Chapter 46

The shock that echoed through the room was contagious.

“Yes, that Isbeth,” she continued, dragging her hand down the length of the curtain. “I was King Malec’s lover—his confidante, his friend, and his…his everything. And your mother…” She looked over her shoulder at Casteel, her grip on the curtain tightening. “She took that away. She poisoned me with belladonna. Can you believe that? Tacky.” Her lip curled. “If Malec hadn’t found me in time, I wouldn’t be standing here, but he did. He just…knew something was wrong.” She pressed her hand against her chest as she held us all in suspended silence. “We were heartmates. He would have done anything for me.”

Queen Ileana—no, if what she was saying was true, Queen Isbeth tipped her head back. “He gave me his blood, unsure of what would happen. He was just desperate and refused to allow me to die.”

I thought of Casteel—what he’d done to save me.

“But he didn’t make me into a vampry. I wasn’t the first. You see, deities aren’t like Atlantians. Their blood is far more powerful than that.”

I looked at Casteel. “Is that true?”

“It is,” his brother answered. “When deities Ascend a mortal, they do not become a vampry. They become something without the pesky limitations the Ascended have.”

Casteel let out a harsh breath, and I knew he was thinking the same as I was. That his parents had to know this entire time that Queen Ileana was…that she was Isbeth.

Just then, the Blood Queen tore down the curtain, letting bright sunlight flow in through the window. The knights scattered back from where the sunlight crept across the floor. Ian moved quickly, avoiding contact, but she…

She stood in the flood of sunlight, the crown and the jewels at her throat, wrists, and waist twinkling. She did not begin screaming in pain, twisting in agony or decaying.

Nothing happened.

Just like nothing had happened when I walked into the sunlight.

I stared at her, my chest rising and falling. “What…what are you?”

“I’ve been many things in my life. A daughter. A friend. A whore. A mistress.”

“That’s a hell of a list to be proud of,” Casteel growled as I saw Naill grip the back of a chair as he shook his head. “The mistress of King Malec. Congratulations.”

“Malec?” She smirked at him as the guards shifted in closer, replacing the knights who now stood in the shadowy alcoves. “I was his mistress. I loved him. I still do. That is no lie. And then your mother had to go and ruin him. But, no. I am no longer the mistress of any man—mortal or god.”

“God?” I coughed out. “Malec was—”

“A god,” Isbeth cut me off. “He was Nyktos’s son, and Nyktos is no normal god. He is a Primal, something far older and more powerful,” she said, and I knew that part to be true. “Any that carry his blood would be a god. But Eloana never knew that, did she? I did. I knew exactly who and what he was. A deity cannot make a vampry, and neither can a god.”