"And you are so positive about this? Are you certain it is your people's reaction that is frightening you?"
"Frightening?" Siena stopped to whirl around and glare at him. "You come into my home, my private chambers, and now you insult me?"
"If you wish to see it that way. However, your efforts to push me away are unnecessary. You need only ask and I will accept your dismissal."
Gideon watched the seething Queen closely, aware of Legna's ready attention in his mind. Siena's fingers were curling into fists and she was literally shaking with her emotions. Able to see and hear everything through her mate's eyes, Legna was aware of how volatile the situation was.
"Your condescension serves no purpose but to anger me, medic. You wish dismissal? Consider it accomplished. You and your nosey mate can consider yourselves banned from this court until I say otherwise!"
"Siena," Gideon warned quietly, "you will feel foolish for doing this in a few days' time."
"Out!" Siena's wild shout brought guards in through the door. "Get out! I will not tolerate this!"
The guards, seeing their Queen upset and so out of character, didn't care if Gideon was a frightfully skillful fighter who had already bested them once. They would still defend her honor and her wishes to their last breath. It was clearly in their stances as their fur bristled and bullish nostrils flared.
Gideon listened to the soft feminine voice in his head, her skill in diplomacy quite unique and effective. His direct manner often upset people, and perhaps he had misjudged by not bringing Legna's softer touch along. But he had never seen the Queen act irrationally, so it had simply not occurred to him that she might. He heeded Legna's pleas and sketched a slow, respectful bow to the Queen.
"As you wish," he said softly, a moment before his wife snatched him up into the soft pop of a teleport, preventing him from any residual temper or action that would come to be regretted later as well.
Siena turned to her guards.
"In an hour you will take a contingent to their dwelling and ascertain that they are no longer there. If they are, you will hurry them along, but they are not to be harmed. Not one hair, do you understand me? This is not to be construed as a hostile separation, merely a temporary distancing so I can concentrate on state matters without the presence of any Demons interfering with me."
"Majesty," the guards echoed in assent, bowing precisely before leaving her and returning to their posts outside.
They were barely finished closing the doors before she yanked them open so hard they ricocheted off their stops and shut on their own shortly after she had passed through them.
"Syreena! Anya! Attend me this instant!" the Queen bellowed down the echoing stone corridor, making many a servant start with unaccustomed shock.
The Princess and the Elite General were shrewdly within immediate reach, popping up behind Siena as they headed for the cold and quiet inner throne room that Siena had continued to keep empty. As soon as the doors were closed, she turned to them. Her only family. For the first time in days, she met their curious eyes, making them both react with expected surprise.
"No comments," Siena said sharply, shedding her overdress and stepping out of it, breathing a sigh of relief as she shook out her hair and adjusted the simple dress she had worn beneath it.
Syreena had been expecting the revelation, but upon seeing Siena's bared throat, Anya's eyes grew wide. She looked as if she were fighting the urge to drop her jaw open, but to her credit succeeded in resisting the impulse.
Siena rapidly filled them in on what had occurred, all the while pacing with the sharp, marching energy of someone itching for a fight. It was, of course, for Anya's benefit alone she did this. Syreena kept a neutral countenance, even when the half-breed's black eyes narrowed on her with suspicion.
"I have decided to fight this so-called inevitability. Syreena, you will go to meet with The Pride. Surely those great scholars can find a way to reverse these effects. Legends and Imprintings aside, it all cannot be in the hands of storytellers and this Destiny the Demons are so proud of. Tell them they have only four days. Make it clear to them that I would very much prefer a cure to this disastrous turn of events. I imagine they will be quite compelled to agree when they realize exactly who it is that will become their King if they fail. Do not return until you have exhausted all of their intellect.
"Anya, your duty is to fetch the female Mistral named Windsong and bring her to me. She lives in a Parisian suburb called Brise Lumineuse, and you should find her there. She is something of a xenophobe and will not want to travel away from her homeland, but you must beg her attendance in my name. She will come for me."
The Queen hesitated long enough to rub her temples. It was clear the turmoil she was wrestling with was causing her a painful amount of stress, a condition she was not familiar with in the least. Siena had always handled her reign with the ease of confident surety and instinctive clarity. Stress and doubt were never a part of her decisions.
Not until now.
"I don't understand," Anya said, confusion etched across her features. "What would you possibly want with a foreigner? What could a Mistral do about any of this?"
Siena turned cold gold eyes on her Elite General.
"Yours is not to ask why, Elite. Yours is to obey me un-questioningly. Go and go now, or I will choose another more capable of executing my commands!"
Anya had never heard such harsh temper from the Queen in all of her life. Had she not been seasoned in reacting to orders automatically, she might have hesitated in a way that would have been damaging to her career. Instead, she moved immediately to do the Queen's bidding, no further question on her mind. She would leave the handling of Siena to Syreena, the only one who could not be banished from the court at a temperamental whim.
Syreena turned to her sister as soon as the other woman had left.
"Siena, I do not need to go to The Pride and you know it as well as I do. No matter what the circumstances, they will not break a trust that is thousands of years in their keeping."
"That may be, but you will go and you will try."
"And when I do, that makes them aware of what you have done. After they refuse me, they will demand you take your mate to ascension, Siena, no matter who he is. You will run out of time."
"If I don't solve this before Samhain, I will run out of time anyway."
Siena suddenly seemed to deflate, covering her face with both hands as she tried to blink back the sting of emotion in her eyes. She tried to take deep, steadying breaths, suddenly moving to her throne and sitting in it because she couldn't stand a minute longer.
"Sweet Goddess, what have I done?" she said hoarsely, clasping both shaking hands between her knees. "Syreena, I can't do this. I can't be ruled by a man. And such a man! He is warrior from blood to bones! His entire world is nothing but battle and intrigue."
"As is Anya's," Syreena pointed out. "And yet she holds a special place in your life, your trust, and your heart."
Siena laughed humorlessly, nodding in agreement as a single tear slid down her face.
"And do you think for a second I could find such things in the arms of a Demon? It is my treatment of Anya that has helped remove the stigma attached to half-breeds, will it be the same if I take the warrior into my bed, possibly my heart? Will this," she pulled the necklace from her pocket, "make the choice of who I should love for me? Will gold and moonstones and cursed magic dictate who will rule this land should I die? I want it to be you, Syreena. A woman. A woman's heart must lead this society into the future. It was always meant to be that way. This is why the throne is passed to eldest daughter, not eldest son."
"No woman can truly know everything she needs to in order to rule a country if she has never known what it means to love. To care for a child. To honor a mate as her equal."
"I am doing just fine so far," Siena snapped.
"Have you? You have a singular way about you when you deal with the law and the court. You curse Father for his bigotry, condemn our people for the same behaviors, but do you not see your own?"
Syreena moved to seat herself at her sister's feet, taking her cold hands from between her knees and holding them between her warm ones.
"I have seen your bias in the courts, siding more often for the woman's side of an argument over a man's. When it is two males involved, you are not so patient and attentive. You try. I know you try," she soothed when Siena looked away from her, unable to meet her truth in her sister's eyes. "Your need for fairness is so powerful. But you are a product of your life as much as any of us are. You are, for want of a better term, only human."
For some reason, that made Siena laugh.
"Sometimes I think I wish that were true. I tell you, Syreena, I envy Anya at times. She is the true meaning of the blend between the animal and the woman. She does not struggle so with her two halves…three halves…" She laughed again when her sister did.
"Five halves?" Syreena offered.
"Yes," Siena agreed, leaning down toward her sibling and bringing their joined hands to her lips. "Yes, that is true. I complain so much in this moment, but it is true when they say there is always a problem worse that your own that afflicts someone else. You have endured all of your life, spilt between multifaceted sides of yourself."
"I endured them in a glass house, Siena. The monastery is not the world. You lived in this world, dodging our father and all the things about him you grew to abhor, including assassination attempts after he learned your feelings about the Demons, and how they so differed from his. We cannot say who has had the harder life. It is like comparing apples and oranges."
"Cats and dogs," Siena agreed.
"Demons and Lycanthropes," Syreena pressed. "Though I suspect from all I have heard from your own lips that we are not all so different as we might hope to be. And if there is one person who can close that gap, it will be you. You are adored, sister mine. Remember that. You have never made a secret of your open mind and attitude toward the warrior's people. They may perhaps surprise you, our people, with the level of acceptance they are willing to take from you."