“Hey, back off.” I scowled, kicking out at him. I missed, of course, but I was proving a point more than anything else. He just smiled slowly, hungrily. His fangs elongated. “Shit,” I said, belatedly trying the yoga breathing my mom taught me to calm me down. “Back off.”

“But you smell like sugar and pepper. Just a taste.”

I held up my fists. “I belong to Nicholas Drake.” Usually I would have rolled my eyes at a ridiculous statement like that. Right now, it seemed my best defense.

He didn’t come closer, but he didn’t back away either. He just kept staring at me with that creepy hungry glint in his eyes. Stay focused, I ordered myself. This is just a minor setback.

Someone rattled his chains suddenly on the other side of the post, and shouted obscenities. He jerked at his chains so frantically I heard the pop of his wrist dislocating. It didn’t stop him. One of the girls nearby tried to hush him. He finally stopped fighting when a guard wearing the royal insignia punched him in the face and then walked away, looking irritated. The guy crumpled silently, dangling from his short chains.

Hell of a setback.

And then just to prove that things could always get worse, they did.

Chapter 11

Solange

Now I knew why Viola hated Madame Veronique.

I could still feel the visceral bite of her hatred for her, from that night in the tent when I’d challenged Veronique. I hadn’t realized why I was doing it at the time. I’d been stewing in frustration for so long I’d just lashed out. But now it made sense. Madame Veronique knew Viola and tried to keep her apart from her beloved.

Constantine.

He was going by his last name now but I’d have known those eyes anywhere. Even for a human they were an odd blue. They’d have gone violet over the years, as he waited for Viola to somehow return. That must be why he’d sought me out, why’d he’d been the only one who “understood” me. He’d orchestrated my entire coup. All while staying carefully concealed from Madame Veronique.

I kind of wanted to stab him.

Mom would be so proud.

And Viola and Madame Veronique hadn’t just known each other. They’d been related. They were grandmother and granddaughter.

Which made Viola Drake the first daughter born to the Drake family. The first of only two daughters, of which I was the second.

Little parts of the puzzle began to fall into place: Madame Veronique hiring an old witch woman to look into the future. She’d defined me with that damn prophecy, hundreds of years before I was even born.

And the reason the dragon had attacked Viola’s knights as well as me was because it was the emblem of our family. Lucy’s father would have called it our totem spirit. Viola had incorporated it into her subconscious, the same way she’d kept a piece of Gwyneth and me. She still feared Madame Veronique.

With good reason.

Memories shifted in my head until they started to make some semblance of sense. None of which I really had time to consider at the moment.

Because I’d slammed back into my body at the exact moment one of Madame Veronique’s creepy handmaidens threw a stake at me. I recognized her by her medieval style dress and the heavy pendant in the shape of the Drake dragon holding ivy in its jaws.

Viola had only let me back into my own body in Violet Hill long enough to help her. I knew my body and what it could do better than she did and she knew she’d die without me. I couldn’t do anything but react.

My mother’s training had me flipping sideways, like a corkscrew. The cold air whistled around my ears and stung my eyes. I was already considering my options, even as I spun and spun, my hair lifting into the air as if I were underwater. Escape wasn’t immediately possible. I’d have to fight. For that I needed weapons.

I was cataloguing what I could use as I landed lightly on the balls of my feet. Trees for height, branches for stakes, pheromones, speed.

They weren’t going to be enough.

My left foot slipped on a bit of ice. I was still getting accustomed to being corporeal again and it made me clumsier than usual. The fact that for some reason I was wearing a white silk slip didn’t help. I was practically naked.

The stake whistled past my head, showering me with splinters of wood when it landed in a nearby tree. The handmaiden snarled and advanced on me, another stake already in her hand. Three more of her sister handmaidens fanned out behind her. I ducked another stake, but only barely. It sliced through my sleeve and my upper arm, leaving a burning trail of blood to my elbow. I backed up, yanking the stake out of the tree. It was splintered but better than nothing.

Another stake whistled my way. I caught it and flung the splintered one back at the same time. It missed its target but at least the other two handmaidens had to jump out of the way. The third one leaped at me, snarling, fangs bared. She was pale and deadly as mistletoe berries. She caught me in the shoulder with the heel of her palm, hard enough that I heard the grind and pop of it dislocating. Pain seared through me and I hurled myself backward, cracking it against a tree. My shoulder popped back into place just as painfully as it had popped out.

She closed in, a dagger in one hand and a rapier in the other. The hem of her long embroidered gown flared out, like the petals of a poisonous flower.

“Viola, love, where are you at? We’ve barely started.” Constantine sauntered into the clearing wearing nothing but leather pants and a lazy, intimate smile. It died as soon as he saw the handmaidens. There were leaves in his tousled hair and he was barefoot.