“Can I ask you some questions about what happened back at the chateau?”
“Okay.” Gideon leaned back and crossed his arms. His body language was showing Meg she was walking on thin ice and Sirus may come back at any time. Gideon seemed much more comfortable in the here and now. Sirus was the memory keeper, for the most part.
Meg decided to try to risk touching him. She needed to increase her connection. Since he was sitting with his arms crossed, she had to resort to the most obvious way: She held out her hand, palm up.
Gideon frowned and tilted his head questioning her actions.
“Please? Humor me?” Meg looked from her open hand into his eyes and back again.
With a sigh, Gideon reached out his right hand and took Meg’s left. They sat holding hands on the taxing plane for a few moments before Meg spoke.
“Back at the chateau, you were one of the guards responsible for keeping watch over me, right?”
“Yes.”
“Who were you guarding me against?”
“I was supposed to be protecting you from Senator Arkdone, but in reality, I was protecting you from Williams himself.”
“How long had you worked for Williams?”
“Years. I’m a metamonarch.”
Meg frowned at the term. “What is that?”
“It means I’m both a metahuman and I’ve gone through Monarch Programming.” He watched the frown deepen in Meg’s face before turning his back to her and showing her his branding.
“See? Metamonarchs have the infinite symbol with an “M” etched into each loop.”
She reached up and traced the scar carefully with the tip of her finger. Gideon’s body responded with a quiver.
He quickly turned around, trying to hide the blush that reddened his cheeks.
“I was told by my family that Arkdone wiped my memory in preparation of being turned into a metamonarch, too. So?”
“So?”
“So did he succeed in finishing the process before Williams took me away? I mean—what am I?” Meg asked innocently.
Gideon swallowed hard before saying, “Turn around, and I’ll see.”
“You don’t know already?”
“How would I know?”
“Well, you never looked, even when I was comatose?”
“Of course not.” Gideon looked truly hurt at the implication that he would have done anything to her while she was unconscious.
Meg nodded once and whispered, “Thank you.”
“I made damn sure no one else touched you either.”
Meg heard a growl rumble deep in his chest as he said those words. She was caught off guard by his protectiveness.
“Did others try?” She was almost too afraid to ask.
“They wanted to, but they knew they had to go through me first. No one but the nurses and Dr. Chaunders even crossed the threshold of your room and even when they did, I stayed just outside your door.” Meg watched Gideon’s honey eyes glisten with rage at the memory he wasn’t willing to share.
Meg turned her back on Gideon and held her hair up and out of the way. “Go ahead and check. I need to know.”
With tentative fingers, Gideon carefully pulled down the back collar of her sweater and tee just enough to see her branding.
“You have the Mark of the Monarch, too.” His warm breath tickled the sensitive hairs at the nape of her neck. She had to resist the urge to shiver.
“I do?”
“Should I show you?”
“Yes, please. I need to feel it for myself.”
Holding her hair aside with one hand, she reached the other behind her and let Gideon take her finger and trace the tattoo-like branding etched across her third vertebrae. Meg felt slightly raised marks shaped like the Greek Sigma character: “Σ.” On the right side of her vertebrae, it was facing as it should. On the left side, it was flipped to look like Sigma’s mirror-image.
Meg swallowed hard.
“Why did you protect me?”
“I was following orders.”
“Whose orders?”
“Though they were on opposite sides, both Arkdone and Williams wanted you kept safe.”
“Who tried to harm me?”
“A couple soldiers, a male nurse, a cook—I lost count.” His voice lowered and for a moment, Meg thought Sirus had slipped out, but when she turned in her seat, she saw crisp hazel eyes.
“That many? That’s just sick!” Meg felt like throwing up at the thought of being so close to having been violated while unaware and unable to fight for herself.
The plane had come to a stop and the flight attendant was advising everybody to check for their carry-on baggage. As the “thank you for flying with us” was still being delivered, another attendant unfolded Meg’s wheelchair and brought it as close as the narrow passageway would allow.