He caught her hand. Twined his fingers with hers in order to catch Iona’s attention—and just because he wanted to hold her hand. “They’ve sent out robots. Rovers. They captured images of planets and stars. Searched and explored.” Hell, he’d take the woman on a little NASA field trip if she wanted…after they were done with Latham. He’d make sure she learned every advance that had been made in space exploration.
“It hasn’t changed,” she said, and with her free hand, she pointed to the sky. “Venus waits. Jupiter shines. The constellations are just as they were. Clothes are different. Music. Technology. But up there…it all looks the same to me.”
He squeezed her fingers. “Why did he stab you?”
“Because my hair wasn’t gray. Because my skin hadn’t wrinkled. Because I wasn’t bearing children for my husband.”
Her husband?
“Did I mention…” Iona murmured, “that my husband was the warrior who stabbed me?”
Sonofabitch. “No,” Jamie bit out the words, “you didn’t.”
“Purebloods usually stop aging around twenty-five. Their bodies just…they freeze. I didn’t realize that had happened to me, of course. I learned later that my father and my husband—they thought I was bewitched.” Her lips tightened. “Or that maybe I’d even made a deal with the devil.”
Blood Queen.
“When I got out of that grave, I made the mistake of running back to my people for help. You see, I still didn’t get it. I thought my father would help me. I was sure he couldn’t have known what Tylar had done. I was so scared and…” Her stare dipped to Jamie’s throat. “Hungry.”
Because her vampire side would have kicked in with all of the blood loss she’d suffered.
“But my father knew. The attack had been his plan. As soon as he saw me, he ordered his guards to prepare the fire.”
The fire. Jamie found that he couldn’t speak. His hold tightened on her.
“The guards bound my hands. Tied me to an old, rotting tree…put brush around me, and it was my father…he was the one to bring the first torch to start the blaze.”
The Blood Queen slaughtered a whole village. That was the tale he knew of Iona’s birth. Whispers had told of a Born Queen who’d been so stricken by bloodlust that she’d turned and attacked every person near her.
Only the story that Iona told was much different from what he’d heard. Jamie found that he didn’t doubt her account, not for an instant. There was too much pain humming beneath her words.
“I begged for help,” she said quietly. Her lips trembled. “So many were gathered around the fire, but no one would step forward to save me. No one.”
Now her fingers were squeezing his.
“I’d never known my mother. My father…he’d said that she was attacked by our enemies shortly after my birth. But there were rumors about her. Stories that said my mother could do magic.” Her long hair slid over her shoulders as she turned her head and gazed at him. “That day, I used magic, too. The fire should have consumed me.”
He knew vampires were particularly susceptible to the flames. Their bodies burned so quickly.
“But I managed to control the fire. I don’t know if it was my fear or my fury, but…something broke in me and I felt a sure of power.” Her breath sighed out. “I got away. I ran and I ran and then I realized…he’d always hunt me. My father wouldn’t stop searching for me because, to him, I was some kind of—of punishment.”
“Punishment? For what?” He didn’t understand, but he sure would have enjoyed doling out some justice to her sadistic father.
“For killing my mother,” Iona said in a soft, sad voice. “Our enemies didn’t kill her. I found out that truth too late. She died by my father’s hand.”
She’d had one sick bastard of a father. Family. Sometimes, you couldn’t live with them…
And sometimes you needed to kill them.
Iona kept talking, and she didn’t try to pull her hand from his.
Good. He liked holding her palm against his. “My father always wanted immortality. Wanted to rule all the land he could find. He thought my mother could help him, and when she didn’t, he made sure she could never use her magic to help anyone again.”
He couldn’t believe how dark her origins were. A heavy ache had grown in his chest as he listened to her tale.
“It was him or me,” she said, and, sure enough, that stubborn chin of hers kicked up. “I knew it, so I went back to my father’s land. I slipped inside and made my way up to kill him.”
And she had. He knew that, at least, this part of her legend was true.
“I had my knife at his throat, but I couldn’t do it.” Her head sagged a bit, as if she were shamed by the memory.
Well, hell. So that part wasn’t true, either?
He’d suspected from the moment her golden eyes first opened that she wasn’t the evil bitch that rumor and legend had made her out to be. Now he knew for certain.
And that knowledge made him feel…lost.
What have I done to her?
“He laughed at my weakness and stabbed me with his sword.” Her left hand went to her side, as if touching a wound that had to be over fourteen hundred years old. “He was coming to cut off my head. H-he said that would be the way to end me.”
Her father had been right. Even a pureblood vampire wouldn’t be able to rise from a beheading.
“He’d killed my mother by taking her head. He told me that…”
Had her mother been a pureblood, too? It was possible. Maybe Iona’s father hadn’t killed her mother because the woman was a witch. Maybe he’d killed her because she was a pureblood and she’d refused to turn him into a vampire? Then the hate had eaten at him, until he’d unleashed his rage on his own child.
“As his blade came for my throat, as I felt my own blood pouring from me, and saw death coming…” Her breath whispered out. “The woman I’d been, she died. The vampire inside of me—she lived. She killed. I took that sword. Snatched it from him. Then shoved it right back into his heart.”
Jamie wanted to put his arms around her, so—screw it—he did. Jamie wrapped his arms around Iona and pulled her against his chest. She stiffened but didn’t fight his hold. Good. He couldn’t have fought her then. Her pain was too fresh. Too strong.