Queen Takes Rose (Wicked Villains #6) - Katee Robert Page 0,80

“I heard that you almost killed her when you took over.”

It feels like there’s a question within her statement, but I can’t figure out the flavor of it. I debate for a moment but decide to answer instead of pushing her. This time. But I want an explanation, and I want it soon. “I dislike coups that come in the form of a blade in the back. It’s cleaner to have a fight for it out in the open. I declared my intentions to take over, and Amelia chose not to take me seriously. She could have left, and I wouldn’t have touched her, but she didn’t. We fought. I won. It’s as simple and complicated as that.”

“You almost killed her.”

I study her. “Where is all this concern for something that happened twenty years ago coming from?”

“You had her down and beaten, and you still chose to keep going.” She’s still not looking at me, her voice low and fierce.

“An Amazon doesn’t leave an enemy at their back,” I say softly, my mind racing. Why is she so worried about the former leader of this territory? It’s no coincidence. Aurora’s anger is too personal to be on behalf of some faceless stranger. No, there’s something else going on here. But what? Aurora was maybe ten or so when that fight happened. There were no children involved; neither Amelia nor her inner circle had kids. I would have known.

“I see,” she whispers.

I cup her face and gently guide her to look at me. Part of me wants to let this go, to kiss her and distract us both until whatever lurks beneath the surface of this conversation stays locked away. I can’t shake the feeling that this revelation will crush the fragile bloom of possibility we’ve nurtured the last week.

It’s not in my nature to shy away from an ugly truth, let alone a fight. I search Aurora’s pretty face, looking for answers she’s determined to hide from me. Finally, I ask the question I know, deep down in my poisoned heart, that will break us. “Who was she to you?”

The silence stretches thin between us. Aurora shudders out a sigh. “My mother.”

Shock has me dropping my hand. “Impossible.”

“It’s really not.”

I’m already shaking my head. “She had no family. It was the first thing I looked into when I got into the territory.”

Aurora goes back to staring at the fire, her expression curiously blank. “I lived with my grandmother. She didn’t want the dangerous elements of her life to touch me. At least not when I was a child. I doubt the same would have held true if she were still ruling when I turned eighteen.”

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this revelation. Twenty years is a long time. I barely remember what Amelia looked like, let alone down to the kind of details that I could hold up to Aurora as a comparison. I remember she was a slim Black woman, but that’s it. Her features have blurred over time, and I never spent any effort into solidifying them. Why would I bother?

Now, I wish I had.

“I didn’t know,” I find myself saying faintly.

“Would it have mattered if you did?”

A comforting lie might work in my favor right now, but I don’t make a habit of untruthfulness. Not with the people I care about. “No.” The die was already cast the moment I chose this territory to make my own. Amelia was a shitty leader, sloppy and far too willing to give in to excess and power. Even if I hadn’t been the one to take her out, someone else would have stepped in before too long. She was an opportunity just waiting to be plucked.

I can’t say that to Aurora. Not now, knowing the woman was her mother.

Aurora lets out a painful laugh. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

Several things become clear all at once. “That’s why you made the deal with Hades. For her.” When Amelia was put in the hospital in a coma, no one thought she’d wake up. She’s been medically brain dead since about a week after our fight. I know. I checked. For Aurora to have made a deal that desperate, there could only be one cause. “You’re the one who moved her to a private clinic.”

“Yes.”

I look at her closely, my chest getting strangely heavy. “Is she still alive, Aurora?” If one can call her existence life. It’s been argued either way by medical professionals, but I land on the negative. I