Page 97 of The Hive Queen

A beat of silence follows before she says, “No.”

He turns away. “Then crawl your ass out of there.”

Surprised by his callousness, I watch as he strides over to check on Pen and Flint before turning back to the hole.

A bloody hand appears, grasping the edge, and Amalia drags herself out of the pile of rubble. Blood covers the bottom of her face, and pain tightens her features.

Her lips peel back from her gritted teeth as she heaves her other arm out of the hole, flinging the broken spear out. “Fucking piece of junk, Marc. I want my money back.”

He kneels to haul Flint up. “You got exactly what you paid for.”

Amalia coughs and wipes fresh blood from her lips before tumbling the rest of the way off the pile of rubble.

Concerned, I bend to extend a hand. “Let me help.”

She pushes my arm away. “I’m fine.”

“Walk it off.” Pen helps one of my officers up. “You’ve dealt with worse.”

“You shouldn’t move so much,” I murmur, appalled by the way my partners are treating Amalia. “We’ll get a stretcher up here for you.”

Amalia gives me a look of disbelief. “Gods, you reallyhaveforgotten everything, Uncle Ga’Vine. I thought you were pretending in front of your subordinates.”

Hooking her finger in the hole in her shirt, she rips it further to reveal the wound where the Hive Queen’s stinger pierced her body. But instead of a gaping wound, her skin is puckered and shiny, like a week of healing passed in a handful of minutes.

With a bloody smile, she pats my chest. “I appreciate the concern. You’re nicer now.”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember reading about you…?”

“Good. One less person who knows about that time.” She grabs the broken spear and stands, already moving better than she was even a moment before.

I step closer to her and lower my voice. “If you can heal, can you help the injured?”

My hope fizzles out when she shakes her head.

“It’s a completely selfish gift. No sharing.” She walks past me, heading toward Pen and the others. “Sorry.”

I follow, my gaze on the Shard. “Is there something we missed about how to use that thing?”

“You read the same books we did. There are no instructions.” Pen turns to Amalia. “What about you? How did you find out about the Shard of Destiny?”

“Obscure text that just said to stab the bitch with this piece of trash.” She looks down at the Shard in disgust. “It took a lot of work tracking the sale history through auction houses and family trees. Maybe it’s a counterfeit, or we can only use it during an eclipse or some other mystical bullshit.”

“I’m meeting my sire in the morning,” Pen says, surprising me.

By the way Flint’s brows shoot up before his lips twist into a scowl, he wasn’t aware of this development, either, but Marc just nods as if he already knew.

Looks like a lot happened while we were gone the other night, tracking down Amalia.

“He wasn’t a powerful lord at the time, but he was part of the court,” Pen continues. “He may be able to point us toward someone who was around the last time the Hive Queen appeared, or even get us an interview with Lord Talkis, himself.”

My brow furrows. “Who’s Lord Talkis?”

“The asshole who signed our first death warrant,” Flint growls.

“He was Darius’s sponsor before the war started,” Marc adds in a more reasonable tone. “He assigned Darius’s hunts, so he’d know about the Hive Queen.”

Hope unfurls inside me. “How likely is it that he’ll speak to us?”

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