Mona Lisa Craving

TEN

EVEN WITH ROSEMARY, Jamie, and Tersa accompanying me, I felt awkward. Like a stranger intruding. It was a feeling that grew even heavier as we made our way onto the practice grounds, the same circle where, once a month when the moon rode full and high in the midnight sky, all my people gathered to Bask.

Men were scattered around, stretching, conversing, sharpening their weapons. I glimpsed Nolan and his sons, and the familiar faces of Dontaine, Chami, Tomas, and Aquila. The rest of them, however, were strangers to me. Their easy chatter died away as the men became aware of us.

What an odd lot we must have looked, a Mixed Blood Queen accompanied by her Mixed Blood waifs. Rosemary was the only Full Blood among us.

“I hope you weren’t waiting for us,” I said as Dontaine came forward to greet us.

“Not at all.” Catching my hand in a courtly gesture, he placed it upon his arm, and led me into the woodland clearing with as much pride and formality as if we were being presented at High Court.

“The men are just warming up,” Dontaine said. “They’re excited, knowing that you would be here tonight, watching them.”

If they were excited, they did not show it. A sea of male faces—there must have been over a hundred of them—turned to us. Hushed silence rang the air. It was as if the silent echoes of an unheard bell had tolled, calling them to attention. As if now that the Queen and her civilian entourage had arrived, all the guards had to watch what they said and did. Gone was the easy camaraderie with which they had spoken and interacted, vanished completely like smoke whisked away by a strong wind.

I swallowed. Gestured toward them. “Continue on, please.”

They simply stared back at me, unmoving. Making me wonder if I shouldn’t have said, “At ease, men,” instead. Maybe they would have understood that better.

“This is Rufus, my drill master,” Dontaine said, stopping before a short, barrel-chested man with hair gone completely gray, denoting his advanced age, over two hundred years old—that was when our hair started to whiten. His was a face I remembered seeing the night they had come to my rescue after I had been captured by Mona Louisa, the former blond bitch ruler here. She hadn’t been too thrilled with me taking over her territory, and had tried to get it back by eliminating me.

“I remember you.” With a pleased smile, I took the drill master’s hand, clasping it with gratitude. The gesture seemed to surprise him. “You and your men helped rescue Prince Halcyon and me. I never got the chance to thank you for it afterward.”

Rufus blushed beet-red. Slipping his hand from mine, he mumbled, “’Twas my duty and honor, milady.”

I smiled. “An awkward one, I imagine. Having to save your new Queen from your old Queen.”

Someone snickered, and like that, the easiness of the night was restored. The men moved about, making quips and snide comments about those who had fought that night. And how well or how lousy each had fared.

“Skewered like a kebab” was one comment that floated to my ear. I didn’t know if the man was referring to himself or to his opponent.

Rufus nodded to me with an appreciative light in his eyes that seemed to say, Well done, milady.

Turning to his men, he called out, “All right, you lazy louts. Fall into your drill groups. I want the new lads with the other boys. Nolan, I’m putting you with the senior group.”

The men fell into three formations shaped much like a whale—smaller at the head and tail. The end groups consisted of the young boys and senior warriors, respectively, with the bloated middle group being the largest: warriors older than the teenage boys in the first group, but younger and less seasoned than the senior group, which was comprised entirely of my contribution of men—Chami, Aquila, Tomas, and Nolan. The power emanating from the four of them was richer, stronger, like the heady scent of sweet wine squeezed from grapes fully ripened and matured. Without my additions, Dontaine and Rufus would have been the only two powerful warriors here. Two to my four. And that was without counting my two strongest, my Warrior Lords—Gryphon, who had become demon dead, and Amber, who ruled my Mississippi slice.

No wonder some of the other Queens had feared me. I could almost see their reasoning. If I surrounded myself with such strong men, so many of them, what did that speak of my own power, my own abilities?

Therein lay the key difference between me and other Queens. I did not fear my men being stronger than I. Did not see them as threats to watch out for, competitors to cut down. I saw them as friends, allies, lovers. Men who wanted to protect me, not hurt me.

The men broke up into pairs, spreading out, and soon the clash of metal filled the air as they commenced sword practice. Rosemary, Tersa, and Jamie’s eyes were fixed on the senior group, watching Nolan. My own eyes drifted to the younger group, which had yet to begin their practice. They stood waiting for the crusty drill master to make his way down to them. There were eight of them, ranging from what looked to be as young as twelve to as old as seventeen, perhaps. The addition of Quentin and Dante was, in my opinion, like throwing in lions with the lambs. But I understood Rufus’s reasoning. They had to start from the bottom. It was responsible, wise even, I realized as Rufus passed out wooden swords to the boys. He wanted to see how Dante and Quentin fared with practice weapons before letting them drill with real swords as the other men did.

Quentin was paired up with a younger boy who looked to be about sixteen. Dante was matched with the oldest lad, the boy whose age I had pegged around seventeen. He was as tall as Dante but far more slender, as if his body mass had yet to catch up with his height growth. Dante was built much more solidly. And aside from the physical difference, there was a confidence to the way Dante moved that set him apart even more markedly. As if he was older than them not only in age—a few scant years in difference—but in experience.

As if Dante felt my eyes upon him, he turned. Our gazes met, and a shiver of apprehension skittered down my spine like the trailing footprints of a ghost. Without breaking eye contact, he stabbed the blunt tip of the wooden sword into the ground and took off his jacket. Metal bracelets hugged his forearms, different, darker than what his brother and father had worn, made from an unusual burgundy-colored alloy. They were as primitive an adornment on him as the gold bar piercing his ear. With the jacket stripped away, he took up his sword and turned back to his practice partner with a cool nod.

A quick glance at the others showed that neither Quentin nor Nolan wore their wrist guards. Just Dante. Then all thoughts scattered as I watched Dante fight. He stood with relaxed poise, countering the other boy’s blows easily, blocking his strikes with minimal effort. One, two, three countering hits. Then, as he had with me, he took control. Two powerful forward lunges like a cobra suddenly striking, and the boy was on the ground, his weapon knocked from his hand, Dante’s wooden sword tip pointed at his heart. Quentin disarmed his opponent almost as quickly, though with less coiled violence.

A quiet word from Rufus, and Quentin and Dante moved to the middle group. Wooden swords were traded for real swords, and a pair of young guards were broken apart, one paired with Quentin, the other with Dante.

By outward appearance, they were more evenly matched. I knew better, though. I’d seen Quentin fight before, had caught a glimpse of Dante’s ability just now, and was both frightened and eager to see more.

What else can you do? I wondered. How well do you fight with a real weapon? Show me.

He did. Again, those few testing strikes and parries, feeling out his opponent. Then he took control, setting the pace, increasing the tempo and the force of the blows. Whereas Quentin fought with flowing grace, like a song, a dance, poetry in motion, Dante fought with brute cutting force. He fought as if the man before him was not a sparring partner but an enemy in truth. He moved with the same fluid grace as his twin, but whereas Quentin was like cool, clear water, Dante was like the raging rapids. Savage, lethal, deadly. As I watched him fight, something inside me whispered, I know you. I’ve met you before.

In no time, Dante disarmed his opponent, his sword, this time, stopped a bare inch from his neck. My own neck tingled in a memory flash of pain, here and then gone, distracting me, pounding my heart, so that I hardly noticed when Quentin defeated his partner.

Rufus grunted, narrowed his eyes, and walked Dante and Quentin down the line of sparring men to a pair all the way at the other end, men older in age, whose power thrummed greater than the Morell brothers. But it wasn’t power Rufus was trying to match up, so much as weapons’ skill.

The two men broke apart, and eyed the brothers curiously.

“Want us to have a go at these two young lads here, Rufus?” asked the bigger of the two guards, grinning. He had dark curly hair and was as tall as Dante but an entire width larger, outweighing the “young lads,” as he called them, by almost a hundred pounds. His arms were massive and his thighs were well on their way to becoming tree trunks. If one were to judge someone’s age by the feel of their power—not always an accurate gauge, granted—I’d have guessed him at close to seventy or eighty years old.

“Aye, Marcus.” Rufus nodded. “And no holding back. I be wanting you and Jayden here to show me whether or not I should be moving these two young ’uns up to the next group.”

It was a statement guaranteed to wipe the grin off of Marcus’s face, and Jayden’s as well. Jayden stood slightly shorter, just shy of six feet, and was built along less bulky lines than his bullish partner. But he, too, felt older in years.

Rufus’s words snapped the two of them to full attention. Because what the drill master was really implying was that the two “young ’uns” were better than they were. Good enough, perhaps, to practice with the senior men.

They paired off in grim silence, Dante with Marcus, Quentin with Jayden. Once their swords engaged, there was no holding back as per Rufus’s instructions. It was fighting that was almost frightening to behold. Whirling movements, dangerous flashing steel. Rufus came at Dante with full slashing force, and Dante smiled as if finally set free, his sword singing in turn, an eager, intent look in those pale eyes.

Metal clashed against metal, the usual sounds. Then came the sound of something new, something that caught everyone’s attention. A lighter, higher resonance. Almost a clinking chime as Dante caught Marcus’s sword against his metal bracelet, deflecting the blow in a most unexpected manner. Dante’s sword darted forward and Marcus leaped back. The burly warrior gazed down at the neat cut that gaped open his shirt front, exposing the muscled slabs of his belly. The white skin itself was uncut.

“Neat trick.” Marcus grinned, teeth bared, his dark eyes lighting up with the pleasure of a worthy challenge. “Let’s see you do that again, boy.” He lunged forward, a big bear of a man, his full power and weight behind the thrust. The high chiming clink sounded again as Dante deflected the blade past him with his right wrist guard. A quick turn and twist like the steps of a ballet, a lethal one, and Dante was suddenly behind Marcus, the edge of his own sword stopped a hair’s breadth away from the thick neck.

Complete silence for one long moment, then big, bullish Marcus dropped his weapon. “And I’m dead.” He turned around slowly, unarmed. “Witch’s tit,” Marcus said, grinning. “That’s some real nice moves you’ve got there, Dante boy. Course, you’d be minus a hand now, if your aim with those fancy cuffs was off by a tad.”

“True,” said Dante, lowering his sword. “Lucky, I guess.”

“Lucky, my balls,” muttered Jayden. He and Quentin had stopped their fighting to watch the other two. As had all the rest of the men the moment that first clinking chime had sounded in the air.

“You fight like the Lacedaemons of old,” said Chami, my chameleon. He was tall and boyishly slender, but his voice held the chill of death, stilling everyone. “You are descended from that line?” He asked the question of Nolan, with whom he had been sparring.

“Yes,” Nolan replied, eyeing the smaller man warily. “It is not common knowledge among the other Queens I served. But Queen Mona Lisa knows of my lineage.”

He’d only told me in a bid for his sons, casting it out as enticement for me to take them into my bed. Or maybe Nolan hadn’t tried to hide it from me simply because I’d already seen the unusual, distinctive manner in which they fought.

“Of all the Queens, she is one you should have kept this knowledge from,” Chami said. His words puzzled me as much as they did Nolan.

“Why do you say this, Chameleo?” Nolan asked, calling Chami by his full name. A name that stated what Chami was, and what he did. Chameleon. Assassin.

“You do not know, do you?” Chami asked.

“Explain yourself, chameleon.”

Chami turned his gaze back to me. “Mona Lisa. If you will please show him your hands.”

Feeling something almost like dread well up in me, I lifted my hands and turned my palms out to him. When Nolan caught sight of the pearl-like moles nestled in my palms, his sun-darkened face whitened, became ash pale. He looked from me to his son. To Dante, who watched us with his pale blue eyes glittering and gleaming like shards of ice melting beneath the sun’s brilliant light.

Chami quoted the following words in an almost singsong manner, reciting them like an old familiar song. “With pale eyes touched by the faint color of the sky, the fierce son of Barrabus slew our heart, our hope, our Warrior Queen.”

Hearing that name, Barrabus, something tingled to life within me. It was a name I’d never heard before. By the same token, deep in the soul of me, I knew and recognized it somehow.

The charged tension between Chami and Nolan suddenly grew thicker, more threatening. Reacting to that incipient promise of violence, Tomas and Aquila moved swiftly in front of me, as did Dontaine, though he looked as confused as everyone else. It was like watching a play that had suddenly, unexpectedly, veered away from its usual dialogue and storyline. Only Nolan looked as if he understood it. And Dante. From whom men were protecting me—as if he were some horrible threat.

“Chami,” I said, trembling from something right there, hovering on the cusp of my awareness, tickling my memory, but still just beyond reach. “Explain this. What’s going on?”

It was Dante who answered. The words he spoke were almost lyrical, and his voice, fully recovered now, was smooth and rich, a sharp contrast to the harsh stillness of his face, the bitter fierceness of his glittering eyes. “Long ago on another planet, in another world, in a time of great strife among our people, there rose a Queen named Mona Lyra. She bore the marks of the moon’s blessing in her hands. The Moon Goddess’s tears, they were called, given to her by a mother crying over the blood being shed by her children, one against another, crystallized and captured in a woman’s hands, giving her great gifts and powers as healer and fighter both. A Warrior Queen.”

The first time I’d met Gryphon, he had spoken of such women in the past bearing the same marks as I. Women who had been both blessed and cursed by their gifts, I remembered.

“What does that have to do with you?” I asked. “With us?”

“Damian, the son of Barrabus, was a warrior with eyes of silver touched by the sky.” Dante smiled, a humorless gesture, as I looked at his eyes, noted their color. “He slew Mona Lyra, killed the last Warrior Queen, and was cursed for it, he and his descendants. By the sword they would live and die. Damned, in an endless cycle of life and death, never ending. Reborn each time into an ever diminishing line of those who carried his blood. His curse was to see his line die slowly out, killing his heart as surely as he had cut down theirs. Lacedaemon was one of his descendants.” The line from which Dante and his family descended. The line that had been cursed.

I pushed passed Aquila and Tomas, and if my hands shook and my heart beat rapidly, it did not show in my steady voice. “You speak of legends, Dante. Of people that may or may not have existed. It’s just a story. It has nothing to do with us.”

“You are wrong,” Dante said, speaking as softly and gently as the breeze that blew across our skin. “I remember killing you.”