Page 116 of Iridian

She spoke the words and I heard them, saw her lips moving, too, yet I still couldn’t believe them.

“What Icando, though, is bring the richest Iridian families of the world on board with this new…regime,if you will. They are powerful people, and they can cause a lot of trouble for you if they so please. I can help you bring them over to your side.”

Impossible.

No fucking way in hell—no way.

“I don’t…I don’t understand,” I said truthfully after a good minute because I was more shocked now than I had been in any other situation so far.

“What’s not to understand?” Madeline asked—cheerful, so fucking cheerful I wanted to run from her. Her smile scared me more than her sneer.

“Power,” I choked. “You…you’ve always wanted power.”

“True,” she said, folding her hands over her thigh. “I always have. For me. For our family. For our blood—and we have it.” Her eyes scrolled down my body slowly, and for the first time in my life, she wasn’t disgusted by me. She wasin awe.“Power falls on you—more of it thanIever had, more than I imagined. Our bloodline will continue to rule the world whichever form it takes. I have faith in that,” Madeline said. “I have faith inyou.”

My eyes closed and I wanted Taland so much that I was dragged into the tunnel once more, and I saw him lying there,sleeping, through the eyes of all four soldiers who were watching him in my bedroom.

Fuck, I wasnevergoing to get used to that.

Drawing in a sharp breath, I looked at Madeline again, focused on her face. Her eyes. Her smile.

She was a monster—I knew that my whole life. It was justconfirmingit that hurt especially deeply. I hated that I was related to her, but I will not lie and say I wasn’trelievedthat she wouldn’t make me fight her. I would have—don’t get me wrong. I would have fought her tooth and nail.

But, fucking hell, I was exhausted, and I just didn’t want to.

“So long asyoutake over the IDD, of course,” Madeline added a heartbeat later, and this time I smiled.

I stood up. “Maybe.”

She stood with me, her smile suddenly vanished. “Notmaybe,Rosabel. Youwilltake over the IDD. You’ve earned it.” She came around the table, and I knew she wasn’t going to attack me or anything—of course not. Notnow,at least.

But even so, I had this strange thought, this strange desire—to see fear in her eyes.

The soldiers moved. They moved so fast they could have materialized on either side of her, and the way she moved back…

Tongue between my teeth, I called for every ounce of my willpower to stop from smiling. Her guards were behind her, but they didn’t engage. They looked just as scared as Madeline, in fact, and she turned three shades paler right in front of my eyes while she looked up at the soldiers, one then the other, then back at me.

“They’re very protective of me,” I said—this I couldn’t keep inside. And I was going to reach for the tray on the table, except the soldier on the left—his name was Iohannes—leaned down and grabbed it before I could move.

Damn, they were good. So fucking good it terrified me.

Meanwhile Madeline took a step back, shook her head. “We can talk later if you need more rest,” she finally said in half a voice.

“No, Grandmother. I will be leaving soon.”

“Surely you can stay. This is your home. Where are you?—“

“Notmy home,” I said, exactly like I thought it when I first came into this office. The same office where so much of my life had changed through the years.

Today, it changed again—and for the last time.

“Rosabel,” she said, and she had the audacity to soundsad.

“I’ll be taking this with. Taland might want to eat before we leave.” I pointed at Iohannes, as if I really thought she would even look at the tray in his hands—she didn’t. She just stared at the soldier, at what little of his eyes she could see through the helmet, and she turned paler still.

One of the highlights of my life.

“Think about it,” Madeline said when I turned around to leave. “Just…just think about it. The IDD is power. With it you can?—”

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