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

the hallway, were slightly rounded and patterned in a tile mosaic, black with metallic shades of the rainbow running through them, iridescent and gorgeous.

At the front of the room was a dais, and on the dais stood a figure, a lamia in a completely shifted form as big as some of the ones I had used in battles back on my own world. She towered far above us.

I sucked in an extra breath of air, gasping at her sheer beauty even as my mind cataloged what kind of snake she was.

Her long coiling body was beautiful shade of gold. But her head was extraordinary, a shiny black with rainbow shades of iridescence chasing each other through it.

The room had been tiled to match her coloring.

Around the edge of her mouth was a white band striped with black.

A white-lipped rainbow python.

I was still overcoming it, the surprise of seeing such a gorgeous member of my own race, when Salara stepped up and executed what could only be described as a deep bow. “Queen Amalya, of clan Lissa,” she began, “I have brought three new prisoners to you.”

This time, my gasp was one of shock and betrayal.

Salara glanced around at us triumphantly, her grin wide and unrepentant. “And they have two lamia infants.”

The queen lamia instantly shifted, her body melting and reforming more quickly than I had ever managed, and I couldn’t help but watch in slack-jawed wonder at how amazing she was. How beautiful.

How deadly. How cold.

Once she’d finished her transformation, the lamia leader gazed down at us while human servants brought in a black, shimmering robe to wrap around her.

Even in human form, she was stunning. Her long dark hair cascaded down her back in a mass of curls that almost seemed to move of their own accord, and her eyes glowed a bright emerald.

When she finally spoke, it was in a hiss full of underlying sibilants. “You don’t belong here.” She waved her hand. “Guards, arrest them.”

Chapter 5

I was horrified at the idea of having fallen into a nest of vipers.

Shane, on the other hand, was thrilled. “Your majesty,” he began, his voice thrumming with undertones of wonder.

“Silence the human,” the queen ordered in a bored tone—but underneath the tone, she watched me avidly for my response.

The two guards on either side of the dais moved toward Shane, who put his hands up in surrender and stood passively as they took hold of his arms.

Every muscle in my body tensed up as I prepared to shift, hoping to fight off the guards who just been ordered to arrest us.

Until I heard the queen’s next words.

“Take the prisoners and put them with the other one.”

The other one?

I ran back over the events of the last day. For some reason, I had assumed that the portal between worlds had taken the werewolf and the kidnapped lamia baby to some world other than this one.

After all, the portal seemed to flip through possible worlds like a television switching channels.

But maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe the werewolf had ended up right here in this world along with us.

It didn’t seem likely that would happen by chance—but nothing that was going on seemed to be happening exactly by chance. The more I learned about magic, especially my own, the more convinced I became that even when I didn’t realize I was doing it, I was somehow controlling the outcome of dealing with the portals I created.

All of that flashed through my mind in a heartbeat as I froze.

I didn’t want to be arrested in this strange world. But we were surrounded by other lamias, many of whom were probably as strong as I was—or maybe even stronger. I needed to stand down. We all did.

I glanced from side to side, finding Coit and Shane both ready to fight if necessary.

“Don’t.”

My one word was enough to get their attention. I saw the moment when they relaxed.

In the end, we all stood perfectly still as the guards surrounded us and snapped some kind of cuffs on our wrists. They felt like metal and looked like manacles I had seen in old pictures of prisoners from a hundred years ago or more.

But when the guard placed them on my wrists, I nearly fell to my knees.

Something horrible flowed through me, like an unseen poison sapping my strength.

These were designed to curtail my ability to use magic, I realized.

The sudden loss made me sick to my stomach.

The lamia standing on the dais saw when it happened, too. Absolute delight at my inability to fight against her or her guards flashed across her face, twisting my stomach further.

I couldn’t help but twitch when they pulled the babies from me, uncoiling them from my neck.

I will find you again, I promised them silently.

The queen, Amalya, held out her arm for the infants to be transferred to her. I’d spent enough time as a counselor to recognize her expression.

I’d seen it before on people who believed they owned someone else. The smug husband who beat his wife. The parent who didn’t give a child room to grow.

Never before had I seen it so clearly, though.

The ruler who owned her subjects.

Triumph and self-satisfied cruelty twined together in her face as the infants slid up and down her arms, exploring this new person, their uncertainty reflected in their inability to coil around her and settle down.

The guards who let us away were both in human form. I wondered briefly if the nullifying effects of the cuffs I was in extended beyond me. Did the guards have to be in human shape in order to deal with them?

They each held a long stick. The guard behind me reached out and tapped me in the middle of the back with this world’s version of a cattle prod. The shock of it buzzed through my system, and I stumbled at the sharp pain.

“Get moving,” the guard said.

I followed his instruction, but I turned to watch the Queen as I stumbled out of the