Page 51 of Queen Takes King
Shara frowned. “Nobody worships Ra today, do they? Light is supposed to be good. That’s why I wasn’t afraid at first. The monsters don’t like light, and the golden light shining through the window was so beautiful. How could something that beautiful send skeletons that tried to kill us all? What the hell were those things,anyway?”
“Soldiers of Light, the best warriors from all the ages who died in service to him. Samurai, Pharaoh’s personal guards, even a few Templar knights I’m sure.” Xin paused when Guillaume grunted with disgust, but he nodded. “The sun is good, yes? We must have the sun to survive. But the sun can also cause cancer. It can burn your skin, cause sun poisoning, heat exhaustion, and extreme dehydration. You can die from sun exposure, even though we need the sun to survive. Light is wonderful, until it’s focused into a laser that sears your eyes or cuts through a foot of metal likebutter.”
Guillaume laid his hand on her left thigh, his touch gentle. “In the world today, any time you see something good twisted to hurt another, it’s his influence. Supposedly good men who excuse killing people who are different from him. Gunmen killing people in church or at a concert at random. Men spewing obscenities to women on the street. Tyrannical purity, racial injustices, fanatical extremists. He revels in patriarchy, misogyny, racism, andhatred.”
She shivered and we all drew closer, pressing against her, shielding her. “Why would he come afterme?”
I pressed my lips to her forehead. “Can you think of anything a patriarchal god would despise more than a woman reveling in blood and sex and her own growingmagic?”
“Then why not all the Aimaqueens?”
“I’m sure he’s spun out his fanatical plots against them as well, but I have a feeling you will be hisfocus.”
She pressed tighter to my side and I wanted to die at the thought of losing her. Of failing her again. We had to find a way to counteract whatever spell he’d sent ahead of that portal. “My mother said I was controlled chaos. If Ra is order to an extreme… then I suppose it makes sense that he’d hate the chaos Ibring.”
“And that’s probably why you must find Leviathan,” Guillaume said. “Remember those old myths? They feature the father god defeating the mighty serpent and either killing him or chaining him in the depths of hell or the ocean, far from mankind. Or in this case, far from you. That’s probably another reason he targeted you now, before you could find the king and freehim.”
I felt her fear trembling in the bond. Her core was shaken. All the political plots and queen games suddenly paled in comparison to an epic battle of light versus dark proportions. “If you’d all been in here sleeping withme…”
Rage crawled through me, lowering my voice to furious bass. “You’d be dead. Gone. Lostforever.”
Shara
Great, just great. While I thought I had a bit of a handle on the whole Aima court politics mess, now I found out a patriarchal god of light was gunning forme.
I felt pretty confident in fighting back against other queens. I was starting to understand my magic. I trusted my Blood to guide me, protect me, and know when to stand back and let me do my thing. But how do you fight a god who’d once been worshiped by ancient Egyptians asRa?
“Shara, we’re coming up!” Gina called fromdownstairs.
I looked around the room, dismayed. Again. Busted bones, pieces of armor, and weapons littered the floor. Blood everywhere. Of course. The guys were all buck naked. I loved Gina and was definitely getting fond of Dr. Borcht too, but I sure as hell didn’t want two other women getting an eyeful of mymen.
Rik flashed a cocky smile. “Let’s at least put some pantson.”
I dragged the sheet up to cover my midsection and breasts, though I didn’t know that was any better with all the blood splattered all overit.
Gina hesitated at the destroyed door and surveyed the room. “Oh my. I guess you’ve had somedifficulties.”
“You could saythat.”
Poor Frank followed the women carrying two black cases. Dr. Borcht stepped around and over the broken skeleton soldiers and made her way to my side of the bed. Her gaze immediately locked on my right knee and she gently began to manipulate my leg to see how badly it was damaged. “If you could set the cases over here close, that’d begreat.”
He brought the two cases over to her and set them down, but I was surprised when he didn’t immediately bolt for the door. He looked at each man and then focused on Rik, correctly reading him as the man in charge. “I get that my team’s strictly outside security, but if we can help with whatever this situation was, we’re willing. Or if there’s any debriefing you can give me, so we can improve ourresponse…”
Rik nodded. “Yeah, we should fill you in on what happened. All of you. It’s going to affect Her Majesty’s security going forward.” He looked at me, though, a slight frown wrinkling his brow.:Do you mind a human included in thisdiscussion?:
:He’s willing to stay. I guess we give him ashot.:
“Here’s what happened tonight. Guillaume and I were up here with Her Majesty. Daire and Xin were on watch downstairs.” He paused with a glance atDaire.
“I was in the kitchen. Xin went outside to make a quick circuit around thehouse.”
Frank nodded. “We saw him, said hello. That was at 2:04AM.”
Rik looked at me. “Were you asleep, my queen? When itstarted?”
“I had been, but something woke me up. The room was brighter than it should have been and when I started to sit up, I saw what looked like a window in the center of the room and a armed skeleton climbing throughit.”
Frank paled but impressed me again. If he doubted my story, at least he didn’t express any doubts. Though he made a quick look about the room, saw the bones, and I’m not sure how he could think I’d made the whole thing up. Gina sat on the edge of the bed and took myhand.
