Page 20 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
I opened my eyes and it felt like my eyelids had to peel away from my eyeballs. Everything hurt. The sunfire poison had spread into my chest cavity. My organs were baking, roasting in a million-degree oven. My blood boiled into a thick sludge that my heart struggled to pump.
Waking, I sat up gingerly, wincing at the pain in my skin. It felt both loose—like it might just slide off—and crisp. I’d endured a lot of sun in Heliopolis, the land of eternal blistering sun, but this was different.
I had a fire burning inside me, working its way outward.
My hands glowed like banked coals. At least they weren’t dipped in gold like in that dream but roasting like a pig on a spit wasn’t on my list of ways I’d prefer to depart this life. As I turned my hands over, a line split across my right palm to reveal something glowing. Molten gold encased in fire.
The sunfire was consuming me from the inside out.
Voices buzzed softly nearby but I couldn’t understand the words over the roaring flames in my head. I tried to control my breathing, but I inhaled too deeply, trying to calm down, and I felt a tear on my back.
My skin. I was literally going to explode into a flaming fireball.
Helayna’s cabin would be leveled into a smoldering ruin. Exactly like the house of my childhood. Maybe that was what had happened to my aunt. One of the sundogs had caused her to burn her own nest down.
Maybe it was the sunfire essence blazing in me, but my rage ignited into an uncontrollable conflagration of hatred and vengeance. If I was going to burn and destroy anything, let it be those skeleton creatures outside.
:Yes, come to us!:The voice echoed in my head, vibrating with intensity. :Hurry, Your Majesty.:
Oh I would come to them alright. I’d take out as many of them as I could. My body glowed enough to light the way back to a narrow set of stairs.
Late afternoon sunlight shone through the windows. Hours had passed and the sun was low in the sky. No wonder the thing in my head wanted me to hurry. Their power diminished with the sun, and when it set… They’d be as powerless as me.
I walked across the strip of green between the house and the lake, trying not to scream out in pain. Every step tore my skin open more. My hands blackened, skin curling up and peeling away to reveal more of the molten sunfire beneath. The borrowed clothing burst into flame.
My step faltered, smoke and heat rising into the air around me. Goddess, burning to death hurt. I tried to hurry faster, shambling along unevenly while the fire spread. Almost to the circle, though I couldn’t feel the warning tingle now. Not with the fire blazing inside me.
“Karmen, wait!” Helayna yelled. “Don’t do it!”
I heard something behind me. Her Blood. Of course, she’d send him back after me again. I lurched forward, drawing on all my anger. All my fear. All my hatred. Ra had done this to me. Even dead, he was still destroying everything I’d ever cared about.
This one taste of freedom had been sweet. Too bad it had to end so quickly.
Flames crackled higher and I opened my mouth to scream, “Burn!”
As I threw myself like a flaming fireball at the waiting skeletons.
* * *
SUN TZU
So this waswhat crushing failure felt like.
Antonius had taken a gamble on sending the sundogs into the nest to retrieve her, hoping she might later forgive the instant fear she would experience upon seeing them charging into the nest once she realized we had saved her.
But everything had gone horribly wrong. Sunfire essence burned in her.
I feared it would destroy her.
And if she died…
Everything we had done for centuries would be for naught.
The air shimmered around her. Flames crackled through the clothing she wore. Molten gold dripped from her fingers as she walked. The same as Ra, may he rot in whatever dunghill to which his soul had been committed. Her skin blackened. Her hair blazed with living flames. Her eyes burned with a searing blue flame.
Cold fire. Fire so hot that it burned like ice.
She leaped at me, her mouth gaping open on a scream. I didn’t hear what she actually said. It didn’t matter. My sunfire flowed into a new shape to catch her in flaming arms that were softer than my bones would be. It—we—caught her. I felt the heat of her fire. The rage that burned even hotter than the cold fire shining in her eyes.
