Page 14 of Queen Takes Queen
The lattice of roots stretched a good thirty feet down and out in a wide circle, but nowhere near the entire nest. Trailing blood, I started walking, listening and feeling for another seed to spark. “What kind of tree isthat?”
“Looks like anoak.”
I glanced back, amazed. The tender green leaves had transformed into gnarled thick branches running low the ground. The tree looked like it’d been here for a couple of hundredyears.
I felt a spark in the snow and paused, watching as another sprout broke through the snow, stretching up toward my blood. This one was some kind of evergreen. In a few minutes, a mighty pine stretched into the sky, interlacing its roots with the oak. I sighed, looking at how much ground I needed to cover. It was going to take a hell of a lot ofblood.
Rik drew me into his arms. “Then you should definitely feed on me while you grow the nexttree.”
“I don’t want you weakened if we’re going to have to protect thenest.”
He snorted and walked with his arm around me, waiting until I found the next seed that sprouted beneath the snow. “Feeding you makes me stronger, not weaker. And I want my queen well-fed and pumped with alpha power before Skye attempts to spoil yournest.”
6
Nevarre
Wheelingin slow circles above my new queen’s nest, I couldn’t still the tumult fluttering like a trapped bird in my chest. Uncertainty burned in my veins, suffocatingme.
My fate had already been determined. My time had run out. I was dead. It was too late forme.
Until Shara Isador called me back from the dead and breathed life back into me. But whyme?
I still didn’t know why I’d been given a second chance. I had already suffered the ultimate failure. I’d lost everything, including my life. I certainly didn’t deserve another chance. Let alone aqueen.
Though Brigid had been a druid not a queen, I’d sworn my life to her. She’d found me at my lowest point and brought happiness and hope back into my life, rather than the desolation I’d been living. Her court had been a simple three-hundred-year-old cottage on the outskirts of Inverness. She dyed and spun the wool from our sheep and made trinkets that we sold at fairs and tourist shops all over the countryside. They looked like simple wall hangings with Celtic knots and carefully woven scenes, but each piece was made for a specific magical purpose. Ward your house. Increase your fertility or wealth. Heal your sick. Improve yourcrops.
Certainly a long fall from grace for a Morriganson.
No queen. No nest. No sibs. Nofamily.
Only a druid witch who’d loved me despite thosefailures.
Looking back, those decades with Brigid had been some of the best of my life. She’d taught me so much about life and love and family and simple pleasures. A newborn lamb. Silvery moonlight dancing across the moors. The gleam of firelight on her glorious sunset hair. With her arms around me, the missing hole in my chest dulled to an ache that was almost bearable. Until I lost hertoo.
With night falling fast, my eyesight wasn’t as sharp. I turned back toward my queen. The scent of her blood was thick on the air, pulling all her Blood to her side. She’d bled a great deal, though I wasn’t sure what she’d done. The air was thick with magic and blood, going straight to my head. Drunk on magic. Drunk on my queen’s blood. Drunk on hersex.
She’d tasted me last night and fucked me under the stars. I’d thought nothing could move me again after I’d lost Brigid, but I’d been surprised at how easily and quickly I responded to Shara. How well I fit into her existing Blood. They’d welcomed me without any resentment or strife, even a dead raven. Even her big alpha hadn’t questioned my right to serve or cast shadow on my abilities since I’d obviously failed so severely in the past. If they only knew the half of myfailures…
I wouldn’t survive the loss of thisqueen.
In the darkness, the woods around her house looked different. By sight alone, I would have said I was lost. The shape and texture of the forest had changed. New trees grew where I swear nothing but snowy gardens had beenbefore.
Trees.
In a circle about her house. A ring in hernest.
I dived for the ground, shifting at the last moment so that I made a running landing on my feet, stumbling to catch myself until I fell on my knees beforeShara.
She stood under the spreading branches of a gnarled ancient Norway spruce. A tree that wasn’t native to Arkansas or even North America to my knowledge and it certainly hadn’t been here just an hourbefore.
In fact, this particular tree had once grown in Morrigan’s Grove in my mother’s nest. I’d climbed these limbs as a boy and my first queen had taken me beneath its branches. It felt so familiar that I didn’t rise from my knees. I just knelt there, trembling, looking up at the gloriousbranches.
“Nevarre? What isit?”
“Morrigan’s Grove.” My voice broke, and I didn’t care. “These trees grew in my mother’s nest, until her consiliarius betrayed us and the trees were destroyed. We lost them. We lost everything. I saw them heaped in a pile and burned to nothing but ash on the wind, yet you recreated it. How? How is thispossible?”
She shrugged. “I offered blood to Gaia, and this is what She grew. I needed something to help us protect the nest from the ground, and now I can feel the roots stretching out fingers deep into the soil, forming one giant network. It’s like they’re talking to each other, and tome.”
