Page 3 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
I scooped her up in my arms and my sunfire wrapped around her like a protective flaming blanket. “Kill him.”
Eyes wide, Galerius opened his mouth, likely to shout an alarm or ask another foolish question. The lion of Sparta didn’t give him a chance. Leonides’ sunfire reared up like a giant beast and engulfed the guard in one massive swallow. Galerius’ sunfire poured free, blazing so hotly it glimmered like a blue flame, and bones clattered to the golden tile, along with metallic globs of melted armor.
I strode toward Antonius, shifting her in my arms so that her head lolled over my arm and her limbs hung loosely. “If anyone stops us, she’s dead and we were given her corpse to reward our sunfires. We go straight to her chamber as he ordered.”
These brilliant, talented warriors didn’t demand answers. They fell into step around me as they always did, providing a full escort for God’s Wife as we walked through his golden streets. Others seamlessly joined our group, though I pretended that they were all beneath my notice. I didn’t race for her chamber, though the sunfire hammered in my skull, screeching with urgency. No one spoke. There were always eyes and ears in Heliopolis, even if you couldn’t see anyone nearby.
I should know. One of my most trusted spies could stand a foot away from even Ra himself and not betray his presence. Geronimo had already glinted away into the dazzling golden display around us, an invisible protector on our flank.
Pausing before a towering obelisk, I waited for my sunfire to unlock the way. Heliopolis was indeed a sprawling metropolis, but in multiple dimensions, not just what buildings were visible to the eye. The sunfire attached to me could open any of the obelisk portals inside Ra’s domain. Since it refused to transfer to any of the other Soldiers of Light, I was known as the Keeper of Heaven’s Keys. As such, this gift was likely the only reason Aurelian hadn’t been able to convince Ra to eliminate me.
The god could travel through his domain at will, and he often used less accessible dimensions as prisons for his most dangerous subjects. Or at least as punishments. Some of his priests could manipulate the obelisks, or create their own portals, but it took a great deal of power to do so.
A flash of gold crackled in the air before us and then widened, like a window torn open in the fabric of infinity. The other side glittered golden, the same as Heliopolis, for all appearances just an extension of the city here. We stepped through to God’s Wife’s pyramid chamber, and the window winked out.
There were no visible exits inside the shining chamber. The walls sloped inwardly, the same as Ra’s giant pyramid in Heliopolis, though this one was smaller. A sunken bedchamber of cushions in the center was the only element of softness. No windows. No way out. Nothing to see beyond the smooth golden walls and the blazing sun above to punish us with constant daylight. No relief from the brutal, shining gold.
For all I knew, this entire “world” was just this golden cage in the shape of a pyramid.
Here, we were relatively secure, unless the god himself came. Not even the vizier could work the obelisk to reach God’s Wife.
Though I still didn’t relax my guard completely. One false move would send our queen to a hell of a thousand suns. “Quickly, reveal the rune. We need to get her out of here.”
Leonides and Geronimo pushed cushions and bedding aside to bare the gilded blocks that formed the foundation of the pyramid. One in particular contained a secret, hidden by a thin, pliable layer of gold. They peeled it back, straining under the weight of the gold slab. Beneath it, lines of molten red-gold pulsed like a heartbeat in a complicated pattern.
“Is she dying?” Marcus Antonius asked. “Has he finally killed her?”
“Not if we can get her to safety.”
“Why now?” Kuros asked in a tone more a demand than a question.
Of all the soldiers who had joined me, the man also known as Cyrus the Great was the one who would challenge me if I ever faltered. He wasn’t the most dangerous one in our group, though. Far from it. So I ignored him. “Is the rune finished?”
The man I only knew as the Scotsman squatted down next to the glowing symbol and gave it a quick once-over. His sunfire didn’t glow as brightly as ours, because it had slowly sacrificed bits of itself to form the threefold knot of shining lines. The sunfire could create a new portal with its special runes, independently of Ra’s obelisks or priests. Another secret for which we could all easily die. “Aye, though I don’t have it set to a particular location yet. Where do you want to send her?”
“Somewhere safe outside of Ra’s domain, where we can follow as soon as we eliminate as many of the others as possible.”
Kuros’ sunfire extended its double set of wings, making him appear bigger and stronger. “I demand an answer, Tzu. We have a right to know why you’ve decided it’s time to gamble with our lives.”
Each man in our group might have a gigantic ego, but only one of us was an actual god. Even so, Ra had enslaved Chak Ek’, the Mayan Great Star, representing Venus in the sky. He’d taken great pleasure in forcing Chak Ek’ to walk in a skeletal form like us despite his once renowned power.
Chak Ek’ didn’t speak. His solar brother had cut out his tongue before handing him over to Ra. He merely pointed at our queen’s stomach.
Kuros actually took a step back, wings dropping tight to his skeletal frame. “No.”
“What?” Leonides asked. “What am I missing?”
“She’s pregnant,” I whispered. “I felt the moment of conception.”
Even though we should be safe here in God’s Wife’s prison, saying those words aloud made my bones throb with my sunfire’s agitation.
For millennia, Ra had been capturing and impregnating women descended from solar goddesses with one goal in mind: a solar witch of his own royal line, Helios. He’d sired countless children. Some even female. Though none of them had ever been a queen, blessed with her goddess’s power.
He might be a god, but he hated what he secretly coveted for himself but could not possess. Ever. Because “possession” was all that such a child would be to him. Something to own. Something to use for destruction and violence. A weapon to destroy the last remaining blessed queens.
This child might not be a queen. But after watching our queen’s endless suffering for so long, I was terribly afraid the babe would be a queen as strong and resilient as her mother. Combined with Ra’s immense power…
She might very well be invincible.
