“That
was
the original plan,” Jenna murmured. She stifled a yawn behind her hand and eyed the pillow, the fluffy duvet, the layers of satin sheets below. The soft bed called to her like a siren’s song, lush and succulent and oh so inviting. This place might be a prison, but at least it was a sumptuous one.
“Well, little bird, you’re grounded until that foot heals anyway,” Morgan said.
Jenna came instantly alert. “Why?”
“Because we can’t Shift when we’re wounded. Even a little cut will do the trick. You’re not going anywhere until that foot heals.”
Something inside her stomach eased and softened, then bloomed into a tiny flower of hope. A shallow cut like this would heal quickly. A few days, maybe a week...
She turned away so Morgan wouldn’t see her surprise. She stood, putting most of her weight onto her right foot, and hobbled over the plush carpet toward the bathroom.
“So you’re saying I’m stuck here until this heals completely,” she threw over her shoulder.
“I’m saying, my dear,” Morgan said, utterly neutral, “you’re stuck here permanently.”
That stopped Jenna dead in her tracks. She turned slowly back to Morgan, holding a hand out at waist level for balance. Panic sprawled over her chest. “I knew it,” she said, her mouth gone bone dry. “I
knew
I shouldn’t have trusted him. He never planned on letting me leave, did he?”
Morgan’s face held another inexplicable expression. Her eyes shone with a deep, hard thoughtfulness. Her gaze flickered to the window for a moment. “Unless...”
“Unless what?” Jenna said sharply.
She cut her gaze back to Jenna. When she spoke, her voice was urgent, a sudden rush of words falling from her lips. “How did you find your way back to Sommerley, Jenna?”
“I
walked
, I told you—”
“Yes, for two days. I know. Through woods you’ve never set foot in before, evading along the way an army of the best hunters on earth, and simply came in through the open kitchen door. But how did you know which
direction
to go?”
For some bizarre reason, Morgan’s facial expression exuded an air of incredulous expectation as if she were just about to peek around a corner to see a unicorn standing in the middle of the room.
“I just...” Jenna struggled to find the right description for what had led her back. “I just followed the trail.”
Morgan just stared at her with the same silent anticipation, so Jenna went on.
“There was a trail—”
“Your scent? You detected your own days-old scent?” Morgan interrupted.
“Well, yes, my scent was the obvious thing, but there was also...the light.”
This was a wholly inadequate description for the pulse of energy she had detected when, as she knelt down to examine the cut on her foot, she closed her eyes for a brief moment and saw the concentric rings under her lids, a faint, glimmering trail of diamond-white and gold that led off into the woods. When she opened her eyes it was gone, but she closed them again and it came back, glittering shapes like
circles with streamers trailing behind heading steady south, even as she turned her head to and fro to see if it would move.
She knew instinctively it was her, an impression left as she shot like an arrow through the forest. She knew it would lead her directly back to Sommerley.
“You could see your heat signature,” Morgan said, unblinking. “You could smell your scent and see your heat signature, all from more than two days past.” She lifted a hand to the chair against the wall and sank unevenly onto its stuffed silk cushion. Her eyes were very wide.
“I don’t know exactly how to explain it...I guess that sounds right, though.” Jenna took in Morgan’s face, the sudden pallor on her cheeks, her slack jaw. “Why? What does that mean? Can’t you do that too? Can’t everyone here do that?”
“I...I...” Morgan cleared her throat and began to blink quite rapidly. The color flushed back to her cheeks in a rush of crimson. “And now—if you close your eyes now, can you see anything else?”
Jenna raised an eyebrow. “How did you know I had my eyes closed?”
“Just try it,” Morgan whispered. “This is very important, Jenna—please, just try it.”
“I am in dire need of a shower, Morgan, as you can clearly see, and am almost delirious with hunger and exhaustion. I hardly see how this is the time for me to play—”
“Marie Antoinette,” Morgan interrupted in a hoarse whisper.
Jenna remained silent, wondering, as Morgan stared at her from her perch on the chair.
“She was the last
Ikati—
”
“Queen. Yes, yes, I know. Your doomed ancestor, the queen of France. What about her?” Jenna said, exasperated. Her foot was throbbing, her patience was fraying, and her stomach was clenched into a horrid little ball of empty, writhing air that seemed poised to begin cannibalizing itself.
Morgan appeared to be breathing regularly, but Jenna could hear her heartbeat drumming under her ribcage like a hummingbird’s.
“The
Ikati
aren’t dogs, Jenna. We’re not like a wolf pack, though we have Alphas and hierarchies and rules upon rules upon rules,” she said slowly. She swallowed before continuing. “We are
CATS
. And every pride of cats has a queen.” She paused again. “Though the
Ikati
haven’t had one since Marie Antoinette. She was the most powerful Alpha of her time, more Gifted than any male Alpha. She was our last true Queen.”
“And look how well that turned out for her,” Jenna said, humorless.
Morgan shook her head, disagreeing. “You are missing the point entirely. The queen of France was allowed to do as she pleased precisely because of who she was. She was in control of her own destiny—had she been any other
Ikati
, she would have been shackled by the Law, as the rest of us are. So I’m going to take a wild guess here, but if I’m right...”
Morgan inhaled a shaky breath. “Just close your eyes and tell me, tell me what you can see. Close your eyes and concentrate.”
Jenna stared at her, confused. “Why?”
“Because it’s...important.”
Her eyebrows arched.
Morgan took another shaky breath. “Because it’s
very
important?”
“This is completely ridiculous.”
“Please?”
Jenna made a sound of exasperation. “I already
know
what I can see—the light! I told you!”
Morgan remained silent but clasped her hands together tightly in front of her chest in a gesture of mute supplication.
“Fine,” Jenna said through clenched teeth. “But you’re going to be disappointed. And you owe me one.”
She closed her eyes.
At first there was nothing but the amber glow of sunlight against her lids. Two songbirds began to warble outside the window, a rising melody of piercing notes that wound together and lifted ever higher, lovely and sweet. She sighed in frustration and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Just relax, Jenna,” Morgan murmured. “Just let yourself go and concentrate on your breathing.”
Inhale. Exhale. She relaxed her body and felt her exhaustion so keenly she thought she might fall asleep standing on her feet. She didn’t bother to cover her yawn with her hand.
She became aware of her heartbeat slowing. Something began to sink into her cells, softening time around her to a muted tick of the clock on the fireplace mantle, a hollow pale echo of Morgan’s breathing. There came a warm, sliding sensation, like honey poured over her skin.
And then it arrived with a breathtaking, silent lucidity as if it had been poised behind her eyelids forever, as if it had only been waiting all along for her to
want
to see.
Picture: A night sky, black, perfectly clear and cloudless, deep in the countryside where no other lights could pollute the virgin dark. Silence. Then, after a moment of suspended anticipation, a glimmer.
A star.
First one winked to life, a bright spot of white against a velvet black canvas, so near it seemed she would be able to reach out with her hand to touch it. Another shimmering light, again very close, this one burning a strong blood red. Then another, still one more, glittering bright, all close to the first.
Then, all at once, thousands of stars winked to life.
They blazed against the darkness, burning and twinkling, calling to her with the most beautiful, aching song. It ran through her senses like an intangible zephyr, like a silken, living wind, and settled down into her bones as if it had been waiting for years and years to arrive, for her to listen.
Here were clusters of light, like galaxies across the universe, beautiful and ethereal and spread over a vast distance, all pulsing with heated power, every one unique in color and shape and size, every one crying out to her, every one her own.
The strongest song of all came from the glowing red star.
A shiver came over her.
It started in her core, in the very center of her stomach, and ran out along her arms and legs. The shivers turned to goose bumps, butterflies in her stomach transformed into scarlet bright flame, joy came up hard to consume her. She wanted to stare up at these stars forever, felt they were more than just brilliant points of light, they were something akin to...
“You can see them all, can’t you?” Morgan said with an awed, whispered voice you would use in church. “All the
Ikati
. All of our kind, all across the globe.”
Jenna opened her eyes and gazed at Morgan’s face. She spun with dizziness and had to swallow a few times before she pulled herself together enough to respond.
“I didn’t see anything.” Her voice was more tremulous than she would have liked.
Morgan gazed back at her with something like reverence. Reverence...and awe. “Yes, you did.”
“No, I did not.” She paused for just longer than a heartbeat. “And even if I did, it doesn’t mean anything. I’m just overtired.”
“I’ll tell you what it means.” Morgan straightened her long legs and rose unsteadily from the chair. “It means that you are connected to
all
of us, you can find us anywhere, even through pitch black or blinding snow or at the bottom of the ocean. This Gift is the strongest of our Blood, a Gift shared by only a few of our kind throughout the ages, a Gift Marie Antoinette herself was blessed with. It means you are bound to us all, in a way we’re not even connected to each other.
“As a matter of fact,” Morgan inclined her head and sank into a low, proper curtsy, one knee bent elegantly with the other behind, “it
means
you are the Queen.”
Jenna stared at her, blinking. “I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “I must be hallucinating. I thought you just said I was the
queen
.”
“Yes,” Morgan insisted. She rose up with shining eyes to look her in the face.
There was total silence in the room save for the longcase clock against the wall that ticked out the seconds in crisp, clicking notes. Five, ten, twenty...
“That is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.”
Jenna hobbled back over to the bed, sank down heavily on it, and stared around the gilded room in a haze of confusion. She yawned again, fighting the tide of exhaustion that wanted to pull her down into an ocean of blessed rest.
She glanced over to find Morgan beaming at her.
“No, Morgan.”
“Yes, Jenna.”
“No.
No
.”
Morgan just stared at her, smiling enigmatically. It unraveled the last of her patience.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing with me, but I’m not in the mood for it! I only came here to get answers about what happened to my father, and first I find out he was...he was
killed
here—and not only that, but I’m a
prisoner
—and now you’re trying to tell me I’m the—I’m a—”
“Queen,” Morgan finished for her, calmly and quietly. “And yes, like it or not, I believe that is exactly what you are. And not only that, but Leander...is your mate.”
Jenna collapsed onto the bed and curled up into a fetal position. “Please just go away now. I just want you to go away.”
For a long moment, all Jenna heard was her own pulse pounding in her ears and the sound of Morgan’s soft, erratic breathing. “Just so you know,” Morgan murmured, “there are substantial benefits to being Queen of the
Ikati
.”
“I find it extremely hard to believe,” Jenna said into the coverlet, her voice muffled, “that being the matriarch of a pack of wild animals who live in hiding and kill each other if they step out of line would have a single advantage I’d be interested in.”
“Well...” Jenna heard the sound of rustling silk as Morgan nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Now they’ll have to do exactly as you say.”
Jenna barely had the strength or the interest to answer her. “They?”
“The
Assembly
,” Morgan enunciated. “If you’re the Queen, that means you can do as you please. It means you can come and go and live your life and
to hell with all of them
...” Morgan trailed off to a whisper, then gave a final, amazed sigh.
Something in her voice began to make Jenna extremely nervous. She sat up quickly and stared hard at Morgan. “You can’t tell them about this. That you think this.”
Morgan’s mouth dropped open. “Don’t be
ridiculous!
Do you know what this means for you? You’ll be able to—”
“Promise me,” Jenna interrupted. She leaned over and clutched Morgan’s hand. “Promise me you won’t tell them.”
“Jenna! I have to tell them! You have no idea how important you are to us—to
me—
”
“No!”
“Why on earth not?” Morgan said, indignant.
Jenna dropped Morgan’s hand and sat back on the bed. She took a breath and lifted her gaze over Morgan’s shoulder. The color of the sky in the windows beyond was lifting to a bottomless, azure blue. “Because I don’t want to be that. I
can’t
be that.”
“But,” Morgan said, astonished, “
why
?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, hating the memory that surfaced. She kept her voice monotone when she answered, because at least she could control that, unlike the pain in her heart. Unlike the past.