Page 69 of The Blood Queen

Although I had no sense of my mate, where he was or what he was doing, he would come.

He would find me.

An hour later, I called a break, having noticed no disruption in the passage to warn that Ago followed. My legs wobbled. Julien was struggling. Not that he would complain. The wound in his side still pained him. I wasn’t sure what Annora’s healing waters actually healed. Perhaps they worked for nymphs and no one else.

When we got to our destination, I’d try to reach Grayson through our bond. Tell him where we were and get the help Julien needed.

With that plan in place, I helped Julien sit with his back against the passage wall. His legs shook with exhaustion. His eyes slitted closed.

I sat across from him, leaned and squirmed around until no rock edge poked my back. Smooth as an easy chair, Noa. I breathed in, breathed out, searched for a rhyme to soothe my frazzled nerves. Liar, liar… pants on fire… didn’t have the same punch it’d had before. Neither did hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

I breathed in again, ignoring the stuttered way the air moved as I thought about my mom. How she’d drawn pink hearts in a baby book. Saved the last letter from my father.

If you are reading this…

No more. I refused to be drawn into the past, into nostalgia that left me aching with the futility.

“I’m glad you’re still alive,” I said to the darkness. To Julien.

His voice bounced eerily. “One of the many benefits of being a vampire.”

“For a second, when we were at High Citadel… the temptation was strong.” The truth whispered through me, a shudder in its wake. “I wanted it. The chance for revenge that Barend offered. Put things right. The compulsion was… I almost meant it when I said yes.”

“Barend mesmerizes. He finds the one desire that burns darkest in the heart. What we’ll sell our souls to get. The truth we hate about ourselves, dressed up as something to be coveted.”

I moistened my lips. “I wanted it, Julien. Revenge. I didn’t care what it would cost me in that instant.”

“And yet you rejected his offer, turned it into a weapon, and used it against him.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Because you have goodness in you, my lady. Because you carry love like a torch that blazes with an eternal light, and Barend cannot stomach the emotion. He wants to destroy you. Never doubt that is his goal.”

“Why did they try to kill you, Julien?”

He was silent for a moment. “In my human life, I was quite fond of puzzles. Solving secret codes. I worked for a lesser king, and I’d go to the universities known for their libraries, pour through ancient books. I never lost the knack. I was researching for Set. She has a journal, hand-written by Amal.”

“She sent me the same book,” I said, leaning my head against the stone. “Leather-bound, with narrow ties.” Zinging with magic. “How did Set find it?”

“They were friends centuries ago.”

Shock quaked through me. “Set and… Amal?”

“Set’s sire turned her by force,” Julien said. “It was common to the times to abuse the females. She despised him for it, though. Despised her craving for blood. She had trouble adjusting. Rumors of the wolf queen attracted Set—Amal was like her. Turned without a choice. Amal left her journal with Set, said it might help her. But Amal—by that time, her hatred was visceral and not what Set wanted, to hate like that. Black hate, without hope. Life is nothing without hope for some purpose. Some reason for the why.”

I listened to the faint plop of water dripping in the distance. “A part of me identifies with Amal. A part that understands.”

Maybe it was the part that connected to her telepathically. To the part that ached when Amal screamed. The part that suffered from the pain beneath the anger, sensing the loss of a wolf.

Or it was the part that Laura talked about… how I did it to myself, identifying with a myth and thinking Amal was a tragic, wounded woman I could save.

Because I was the daughter of the daughter’s daughters. Descended from the queens, suffering the queen’s curse, needing to give up arrogance. Learn compassion.

Fated to be healed through a king’s curse. Drawn to a dread lord, who was himself cursed to repair what the kings had destroyed.

Did that cycle ever end?

“Amal can mesmerize the way Barend does,” Julien murmured. “She sees the depth of the soul, the kernel of corruption easiest to exploit. Her goal has never changed. She wrote about it in her journal.”

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