Page 38 of A Game of Queens
Naturally, that meant he'd been the one to torture me the most.
The scars on my back had been his.
For a moment, I was back in hell. I stared into the molten gold shining in his eye sockets and knew my own gaze had gone blank. Dead. Cold. His mouth moved into a grimace that probably would have been a smug smile if he actually had lips. He leaned closer, watching the battle in my eyes as I fought notto flinch or cower away from him. "Good. You remember me. That makes this easier, my queen."
I closed my eyes a moment, hiding my thoughts. He'd never called me a queen before. Let alonehis.
He'd called me God's Wife, my title in Ra's realm that I'd been given as a child when I'd accepted his dominion over me. Sometimes Aurelian and his soldiers had called me princess, but always with a sneer in their voices. They'd hated me. They'd hated all the women in Ra's domain, especially the ones who managed to survive any length of time. Aurelian had taken it upon himself to break me. Ruin me. And ultimately, kill me.
Evidently a task he'd relished—even as he failed. Because I was still fucking here. Still alive. Still fighting.
Though, yeah, I wasscared, too. So scared that my heart jumped around frantically like a terrified bird battering its wings against my ribcage.
He jerked my arm so hard that he nearly dislocated my shoulder. Nerves zinged all the way down to my hand, and my numb fingers dropped the other mirror shard. "Call your power. Then the sunfires will submit to your will. They're here for you."
His words made no sense. The sun demons would never submit to my will. They only submitted to Ra, and even he had been forced to bargain with them on occasion. Thousands of years ago, he'd needed them to conquer and absorb the other solar gods, but their power had grown, while his had waned as the old gods slipped into oblivion. On the rare occasion when he'd wanted a compassionate ear, he'd confided to me that it took all his power to hold them. That someday, his hold might loosen. They would escape his realm and his control.
Not that he'd actually cared. He'd already planned to open the gates and allow them to ravage and plunder the other realms once he had what he sought above all. The only reason he hadn't already let them escape was his own gigantic ego. The Supremeand Almighty God of Light couldn't be seen as weak. Let alone failing to hold onto what was his and his alone.
"Ra's dead," Aurelian said. "They escaped Heliopolis and most of them abandoned their carriers. We have to get them back."
My brain latched onto Heliopolis, relieved to finally remember the name of the place I'd been. The rest of his words were too extraordinary to even comprehend. Ra was dead? How could one kill a god? Let alonehim.
Aurelian squeezed my shoulders, shaking me so hard my teeth slammed together. "Do you hear me? Light, what's wrong with you?"
"Karmen!" Eivind bellowed somewhere, unable to find me in the smoke. "What the fuck is going on? Where are you?"
A broken sound escaped my lips, though it was mostly a giggle. This was all too much to take in. He still didn't quite believe me. He thought a bullet would stop the greatest warriors of the ages. Meanwhile, Aurelian Sol Invictus actually thought I would go with him. Help him. One of my greatest tormentors.
Help him tame and command the sunfires that even Ra had struggled to contain.
The demons that had dripped acid on me and tormented me as much as him during all those years of captivity.
Not all of the sunfires had been involved in my pain. Only the ones carried by Aurelian's soldiers, theSol Invictus Legion, had ever hurt me. Even then, probably only a handful had ever actively tortured me. Ra had become too jealous of me in the later years. Not because he cared about me. At all. He merely couldn't get a new wife to replace me if something happened to me.
Now he was dead. I was alive. And his surviving enforcer wantedmyhelp.
My whole body felt cold and numb with shock. I'd expected a great many horrible things to happen to me once Ra's minions caught up to me. But I'd never expected this.
"Stupid bitch. No wonder..." His breath caught on a low curse and he jerked me closer to him. I pulled back, leery of his blazing sunfire that usually hovered over his shoulders like a glowing red mantle he'd worn to battle. Only the burn didn’t come. No sunfire hovered around his shoulders. "God above, he did it. You carry his child. A solar queen carrying an heir to His Imperial Majesty. Ra's glory lives on in you."
"No," I rasped. "Never."
Ignoring me, he whispered low, vicious words, each one wounding me. "They will devour that child you carry. You do realize that, right? They'll rip it from your belly before it can be born. Then they'll eat what's left of you. No wonder they rushed to this realm as soon as the gate failed. I thought they came for you, but they scented the very thing they've feared all along. Why else would Ra want a queen of his own line so badly? Only solar blood can command the sunfires. He needed a female heir to carry his gift. The Eye of Ra, blessed by the Great Goddess, Wadjet. His Eye lives on in you."
Aurelianwent down on one knee before me. My brain skittered away in terror, laughing like a mad woman.
"I'll help you subdue the sunfires before they can devour you or the precious child you carry." He took my hand in dead, bony fingers, ignoring my automatic attempt to pull free of his iron grip. "Karmen Sunna, accept me at your side. Use my sword to defend Her Imperial Majesty, heir to Heliopolis."
My ears roared with the sound of rushing wind. No, that was my thoughts, swirling frantically. I now had confirmation, however unwanted, that the human doctor was right. I was pregnant. Not just with any heir, but Ra's heir.
The very reason he'd kept so many queens captive in Heliopolis over the centuries. That I also descended from a solar house only made this unborn child all the more dangerous.
All of Ra's blistering solar power, mixed with whatever gifts I had inherited through House Sunna before my power had been burned out. Would this child inherit her father's insatiable thirst for power? His dark lust for the pain and suffering of others? Could any child formed through an eternity of torture ever be normal or safe to bring into existence? Was she doomed to be as vicious? Insane? Violent?
Did I dare risk bringing such an unknown force to life?
Ra had always wanted a Helios queen, and now, I had the ultimate power to deny him. He was dead. Gone. Nothing could stop me from ridding myself of this burden before it was too late. In fact, the world may very well be glad if this future queen winked out of existence before she could carry out Ra's ultimate destruction.
