Page 61 of Queen Takes Blood
“Well, well, well.” Keisha paused her laughter. “Your mother always did love to fuck the monsters. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re just like her.”
Senses wide open, I strained to pick up a scent. Any clue to who this queen must be.Mother.
Could it be…?
The owl had been right. Over the years, I’d slowly started to remember more as my shattered mind healed. I couldn’t remember my queen’s name. What had happened to her, why I was here, what she might have said to me. But I’d served her for centuries. I’d loved her with my entire being. That kind of love didn’t just wither away and die. In fact, it flowed into all the cracks and splinters and helped smooth them over. Holding me together. And one thing I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.
My former queen had loved to fuck her monsters. Especially me.
I might have lost my beast when I lost her Blood bond, but I knew that I was a gryphon. Males mated for life, and I was mated to House Isador. The Furies had learned what that meant over the years when they couldn’t arouse me no matter what they did.
I tracked the rustle of clothing as Keisha moved closer to her throne. I hadn’t been able to see the presentation hall for decades, but my eyes had recorded the layout perfectly before they’d blinded me. I turned my head slowly so the chains didn’t jingle, mentally counting steps toward where I would guess a visiting queen would stand. Too much ozone and smoke in the air yet for me to pick up her scent.
“Oh, yes. My very good friend and Triune queen, Marne Ceresa, was only too kind to warn me that you were not quite what we first thought. I’m sure I would have recognized the truth as soon as I saw you, but I’m grateful she passed along that little tidbit. Now that we have crossed swords and tested each other’s strength, let me lay the truth bare between us.
“Your mother,” she spat the words like a curse. “Was my closest friend and ally at one time. Until she stabbed me in the back and crawled into the depths of hell to spawn you.”
If this queen who’d managed to turn Keisha’s blast back on herself was descended from Isador, my queen, then Keisha lied. My queen had never been a close friend or ally with House Skye. I may not be able to recall my queen’s name, but my heart remembered her personality. Her power. Her sense of right and wrong. And there was nothing right about Keisha Skye.
My nose twitched, picking up the faintest trace of blood through the leather hood. I filled my lungs completely, holding that scent inside my body.
Sparks fired in my bloodstream. Molecules long dormant flocked to those faint particles in the air. Blood called to blood.Isador.
I pushed away from the wall and shuffled as quickly as I could in the chains straight to the visiting queen. Letting the call of her blood pull me unerringly to her side.
“Isador?” I rasped out, breathing deeply again. I couldn’t be sure what my former queen had smelled like, but this scent was familiar. Like walking into your birthplace and realizing you were home, even though everything looked different. Blowing sands, a desert oasis, bloody flowers blooming beneath a full moon.
My heart stuttered, my ribs cracking beneath the strain of emotion swelling through me. Hope. Relief. Joy.
I would know Isador blood anywhere. Even if I’d been waiting for millennia. “It is. My queen. You’ve come for me.”
* * *
Shara takes Llewellyn as her Blood in Queen Takes Rook.
QUEEN TAKES… VIVIAN HELIOS
Song: Street Fight by Adam Jensen
33
VIVIAN
In Heliopolis, the eternal sun burned everything it touched, turning Ra’s city into a golden hell. No night. No shade, not even a fucking roof. No peace from the blazing, punishing sun.
I couldn’t fucking wait to escape once and for all. I’d do anything to get it out. Anything at all. Even participate in one of Ra’s gladiator games. Winners were given a boon from the god. Whatever they wanted, except the death of one of his precious few solar queens.
I wanted a one-way ticket out of this hellhole.
I had no hope of winning against a Soldier of Light, but that didn’t stop me from trying. He’d resurrected the finest warriors of all time to his imperial guard, though he didn’t give them flesh and blood bodies. The soldiers marched the golden streets as skeletons armed with painfully bright swords and shields. Just looking at them too long could scald your eyeballs.
It wasn’t their punishing brightness, weapons, or even their legendary reputations that made them invincible, but their sunfires, blazing demons of molten solar energy. Ra captured them eons ago and forced them to serve his Soldiers of Light, giving them fiery energy that manifested in countless ways, from flaming swords to blazing horses of fire.
I had a sunfire too, but Smoak was different.Wewere different.
I wasn’t a Soldier of Light, and I was Ra’s own fucking daughter.
I didn’t know who my unfortunate mother was, but she must have been a solar queen of Aima blood that he kidnapped and raped until she was pregnant. None of Ra’s offspring were born easily. In fact, I couldn’t name a single mother who’d lived through the trauma. Not that he gave a fuck. All he wanted was a solar queen of his own bloodline. The rest of us spawn were left to survive as best as we could among the sunfires and soldiers.
