Page 67 of Queen Takes Blood
The queen held her hand out to me. Holding my breath, I gripped her fingers. Her power surged, instantly numbing my entire arm. The tiny ball of feathers swelled in my chest. So much power. She might be strong enough. She might be able to take Ra’s fire and…
What? Quench it? Endure it without dying?
My heart ached so badly I could barely breathe.I have to warn her. At least a little.
“You should know that Ra is my father. My full name is Vivian Helios, but I changed my name to Smoak when my power emerged.”
“Would you rather I call you Smoak then?”
She didn’t even react to the bombshell that Ra was my father. Wide-eyed, I flicked a quick look over at her alpha. Surely he would be concerned. Every house I’d visited whispered about disappearing queens, especially solar queens. “My queen can call me whatever the fuck she wants. You don’t care that Ra sired me?”
The queen laughed softly, her thumb rubbing a circle on my palm that made my heart thud heavily. “When the Great One sends me a Blood, who am I to question Her gifts?”
The Great One…
An epithet for Isis. The one goddess Ra hated more than anything and anyone.
If anyone could break his curse that burned in my blood…
It would be Her fucking queen.
* * *
Shara takes Vivian as her Blood in Queen Takes Checkmate.
There’s also a bonus short story, “Queen Takes a Late Christmas,” featuring Vivian and Mayte in Queen Takes More.
QUEEN TAKES… OKEANOS KETEA
Song: Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea by MISSIO
37
OKEANOS
The deepest blue of the sea beckoned below. Forever out of reach.
My mother knew exactly how to punish me.
In my reef cave, I could touch the water as the tide rolled in and out. I felt vibrations of life all around me, the calls of dolphins and other creatures. I added my song, hoping another of my kind might hear, but no one ever answered my lonely cry.
I caught the occasional fish to feed myself. But I couldn’t swim or even move much beyond dangling tentacles into the water to lure my prey. In my loneliness, I resorted to leaving tidbits of choice fish heads and tails to bring the birds down to eat upon my rocks. Some of them saw me, their heads cocked warily or with interest. A few even chirped.
A much larger bird glided overhead, back and forth, ever lower. Blue feathers on its breast and stomach, with black wings so large it shielded my baking tentacles. It didn’t flap its wings but simply floated over the currents as gracefully as a boat sliced through waves. Cracking open a long beak, it made a high-pitched shriek as it drifted north. I decided that call meant“I’ll be back to visit soon.”
A fishing ship trolled past slowly while the humans on board conversed about the best place to drop their nets. It passed so closely that I could have touched the hull, or even snatched one of the humans from the deck and dragged him to the depths like the fabled monster, Cetus.
But they couldn’t see me, and for all I knew, a Cetus descendant was my father. Undina Ketea, High Queen of the Skolos Triune and my mother, had never told me who sired me.
An orange cat with lovely emerald eyes perched on the deck, staring at me as if it could see me, even though the humans were oblivious. To thank it for its attention, I tossed it a bit of fish. It gave me a swish of its tail and accepted my offering. Perhaps I would see it again someday.
And so I passed year after year in my reef cage, close to the human world, but not a part of it. Not a part of any world. I couldn’t see Undina’s nest to the south, masked by her magic despite it being in the center of the Aegean Sea. I wondered if she’d rebuilt the fishing camps and docks on the shoreline after I’d destroyed them. Surely. It’d been years ago. Maybe decades. The days and nights blended into one endless eternity.
All I knew for certain was that I had grown too large for my prison. I couldn’t pull all of my tentacles inside the shelter during the heat of the day. But I hated being in my human form. Feeling the salt drying on my exposed skin. The brutal thirst and hunger. At least as a kraken I could more easily feed, though even the fish seemed to have become wary of my prison. Or perhaps after so much time, I’d simply eaten them all.
My dangling tentacles picked up the vibrations of an engine. Usually the steamboats passed too far away for me to see much, sticking to the deeper channels. The rumble was deep, smooth, and fast. A pleasure ship of some kind, though not as large as a cargo ship. It approached from the south but House Ketea had no need for luxurious boats. Not when they could swim just as fast.
An elegant white yacht glided into view with sleek lines and polished teak. Even the smoke plumed from its stack like a fine lady’s cape. The motor chugged, slowing the boat so it hovered in front of my cave. Rocking closer with the tide until I saw two women on the bow.
