"Can you teach me some of your healing art?"
"With great pleasure," Janelle answered with a smile. "We may begin tomorrow, if you so desire."
I nodded eagerly. "Please. There is much I wish to learn."
"And there is much I wish to teach you. It is rare to find a Queen with the gift for healing."
"There is one thing that cannot wait, though. One of my men, Gryphon, suffers from silver poisoning."
Janelle's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Ah. I sensed wrongness with him but did not know of what nature it was."
"I have come here to seek a cure for him. Can you help him? Do you have the antidote?"
"I know of no cure for silver poisoning," Janelle said sadly.
Well, shit. Two people now had told me that. Not good news. "Might the other healers be able to help?"
She considered it. "Perhaps. But I trained the others in the craft myself. Still, it will not hurt to inquire of them."
"I've heard some say only Queens have the antidote. But somehow I don't think the two Queens here will be eager to help me."
Janelle's eyes glinted with dry amusement. "We have few enough Queens so that every new member is a true treasure to our people. Unfortunately, other Queens will look upon you as competition and a reason to lessen their own territory as each new sister is added to their ranks. In their eyes, there is no reason to aid you. Mona Ruder a. who should be here when the Council next meets, is the only other Queen who has some small healing talent. Healers are more apt to share with each other. Perhaps she will be willing to lend you aid if an antidote truly exists, though I have never heard of the existence of one."
"Thank you, Healer Janelle." I took my leave of her.
What I had learned disturbed me greatly, but not enough to keep me from noticing that Amber was unusually tense as he escorted me back. He kept his hand within easy reach of his sword hilt the entire short trip.
Gryphon and five other men awaited us in the foyer. It took me a moment to notice that Gryphon's wooden trunk sat by the doorway and an even longer moment to register its significance.
"Milady." Gryphon, my beautiful Gryphon knelt before me. "I ask that you release me from your service."
His words were like a stab to the chest, knocking the wind out of me, coming out of nowhere. It was the last thing I would have expected. And they say women are fickle. "What?"
He stood upright, his blue eyes fixed solemnly on me. "Milady. Mona Louisa has graciously invited me to join her. Her plane awaits me. She has promised me the antidote," he explained gently.
"You're… leaving me?" I asked, stunned and suddenly lost, cast adrift from the one solid thing that had anchored me in this new life.
"If you will release me."
That new inner, possessive demon within me shouted: No! Never! How could I let him go? Dear God, how could I not? Mona Louisa offered him life, the icy bitch.
"If… if you wish to go." Idiot, I berated myself. Of course he wished to go. He was asking to go. And yet, he had held me so tightly, kissed me with such tender love… at least, I had presumed it was love or some deep emotion similar to it. But then, he had never said the words…
Gryphon knelt again and bowed his dark head, graceful even now when leaving me. "Thank you, milady. Mona Louisa has kindly agreed to loan you four of her guards for your protection until the Council next meets."
I choked off hysterical laughter. I don't think kindness motivated Mona Louisa in any way. Lust, maybe. Not kindness.
He stood and his sky-blue eyes and the wayward lock of hair that fell over his brow were so familiar, so dear. Don't go. Don't go. The words choked in my throat as he pressed a last final kiss on the back of my hand. One of the unfamiliar men lifted Gryphon's trunk onto his shoulder in an easy motion.
"Fare thee well, Mona Lisa," Gryphon said softly.
Don't go. Don't leave me. Gryphon, I love you… But the words were locked shut behind my clenched teeth. I swallowed, watched him exchange a glance with Amber. Please don't go. Oh, God. Gryphon…
Then he was gone.
My harsh breathing filled the hallway, too fast, too deep. Everything seemed surreal. There were four new puppet guards standing before me, their new puppet master. Only I'd just had my own strings cut.
A pretty blond man flashed me an eager smile. They were all pretty, for that matter. One of each individual haircolor: blond, brown, jet-black, and one the shade of a colorful carrot. Again, that hysterical laughter threatened me.
Blondie bowed. "I am Miles, milady, and this is Gilford, Rupert, and Demetrius. We are most eager to serve you." I had a feeling somehow that they expected to do so in bed, not that that was going to happen.
Numbness was creeping over me and I welcomed it. It hurt too much to hurt so much. I don't know if I grunted, nodded, or just walked straight past them. All I knew with certainty was that the stairs were suddenly beneath my feet. I flew into my bedroom, shut the door, and sank down onto the floor, my back pressed against the wall. And just sat there, not knowing what else to do.
Chapter Nine
Helen had been my human mother's name. Her and her husband, Frank, had taken me home from the orphanage. I had called them Mama and Papa. They'd been an older couple in their fifties with no children.
Helen loved curling my hair and arranging them into two pigtails that swung and bounced as I moved. She loved adorning my dark hair with pretty pink ribbons or blue bows. Those had been her favorite colors. "Give me good old-fashioned pink or blue any day," she'd use to say with a laugh that shook her plump, solid frame as she'd cuddle me in her big arms, enveloping me like a soft, huge teddy bear, squeezing me against her generous bosom. I still remember how she smelled. Like talcum powder, love, and laughter.
She bought me a goldfish named Joey that wriggled around awkwardly in a bowl and had big, fat cheeks that fascinated me to great end. With her big hand over mine, she'd guide me in pinching up little flakes of fish food and dropping them into the water before I snuggled into bed each night. I would watch Joey wriggle his fat body around, greedily gulping down the flakes while Helen read me a bedtime story.
Helen's pain started when I was four. A sharp twinge in the lower abdomen that made her bend over and gasp. I put my hand over her belly and my palms warmed and tingled for the first time.
"Mama. Bad here."
"Yes, baby. Some bad gas. But it feels much better now."
The pain had gone away but had come back six months later, hurting so much that she had to squat down. And I realized even then that that bad thing inside of her had grown just a little bit more.
"Bad inside," I said. "Mama go see doctor."
"Ah, baby, you've got magic hands." She kissed and buzzed my hands, blowing air against it until the funny noise made me giggle. "Now why should I go see a doctor? They just find things wrong with you."
Quiet and steady Frank, a postal worker, finally started to worry when I was five-and-a-half years old. The pains were growing worse and coming more often. Ignoring his wife's blustery protests, he finally dragged Helen to the doctor but by then it was too late. Colon cancer. It had spread to the liver and lungs.
Helen underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments and I fed Joey on my own each night. There were no more bedtime stories. She grew gaunt and laughed less frequently, though she still cuddled me. I'd lay my hands on her and she'd sigh and say, "That feels much better, baby."
She lasted a year, ten months more than what the doctors had predicted for her. When she was gone, Frank was an empty shell and I was sent from the only home I'd ever known.