Page 12 of A Game of Queens
How could I bear the unending night once she left?
6
HELAYNA
Memory flickered inside me. Children sitting at the feet of an elderly woman, listening to her fanciful tales of giant trees and creatures of darkness. Grandmama, I thought, but I couldn’t remember who the other child had been. Though I felt an echo inside me, as if I’d misplaced a part of myself.
I hoped that meant this sibling still lived somewhere.
With my three guardians’ blood spreading through me, I knew what I needed to do. I could feel the goddess’s compulsion pounding with every beat of my heart. I needed to get to Her tree. My life depended on it, but more, the plight of the worlds weighed upon me.
Something was wrong with the tree, and if Yggdrasil failed…
The nine worlds would fall.
Dörr strode swiftly toward the core of the giant tree, effortlessly stepping over treacherous roots and holes that would have taken me hours to navigate on foot. His face was grim, his mouth tight. He sensed my urgency, I thought, though I hadn’t given him my blood yet.
He tripped, jostling me against him. His eyes shone like black jewels when he looked down at me, his mouth falling open with shock.
I arched a brow at him. “Yes, I fully intend to give you my blood. Is that not what a queen offers to her Blood?”
Aghast, he looked at his two friends as if hoping they could offer up a reason to refuse. Myrk humphed beneath his breath, while Svar flashed a wide smile at me. “If he’s afraid to go first, I’ll gladly take the first sip, my queen.”
Dörr’s jaws ground back and forth, but he didn’t say anything.
“My alpha will go first.”
He carefully didn’t look at me, but the other two nodded and continued walking. It was obvious to me, at least, that Dörr was my alpha. He was the eldest. He had woken first to my call. He commanded the others. He’d fed me first.
Though he still seemed determined to save me from himself.
A huge black tower rose in the distance, stark against the deep purples and grays that swirled along the ground. Yggdrasil, the world tree, holding up the nine realms along its trunk. The roots were thicker, making Dörr duck occasionally to pass through the network of tunnels as we neared the trunk. It was colder here, which seemed odd. This close to the world tree, shouldn’t the air be warmer, alive with its presence?
Instead, the air felt completely devoid of life. Maybe it was simply this realm’s darkness. But the urgency humming in my blood indicated that something was dreadfully wrong.
He set me down on top of a thick root that arched out from the massive trunk.
A memory fluttered to the surface in my mind. Me, laughing and dancing in a forest. My red hair loose and flowing about my shoulders. I ran to a thick, tall pine and placed my palms on thetree. I’d felt its life inside. I knew that tree, inside and out. I’d whispered to it all my life.
I’d willed it to grow from a tiny sapling to a towering giant, ten or twenty times faster than it would normally grow. And that had beenbeforeI’d ever taken Blood or come into my power as an Aima queen.
I laid my palms against Yggdrasil’s rough trunk. Closing my eyes, I sank through the thick layers of bark and outer wood. Deeper.
Seeking its source. Its heart.
But only dead, cold wood filled the tree. Even a dormant tree sleeping through a long winter would have some energy inside. A core of sap and life, withdrawn deep into its roots, waiting for the ground to warm and the sun to awaken its buds.
But I felt nothing inside Yggdrasil, the greatest tree of all.
It felt so… dry. A single spark of fire would set the whole mighty tree into a blazing torch.
“Isn’t there any water here?”
Dörr shook his head. “There hasn’t been water here for most of my lifetime, though the tales say that Hel once had many rivers. In fact, the wellspring of all the rivers of the nine worlds lies here and gives this area its name.”
I hopped off the root into his waiting arms. “I need to go there, then.”
“At once, my queen.”
