He hit the ground hard, feetfirst, and rolled with his precious burden, taking the heavy brunt of the fall. Both of them were immediately sprayed with fire extinguishers by the waiting firemen before they even came to a stop. The footage ended with the male lifting the girl and staggering to his feet. He managed a few lurching steps before collapsing to his knees and slumping over the girl. The footage stopped there and switched back to the news anchor at the studio.
Thaddeus hit the mute button and flipped to other channels. All of them were running the same film segment. One channel had even clearer footage, a close-in zoom shot after the male burst out the window and first spread his wings. They froze it there, showing the burning feathers in clear, undeniable detail.
“I don’t know how long they’ve been running this. I’ve just been watching the last ten minutes.” Thaddeus turned to me. “Is it bad?”
“Yes,” I said, dumbstruck. “It’s awful. They have a zoom shot of him!” I turned to Nolan, the oldest Monère in the room. “Has anything like this ever happened before?”
Nolan shook his head. “We’ve never been caught on film like this before.”
“What are the reporters saying?” Quentin asked Thaddeus.
“Everything but the truth. No mention of Monères so far.” Thaddeus rubbed his face. “Some are calling it a hoax, claiming what we saw was just clever film editing and special effects. Although with three different news stations showing different live recordings, not much credence is being given to that. The most popular assumption is that he strapped winglike contraptions on his arms and that they burned off.” An ironic smile crossed Thaddeus’s face. “One station is actually calling him an angel.”
Dante snorted. “An angel?”
“Well, you have to admit, he sort of does look like one,” Thaddeus said, shrugging. “A man with wings, flying. Hey, don’t look at me like that; I’m just reporting back what I heard. But even without all that real-wings-versus-fake-wings argument going on, there’s no getting around the fact that this guy jumped out of the nineteenth floor of a twenty-story burning apartment building and half flew, half fell down over two hundred feet without going splat. Hell, he was even able to stand up and walk afterward! Not something most humans can do. They’re calling him a hero, whoever-whatever he is. So far, no one’s come up with an identity for him or the girl.”
“Do we know who they are?” I wondered.
“Luckily not our problem, though High Court must be going crazy,” Nolan said. “Though I wonder if they even know this is being played on television yet.”
I flipped open my cell phone, something my men had forced on me shortly after I became Queen, and now was grateful to have. “I’ll give them a call.”
I indentified myself to the person answering and asked, “Has the Queen Mother seen the news playing on TV?”
“Oh, yes, milady,” the man said with feeling. “We’ve most definitely seen it.”
“Good, just wanted to make sure she knew about it.”
“Wait, please,” he said before I could hang up. “The Queen Mother wishes to speak to you.” He pronounced her title with careful reverence, as well he should for the sovereign of the Monère people here in the United States.
The Queen Mother’s voice came on the line. “Mona Lisa, I was just about to call you myself. Have you seen the news?”
“Yes, I just saw it.”
“Are you able to speak privately where no one can hear you?”
I looked at the others, all of them listening in on the conversation. “Uh . . .” Dante saved the day by removing the gold chain that hung around his neck, and holding it out to me. At the end of the chain hung a small gray stone the size of a robin’s egg: the privacy charm I’d seen him use in the past. “. . . not yet. Give me a second.”
“You can use my study,” Aquila offered. He had drifted in, along with Rosemary, drawn by the commotion.
Dante and I hastened down the hallway to the study. Dante slipped his necklace over my head as soon as I sat down behind the desk, and activated the privacy charm with a small pulse of power. A ring of energy expanded, encircling us.
“Touch it with a small thrum of power to deactivate it,” Dante instructed, and stepped out of the invisible circle, leaving only the sound of my own breath and heartbeat in that cone of silence. I couldn’t hear anyone else, nor could they hear me.
“All right, I’ve got privacy now,” I said, wondering what she had to say to me that could be so important in the midst of what had to be a critical situation.
“I’ve spoken to Halcyon. He’s told me that you seem to be stable now,” the Queen Mother said.
I glanced at the phone, then put it back to my ear. Whatever I’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this chatty comment. “Yeah, it’s been quiet. No one snatching me away or anything.”
She gave a soft snort. “Yes. It’s seems to have been one crisis after another for you ever since you’ve taken up the mantle of Queen. But what I meant was the demon blood you ingested secondhand through Mona Louisa. You no longer seem to be becoming Damanôen.”
“Oh, that,” I said after a moment of uncomfortable silence. “I, ah, didn’t realize Halcyon had made you aware of that.”
“Do you know how old I am, my dear?”
My brows scrunched together. Instead of saying, What the hell does that have to do with what’s going on? I answered politely, “No, Queen Mother. I have no idea how old you are. No one does, was my impression.”
“I am seven hundred and thirteen years old.”
“Oh.” I know, pretty lame, but what was I supposed to say? “I thought Monères only had a three-hundred-year life span.”
“They do. Did you know that our original Monère society was clan based?” the Queen Mother continued. “Wolf clan, dragon, phoenix, tiger, and others, all maintaining separate courts based around their pure-blood clans and Queens.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“A little over six hundred and fifty years ago, the clans unfortunately began to destabilize as fewer and fewer children were born among these separate groups. The few offspring who came were from those who had chosen a mate outside their own clan lineage, as Blaec did, Halcyon’s father, when he married a woman from the phoenix clan, not his own dragon clan. We were a dying people, not only growing infertile but also killing off our numbers with a growing number of skirmishes and wars between clans. It was during this critical period in our history, as the old ways were falling apart and our people were in grave danger of dying out through their own foolish actions, that Blaec, the new young Demon Ruler of Hell, approached a young Queen and made a pact with her. He opened a vein in my arm and mixed one drop of his demon dead blood with my own.”
For a moment, there was only the sound of my sharp, indrawn breath.
“With that one drop of blood,” the Queen Mother said, “Blaec took a strong Queen and made her even stronger. With the High Lord of Hell’s powerful backing, I changed and reordered things to what they are now, forming courts out of mixed-clan individuals. I created High Court and the High Queen’s Council and established stable rule, putting a stop to all the squabbling. It was a secret Blaec and I have long kept. A secret shared only by his children, Halcyon, his son, who lends his support to High Court in Blaec’s place now, Lucinda, his daughter . . . and now you.”
“If no one else knows,” I asked carefully, “why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m old, my dear, old beyond my natural years.” The Queen Mother was the only Monère who looked old among us, the only one who had wrinkles. White hair was common after hitting your second century, but not wrinkles; Monère skin remained relatively unlined, leaving you looking thirty-five until you died. The Queen Mother had been the exception to this rule. Now I knew why.