Angela Knight - Over The Moon

"Show-off," I said to Thaddeus.

He held out a hand and helped me to my wobbling feet. "Hey," he said, grinning as he pulled Gryphon upright next, "it's one of the few things I can do better than you guys." He looked over my shoulder. "Uh, oh. Looks like the others need my help again."

I watched as he skated nimbly off, back to the others in our little group. Rosemary, the only Full Blood Monère woman among us, was gingerly step-walking with her skates, faring pretty well with that method, her plump face flushed pleasantly by her exertions. Tomas and Aquila, my two other guards, chivalrously supported her on either side. They were powerful warriors in their own right. But standing next to Rosemary, shorter than her by a couple of inches and far more slender, they didn't look it. Rosemary stood six feet tall and was built like an Amazon. She had left her coveted position as High Court cook to follow me to my new territory. The reasons for her doing so were several meters behind her—her children, Tersa and Jamie, rare Mixed Bloods like Thaddeus and I. Only they were only half Monère. That quarter difference in blood made a crucial difference. They were essentially human, without a Full Blood's greater strength or gifts.

I watched as Thaddeus slid to a smooth stop before Tersa. She'd fallen. Beside her, her brother, Jamie, was climbing clumsily to his feet. Their flaming russet hair gleamed like Christmas ornaments and their laughter was even brighter with the joy of youthful enjoyment. They were closest in age to Thaddeus and I—Jamie, nineteen, and Tersa, twenty-four. Tersa was actually older than I was by three years but I tended to view her as my junior. She was tiny, petite, only five feet tall, with delicate bones like a bird. But it wasn't just her size that made me protective of her. Weaker, more vulnerable, without my strength, she'd been raped to draw me out to my enemies. To show their disdain for our mongrel blood. Their mother, Rosemary, had left her sought-after post, taking up a position with me, because she knew I would do my best to protect her children. And she was right.

My brother, Thaddeus, was the only one who did not know of Tersa's brutal taking. All the other men were cautious and gentle around her, careful not to touch her or make her feel uncomfortable with their male presence. But Thaddeus didn't know. He held out a hand to her. My breath caught, wanting to stop him, yet too late to do so.

With but the barest hesitation, Tersa reached out and took Thaddeus's hand. Let him pull her up and help brush the ice from her clothes. Then, laughing, they helped clean up Jamie.

"They are good together," Gryphon said quietly, echoing my thoughts.

"Yeah, they are." My family. Thaddeus, the brother of my blood. Tersa and Jamie, the brother and sister of my heart. And the others… all of them mine, under my care.

"Mona Lisa." Amber's soft utterance of my name, spoken more than a hundred feet away, came to me clearly through the cacophony of sound. With so much noise bombarding our acute senses, it was a natural habit to tune it down until it became a low background hum. But some things, like the speaking of one's name, cut sharply out and apart from the rest of the din, reaching your ears easily.

I turned my face and looked to where Amber stood at the edge of the rink, his massive size standing him apart from others. But even were my eyes blindfolded, I would have known precisely where he stood from his powerful presence alone. We sensed each other in ways humans could not. That innate draw of a Monère male to his Queen was a strong pull that went both ways. It was always there, sometimes muted. But never forgotten, always felt.

I looked into Amber's stony face, blank with cool control. But I knew every nuance of those solid features so well now. I gazed into his eyes, dark blue like the color of the sea, saw the alert tension filling them, and knew that something was wrong.

I loosened that power that was within me, called it up from deep inside and flung it wide and searching, a tangible force trembling in the air in a full spreading radius outward. Searching, searching until it found one and then another's presence like ours. Two Monère males, Full Bloods, above and behind me. And a short distance beyond them, two other males and a Queen. Her distinctive power brushed abrasively against mine in an irritative, stinging fashion, feeling a bit like fire ants biting your skin—an innate reaction when two queens came in contact with one another. Whereas we were drawn to males and they to us, we were repelled by other queens—nature's way of ensuring that we disperse wide to propagate.

I turned around and looked up to the short encircling wall overlooking the rink, crowded with eager tourists who had come to the city and were enjoying the festive sight of the elaborately decorated giant tree and the circling skaters swishing small and tiny below it. The surrounding wall above us was packed three feet deep with gazing people, but the ones I sought were easily picked out among them. One man tall and dark-haired. The other with light brown hair, shorter, more beefy. Nothing usual about them but for the power they emanated in a low, steady thrum. I recognized their faces. Mona Sera's men.

Chami came to a sliding halt beside Gryphon and I. Aquila and Tomas, aware now of our nonhuman observers, skated back with Rosemary to stand protectively in front of Tersa, Jamie, and Thaddeus.

Technically, I was a Queen—an uninvited Queen—in another Queen's territory, Mona Sera's. Reason enough to hunt me down and try to kill me and my people. Although that wasn't what I really feared.

Why? Because I was Mona Sera's daughter.

Before you get any other wrong ideas here, let me set you straight. Our recently renewed acquaintance was not what you would call a cozy mother-daughter relationship. She'd tossed me out like garbage when I was born because of my mixed blood. I'd only discovered she was my mother when I broke into her home seeking a cure for Gryphon. He'd once belonged to her and she'd poisoned him with silver because he no longer wished to serve her. Mona Sera was like the wicked Queen of the West—okay, I know we were technically in the east, but you get what I mean. She was vicious and cruel. Even among the Monère, who weren't exactly known as the most gentle of creatures… even among them, Mona Sera was considered one of their worst Queens.

Before she'd found out I was her daughter, she'd ordered Amber to rape me. Being her daughter hadn't saved me. It was the fact that I was a Queen and her daughter that had spared me that fate. I was of use to her. Nothing more. She'd taken me to High Court, and had me acknowledged as a Queen. Though a Mixed Blood, I was a precious Queen nonetheless. And she did so only to have her own fertility and Queen-bearing status recognized; it gained her brownie points with the Council, increased her own value.

She'd given me two gowns, two of her men, Amber and Gryphon, and then washed her hands of me once more.

Whether you live or die now is of no concern to me , she'd said.

Now some might think that giving me two of her men was a generous gesture on her part. Trust me, that wasn't the case. They had become too powerful for her, and she did what Queens typically did when that happened: She tried to kill them. They were dying when she'd given them to meGryphon from the liquid silver she had poisoned him with, Amber from sun poisoning. She'd roasted Amber under the sun's hot rays, under the guise of punishing him for disobeying her, until he was one gigantic, weeping mass of boils and pus.

Mona Sera had only given Gryphon and Amber to me because I had asked for them and because they were dying. She hadn't expected them to live; no one had. But I'd saved them and now they were mine.