Cold Queen - K Webster Page 0,41
cries out, squeezing me tight.
“Little sister,” I choke out. “Here you are.”
She pulls away, her hands on my shoulders, and inspects me. “How are you? Has he hurt you?”
So beautiful.
An exact replica of her mother, even down to the way her full breasts nearly spill out of the top of her dress, enticing any male with a working cock. Her lips are stained red and her eyes are lined in black. Her beauty was always something I was envious over.
“That’s enough,” Ryke barks, gripping my arm and yanking me back.
Yanna glowers at him. “Get your hands off my sister, you monster!”
Ryke summons his fires and his palm blazes red-hot, sending Yanna stepping back several paces. He snuffs out his heat and then pulls a cloth from his pocket.
When he reaches up and pulls my crown from my head, Yanna cries out in horror.
“Elzira,” she whimpers, fear in her voice. “Run.”
“If she runs, I’ll catch her,” Ryke promises in a wicked tone, sending a chill straight down my spine. He sets the crown at my feet and then he ties the cloth around my head, silencing me from speaking.
I don’t fight him.
I knew this was coming.
He uses his whip to bind my hands behind me, reminding me of our first encounter.
“Queens look pretty on their knees,” he rumbles, nudging the backs of my legs with his knees, forcing me to fall forward. He catches me by my hair before I land painfully and eases me the rest of the way down. “Lovely.”
“Elzira,” Yanna says tearfully. “I’m so sorry.”
Ryke snorts as he walks over to her. He toys with a dark strand of her hair, his heat making the air around him ripple.
“Why are you sorry?” he asks, his voice sounding slightly amused. “Because you can’t save her?”
She nods, fat tears streaking down her pretty face.
“All you’ve done your entire life is try to save hers,” he says as though he feels sorry for her. “You’ve dedicated your entire life to this dying, Cold Queen. Is that true, Princess?”
Yanna’s brows furl together and she cuts her eyes to his. “She’s my sister.”
“She is the present.” Ryke glances over at me, his fiery eyes cold. “What about the future, hmmm? When the frigid queen has drawn her last breath and is a queen no more, where does that leave the selfless sister?”
“I don’t know,” she murmurs, peeking up at him beneath her lashes. Her plump lips part and her jiggly breasts quiver with each breath she takes.
His fingertip strokes through the wetness of her cheek. “Perhaps a princess is ready to be promoted to a queen.”
She looks up at him, her lips twitching with a smile. “A queen?”
“Beautiful and feared,” he says. “A fiery queen of the Volcs.” His head nods my way and he walks over to me to run his fingers through my hair. “Are you weak, Yanna, like your dear sister here on her knees and missing her crown?”
It’s then my eyes lock with Yanna’s.
The love has hardened into something much harder than ice or stone or diamondblade.
Hate.
Her laugh is cruel as it echoes in the dining room. “Weak? I will never be weak…like her.”
I stiffen, affected more than I imagined by hearing the words tumble from her mouth.
“It’s her fault, you know,” Yanna says bitterly.
“Her fault?” Ryke goads. “Your mother’s death?”
Yanna trembles with anger. “No, our father’s favor. She was the cloth covering his eyes. Elzira, you blinded him.”
Ryke asks the question I wish I could.
“How so, Princess?”
“He was blind by his love toward her. His sureness of the fact she’d become a great queen one day. He favored her and treated me as an insignificant daughter. An ignorant child not worthy of love or a future.” Her features tighten with anger. “When they died, I vowed to dethrone the witch.” She sneers at me. “My mother made sure of that.”
My beast inside me rattles, desperate to ravage the world around me. Instead, I keep it on a tight leash.
“Your mother?” Ryke asks. “She betrayed the king?”
She shakes her head. “No, she loved him. So much so that she took him from Elzira’s mother.”
What?
“Go on,” he urges.
“She slowly poisoned her. So often, before bed, she’d whisper just how she’d done it, too. I listened in awe,” Yanna says dreamily, making my stomach clench in horror. “I learned.”
My poor mother. She wasn’t sick from some incurable disease. My mother was attacked by a friend who wanted her husband.
“You were a child, yes?” Ryke probes.
“The kingdom was to be mine,” Yanna