Page 16 of A Game of Queens
My blood may not have helped burst forth the wellspring, but it was my best bet for helping my gargoyles live and breathe once more. I punctured the pad of my thumb on my fang and rubbed my blood on his cold lips.
:Wake, my alpha. Your queen has need of you.:
8
DÖRR
Agony. To be so close to her, unable to touch her. To feel the foreign warmth of sunlight on my stone hide, unable to move, even to look up and see blue with my own eyes. If thousands of years of imagination could even come close.
Plus, I worried for my queen. She was unprotected. Possibly injured. She would need to heal, but her Blood couldn’t feed or tend to her.
With dark alfar as Blood, she would always be alone during the bright light of day. Hampered by our limitations. Which was wholly unacceptable.
I slept, but I was aware. My stone eyes didn’t work, but I could sense her presence. I knew she was close. I could only imagine her distress, seeing her Blood in full daylight for the first time. The reality of what manner of creatures she’d called. It was one thing to need us in Hvergelmir, but here, in her land, she wouldn’t be able to avoid the truth of our grim existence.
Perhaps it was for the best that I couldn’t see her face.
Something warm pressed against my lip. Color exploded inside me. There was no other way to describe it. Stone melted instantly and I sank to my knees, unable to hold myself up. Ididn’t know what was wrong with me. Perhaps the alfar form couldn’t exist outside Hvergelmir. I felt strange. Something beat frantically inside my chest, a desperate creature trying to flee the confines of my body.
“Shhh,” she whispered, her arms closing around me. “I’ve got you. Feed, my Blood.”
Feed? I felt her against my mouth and instinct snapped inside me. I sank fangs into her without thought.
Color erupted on my tongue. Brilliant and dazzling. Overwhelming sensation. I was falling. Unable to save her. Unable to catch myself. I looked up at her, the world spinning around me.
My queen. Her eyes gleamed. Her face, radiant. Her hair hung in choppy, uneven curls around her face. The ends were black and charred, forever stained with my essence. But the roots of her hair flashed like fire.
Fire. Color. I blinked. I could see a multitude of brightness and hues, more than I’d ever dreamed, and that was just looking ather.
I lifted my head slightly, so I could move. Though once I realized my head was in her lap, I settled back against her body, unwilling to move unless Jörmungandr came crashing down on us again.
“Hello there,” she whispered, her lips curling. “How do you feel?”
I swallowed, shuddering as I tasted her blood again.
Wait. I had fed. On my queen. Her blood.
My eyes widened, my breath catching in my throat. The wild thing inside me ceased flittering about, shocked to stillness for several moments. My chest ached. My throat tightened.
She smiled and stroked my cheek. “Breathe, Dörr. It’s alright. Welcome to earth. Or I guess you would know it as Midgard. Let me wake Svar and Myrk.”
Setting my head gently aside, she rose and moved away. I stared up at a tree. I knew its trunk was supposed to be brown. I’d never imagined leaves would be so thin and pointy, but I wept at the sight anyway. The sky. Pale and light. Wisps of white floated across. Clouds?
Goddess below. I’d spent thousands of years trying to imagine what these simple things had looked like while sleeping as a gargoyle, but I’d failed. Miserably.
I turned my head, unwilling to look at anything but my queen. Trees and sky and sunlight were well and good, but it was my queen that captured my attention. The elegant curve of her spine. Tiny dots colored her skin. Brown flecks. I didn’t know what they were, but they entranced me just the same.
The rounded curve of her hips. Her backside. The delicate curve of her calves. Her dainty ankles. Small feet. Pink toes. I wanted to kiss each and every part of her body and praise the goddess for Her creation. My hand rose to touch her, but I gritted my teeth, forcing my arm back down. I had no right?—
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she retorted sharply, giving me a look over my shoulder that was probably supposed to be intimidating.
But I was too consumed with the evidence of her glory to care.
I watched as she smeared her blood on Myrk’s stone lips. I wasn’t surprised when his gargoyle folded inside him. But I pushed up from the grass with a muttered curse when the emerging flesh wasn’t dark alfar.
He looked… human. His skin was still dark, but not glittering shards of obsidian. His hair—yes, hair!—hung down to his shoulders, shining like dark alfar essence. Involuntarily, I turned my head, feeling the sweep of long hair on my shoulders.
Also black and long.
