Guillaume flowed forward, a light, thin blade shining in one hand, the heavy kukri in the other. He caught the thrall’s épeéand twisted his blow aside. The Isador Blood was still wounded by the ridiculously sharp blade but it wasn’t fatal.
Staggering to her feet, Rosalind glared at me. Leonie. Back to me. The death knell hadn’t stunned her completely. Likely because I’d split it against so many targets. Guillaume certainly didn’t move like the elderly knight, though he still wore Barrau’s face. He forced the other swordsman back, the clang of swords impossibly fast.
A heavy guttural “Guh….” hung in the air, and the thrall crumpled to the marble.
Guillaume lifted the kukri in his left hand. “The greatest weakness of a fencing master is his inability to defend against dual blades.”
Then he chopped off the thrall’s head with one heavy blow that rang in the silence.
“Show yourself!” Rosalind screamed. “I will not be disrespected in my own court!”
:Now,:I said as I allowed the Eleusinian Mysteries to slip away, revealing my true face.:But don’t take the blood circle down, Sekh. You won’t need to in a few minutes.:
Rik immediately surged toward me, shoving through the pool and up out of the fountain outside this house with the rest of my Blood.
“You have something of mine, Rosalind,” I said in a light, teasing voice. “I want them back.”
“You can’t have them!” She looked to the rest of her Blood who’d rushed to her defense. “Tuez-les! Tuez-les tous!”
I opened myself fully to my power, letting magic pulse in the air, building with intensity.
“Jeanne Viennois’ blood is mine. Every drop. I call her blood to me now.”
I focused on Rosalind first, willing her blood to respond to me. I owned her house, because I owned her grandmother’s.
Viennois spawned Valois, so you’re fucking mine. Every fucking drop.
Blood dripped from Rosalind’s eyes and nose. Startled, she reached up to touch her cheeks and stared at the blood on her fingertips. Droplets became rivulets became raging streams of blood, not just from her but her Blood. They’d fed on her. Now that blood abandoned them, dripping onto the pristine floor.
Her blood shining in a circle around this house. Mine to command. Mine to call.
Mine to drop.
The circle hung for a moment, shimmering with heat, and then the magic dissipated into the air like morning fog.
Magic pulsed through me. The scent of blood thick all around, stirring my own hunger. Stoking my rage. So much blood. Such a fucking waste.
Unless I put it to use to right the wrongs committed by Jeanne, as I swore to Basilia and Medusa. As the Dauphine’s heir, Rosalind had at least been complicit in her grandmother’s crimes, and in the case of my mother’s Blood, absolutely guilty.
With so much blood waiting to be used, I could end the suffering of every single trapped queen. Now.
Eyes closed, I spread my arms out and allowed my head to tip back, filling myself to capacity. I touched Leonie’s bond.:May I use your power over the dead?:
:Yes,:she said without hesitation.:Everything I have I give to you, my queen. Gladly.:
I pulled her power into the maelstrom pulsing around me. The gray, silent twilight. A creaking iron gate swinging open. Cold empty graves of the dead.
“Rise, victims of Jeanne Viennois!”
Tiles cracked open, marble crumbling as skeletal hands shoved up from below. Breaking free of the traps and prisons Jeanne had used to control them, the dead queens crawled up out of theirprisons, pulled through the blood to appear before me. Other Blood she’d tainted with leeches. Mindless zombies. Answering my call. Using the last of Jeanne’s blood to come to me.
All over the world, I felt the captured queens’ blood circles resonating with power, responding to my command. Because Jeanne’s blood tainted them too. Those circles fell, melting into the growing puddles of blood around me.
Basilia’s nest. Her blood circle. Gone. All her suffering. All her rage. Flowing into me.
I pulled harder, using the spilled blood to lift Illa from her prison at the bottom of a glacial lake. The other living queens who’d been tortured.
Freed at last.
