Page 18 of Queen Takes Triune
It was lighter in the room than the tunnel had been, allowing me to study the details. Concentric rings in the floor flowed out from the nest, some thicker or lighter than others as if we were inside a giant tree.
My heart tree’s diameter wasn’t nearly this large.
I stepped over to the walls and ran my fingers over the smooth surface. It definitely felt like wood, hard and smooth as though a craftsman had sanded for days. I tipped my head back and found the source of light. A crack in the trunk at least twenty or thirty feet above allowed air and light to filter down into the chamber.
“Where are we?” I mused aloud. “It doesn’t feel like we’re in the grove any longer.”
The crow queen chirped, drawing my attention back to her. I felt a tickle in my mind, almost like a small scratch. Or a knock. I nodded and she filled my mind with a picture of a huge tree from the outside as she flew around it. So tall that the top was shrouded in mist. A giant redwood, I thought, though I’d never seen a sequoia before.
She pulled me along in the vision, winging out over a sprawling forest. Mountains formed a formidable ridge on one side, and with her incredible eyesight, I could see the ocean in the distance. I’d never been to California, but it certainly looked like the coast.
In a matter of minutes, maybe a dozen steps, I’d traveled from Arkansas to California. Unbelievable.
:She’s talking to you,:Nevarre said in our bond.:That’s new, isn’t it?:
It was. Before I’d resurrected Huitzilopochtli, she’d sent me a vision of stabbing herself on the heart tree’s thorns.:She bled on the heart tree—where my blood flows.:
I could taste her on my tongue now. Black feathers fluttering against my cheek, the scent of forest and mountain air filling my nose. Similar to pine but not quite as pungent. If I were to guess, I’d say I was smelling my first sequoia.
This had been her home before she’d come to me.
How had she known to fly from California to Arkansas? The night Keisha Skye attacked my nest with ants, Nevarre had put out a call to all the birds in the area for assistance, but the crow wouldn’t have had time to fly that far. She had to have already been close. I wasn’t familiar with crow migration cycles, but I couldn’t imagine a crow naturally flying so far from her home.
The crow queen’s feathers rustled as she shifted on her eggs, drawing my attention back to her. :What’s your name?:
She didn’t give me a single word, but an image. A crow’s wing, glistening with the soft light of a thousand stars. The night and darkness of her wing. Nightwing.
She chirped softly, but I felt an expectation from her. Hope. There was more to her name.
I felt her soaring high into the night sky, twirling and spiraling so the starlight flickered on her wings.
Nightwing Starlight.
Joy flooded my bond and she chirped again. In words, that was as close to her name as I could get.
I stepped closer to her nest and dropped down to sit cross-legged before her. “Thank you for sharing your name with me, Your Majesty.”
She squawked and fluttered her wings, giving me an indignant look that made me smile.
“Nightwing. Is that better?”
She settled back down with a humph.
“I love your nest. Thank you for showing me your tree.”
She preened, making a low coo as she fluffed up her chest feathers with her beak.
“I hear congratulations are in order.”
She rose up enough to show me the speckled blue-green eggs beneath her. Something caught my attention and I leaned closer, trying to make out what it was. It took me a moment to recognize the bit of hair I’d given her. The strands were balled up beneath the eggs like a thin cushion. “Do you need more hair? That doesn’t look like enough to keep them safe.”
She shook her head and settled back on top of her eggs. An image of downy soft royal silk filled my mind, gleaming black like my hair, wrapped gently around her eggs. Evidently the few strands I’d given her were enough.
An image of hundreds of crows filled my mind, a steady stream of birds flying in and out of the heart tree. They each carried something, either in their beaks or grasped in their talons. At first, I thought they were bringing food to their queen, but as I watched, I realized they were tribute. Offerings. Shiny silver and other metals for the most part, but a few scraps and things I couldn’t immediately identify either.
She made a different low-pitched call and several crows fluttered down from somewhere above us. Two of them held something in their beaks, and they laid the items down before me. I got the impression that they were male, maybe her mates. Or at least her guards, like my Blood.
I dropped my gaze to the items, trying to understand why she wanted me to see these. They didn’t appear to be of much value. A scrap of baby-blue fabric, edges tattered and torn, and a piece of paper, wrinkled with faded ink that had bled out into an unreadable mess. It looked like it’d been rained on and dried in the sun several times.
