Page 14 of A Game of Queens
Jörmungandr rolled over the top of us, ripping me from their arms.
7
HELAYNA
The snake rolled over me. Heavy coils. Slithering scales. Panic bubbled up my throat and I screamed. “Dörr!”
I couldn’t feel him touching me, though his bond fired inside me. He leaped over roots and dove beneath twisting coils, chasing after me.
I tried to push off the coil and jump to the ground even though it was far below, but I was stuck. My hair was caught. My scalp burned with pain, but my hair didn’t rip out. Even as the coils rolled me tighter against the snake.
He was reeling me in by my fucking hair.
Frantic, I gripped handfuls of my hair and tried to tug it free. I rolled over, blindly feeling along the scales to where my hair was trapped. A large chunk of my hair was stuck inside one of the huge scales. I tried to pry it up, but it wouldn’t budge. I gripped hanks of my own hair and tried to rip it free from my scalp. Until I couldn’t see for tears and it felt like my scalp was bleeding.
But I couldn’t pull free of Jörmungandr.
Goddess. I tried to make myself think calmly. My blood hadn’t worked to free the wellspring. Why not? That should have worked. I was an Aima vampire queen. Blood was my power.
My head tugged closer to the snake. My hair taut. The coil rolled, spinning me around until I was dizzy. I couldn’t tell if I was flat on my back or vertical. Roots snapped and crashed beneath the snake’s weight. Was he dragging me up to his head? If he released his tail to eat me…
A black shadow dropped down beside me. Dörr tried to pull me free, jerking at my hair that was helplessly tangled in the snake’s scale. With all his impressive strength and size, he couldn’t get my hair out.
I could feel scales beneath my shoulders. I only had inches left before. Before. My mind stuttered. I didn’t think my sanity would survive being trapped inside the snake again.
Dörr hovered over me. His right hand rose, his fingers blurring together into a sharp, black spear. He pried at the scale, trying to pop it up.
“It won’t budge.” His desperation rolled like thunder in our bond. “I’d stab him, but he’d wake for sure.”
My head thumped against the snake’s coil. Goddess. I could feel the hard surface beneath my head. Another roll of my hair inside… “Cut it! Cut my hair!”
The spear on the end of his hand flattened and he swiped beneath me, sawing at my hair. Myrk leaped up beside us, and Svar ran alongside. Myrk cut from one side, while Dörr worked on the other. I’d never cursed having so much thick, long hair until now, but I could feel hair freeing bit by bit.
“Almost,” Dörr whispered fiercely. “Svar, be ready to catch her!”
“Aye!”
I winced as his hand-blade nicked my scalp. But I didn’t care. The two blades were almost together. I jerked my head up, tryingto tear the last bit free. To give them more space. Dörr gripped my throat with his left hand, trying to lift me away without choking me. I clung to his wrist with both hands and jerked myself up, screaming as my hair pulled and gave way.
With one last swipe, he cut the last strands trapped inside the snake.
We fell. Tumbling. Svar caught me, rolled me beneath him, and braced on his hands and knees above me as the snake’s coil swung back toward his prize. He thudded against me as Dörr and Myrk both piled on top of us, all three of them trying to shield me.
The ground rocked beneath me. A low, rumbling roared louder. At first, I thought it was Jörmungandr, but the sound came from below.
The wellspring exploded beneath us and we shot up in a geyser of water. It should have been violent, tearing me away from my Blood, jumbling us with boulders and logs, but for all our velocity, I wasn’t even jounced. The water flattened out into a sort of platform, lifting me up so I could see the landscape below.
Hills and mountains rose in the distance, gleaming faintly in my enhanced vision. The coils of Jörmungandr. I shuddered, my mind unable to comprehend how vast he was. No wonder legend said he encircled the entire earth. I looked up, somehow not surprised to see the roots shifting out of our way as we rose along the trunk of Yggdrasil. Water flowed all around us, swelling like an endless lake. I didn’t need to touch the tree to feel it stirring. I felt its life sparking in my bones.
In my veins. Because my blood spread in the water, dripping from my torn scalp and my wrists. My blood hadn’t broken the wellspring open, but it fed the mighty tree’s roots now.
My blood flowed in Yggdrasil.
As we rose, my awareness sank deeper into the tree. Or rather, higher, soaring out along its branches. Light flashed and danced inside the tree as if the leaves were giant prisms. Other realms sparkled in the distance. Not just the nine worlds of Norse legend, but worlds so far and distant that it would take a thousand Jörmungandrs lined up and we still wouldn’t reach. Far galaxies. Alternative dimensions. The tree sparked those paths, illuminating the way.
I leaned far back so I could look up the mighty trunk. A few other limbs gleamed with rainbows, but there were far more branches that were completely dark. I tried to direct my blood to flow that way and regenerate the limbs, but my blood thinned. It was too far. This branch was mine and mine alone.
The other branches needed their queens, and they weren’t mine to heal.
