Page 30 of Bros Come Before Hordes
"Thisfilth sacrificed my daughter, and now you're cozying up to them after they almost did the same to your Asa? Howcouldyou, Booklet?" she snarled. The look of pure betrayal in her eyes made me wonder about the answer myself.
Had I made a mistake?
"No," I choked out. "You're Madame Theodosia. As a seer, you saw me coming."
"I said whattheywanted to hear. I gave them false hope so I could sit back and laugh at them." A mad gleam lit up her usually kind brown eyes.
Who was this woman in front of me? This was not the same leader of the underground resistance to dragon shifters I knew.
"But you helped me, Bad Mama,” I said, and my voice sounded like I was pleading. “You knew what you told them, and yet you helped me get to the Evenza building on the very day you told them their next queen would come to them."
"So what, Booklet?” she snapped. “I don't even remember what I told them. I just wanted them out of my shop."
Vance narrowed his eyes at her. "Yet the sign on your shop very clearly states that you'll do readings for anyone, regardless of species."
She cut her glare to him. "Ever heard of a capitalist society? That's how it works. You pay me money, and I tell you to go fuck yourselves."
Tavis's jaw muscles clenched as he moved away from Calhoun, and he pushed back his blue hair to better reveal a face full of questions. "You told us about Mack. Mack would come on the day of that full-moon ritual, and she would be our queen." He pointed at me, and a slight tremble gripped his hand. "Her vacuum very clearly said Mack."
"If I would've told you to look for the number three, then you would've seen it everywhere too,” Bad Mama said in a low voice. “That's called a coincidence. You saw what you wanted to see. Just how dumb are you, boy?"
Sweet, laid-back Tavis lunged for her, but Calhoun leaped forward to hold him back. Vance stalked toward her and stopped, his glare like a scalpel.
This was getting out of hand, and fast. I surged from my throne and started down the steps. Tempers were wild, and I hated to see my harem learn they'd been duped for twenty-five years.
Only I wasn't so sure they had been duped.
"Bad Mama," I said, the room throwing my voice to impressive lengths. I stopped a little in front of her, between her and my harem. "You were the one who gave me that vacuum. The one that said Mack."
"You're welcome," she hissed.
"You helped me every step of the way to get Asa back because you wanted me at the ritual.Why?"
Something flickered behind her eyes, something much stronger than her anger, but I'd never seen it before to place what it was.
She was hiding something from me.
"You want to know what happened at the full-moon ritual?" I asked.
The air behind my back tensed into a brick wall, and I could tell I was about to cross a line with my harem. The rituals were secret, protected by powerful dragon shifter magic, and here I was about to give the scoop to an outsider.
Bad Mama sneered at me. "You turned traitor? I figured that one out on my own, but thanks."
"The dragon goddess vanished, and a shifter died who wasn't supposed to."
She held up her hands. "I wish I could say sorry for your loss."
"It's kind of convenient that I should be chosen queen on that exact chaotic night, isn't it? The night that you foresaw all those years ago?"
"The foresight was a lie, Booklet. How many times do I have to say that?" She shifted in her wheelchair and adjusted her legs in the footplates.
"It's almost as if the whole thing was planned to create division among the dragon shifters, to cause a distract...ion..." Something in my periphery froze me to the bone. My gaze dipped down, down to her boots. Black with gold-striped laces. The same boots I'd seen leave the security room in the Vivix building after yet another murder. And before smoothing the crumpled flyer for Madame Theodosia.
Oh god. It was her.Shehad been in the security room at the Vivix building. The realization shocked the air from my lungs and slid a slimy shiver down my back. My gaze flicked back up to Bad Mama's face, seeing her in a new and terrible light. The same flicker reappeared behind her eyes, a dark and monstrous thing that made me take a step back.
Vance touched my elbow. "Are you all right, Yara?"
"Bad Mama." I forced down the burn in my throat, the urge to take my harem and run. "What did you do?"
