Page 65 of Queen Takes Triune
I needed to destroy her body so she could never be turned into a walking corpse again, but I couldn’t bear to burn her alive. She was still inside the rotted body, fully aware of what was happening to her, even though she couldn’t control the zombie she’d become without the Dauphine’s will.
I’d only dealt with one other mummy before, though I’d brought Huitzilopochtlibackto life, rather than trying to free his soul. I closed my eyes and forced myself to look at her body through my power. The stench and rot were amplified in my heightened senses. I could see the dead, shriveled cells. All the trauma of death. Even after five years, the violence of her murder still echoed in her body. The pain as her former alpha had torn open her throat. His desperation burning like madness in his eyes as he devoured her. All he’d wanted was to be her Blood again.
But she had no power left to give him. Only her life.
I stared up at him through her eyes and read the subtle compulsion that had twisted him. He’d definitely turned himself into a thrall, a monster, by killing humans once his queen had died. But someone else had whispered poisoned secrets to him. Someone had sent him out after his lost queen and her daughter who wasn’t actually hers. They’d told him lies, enraging his madness until he was their perfectly obsessed hunter.
I remembered the night I’d killed him. He’d told me that my father was Leviathan. He’d told me that name on purpose.
Someone had given him that name, hoping that he’d share it with me.
So maybe a desperate, lonely young woman in search of the father she’d never known would seek out the monster known to have killed queens for at least a thousand years.
I’d destroyed Greyson before I ever knew about the Dauphine, but I had to wonder if she was the one behind his corruption. Even then, she’d been close to finding me. She’d already been here in America, sending out her careful feelers looking for me. She’d known to look in Kansas City—likely because of Greyson, who’d been able to sniff out his former queen’s existence even without her power.
I’d sensed the spy in the dark hallway at the bar. How many other invisible watchers did she have? How many were here in Eureka Springs? She’d known that I’d left the nest, but she’d been surprised that I’d returned so quickly. She hadn’t known about my grove. She’d been trapped by the trees, and now she knew that I could instantly travel from New York to my nest. Maybe not how, yet—but that it was possible.
She’d deliberately sent Mom to me, trapped in this rotting body, with her warning.
I pushed away the memory of Greyson tearing out her throat. Another memory fluttered up at me. Waking in darkness. Forced to claw and dig her way out of a six-foot-deep hole. Compelled to stagger across Missouri to find me in the hills of Arkansas.
Knowing that she was dead. Feeling the rotted corpse imprisoning her soul.
Someone I loved—so that it would hurt all the more.
Other than the monsters that had hunted me all my life, I’d never really hated anyone before. But I hated Jeanne Dauphine for this. I burned with a cold, icy rage.
Fire had been my gift from the beginning, but this emotion was a blistering blizzard that would obliterate everything in its path.
I reached deeper into Mom’s corpse, past the paper-thin skin and sharp, dry bones of her rib cage. In the center of her body, I felt a faint stirring. A hint of feathers and movement, though it was bound tightly, trapped against bone and dried sinew. I grasped the caged thing with my power and pulled it out of her.
Opening my eyes, I saw a hawk sitting on her chest, holding her locket in its beak. It was larger than my crow queen, but not a massive bird of prey. Dark brown feathers covered her body, and her head was darker, almost black. She opened her wings, though she didn’t fly away yet, giving me a glimpse of the stripes of lighter colors on the undersides of her wings. I’d seen something like that before, but it took me a moment to place it.
On the legacy box, there was an image of Isis with Her horned crown and red disk, one arm lifted up with a cup in Her hand. On either side of her, outstretched wings reached from side to side on the box’s top.
Wings like these—with dark and light striped chevrons.
The hawk’s head tipped sideways, and she dropped the locket into my lap. She chirped several times. I didn’t need to have my crow queen or Nevarre’s raven translate for me.I’ll always love you.
Then she sprang up into the sky, gone on silent wings.
Picking up the locket as I stood, I stepped back from Mom’s body. Tears streaked my cheeks, but I managed to smile. Her spirit was gone, freed from the hell that the Dauphine had put her through. Now only one thing remained to ensure she couldn’t do it again.
The blood I’d dripped on Mom exploded into flames, quickly blasting through the dried flesh. I watched her burn, making sure there wasn’t anything left that the Dauphine could ever use.
I lifted my head, not surprised to find that my trees had silently gone. I hadn’t heard them move back to their positions around the heart tree. Clouds covered the moon and the temps had warmed enough that most of the snow had melted. It wasn’t quite time for new life to start sprouting, but a tender young plant shot up out of the ground, fed by Mom’s ashes and my blood.
Turning back toward the house, I didn’t wait to see what new tree would grow there. I already knew it would be beautiful. As beautiful as Selena Isador Dalton had been.
“Shara!” Gina called.
I glanced back over my shoulder but didn’t pause my step. She had her arm around Frank’s waist, supporting him, though he didn’t need her help to stand after I’d healed him. The tender look he gave her warmed the frigid hurricane of snow blowing in me but didn’t dispel the coming storm. “I’m so happy for you and Frank. I’m sorry I didn’t notice before.”
Her eyes shone as brightly as the moon. “What are you going to do now? What do you need?”
I kept walking toward the house so rapidly that even Rik had to hurry his step to keep up with me. “I need the mirror.”
Itztli rushed past us so quickly he was a blur, but I still made out his black leathery wings. His new shape was a giant bat.:At once, my queen.:
