Page 16 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
I fought the instant urge to look away. To hide my gaze and my secrets. Surely there was no way she could see that I was pregnant. Though Aurelian had known immediately…
Tipping my chin up, I made myself stare back at her. Daring her to look deeper. To bare my ugly secret if that was what she had truly seen.
“It’s not demonic,” she continued. “At least not in any earthly or religious sense. It’s not inherently evil, though it has been made to do evil things by evil men. It is part of many. A multitude of burning entities, separate but united. Its nature is to destroy. Death and destruction are part of the Mother’s continual circle.”
Sunfires might not be evil, but I didn’t want to be some tool of destruction, either.
Helayna lowered her hand and the illusion faded. Her hair was short again, though ruffled as if a great wind had blasted through her. “Pulling it out of you is beyond me. It’s fusing with your power.”
“I don’t have any power. If you knew what I’ve lived through, you would laugh. I’m the epitome of powerless.”
She shook her head slowly. “You may not know how to use it, or from where it comes, but I feel the resonance within you. You’re deep, Karmen. Deep like the Grand Canyon. Roots and branches spanning worlds like Yggdrasil. Bottomless, actually. I couldn’t find an end to the depths of your capacity.”
“Power was burned out of me long ago. That’s why you can’t find a bottom.”
One shoulder lifted slightly in a delicate shrug. “Perhaps. Trauma can affect a great many things, including your capacity and even your personality. You were changed by what you endured, the same as I am different after being held captive. I won’t be taken again, and I daresay you would swear the same.”
“Never again,” I retorted, words echoing with vehemence. “I’ll burn first.”
7
Karmen
“I’m going to look through my mother’s things.” Helayna helped me lie back onto the cushion of whatever chair or bed they’d put me on. “I’ll see if I can find a way to contact the Triune. They may be able to help.”
“Okay,” I whispered,
I lay in the darkness, my thoughts hammering inside me. The sunfire essence burned its way through my body. I could feel the change happening inch by inch. It hurt—though it was nothing like the torture I’d endured over the years. I was more scared than anything.
Scared. Because I could feel myself changing.
My leg cast a deep, reddish glow into the darkness. Coals banked for the night. Lava seeping through cracks. My skin felt tight, as if the sunfire was swelling inside me, changing even my body’s shape. Though maybe that was just the heat intensifying. Sweat dripped off me.
And the essence crept ever higher.
My pulse fluttered in my throat. I clenched my hands to hide the way my fingers trembled, even to myself. She’d said my personality had changed because of trauma. Maybe. Who could say what kind of woman I would have been like if Ra hadn’t taken me as a child?
Maybe I could have been open, easy, and warm with a ready smile.
Instead of this empty shell I had become. Dead inside. Burned out by the eternal sun to be a cold, emotionless mask.
Though I wasn’t cold any longer. I wasn’t empty. I certainly wasn’t emotionless. Maybe I wasn’t powerless, either.
And that scared me most of all.
Because if I had power. If I could protect myself. If I could punish the things or people who had hurt me so long. If I could finally embrace the rage that had been simmering inside me for years. Decades. Centuries…
What kind of monster would I become? Helayna had said the sunfire essence inside me wasn’t evil, but I’d seen how they’d been used. I’d borne the scars in Heliopolis.
Light brightened, making me sit up with alarm. Helayna’s glowing ball was bigger and brighter, illuminating the room we were in. “They’ll see.”
“It’s a risk I’ll have to take.” Helayna examined a stack of papers on top of a large desk in the corner. “I haven’t been down here in forever. I can’t remember where Mother kept everything.”
Helayna didn’t seem to hate her as much as her brother had. I glanced around the room, looking for anything that might help me understand their past.
I sat on a long chaise. There were two other chairs and the large desk. The walls looked like dark, rough stone. Some kind of cave beneath the house? If it was a cave… there could be another way in. The sunfires would have a hard time entering such darkness, though it could be done, especially if Sepdet was with them.
He was one of Ra’s children, sired on one of the long-dead Egyptian queens. Of all of Ra’s spawn, he was the worst. He’d loved to torture us, until I was the only woman left. Then Ra had ordered him to leave me alone, too afraid of damaging his last remaining queen to let his twisted son indulge in his vices any longer. But I’d seen the way Sepdet looked at me. I shuddered at the memory.
