Page 27 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
No one answered. I glanced at each soldier, wondering what I was missing. What I had failed to understand. I focused on Sunzi, the leader.
A tenseness eased across his shoulders. Kuros even took a step backward. It was a subtle exchange, but evidently, I’d settled an unspoken score between the two soldiers.
"You must rest and heal, Your Majesty. That was my hope in bringing you here to a place that you remembered. However, there is one thing I would ask of you before we proceed any further."
I couldn't read his skeletal expression, but I was starting to learn how to listen to the sunfire essence building in me with each feeding. The fiery energy tightened inside me, braced for an explosion. "Yes, what is it?"
"Since you weren't raised as other queens, you might not know. We aren't sure either, but we've listened and watched as the other queens before you were taken..."
"Through the sunfires," Marcus added.
"Yes, we weren't ever a part of the torture. But we suspect that... Or rather, we wish..."
"Oh for fuck's sake, man. Just tell her already."
I wasn't sure which soldier spoke. Either the Impaler guy, or the Scotsman, I thought. I really needed to come up with better names for them. Something more personal.
Sunzi drew a deep breath. "It may not work at all. Since we're dead."
I glanced at each soldier again, listening to the sunfire that burned in all of us. An image formed in my mind. Ravenous wolves surrounding a downed carcass of some kind. The thick scent of blood in the air. Scarlet spreading on the snow.
The soldiers weren't Aima. Neither were their sunfires. But evidently, they wanted one thing very badly.
My blood.
12
Karmen
Blood. It was supposedly a normal thing to share with my kind. Helayna had talked about it so casually, as if giving her blood to Dörr was no big deal.
But I couldn't quite wrap my mind around it. I'd never seen it done. I had fangs, certainly, but they didn't. Did they? They were human. Skeletons. They didn't need or want my blood.
Evidently, the sunfires did, though. I could feel their anticipation rising, heat burning through my veins. But even the sundogs didn't have fangs. I didn't care to be bitten like that again, even though War hadn't meant to hurt me.
My mouth throbbed in time with my heart, a steady ache that only worsened the longer I delayed. My instinct was to bite, sink fangs into something. Even a sunfire. Though that hadn't satisfied that urge at all. I'd fed on the blazing solar energy, but it wasn't the same.
I needed, wanted to bite. To feel the pressure of solid flesh against my mouth. They wanted blood, and an exchange might give me my own Blood like Helayna's. So it only made sense to bite myself.
I lifted my wrist to my mouth. The scent of my skin made my mouth water. I couldn't help but remember the way Eivind had smelled. Wolf and snowy pine. A living, breathing man who could have been mine.
His loss. I refused to allow his fear to hold me back from doing what I needed to protect myself.
My fangs slid effortlessly into my flesh. The satisfying pressure against my mouth made me sigh softly. So good. Even the taste of my own blood stirred my hunger.
I needed to feed on living blood.
Helayna's words played through my mind, mixing with the dream I'd had of the goddess. Intention. My power. My will. Now was my time to define how the rest of my life was going to unfold. I had the power to decide my fate. To make what I wanted real.
The magic was mine. I was the daughter of a goddess, one step away from the Great Mother Herself. Her blood flowed in my veins. The power to create life. To make oceans, grow forests, build mountains, and shake the foundations of the earth itself.
That power was also mine to call.
Eyes closed, I stretched out my bleeding wrist. An offering, both to the soldiers and sunfires who wished to be my Blood, but also to the Mother and Her daughter, Sól. To every solar goddess who'd been devastated by Ra's brutal dominion over their daughters.
I want living, breathing Blood. I want to be able to bite and feed as an Aima queen. I want to feel the might of Your power flowing through me. I want to be safe. I want to be protected. I want to be so strong that no man, no god, will ever hurt me again.
"The burning light of day," I whispered, remembering the goddess's words. "My swords and their fires rise in the burning light of day."
