Page 76 of Rise of the Queen

“She went from black to purple the other day. That might be my favorite color transition so far. It was incredible,” Adrik said. I could feel the familiar pull in my chest that meant he was thinking about how much he loved me.

“You’re late to the party, Squish. When are you going to figure out you can strike even more fear into the hearts of regular people?” I asked.

He cut his eyes over at me, his sly grin creeping up one side of his mouth. “Since your dad told me it was possible and I saw Boss do it, I may have tried to make it happen when no one was around.”

“Shut up. Did it work?” I asked, completely curious to see if he could make his eyes go dark now too.

He closed his eyes briefly, opening them to reveal his much darker eyes. His eyes were normally golden brown, but they were much darker when he looked at me and Adrik.

“Squish, you’re barely angry right now too. That’s impressive,” I said. “Did you have to get to insane levels the first time it happened?”

“I did. I kept trying to make it happen without going nuclear, but it just wasn’t happening. I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to feel it. I didn’t want you to come running downstairs, so I waited until I knew for sure you were asleep,” he said, grinning at me.

“You did it at the ungodly hour of 4:00 a.m., didn’t you?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yep. I know you’re dead to the world then. It worked. I figured it out and you were none the wiser,” he said.

“Well played.” I looked at both of them. “You’re both going to need contacts now to keep from scaring the entire world. It’s bad enough when people see it on me. You two have an added intimidation factor. People are going to run from you.”

“I think that’s kind of the point, princess,” Ivan said. “How do you control yours so quickly? You can get your eyes to change from normal to black and back again in a second now, without getting ridiculously angry. What do you think about to make that happen?” he asked.

“Um, I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought about this before. I just kind of do it. But I learned very early in life to think of my anger like a living being, almost. Maybe what I think of as my anger is actually my demon? It’s much the same as when I’m sending stuff to you guys. I just concentrate on it and push it forward,” I said.

Ivan closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them this time, they were much darker than they were just a few moments ago. I couldn’t help but grin at him. “Clearly, that explanation worked,” I said. I turned to look at Adrik. “Have yours turned dark other than that one time when we were all in here?”

He nodded. “I was talking to Ivan the other day and they changed. Like him right now, I was barely angry when it happened.”

“You guys are learning much faster than I did. That’s impressive,” I said. Adrik closed his eyes for a moment, opening them to reveal his almost-black eyes. “Yours are getting darker much faster too. How?”

“When you showed me how you control your anger, I started thinking about mine like a living thing too. Maybe we’re just giving acknowledgement to our little buddies in there?” He smiled, his eyes still dark.

“Are you asking me because you think I have the answer? Because that’s not a thing I have,” I said. “Has anybody else seen this yet?”

“Not that I know of,” Ivan said.

“I might’ve had it happen in one of my meetings. I noticed a look of surprise on someone’s face and blinked when I noticed my mind was wandering to Ricardo,” Adrik said. His eyes had returned to their normal blue as he laughed about scaring his business associate.

“All this time I’ve been worried it was me who was going to scare everyone off. Turns out it was you,” I said, laughing.

“Told you that you’re gonna need contacts too,” Ivan said.

Once the guys came back with Chen, Andrei caught my eye. He tapped his temple and raised one eyebrow at me. I took a peak in his head, looking through what he’d seen when he looked into the journalist’s head. When I looked into people’s minds, I could see what they saw, so I got a chance to see the journalist how Andrei saw him. I clearly saw the journalist’s aura around him, but I also saw it was broken in a few places. Dark spots, like holes, were visible. Andrei felt nothing bad from him as he talked to Chen. I couldn’t stop looking at the way Andrei saw him. It was fascinating.

It also gave me an idea on how to help Viktor.“Squish, can you call the acupuncturist? Bubba just gave me an idea about Viktor. Also, I was able to see what he could see when I just went fishing in his head, so I’m gonna need to do that to you the next time you see a little demon riding shotgun on somebody’s shoulder.”Ivan laughed loudly, which made me struggle not to laugh, because it looked like he wasn’t talking to anybody.“My bad.”I thought.

“What did you do to Ivan, solnishko?”Adrik thought. I caught his sexy smirk on his face as he pretended to listen to Viktor.

“I have an idea on how to help Viktor. I also said I wanted to see what it looks like when a demon is riding shotgun on a person and now I know how,”I answered.

Adrik was much more in control. I could hear him laughing internally. When I looked at him, he looked like he was still listening to Viktor, who was going through the information the journalist had given Chen on the mayor and the police commissioner.

As everyone started to pay attention to Viktor, the mood turned more serious. Our suspicions were confirmed by the journalist. It was Henry, not the mayor, who was dirty. However, it appeared that he hadn’t been on the take as long as we thought. From what the journalist could find, Sal had only recently gotten to Henry. We still weren’t sure what he was doing with the information on Ricardo, but we could still get that information to the mayor, along with this new information on Henry, and get them both taken care of. Along with a win in the next election for the mayor.

“So how do we get to the mayor without Henry finding out?” Misha asked.

“I might actually be able to help with that,” Chen said. He looked somewhat nervous to interject.

“How?” Adrik asked.