In Someone Else's Skin, Margo Collins [best books to read for women .TXT] 📗

“There are no lamias indigenous to other worlds,” he said. “If you are from another world, your roots are here.”

I was still staring at him open-mouthed when the elevator doors slid open.

AT LEAST THIS TIME there weren’t any guards waiting to jump us when the elevator door opened. We would have been ready for them, though.

As soon as the elevator came to a stop, Coit and Grant moved in closer to the prisoner and grabbed his arms, one on each side.

I peeked out, peering around the edge of the door. I found only a long white hallway, stretching back toward the snake’s-head section of the building.

I nodded and waved two fingers forward like I’d seen the leader of a military team on TV do.

Okay. So that motion was also something Eduardo had taught me when I was doing my training to be one of the Shifter Shield guard members. It still felt ridiculously cinematic to me.

Shane, still holding one of the shock sticks, slipped around me and started down the hallway. Coit and Grant frog-marched the prisoner out of the elevator. I took up the rear, keeping my magic ready to use.

Up here, the magic I grabbed hold of felt less slippery, and I felt less likely to fumble it out of my hands entirely. After a moment, I moved up to walk a beside the prisoner, close enough to see him. “Where next?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“Your men said you wanted to see the babies, Princess.”

“Don’t call me that. And, yes, I want to see the babies. They’re mine.”

“They are of your body?” he asked, his eyes widening almost imperceptibly.

I thought about the women who’d been forced to carry infant lamias they had no desire to give birth to. “No,” I said, equally quietly. “But they are mine, nonetheless. They are my responsibility, my charge, my obligation.”

By now, I was almost talking to myself as much as to him, but the guard answered, anyway. “You’ll make an amazing queen someday.”

I bit down the urge to tell him that there was no way in hell—or on my earth—that I was going to end up being a lamia queen anywhere, anytime.

But I thought I knew what he meant. In the same way that Queen Amalya was responsible for her people, I had a duty to the lamia infants who had come into my care, no matter how that had happened.

It was my job to make sure they grew up into healthy, compassionate, kind people, no matter their genetic makeup.

“It’s that room,” the guard finally said, pointing to one of the several nondescript doors toward the end of the hallway. “But you can get in through that one, too.” He gestured toward a different doorway.

“What’s the difference?” Shane asked, his forehead wrinkling.

“The second is the servants’ entrance.”

Of course there was a servants’ entrance—one that looked exactly like the main entrance. I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Whichever is least likely to end up with us all dead, please.”

The guard took us through the servant-entrance room, leading us to another doorway, a second hallway winding along behind the walls of the main rooms.

We should have been using these halls all along.

A small window overlooking the room allowed me to glance inside before we moved to take my babies back.

The queen had come to visit the nursery.

Amalya was half shifted, her lower body in its snake form wrapped around the almost ubiquitous poles that served as lamia furniture in this world.

Her back was to us, and the infant lamias coiled around her wrists and neck. The queen crooned to softly to the three babies and their heads swayed gently back and forth to the rhythm of the soft song she sang.

I froze, transfixed by the sight of the Queen, whose cold cruelty had struck me earlier, singing lullabies.

Chapter 10

Slowly, silently, I backed away from the door, letting it remain closed. My mind raced in direct counterpoint to how slowly I moved.

“What is it?” Grant hissed.

I waved us all farther down the hallway before answering. “The queen. She’s in there with the babies.”

“Who else?” Coit asked, ever practical.

“No one.”

“That should make it easy.” Shane shrugged when I frowned at him. “You having some kind of second thoughts? She’s no better than the werewolves who tried to take them. They’re not her children. And their birth-mothers gave them over to you.”

He was right. I knew he was right.

Yet something about seeing her sitting there singing to the infants left me feeling ambivalent about her. An hour ago, I could have cheerfully hurt her.

Now?

Now I wondered if maybe she wasn’t as awful as she seemed when I first met her.

Queen of a dying race, grasping at any straw of hope—even one so slender as two infants.

How could I do anything other than pity her?

But that doesn’t mean you have to let her have your babies, Lindi, I admonished myself.

“Okay.” I inhaled deeply. “Let’s go get them.”

Grant gave me an approving nod—and that sent a twisting tendril of worry flipping through my stomach. What did it mean that the werewolf, my recent enemy, my the enemy of my enemy is my friend ally-for-now, liked my plan?

Nothing good, I’m sure.

“What’s the plan?” Coit asked.

“You hold the guard. Shane, see if you can get in behind the queen, maybe use that shock stick to knock her out?” It was the best I could think of. “Grant, whatever happens, your job is to make certain she’s incapacitated. I’ll grab the babies and we can head out.”

“What about the queen?” Shane asked. “Should we kill her before we go? Try to knock her out? What?”

“We take her with us.” I didn’t think before I spoke, but as soon as I said the words, I knew it was the right thing to do.

All three men, however, stared at me with wide, shocked eyes.

“Seriously?” Shane’s tone hovered somewhere between stunned and horrified.

“That ain’t the best idea I