Page 53 of Queen Takes Sunfires 2
“Why?” Kuros retorted. “We serve Ra, not you.”
“Ra is dead. The witch killed him. Didn’t you know?”
My heartbeat quickened as he moved closer. I could see his eyes now. The same blood-red glow of hateful glee. He stretched out a hand to me—a real hand, not the long whip of sunfire essence. “Come, my dear. Let us return to Heliopolis. You will sit on my right hand in honor as God’s Wife once more.”
I tipped my chin up slightly. “I quite like it here, my lord.”
“You don’t want to sully yourself with the stench of mortals. Besides, I see two witches here. They’ll turn on you soon enough. Especially once they know what you are.”
I tried not to react, but his words startled me enough that I almost glanced back at Helayna to gauge her reaction. His tone implied filth and degradation. She hadn’t said a word to aid me in this. For all I knew, they’d abandoned me too. She had no reason to face this kind of evil.
“What she is?” Shara Isador’s voice echoed out over the swirling darkness. Ignoring the Soldiers of Light, she walked right up to me on my left and locked her arm with mine. “She’s a Daughter of Gaia, the Great Mother. We will never turn on her.”
Helayna took my other arm, though her grip wasn’t as strong. She leaned heavily on me, but she stood proudly on my right. “House Ironheart welcomed Karmen Sunna into our nest. She has access to all the protections we can offer.”
Sepdet laughed, a nasty, silky menacing snarl that promised to rip off my flesh and expose all the scars he’d once left on my body. For a moment, I was back in that hell. Trapped beneath him. His forearm pinning me face first on the golden tiles. His sunfire dripping acid on my back. The bitter smell of burning oranges thick in my nostrils. Overwhelming strength. Pain. Terror.
Fire burned inside me, blasting those dark memories away. Cleansing all the horror. The boiling sun rose in my mind, and my rage simmered higher.
I would never be forced or hurt by a man or god. Never. Again.
A solar storm brewed inside me, swelling me with power. The kind of power that a dying star generated when it exploded, releasing the sunfires.
A star. Of course.
I allowed a knowing, smug smile of my own to twist my lips. “So says the bastard son of a star queen who wasn’t even of a solar royal house. No wonder His Imperial Majesty never named you his heir.”
The thin veneer of attempted civility ripped away from Sepdet’s face. His sunfire blazed down his arms into the familiar whips, dripping molten fiery gold into the shadows that swirled around him. “I am Ra’s only surviving son. I am destined to be Lord of the Horizon!”
I laughed in his face, throwing my head back with amusement. “Ra never wanted a son. He wanted a daughter. He wanted the Eye of Ra. You were always worthless to him.”
He lashed one of those burning whips at my face. For a moment, I was frozen with the memory of how that whip had burned my body when even Ra’s endless, merciless sun had not. But now that whip was the same essence that flowed in me. I also held my Blood’s sunfires and their blood.
Shara muttered something beneath her breath and started to raise her hand, releasing my arm. Goosebumps raced down my arms as her power surged. So was Helayna’s, even though she swayed with weariness. They had come to stand with me, despite the strain they’d already been under to save the nest until I arrived. They couldn’t stop Sepdet. They couldn’t stand against his sunfire energy.
But I could.
I snapped my arm out across the tingling blood circle and grabbed that sunfire lash in my bare hand. My flesh didn’t catch fire. His essence didn’t burn me like acid. He couldn’t hurt me any longer.
I watched that knowledge flicker in his blood-red eyes. Not fear, exactly, but consternation that quickly swung back toward belligerent masculine arrogance. A woman wasn’t going to embarrass him in front of these Soldiers of Light. He couldn’t go back to Heliopolis empty handed and face the vizier, arguably the most powerful man after Ra.
He needed me. And he knew it.
:Stay here,:I ordered my Blood through our bonds.:This battle will be won by me alone.:
Then I gave my wrist a sharp twist, wrapping another length of Sepdet’s sunfire lash around my arm. Another loop, as I pulled myself closer to him, leaving the security of Helayna’s nest. Stepping over and around the twisted remains he’d already destroyed.
Now he puffed up his chest, pretending that he was reeling me in, dragging me to him. But I controlled the speed of my steps. Sunfires pulsed through me, and the bees swarmed, shifting the golden gown with each step like a living cloud.
Shadows thickened around him, until I was wading through swirls that I could feel brushing against my calves. My knees. My upper thighs. My waist. Their circular pattern changed, as if I had interrupted the gravity pull that Sepdet held on them. More and more of the drained sunfires flowed toward me, around me. My energy dipped sharply, and for one heart-rending moment, I feared that I had made a terrible mistake. If they managed to drain me before I got to Sepdet…
The shadowed sunfires started to glow again, swirling harder and faster around me, and the flow stabilized into the familiar synergy I’d become accustomed to with the sunfire essence that I’d drained from the soldiers. We grew together. We fed each other. My blood, my gift, my power—fed us all. The more sunfires flowed to me, the greater our power grew. Exponentially.
The burning sun inside me strained against my hold. My skin started to crisp from the inside out with the heat rising inside me. Where Shara had strained to hold the shield over the nest, now I strained to hold in my own energy. The burning light of Day—the ultimate light of a thousand blazing suns—lived in me. I was the living Eye of Ra. The most destructive force of nature. A killing sun of retribution.
I would have my justice. Sepdet would pay for his crimes. My only fear was destroying Helayna’s nest and the rest of this world when the sun detonated.
Vlad chuckled in my head, breaking some of my worry.:Burn all the worlds, Karmen, my queen. Blast them with the heat of a million suns for what they’ve done to you.:
