Long Live the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (30 page)

He rose to his feet and looked around. “Half-bloods will not be safe if Bertie gets his way. Nor will wolves, or goblins. No one but those who follow him will be protected. Those who don’t will be killed like Vardan, or Prince Albert.” The look he shot Victoria was sympathetic, and I had to admit I loved him for it. It was exactly the sort of look one should give a woman whose son murdered her husband before plotting her downfall.

All these years Bertie had been plotting. Slowly and patiently. Had he planned to kill Albert, or had the opportunity fallen into his lap? He wanted to rule, and he wanted to crush the humans. He wouldn’t be a king, he’d be a dictator.

Who else did he have in his pocket?

“Why?” It was Ophelia who asked the simple question, and
she directed it at Victoria. The tiny vampire didn’t pretend not to understand.

“Years ago – before the uprising – Albert and I discussed the notion of trying to improve the relationship between aristocrats and humans. We knew we weren’t so very different, especially when our kinds could interbreed. My son was vehemently opposed to the idea. He said we’d muddy the bloodline.”

She shot me a droll look. “There’s muddying, dear girl, and then there’s breeding yourselves out of existence. We wanted to find a… balance. It was my Albert who thought of testing humans for the plague, and having teams of doctors and scientists work on how to better all the peoples of the empire, not just the entitled few. We tested ourselves; we even tried to test our children. Bertie refused. He said our line had already been polluted enough by my goblin uncle.”

“Forgot our kind began as human,” William said. He started removing the bandages from my face. Thankfully, I was wearing a robe so my bits weren’t on display, but that meant having to keep my torso wrapped up for a bit longer until Vex and I were alone.

“Yes, well…” Victoria raised her chin. “I must take my share of responsibility for the boy. If it is determined that he is indeed behind all of these horrendous crimes, he must pay for them. Publicly so.”

I raised a brow. “What are you going to do, behead him?” As far as I knew, that had been outlawed over a century ago.

Victoria stared at me. “If necessary.”

I stared back. She would do that? To her own son? No. She wasn’t that heartless. I could see how she clenched her jaw to keep her composure, how she blinked and looked away.

“I’m guessing if it was the prince who sent the finger, he won’t be meeting you tomorrow evening?” Val asked.

“Oh no,” Her Nibs replied. “He’ll come. He’s been working for this confrontation for a long time. Perhaps he’ll have his little monster kill me and assume my appearance. I rather expect he’ll try to lay all the blame on me and have me arrested for his crimes so he can enjoy seeing me brought low.”

“He won’t have to work too hard to sway opinion that way.” Avery crossed her arms over her chest. “There was a rather nasty piece in
The Times
this morning that suggested you were behind the laboratories. They even insinuated that you should be investigated in several missing-person cases.”

“Eating children now, am I?” Victoria didn’t look too put out. I suppose almost two centuries on the throne would give you that sort of tough skin.

“A time there was when it was an honour to have the leech queen sup on your eldest.”

I turned to William. “Really?”

He nodded, and cast a glance at his niece. “Were it Chesterfield or Marlborough?”

“Chesterfield,” Victoria confirmed. “Chief Inspector Vardan, I would suggest you go ahead with your plans for tomorrow evening and leave my son to me.”

“No,” I said, even though it was the perfect and safest route for all of us.

No one looked more surprised by my announcement than Victoria. Vex glared at me as though he might tie me to the bedpost to keep me from inviting myself along.

“You’re going to have backup,” I informed her. “Bertie’s going to bring friends with him. So are you. This affects all of us; it’s not just about you any more.” I gave her a hint
of a smile as I threw what she had once said to me back at her.

The Queen of England gaped at me. Quite literally. “Are you
concerned
for my safety?”

“I know – it boggles the mind, right?” I squirmed under that piercing blue gaze. Fang me, it wasn’t like I’d dropped to one knee and pledged my honour to her. “It’s not safe, and you’re not going to be alone. I’m going to be there with you.”

“No you’re fucking not.” This came from Vex, the man who very rarely told me what to do. “I’m not letting you get back in the path of that thing. She almost killed you.”

“She almost killed
you
,” I reminded him. William had removed the rest of my visible bandages, and despite a layer of that salve, I felt unbelievably unburdened. “You plan on being there, don’t you?”

A muscle in his cheek clenched.

I turned to Ophelia, who had been very quiet, probably because she was a known criminal. “You’re coming too. Bring humans.”

“What for?” she demanded. “Going to feed them to the freak, are you?”

I ignored that. “William, I want goblins there as well.”

“Of course, lady.”

“All the races together,” I said, looking around at my friends, family and… Victoria. “United against a common enemy. We’ll keep the humans back to protect them. Val, you come armed to the teeth. If we drug Ali, we can bring her down.”

I hated the idea of having to kill her, but there wasn’t any other way. She’d been purposely made a monster, and Bertie had her under his control. I didn’t see any way for her to walk away from this and be allowed to live.

I yawned and leaned back against the pillows. Vex shot me an assessing glance. “Look at you; you’re not fit for fighting.”

“I will be tomorrow,” I promised, but it was all bravado. “We’re going to train, remember?” That had gone by the wayside, hadn’t it?

Ali had put me out for three days. Three fucking days. Who was I trying to fool? It was going to take every one of us to bring her down.

Wasn’t it? I looked down at my hands. They looked as they always did, but when Ali and I had fought, I’d grown fur. Hadn’t I? My mind was still a little cloudy. There had to be laudanum in the bags suspended above my head. I yawned again.

“We should let you sleep,” Ophelia piped up. “The rest of us can hammer out the details.” She began herding the others toward the door.

“Vex and William,” I called out. “Could you stay, please? And Val?”

My brother turned. “Yeah, Xandy?”

I took the ring off our father’s dead finger and tossed it to him. “This is yours now. Wear it tomorrow night and make certain everyone sees it.”

Val looked at the ring for a moment before slipping it on his own finger. It was a good fit and the style suited him.

“Your Grace,” I said, letting the gravity of that sink in. He clenched his hand into a fist, threw me a look bright with the promise of vengeance, and then left with Ophelia.

Avery put herself in the path of Victoria. “Beg your pardon, ma’am, but I’ll accompany you back to the palace.”

Victoria bestowed a rare smile upon her. “My dear girl, surely you do not believe I require
protection
, do you? I am a full-blood.”

My sister pushed a strand of pink hair away from her face and met the Queen’s gaze evenly. “Have you ever thrown a punch? Kicked someone in the face?”

The monarch’s smile grew, with a hint of fang. “Not recently.”

“Well you will have before this night is through. Come on, we’ve work to do. See ya later, Xandy.”

And with that, they were gone, leaving me with the two most important men in my life.

“I don’t want to fight about this,” I told Vex.

“Nor do I,” he replied.

“Good.”

“But after this, we’re getting married.”

It was not the response I’d expected. “Married? We can’t get married. You have to marry a were!”

“No I don’t. I’m marrying you, and if you say no, I’ll tie you to this fucking bed and you won’t be going anywhere tomorrow night.”

“You’re coercing me into accepting your proposal?”

“You want to marry me as much as I want to marry you, and you know it, daft girl.”

“I’m two and twenty years old! I’m not supposed to know what I want!” But a little voice in my head shouted at me to shut up.

He crouched beside the bed. I could see every line etched in his face. My favourites were the ones around his grey-blue eyes. He took my face in his hands. “I’m asking you to spend the rest of your life with me. Does that sound like something you’d like to do?”

“I think so.”

He chuckled, and kissed me on the mouth. “That’s a yes if I’ve ever heard one.”

Sometimes it was frightening how well he knew me.

William bowed before us. “Congratulations, wolf, lady. Should your prince leave?”

“No,” I said at the same time Vex said, “Yes.” I made a face at him. “I need to talk to the both of you.” I handed Vex the box with my father’s finger in it. “Could you get rid of that, love?”

He put it in his pocket, then reclaimed his chair by the bed; William sat by my feet.

“Of all the people in my life, I trust the two of you most of all. When I fought with Ali the other night, something happened.”

“She laid you open like a sandwich,” Vex remarked.

I rolled my eyes. “Besides that. Look, the last few times I’ve gobbed out, it’s been different.”

“Gobbed out?” William’s muzzle wrinkled like he’d bitten into something bad. “Is that what you call it?”

Deliver me from touchy, whiny men. “Had a visit from my inner goblin, or whatever. It was different. The first times my teeth were bigger and my face changed. I even got a bit of a muzzle.”

Vex watched me, an odd expression on his face. He looked almost excited. “What happened last time?”

“I grew fur.”

William barked. He actually barked. “The lady shifted.”

“Started to,” Vex amended. “She started to shift.”

“You two look far too happy about this. Did you hear me say that I grew fucking fur? It was just like Ali’s.”

They looked at one another. “Just like hers?” Vex asked. “Are you certain?”

“As certain as I could be with my blood spraying all over the place, yeah. Why do you two look so ruddy smug?”

William turned to me. “If the lady can alter form, then perhaps future goblins might do the same – for longer times than now. No more looking like monsters.”

It was like a punch to the solar plexus. This creature, who had terrified me so badly at one time, now inspired me to hug him. My heart broke for him.

“Shifting is primarily a were trait,” Vex joined in. “I don’t care what our children are, but they’ll be shifters.”

“We are not talking children yet,” I informed him. “Not for a good long time.”

He merely smiled. “I also suspect that Ali’s ability to shift might be another trait she inherited from you.”

“And others,” I added. “Others that contributed to her gene pool were shifters.” Such as his son.

“Yes, but your shifting ability was the dominant one.”

Maybe it was all the drugs, but I still didn’t get it. “I fail to see how fur colour and texture make any difference.”

“Xandra, sweetheart – it means that maybe you have it in you to be like her. You’re what she’s copying when she gets all ‘gobbed out’, as you put it.”

Right, it was definitely the drugs, because I felt like giggling. What he was suggesting was ludicrous, of course. Honestly, if I hadn’t shifted to such an extent yet, what hope was there that I could?

But there was that little bit of me that held back whenever I felt the change come on – that part that flicked a switch before I lost complete control.

Maybe Ali did get it from me. Maybe all I needed to do was let myself go.

“It couldn’t be that easy, could it?” That wasn’t quite honest on my part, because there was nothing easy about it. Control
wasn’t something I liked to give up. That was why I was never particularly popular with boys, or had many girlfriends when I was younger. I was impulsive, but only on my own terms.

I was no fun.

Vex shrugged, but he looked the most hopeful I’d seen him look in a long time. “Nothing with you has ever been easy, sweetheart. But it may be worth a look.”

I yawned again. “Right. What’s the worst that could happen?”

After two hours of trying, I managed to fail spectacularly at this shifting business. I had one small success – the index finger on my right hand morphed into a claw just like one of Ali’s – but it was a lone occurrence.

“It’s the drugs,” Vex allowed later. “You’re still getting laudanum from the IVs.”

“I’m not stoned,” I replied, rather petulantly. Where was my big bad? My snarl? I was supposed to be the goblin queen, a nasty piece of work, a fighting machine.

Right then I was about as nasty as a mouldy old dishcloth. Nasty – but not in the right way.

“No, but you’re not at one hundred per cent either. You’ve done enough for tonight.”

“We’re facing her tomorrow night, Vex.”

“Aye, and you’ll have several vampires, half-bloods, weres and goblins at your back. It doesn’t all have to fall on you.”

Was it completely twisted that I wanted it to fall on me? Ever
since I’d jumped down this particular rabbit hole in my original search for Dede, I’d felt as though it had been all about me. Right. Now I knew it wasn’t all about me – I was just a happy by-product. It was all about a boy and his mum, and that age-old chestnut about the heir itching to inherit. Victoria was obviously our longest-ruling monarch, and Bertie boy was the prince who’d waited almost two centuries to prove himself a man.

Still, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it, was he? Making a monster. Killing my father. Poisoning his own father. Those all seemed to be the work of a coward, really. But then again, he’d hidden behind his mother’s skirts for decades. Why show himself now if he didn’t have to? Plus, if he was openly out there in his villainy, it would be that much more difficult to elicit sympathy and followers.

No, Bertie was setting himself up to be the saviour of his people, and he was going to make humans into a buffet and kill off as many as he could.