Page 12 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
Blood. Someone was bleeding. I didn’t dare turn my head to see who it was. It didn’t matter anyway. I couldn’t touch anyone’s blood for fear of revealing the secret I carried inside me.
One of the soldiers rode closer, his sunfire rearing and snorting like a horse of living flames. “Your Majesty, we mean you no harm.”
I stepped back to the railing, using it to steady myself. They hadn’t come any closer. Yet. Maybe Helayna’s nest really would hold. I had heard his voice before. He was one of Ra’s closest guards. But I couldn’t think of his name. “Leave before you meet Aurelian’s fate. I won’t go back to Heliopolis alive.”
“Sol Invictus doesn’t speak for us, Your Majesty.”
“That’s good, because I turned his bones into dust.”
The brightness intensified as the sun rose higher. My eyes streamed with tears, but I refused to look away. I couldn’t even see specific shapes now. How many were there? More than five, I thought. Twenty? I blinked furiously, trying to count. Trying to come up with a plan.
“We don’t have time to explain. You’re in grave danger. This place won’t hold for long.”
I drew on the remnants of solar energy that I’d stolen from the last bunch of soldiers, trying to think of the best way to warn them off. If I could buy myself some time…
Molten sunlight filled me. The pain in my eyes eased and I could finally see through their glamor. Ten soldiers with their blazing sunfires. The skeletons I could deal with. It was their demons I was worried about.
The nearest one, a large fiery horse with curved horns, shimmered brighter, more golden and less red. I didn’t know what that meant, if anything. Head high, it seemed focused on me, rearing again, fighting, tossing its head.
Fighting the soldier’s hold? Goddess help me, I didn’t want to deal with loose sunfires. They were all dangerous, but Ra’s soldiers had constantly struggled to keep the unattached ones under control. If this one was nearly free…
One of the other soldiers raised his arm, a silent command that sent the sundogs racing toward me.
Through the blood circle. Into the nest.
I remembered one crucial detail in a rush. Sundogs were the key to bringing queens under Ra’s control. They had one purpose: kill the queen holding the blood circle, so the soldiers and sunfires could follow.
“Go!” I screamed over my shoulder to Helayna. “They’ll kill you to bring down the nest! Get somewhere dark and stay hidden!”
I wasn’t sure what I could do to stop them. The mirror certainly wouldn’t help, so I let it fall from my fingers as I stepped down off the porch. I ran a few steps away from the house to my right. Locked in on me, the sundogs adjusted their trajectory to intercept me. Running side by side, they bayed with every step, the sound alone enough to make me tremble. As they came closer, the whitish-blue at their center spread until all the red was gone except for the tips of their flickering flames.
Every instinct screamed at me to turn around and run back inside the house. But I couldn’t take them near Helayna. I wouldn’t repay her kindness to me by getting her killed.
A blast of something shot over my shoulder and hit the ground right in front of the sundogs. It splashed up into their path, hissing and immediately turning to steam without any noticeable effect on them. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder to see where the water had come from.
Helayna stood where I had been on the porch, her right arm flung out towards me. Blood trickled down her chin. As I watched, the biggest Blood swept her up in his arms and quickly disappeared into the house. Hopefully they had a basement or something where they could hide. As long as she stayed alive, the rest of the soldiers wouldn’t be able to cross into the nest.
If they were truly only after me, then… My brain stuttered. I couldn’t. I couldn’t surrender myself to them to save her. To save anyone.
I won’t go back alive.
5
Marcus Antonius
Ihad the wretched habit of destroying everything I ever cared about. Yet that could not keep me from caring about this queen, the light of everything. If she died…
I pitied this world. Because we would burn it all down.
Time wasn’t on our side. Chaos reigned in Heliopolis, and the sunfires had poured through the portals to this world, where we’d sent her to safety. Unchecked and untamed, they were likely as drawn to her as we were. As Aurelian had been. She’d been able to escape him, though we had no idea how. Tzu had gone deadly silent when we found the piles of ash at the smoldering inn.
Too late. We had not been there for her. We had not protected her. This place we’d sent her to was as big a death trap as Heliopolis had been. We had no way to know which of the Legion had been with Aurelian. Sepdet might still be free, searching as frantically for her as we were. As one of Ra’s offspring, Sepdet might very well try to ascend to his father’s throne of glory. One way to do that would be to claim God’s Wife for his own.
And if he discovered our queen carried another heir…
He would eliminate her as quickly as he could. He couldn’t afford for the heir to be a solar queen.
So many threats on all sides, and she consideredusthe enemy. Sending sundogs in after her would only worsen her fear of us, but what choice did we have? We couldn’t enter the nest, and she wouldn’t come to us voluntarily.
