31. The Queen
T he black bag comes off with a harsh whoosh , yanking on strands of my tangled hair. Half-blind, I kick the bastard in front of me, slamming my foot right in his dick.
He jolts, clutching himself as he crumples to his knees on a pathetic, high-pitched keen. I rear back to strike again, but an iron grip jerks me backward against a broad chest that reeks of sweat and cigarette smoke.
Bart .
“Where the hell is Orion?” I scream at him over my shoulder, swinging my legs anyway, not caring that pain shoots up my ankle like I’m learning pointe all over again.
My victim, the other bearded brute that helped kidnap me, wheezes. “You. Bitch ?—”
“ Travis , you best stop right there.”
A woman’s voice cracks like a whip, freezing me in place. “You ain’t above a whupping, even at your age.”
I blink several times until my eyes adjust to the dim lantern glow, revealing the white painted wooden walls of a chapel. My gaze lands on a single pew with armrests. It’s more throne than church seat, made all the more surreal by the regal woman holding court from it.
She’s perched like a wise, elderly queen, so ancient I’d believe it if she’d been here longer than the Appalachian Mountains themselves. Her pale, gnarled hands rest on a hooked cane, and she wears a prim, black dress buttoned to her chin, faded blonde hair wound tightly into a bun at her collar.
“Excuse him, baby,” she drawls, her cadence and accent eerily like Orion’s.
“My boys know better than to speak ill of women and the dead. But even though he’s one of my grandbabies, his momma ain’t raised him right.
Just look at that unkempt beard. Hairier than Bigfoot.
” She ends with a disapproving click of her tongue.
Beside her, an older, barrel-chested, clean-shaven guard grumbles. “Now that ain’t nice neither, Mama.”
She glares up at the man nearly twice her height. “Ain’t my fault, son. You married her even after I told you she weren’t right for the Wildes.”
Her rheumy blue eyes narrow at the drama king still rolling on the floor. “Apologize, Travvie-boy.”
He groans. “Sorry… Mama Bossie.”
Oh. My brows shoot up, eyes darting from him to her. So this is Bossie Wilde.
The frail woman stretches slowly—her frame all skin and bone—then whacks her cane across Travis’s back with enough force that he cries out and I flinch. Maybe Orion’s “bit of a ruthless bitch” description was an understatement. Gotta admit, I’d be impressed if I wasn’t a little terrified.
“Don’t apologize to me, fool.” She points her cane at me. “To our guest.”
“Ugh… sorry, Luna,” he rasps.
Bossie’s eyes land on me again, full of wry amusement as she sits back again.
“Men never do learn, do they? That’s why us womenfolk gotta stick together.” She juts her chin at Bart. “Let her go, Barty. She ain’t gonna cause no trouble now. Are you, child?”
My heart pounds like I’ve taken another high dive off a short cliff. There’s more than a hint of warning in her question, and my eyes flick to her bone-white knuckles tightening around her cane.
I shake my head.
Bart releases me roughly from his meaty grip, and I stumble toward her.
“Careful! Goodness gracious, Barty, you’re gonna break the poor girl. She a little bitty ol’ thing already…”
I stay silent as she berates him for manhandling me, taking in my surroundings and trying to figure out my best play.
We’re on a church stage with dingy red carpet and warped wood that creaks beneath our feet.
Wind rattles through the slatted walls like the chapel itself is breathing through cracked ribs.
Smoke stains climb toward the rafters from flickering lantern sconces, their light casting shadows in the corners like restless spirits.
Behind Bossie, the faded imprint of a cross is flanked by arched stained glass windows, their biblical tableaus fractured to hell.
A small plaque near the lectern catches my eye.
Whitby Rose Chapel
My stomach drops.
The church by the graveyard where Orion’s family is buried… The shadows I saw in the forest that day weren’t ghosts. They were Wildes, and they followed us from here back to the cabin.
Where they killed Benny.
Anger blasts through me, incinerating any semblance of my self-control over “my best play.”
Concern deepens Bossie’s sun-weathered wrinkles, her grandmotherly smile returning. “How you doin’, baby? They treat you nice on the way here?”
I square my shoulders, lifting my chin.
“Oh, they treated me fine for being kidnapped .” My voice cracks with rage. “Where. Is. Orion?”
Bossie eyes me for a beat before a raspy chuckle huffs out of her, churning my stomach. “Shoo-wee, Barty. You gon’ have a time with this one.”
“It’ll be my pleasure to break her, ma’am.” He snickers behind my back, his tone mocking. “Although judging by that bite mark, looks like she’s already been rode hard and put up wet. It might take a while to get the Fury stench out.”
My blood runs cold, but I refuse to let them see me shudder, so I seethe. “Fuck you, Bart?—”
“Nah-ah-ah, I won’t allow that language from you neither, missy.
” Bossie tsks, lifting her cane, silencing me.
“And no whining now. You could’ve had the nice one.
Ozias would’ve been good to you. But he ain’t here, and I wouldn’t ask him to be.
” She glares daggers over my shoulder. “Not after the Furys stole his smile.”
I follow her gaze?—
My world shatters like the stained glass around us.
“ Orion ?” I whimper.
He’s slumped in a chair, his ankles roped to the legs and wrists bound together in front of him.
My feet move on their own, heart pounding painfully behind my sternum.
He’s not moving. He’s not moving. He’s not ? —
“Orion?”
Tears blur my vision.
Is he…
“No!” I scream, lunging for him, but I’m yanked back. “Let me go! Let me?—”
He stirs, and my shouts die on my lips.
“Orion?”
His head lifts slowly like it’s too heavy to hold up. He blinks, eyes glassy and lost as he searches the room.
“You’re… alive ,” I cry, my knees buckling with relief. “You’re alive. Thank God.”
But he’s barely able to sit up straight, breaths shallow, blood glistening a sickeningly pretty crimson on his black shirt.
A man stands on either side of him, one aiming Orion’s crossbow at his back, the other scowling with his arms crossed, pistol loose in his grip like he knows Orion is in no shape to fight back.
Not yet, you bastard.
I saw Travis Wilde shove the loose dart into his shoulder, and I also saw it jam before Travis could fully depress the plunger. If I can just stall…
Orion’s gaze locks on me, and he exhales. “Luna?”
My heart strains to go to him, but I force myself to stand still so Bart’s grip doesn’t tighten further.
“I’m here. It’s okay. You’re alive. We both are.”
“Alive,” Bossie spits, unleashing her anger. “Unlike my grandbaby, Rufus.”
Orion zeroes his focus on Bossie as he growls, “You mean the ‘grandbaby’ that drugged Luna?”
Bossie waves him off. “He did what had to be done. Ozias had his plan to win her over.” She rolls her eyes. “That boy never had it in him, though. The fool fancies himself in love with someone else already.”
My breath catches at the confirmation, but before I can fully register that information, Bart sneers bitterly.
“If he’d just taken her from the start, my brother would still be alive. The Bordeaux branch of the Troisgarde would’ve been secured ages ago. Instead, Rufus and I had to step in and grease the wheels, so to speak.”
“Wait,” I blurt, putting things together. “Did Ozias have anything to do with drugging me?”
“Nope. That was all me and Rufus,” Bart answers so casually, I want to stab him. “Goody Two-shoes should’ve at least done what the Fury did.”
He jerks his chin at Orion, speaking to him, “You’re more a Wilde than he is, far as I’m concerned.”
Bossie slams the bottom of her cane on the floor, splintering the rotten wood through a shredded hole in the carpet.
“I’ll have none of that talk now. Kin is kin. You know that.”
“But see? All that means Ozias wouldn’t have wanted this,” I try, grasping for her humanity. “He’s nice and kind and?—”
“Weak,” Bossie finishes flatly. “And this feud ain’t for the weak.
He knew what had to be done to make up for his branch’s sins, and he failed.
He’ll live with that. He also understands life for life.
Blood for blood. And after all the bodies that boy—” she jabs her cane toward Orion “—left behind in Lost Cove, if Ozias doesn’t see our side by now, he never will. And we ain’t got no use for him.”
There it is. The wolf beneath the grandmotherly skin. The matriarch even the Furys fear.
This time, I can’t hold back my shiver at the coldness in her eyes.
“It’s within our rights to call on the lives of both of you,” she hisses at me, the venom in her voice turns my blood to sludge. “And we will.”
“No!” Orion strains forward against the ropes. “You won’t touch her!”
The guy with the gun smashes his fist into Orion’s jaw, snapping his head sideways.
“Orion!”
“I’m okay, birdie,” he huffs, forcing himself upright. He works his mouth, then spits blood at the man who hit him.
“You motherfu—” The man cocks his arm back again, but a high-pitched whistle through Bossie’s teeth halts him mid-swing.
“Cut that out, you two,” she says in a tired, even tone. Then she pins Orion with a look like she’s scolding him for acting out during Sunday service. “Don’t worry. Our proposition is more than fair. She’s not the one we want dead.”
She fixes her eyes on me, spiking my pulse. “We’ve decided to go a more… creative route.”
“What are you going on about, Bossie?” Orion snaps.
Bossie’s lips curve. “We want her to pledge her life to the Wildes.”
Orion scoffs, “That’s fucking worse.”
Bossie sighs, a barely-there wheeze in her lungs. “Looks like you got as much sense as your daddy, boy.” She nods toward the other guard behind him. “Go ahead, Vaughn.”
He cracks the butt of the crossbow into the back of Orion’s skull. I smother my shriek as he slumps forward, only breathing again when he hisses and lifts his eyes to mine.
Bossie drums her fingers on the hook of her cane. “Now, is everyone gonna behave? Fury, you’re alive for one reason, and I won’t have you acting out in front of our other guests.”
My skin prickles. “Other guests?”
“Haven’t you figured it out, child? There’s gonna be a wedding.” She leans toward me like she’s letting me in on a secret. “And you are the lucky bride.”
My jaw falls slack.
She chuckles. “Your little outfit’s already white and everything.”
Her eyes scan my black and crimson stained swan costume. “Almost anyway.”
Anger and fear vibrate through me, but before I can scream, run, fight, do anything at all, the chapel doors slam open, banging against the walls.
Every weapon shifts toward the two men barreling in like they’re ready to set the world aflame. One’s the dangerous King of New Orleans, the Phantom of the French Quarter himself, rage carved into his scarred face. The other, NOLA’s prince, his father’s furious, lethal spitting image.
Despite the knives raised, the guns cocked, and the crossbow aimed, Solomon Bordeaux strides in, staring them all down without flinching. Thunder rumbles, vibrating the walls as he stops in the center and growls.
“What the fuck is going on?”