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I turned as Lew and Thierry joined us, searching my Blood’s eyes. Afraid to see any recrimination for what I’d done to him but also desperate to know. If he had regrets?—
:Never.: He took my hand and bowed low, kissing the back of my knuckles as formally as Lord Greyson would have done in the palace hundreds of years ago. :Thank you for being queen enough to give me my heart’s desire, while allowing me to still serve you and your mighty house with all the love in this gryphon’s heart.:
41
XIN
Crouched on a large fallen tree slowly disintegrating into thick stagnant water, I whispered in Shara’s bond. :I’m here, my queen.:
Immediately, she filled me so strongly I could smell the delicate perfume of her skin as if she’d pressed her throat to my muzzle.
Our bond, so deep. So well fed by her blood. She saw through my eyes. A gray-green hump of earth rising out of the surrounding swamp. The stand of cypress trees, branches heavy with Spanish moss. Huge trunks cracked open at the base where they met the ground. Many more stumps rotted and busted open. No structure or house to mark it as a nest or any different from hundreds of other scattered mounds through the miles of swampland.
Only the tingle of a queen’s blood circle, prickling my ruff around my neck. A line of fur rising down my spine in silent warning.
She smelled thick, clinging mud and brackish water through my nose. Heard the absolute dead silence in the middle of swamp in broad daylight on a beautiful spring day, where thousands of insects and frogs and birds should be singing their songs of life.
I might have killed dozens of queens for House Wu Tien but never had my queen walked in my body like Shara fucking Isador.
With her focused on our bond, I crept forward along the downed trunk, letting her feel the buzzing blood circle inches away. My gift saw the gleam of red energy pulsing up out of the water with the queen’s power. A frequency unique to her, just as Shara’s blood circle could only be laid by her. Rich with her unique powers and bloodline from her goddess.
Deep inside my chest, I let out a soundless howl of energy. My fur rose on end, rippling with the waves shifting around me. My bones resonated with each pulse. Higher, changing the frequency closer to the blood circle’s. Shifting my own aura to match the enemy queen’s energy. Red flickered darker, almost blue. Flashed to searing white. Then gray. Dissipating into nothing.
:We’re invisible to the queen’s power now.: I touched my nose to where the circle of energy still lay, breathing in the queen’s scent. Trying to, at least. I knew blood had been spilled, but it was absent of any distinguishing scent. Another factor of how the Dauphine was able to hide so well.
:Wait,: Shara whispered in my mind. :Let me search for any other geas on the circle.:
I smelled my queen’s blood in the bond, even though she was hundreds of miles away. She swelled inside me, her power bulging through my wolf. Her eyes took over, looking through her power at the strange nest. Looking for any pockets of darkness or shadow along the boundary. The Skye geas had looked like a spider to her, but she sensed nothing else on the perimeter. It was incredibly small for a nest. Smaller than a football field.
Her power receded in the bond, and the wolf whimpered at the loss.
:Carefully, Xin.:
:Always, my queen.:
I crept across the blood circle, paws placed carefully without a single splash, nose and tail low, breathing in all the scents. Thierry’s footprints sank into the sediment below the brackish water, every step a tainted mark. Leading me to one of the broken cypress trees. The trunk was larger than I could put my arms around, flaring down at the bottom even wider into a wedge of roots. A dark hole gaped in the base. Cracked and splintered wood. Rotted. Torn. Shredded apart as he’d fought his way out. Black sludge oozed out of the trunk onto the ground. Almost like crude oil but thicker and smelling of the same foul rot as Thierry.
Her bond ached with pain, a cutting sharpness like a honed edge, her fury at what her mother’s Blood had suffered. :I wonder how long she kept him trapped in that dark hole.:
:No way to know for sure, though I don’t smell any other scents coming and going from the circle.: Which meant I couldn’t track my queen’s target back to her den. :I’d guess years.:
Just as carefully, I silently glided to the nearest intact tree. Ears flickering back and forth, straining for any sound. Nose wide open. More of the black taint oozed from the tree trunk but it wasn’t torn open. Roots split apart, leaving thin cracks like prison bars, covered in some kind of thin membrane.
:Skin?:
I didn’t dare touch it. :It doesn’t smell like anything that has been alive. Just the same rotted taint of death.:
:Another thrall, maybe? Or something else? Fuck. I wish?—:
The membrane bulged slightly. Movement inside, deep in the trunk. :Whatever it is, it’s alive.: Well. As alive as Thierry—a shuffling zombie thrall.
:Goddess,: she breathed shakily. :Check how many more are like this and then get the fuck out.:
:At once, my queen.:
It only took a few moments for me to investigate the remaining trees. :Three others, my queen.:
:We’ll have to come back later and make sure those things are dead once I take care of the Dauphine.:
