Free Long Live the Queen (The Immortal Empire) by Kate Locke Page B

a good fighter, but was I better than Vex? Could I hold my own with William? I hadn’t really tested either question. I would have to be at least Vex’s equal to survive a scrap with my feral twin – William’s if I wanted to subdue her.
    I reckoned I ought to figure that out just in case. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe this was going to end well. Too many people were going to want her dead, on both the human and aristo sides. She was simply too dangerous – a child with a monster’s urges, and the strength to act on them and no moral code to stop her. Even if I could help her, she was freak enough to go through the rest of her life with a target on her back.
    “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” she asked.
    Would I feel so much for her if she didn’t have my face? Would I want to protect her if I didn’t feel a freak-to-freak kinship with her? It didn’t really matter. I was going to help her – if I could.
    “A little.” Such a gross understatement. “But you didn’t know you were doing anything bad.”
    “I hurt your friend.” She wrapped her arms around the knees bent to her chest. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, but I was scared and hungry. I thought he was going to hurt me like he hurt the vampires.”
    Right. She would have seen Vex and the others brutally attack the only guardians she’d ever known. How could she not react to that?
    I massaged conditioner into her hair. What a tangled mess it was. “It was right of you to protect your loved ones.”
    She tilted her head to glance at me. “I didn’t love them. They fed me, taught me, but they didn’t love me. Theypunished me for trying to eat the meat they brought. They said it was special and I couldn’t have it. It was
infected
. What does that mean?”
    Infected? With what? “It means sick. The mea—the person wasn’t well.”
    She made a face. “Ew. The others were sick too. I wouldn’t want to eat them.”
    “Others?”
    “Other meats.”
    Had they tried to feed her diseased humans? No, because she said she wouldn’t want to eat them. “What was wrong with them?”
    My furry twin looked at me as though I was the one born only three weeks ago. “They were sick.”
    Served me right for asking. How could I expect her to know the answer? But it was something worth bringing up with Vex.
    “How much do you normally eat in one day, Ali?” I was all polite interest as I gently worked the tangles out of her hair with a comb.
    She shrugged. “It depended on who fed me. Some gave me more than others – I was quite hungry.”
    “Take a guess.”
    “Maybe one and a half.”
    “Meals?”
    She blinked. “Bodies.”
    Fang me, that was a lot of meat. Where were her handlers getting it all?
    At least that answered my earlier question about how many there were like her out there. There couldn’t be too many – any – if they all ate like her. That many missing people attracted attention, and humans being the viable food sourcethey were, most aristos wanted to keep them quiet and complacent.
    “You’re going to be eating less from now on,” I told her. “You can’t kill someone whenever you’re hungry.”
    An angry pout was my reward. “Why not?”
    “Because humans call that murder and they will want to punish you for it.”
    The pout turned to a threatening scowl. “Then I’ll eat them too.”
    “They’ll kill you.” No point in sugar-coating it
    “Humans?” She snorted. “They’ll never catch me.”
    I rinsed the conditioner from her hair. “Sweetie, humans are only one group. There are those among the aristocrats who would hurt you as well.”
    “They won’t catch me either. My makers made certain.” It was such a cheerfully ominous statement that it sent a shiver down my spine.
    “What did your makers do?” It certainly had nothing to do with scent, because I now knew hers as well as she knew mine.
    The bones of her face shifted. Startled, I jumped back, almost knocking over my chair. I watched as her face