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:Not yet,: I whispered in his bond, trying not to weep. :I just need a moment to gather myself.:
“He’s not able to swallow, my queen,” Daire said. “It’s not even soaking into him.”
“It’s the contamination,” Guillaume added softly. “His dying body repels your blood. It doesn’t understand how to absorb the power any longer.”
If I couldn’t get him to ingest my blood…
How the fuck could I even begin to heal him?
26
LLEWELLYN
I’d never seen such an abomination.
He wasn’t a thrall. In that much, he was absolutely correct. But he was so much worse. The very sacred gift that made us Aima had been twisted and corrupted beyond anything the Great Mother had ever intended.
Even thralls would be able to take a queen’s blood, not that it would save them in the end. But Thierry couldn’t swallow one drop of our queen’s blood. And the agony. Goddess.
Not because he couldn’t take her blood. Not directly.
Because she was Isador. She was our former queen’s daughter. Everything she’d worked for, dedicating her life—and thus ours—to the single driving force of her will to make possible. She’d been successful, and a powerful, living, glorious daughter of Isis stood before us.
And there was nothing he could do to taste her one final time.
Thierry threw himself forward, impaling my six-inch wicked sharp eagle talons into his throat. Not to harm our queen. Not even to put himself out of misery.
But to end hers. Because she couldn’t help him.
Thierry didn’t have a bond to hear the desperate tumult in her mind, but he still had eyes and enough remaining mental capacity to understand what he was seeing. She clung to her alpha, gathering her courage. He could see the way we all looked at him with revulsion and pity and horror. Now more than ever.
Unable to feed on our queen. The absolute worst thing you could do to a Blood.
My stomach clenched at the black filth pouring out of him. Oily sludge, reeking of all the most revolting smells of this world. How Itztli could stay in the room with his sensitive nose, I had no idea. It was almost too much for me, and I didn’t have a hound’s olfactory glands.
I tightened my talons inside my old friend, ready to yank out a hunk of whatever flesh might remain.
“Wait,” Shara rasped out.
Her voice quivered, fainter than any order she’d ever given, but I paused. Even though that meant I still had my fingers buried in his decomposing body.
“I have an idea. If blood can’t heal him, maybe my darkness can. Carys, is that possible?”
Still in the hall, the other queen leaned against the wall opposite the door, pale and sweaty, weak enough her owl hopped down to the floor beside her rather than riding on her shoulder. “I need more information. What darkness?”
“I wish I dared take him to the tower’s basement. Maybe I can pull it here…” Her voice trailed off, ideas flaring in her mind too rapidly for me to follow. “I need all the windows of this house covered. I don’t even want starlight shining inside.”
Immediately Daire and Okeanos ran out of the room with the humans, moving room to room to draw blinds and curtains. Sliding furniture in the way. Whatever it took to cover the glass.
Releasing her grip on Rik, she stepped deeper into the room. Eyes closed, her hands held out in front of her.
“What are you looking for, my queen?” I asked. “I’ve been in this house many times.”
“Is there a basement? A crawl space? Anything below the house?”
“Not that I’m aware of, though given how old the original structure is, it’s certainly likely.”
“My mother was a fucking genius.” She stopped in the middle of the room, nodding with a sad, fond smile. “Rik, I need this opened.”
