Page 17 of Queen Takes Rook
As a young queen ripe with power, Citla Zaniyah had gone to foster with an older and more renowned queen descended from the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan, and when she returned, she was changed. Silenced. Broken. No one ever spoke of her time there, or who our father, or fathers, were. Though I heard the whispers.
I was so different from Tlacel. He was kind and generous, beautiful and gentle. He would never harm another.
I, on the other hand, had gained the reputation for being sullen, dark, and yes, extremely dangerous. I fought to the death like a starving dog over scraps of refuse. Mama had retreated into her mind, and Grandmama had been busy establishing the new Zaniyah nest and moving our family from Tenochtitlan. But one thing always stuck in my mind.
Mama never had Blood. Not even an alpha. So who, then, had sired us?
When I was older, I asked Grandmama what had happened to my mother. She had only shaken her head and said some things were better forgotten.
Forgotten. Like how I came to be. How I was so different from my brother. As we matured into young Aima males, hungry for the chance to serve a queen, the differences in us had become even more stark and grim.
Grimacing, I pulled back from those memories and focused on Shara. She cupped my face in both her hands and leaned down over me, staring deeply into my eyes. She turned the page in my mind, and I was sharing blood for the first time with someone not family. My first sib, my first lover. Shame clawed at my throat, and I tried to shut the memory away, but I couldn’t refuse my queen.
The first taste of sweet, new blood. Her hot skin against mine. Her cries that had quickly turned to screams. Even when she fought me and clawed at my face and arms, I couldn’t stop. The pain only inflamed me. I wanted more. I wanted her to shred my skin off in strips. I wanted to cover her in my blood and wear hers too.
They’d had to drag me off her, beating me like a wild animal until sense slowly edged back the red haze clouding my vision. Panting, achingly erect, and covered in blood, I could only watch as she fled from me. That look of horror and fear on her face flashed in my mind constantly, but especially when I fed. Even from family. I hadn’t touched Tlacel’s or Mayte’s blood in over a century. It’d been so long…
I was afraid someone would have to drag me off them, too. That I’d turn into a savage monster and devour the people I loved most in the world. Or, that if they tasted my blood, the same savage, mindless hunger for blood and pain would contaminate them, too.
It was one reason we’d never served a queen despite our age and potential power. Tlacel refused to go without me, and I couldn’t bear to feed or risk touching a woman ever again.
:After that incident with the sib, Grandmama sent us to the same nest where Mama had fostered. She said I needed to know the truth about how I was sired. I needed to understand what I came from, in order to protect us all.:
We’d gone to the nest of Theresa Tocatl, descended from the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan. Little was known about the goddess, though She was always depicted with spiders. Sometimes as a giant mouth lined with teeth. Her Blood each descended from the old gods. A jaguar god. A sun god. A quetzalcoatl god. And the flayed god.
After seeing how the latter Blood fed, I knew who my father had to be.
Even now, my mind flinched from the memory.
We Aima reveled in blood, but the Flayed One reveled in pain as much as the blood, and he saved his darker tastes for hapless human women. He could strip the whole skin off his sacrifice with only a small slit in the chest, and he gave the skin to his queen to wear.
Worse, his power allowed him to keep his sacrifice alive and screaming the entire time. He feasted on her pain as long as possible, until she ultimately died. Humans were too fragile after all. Nothing like Aima queens.
Unfortunately for him, drinking pain made him as loose-lipped as a drunk human, and he had told me, in brutal detail, exactly what had happened to my mother years before.
A young queen without Blood. Without protection. With a great deal of power that she didn’t know how to wield.
I killed the monster who’d fathered me. I killed them all, even their queen, but the damage had already been done.
:He tortured her and used her power to keep her alive while they all raped her.:I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut.:Tlacel and I were sired by Tocatl’s Blood through rape and horror, and I was her greatest horror. The one who tortured her the most lives on in me.:
* * *
SHARA
So much pain and guilt and shame, all for something completely out of his control. He’d carried that needless guilt for hundreds of years, to the point where he hadn’t fed or enjoyed the powers he’d been born with.
:How did you make it through last night? You were able to take my blood, and you allowed me to feed as well. I sensed nothing amiss, and I was looking for a reason not to trust you.:
A grim smile twisted his lips.:The goddess sent me a vision of you killing a magical spider without hesitation, and I hoped you could also kill the spider that I carry. The Great Goddess and the Flayed One live on inside me, my queen. I fully understand if you cannot abide such Blood. I only ask that you sacrifice me here, so my blood will at least feed Zaniyah lands, and I beg you to allow Tlacel to continue to serve.:
I had envisioned the geas on Mayte’s nest as a spider, but I’d sensed nothing like that in his bond. Only the giant black dog.
However, I hadn’t sensed his reluctance to feed or allow others to feed, either.
His bond firmed with conviction. He knew I would reject him. He braced for his own blade to sink into his heart.
:If I’m not mistaken, your sister’s crown was made to look like human hands and hearts. All goddesses have their dark side of death and destruction, and we are given their gifts as they see fit.:
