Page 93 of Queen Takes Triune

But when she came to heal him…he didn’t recognize her.

He couldn’t see through her illusion.

Which shattered her completely.

I released Carys, and she stumbled backwards in shock. Hopefully I hadn’t damaged her or wiped her memories. I didn’t have time to check on her.

Marne’s idyllic summer day darkened. Thick black clouds blanketed the sky. Her howling winds bit at my skin. Locusts pummeled me with hard shells. Scratchy legs on my skin. Jaws clamping down. Tearing. The noise of their wings filled my head, a drumming, pounding drone meant to drive me insane.

Of course, the goddess of the harvest would know all about the scourge of a locust horde.

I gritted my teeth, fighting down my instinctual need to fight. To seize my power and strike back. That was what she wanted.

She wanted a reason to obliterate me and my entire house. All I had to do was break the conditions she’d set when I stepped into her nest, and she’d be perfectly within her legal rights to do whatever she wanted with us.

I made myself stand there. And take it. I’d take whatever she threw at me and smile while she did it.

I focused on her. Her golden hair perfectly coiled around her head. Her beautiful, ancient Italian villa. A queen who wore diamonds and silk to tea and fed fancy dishes to her cat on fine china. Wealthy and powerful beyond measure.

But she’d welcomed me to her house alone.

No Blood at her back. No friends. Not even her consiliarius. Byrnes didn’t even live on the same continent.

Thinking of him made me remember Kevin’s memory. Marne Ceresa, the queen of Rome, doing a simple household chore.“Don’t ever forget where you came from.”

I couldn’t possibly fathom the long years of her life. I was too young, and she’d lived here for hundreds of years, in a villa that still used a fucking Roman aqueduct. For all I knew, she’d been alive when it’d first been built.

While I hadn’t even been raised in a proper nest.

No wonder she’d pitied me and found my upbringing so shocking.

As shocking as a naïve slip of a girl who still believed in love.

The girl from the story. Nella. Marne.Marnella.

The high, sweet ringing of the goddess’s bell cut through the droning locusts.

“Marnella! Don’t ever forget where you came from!”

The howling locust horde dissolved as suddenly as she’d called them. I staggered a little, still caught up between my Blood.

My gown. It’d been soggy and disgusting after my trip through the pond. The silk hopelessly ruined.

Now, it was dry. The white, diaphanous silk was pristine.

My hair. Dry and controlled in a thick braid. After being whipped by a hurricane.

I jerked my gaze up to Marne’s face, not surprised to see she now wore a formal golden gown heavily studded with diamonds and pearls. Was the gown only an illusion? Or had her idyllic tea party been the illusion? I would probably never know for sure.

“I haven’t heard that name in centuries.” Her formidable gaze raked over me, looking for the ace tucked up my sleeve. Or perhaps she was looking for the invisible wires or hidden compartment. Some illusion that hid my true identity. Because a twenty-two-year-old queen would never get the best of her. “How did you know?”

I smiled brightly. “I love it when my Blood read to me.”

Speaking of…:Carys?:

:What now?:She retorted.:Want to suck another book out of my brain?:

I had to laugh. She was fine and back to her crusty self.:Thank you.: