Page 3 of A Game of Queens
I willed the darkness to rise up to my aid.I need you.
2
DÖRR
Acall for help awoke me from eternal sleep.
Unexpected. Impossible.
A call forme.
From a queen.
Her need thrummed inside me. A vicious pounding force that threatened to shatter my obsidian core into a million pieces if I didn’t answer her at once.
Stone groaned and shifted as I opened my eyes. I was still cold and heavy with sleep, but I fought to lift my head. So heavy. It had been so long.
Pebbles rained down to the ground on either side of me as my brethren awoke too.
“A queen.” Svar’s voice rumbled like an earthquake, making the ground tremble. “Here? How?”
I surged to my feet, shaking clumps of dirt from my shoulders. I couldn’t walk yet. My thighs were still too stiff and heavy. But I would crawl to her aid if I must. “I don’t know or care. She’s here, and she calls. She callsus.”
Myrk sniffed the air, his eyes glinting like shards of onyx even in the darkness. “I smell Loki and blood.Herblood.”
“Fuck the trickster,” Svar growled. “If he lays a hand on our queen…”
I lurched forward a step, my head swiveling toward her. My wings creaked, frozen awkwardly above my shoulders in the upswept position I had maintained for millennia. Lost to time. Unneeded. Until now.
The unmistakable scent of rich Aima queen blood filled the air, a mix of warmth and life completely foreign to a place like this. I took another awkward step, shaking debris from my wings. The ground rumbled beneath my weight.
After so long, it would take time for my stone form to soften to alfar flesh.
Time I did not have.
Though here in Hvergelmir, time and space were meaningless. I willed the darkness to fold, bringing me to her side in a heartbeat. A warm, living being in a place of endless night and cold. Pain wracked her body and her mind felt sharp and splintered. She had endured much already, and now…
I growled with fury. “Jörmungandr has her in his grasp.”
Myrk brushed past me to run his broad palms over the gigantic coils, trying to find a crack that we could pull part. Or, knowing him, he’d just rip and tear his way through to her.
I grabbed the base of his wing and hauled him back. His lip curled in a snarl, his barbed tail lashing my marble thighs, but he grudgingly acquiesced. “We can’t wake him.”
Svar’s shoulders heaved with the force of his breathing. “Her blood is driving me mad.”
A queen’s blood, laced with a goddess’s power. The perfect lure for creatures of the darkness, whether the Midgard Serpent or alfar.
Even dark alfar.
He would not give up his prize so easily, even though he was locked in the same endless sleep that had consumed us forthousands of years. The trick would be making him relinquish her… without waking him fully.
Or the nine worlds would fall and we’d lose her anyway.
Her suffering hammered against me. Urgency thrummed in my veins, driving me to act. To do something. Anything.
But one wrong move would destroy us all.
“Help,” she moaned from deep inside the beast.
