Page 24 of Queen Takes Blood
“Maybe you’ll find out for yourself.”
“Maybe sooooo,” I hissed. “Or, like I said, maybe I’ll eat you. It’s been a fucking long time since I had anything but rats and worms to sustain me.”
She lifted her hand, and the ball of light floated toward me. “Which is why I’m bringing you this. Is this enough to free you?”
Braced to find a nasty Trojan horse, I swallowed the golden ball, trusting my fire to deal with any trap she might have laid inside. Yet only sweet pure light flashed through me. Fucking revolting in its purity and stinking of Heliopolis piety—but power just the same.
Power she gave freely.To me.Even though it didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of turning back the darkness waiting to engorge on her blood.
I let out a harsh laugh to cover the niggling unease worming in my gut. “You think this is enough to free me? That was a taste. Just another torment you’ve brought me.”
“What will free you?”
I couldn’t resist testing her courage—and the strength of her chains. I scrambled toward her, raking the stone walls of the dream with my claws. Her eyes flared and she trembled as I clanked and strained against her hold, snapping my jaws in her face. Her hair fluttered back with the force of my breath, but she didn’t flinch or back away.
She most certainly didn’t run, even in a dream with the King of the Depths panting in her face.
“You.” I strained harder, stretching against her chains. “You will free me.”
She licked her lips, her voice quivering. “How?”
The lie came easily. “The fuck if I know.”
I knew all too well. I hungered. I would feast on her blood, wallow in her power, and fly free of this prison once and for all. I’d toss her shell of a body aside to lie like a crown jewel on a heap of rotten old bones. All my kills. The random animals who’d wandered through the veil and murdering queens alike.
Like that Avalon bitch. Just the thought of being bound to her, forced to sire her dragon daughters, made my blood boil.
Though siring dragons on this fledgling queen might not be a fate worse than death. If she could free me… and somehow not die.
Both were impossible. Everyone had failed. For millennia. This one would be no different.
Fuck me, but this was the realest dream I’d ever endured. So close, I could smell the sweet, rich blood flowing through her. Magnificent power waiting to fountain from her arteries. I sensed an injury in her leg, a pain that penetrated even her dream, yet she’d come to gift me the ball of solar power which would have easily healed her. Power that she’d wrestled from the God of Light himself.
What the fuck had happened to let her escape with only a slight injury?
I should have been watching.
To learn her methods. To see how she’d escaped so I could be prepared.
Nothing else.
Fucking hell. The lies came so easily. Even to myself.
I strained my neck out further and barely managed to brush her stomach with the tip of my muzzle. No dragon in her scent. She wasn’t another of Arthur’s daughters at least. But so fucking young. I hadn’t noticed any queens being born in decades. Who was her mother? Her house?
She stank too much of Heliopolis magic for me to tell.
“Give me some of this power and that might be enough to allow me to shake the foundations of the world.”
I meant for her to come find me. To physically pierce the veil and slide down into my trap like an unsuspecting rat.
Instead, she closed her eyes and seemed to reach backwards through time and space. Back to her body, no doubt sleeping surrounded by her Blood. Her jaw tightened, her lips compressed tightly. My scales itched as her power rose. My spine tingled. My vulnerable wings clamped tighter to my body to protect them. I didn’t think she could blast me in a dream, but I braced for her attack. Another light weapon, perhaps, fresh from the cursed bright halls of Heliopolis? Or something worse?
Power slammed into me. Blood power. Hers, mixed with some of her Aima warriors’ blood, and more I couldn’t even identify. Blood that burned like the hottest heart of my flame. Blood that sang to the darkest core within me.
Blood that embraced Leviathan, King of the Depths. Not to bind me. But to—
I thrashed in denial. I slammed my tail against the stone walls and chains and shredded at the wisps of her dream that clung to my scales. But it was too late. She sank deeper into the depths.
