Yet I loved him.
His steadfast loyalty and dedication. His sacrifice. He certainly wasn’t evil simply because he’d been forced to endure torture as the Dauphine’s thrall.
Clenching my jaws, I shoved my awareness deep into the pit like a brutal sword.All creatures carrying Jeanne Viennois’ power rise now.
The mud boiled. Leeches clumped together into wriggling bundles, squelching up out of the mud to hover over the pit. I tightened my fingers into a fist, pulling the writhing clumps together. Compressing them smaller into a tight ball that was still nearly five feet in diameter. So many fucking leeches.
I bit my lip and allowed my blood to drip down my chin. Then I set the mass on fire. They squealed and shrieked and popped like fat, juicy bratwursts cooking in an open fire, frantically leaping in the flames, though they couldn’t escape.
Releasing the power that had bound them to the Dauphine’s will.
I braced for pummeling waves to slam into me, but her power was much more insidious. A creeping, disfiguring blight contaminating its host long before it killed, allowing its power to spread and multiply. A slow, evil smile relishing someone’s agony. Cuts so sharp and deep you didn’t even know you’d been injured. Until you fell gasping to the floor, wondering why you were dying.
I allowed her power to fill me. All of it. I would need it to restore Leonie and her House as much as possible.
The chains rattled and clanked against the cement. A hump swelled in the center of the pit in a vague body-like shape, also responding to my command to rise. Though the chains weren’t long enough for me to lift her fully from the mud.
:I need to get closer,:I told my kraken.
He oozed over the ledge into the mud, spreading out his tentacles across the surface so we didn’t sink.
“Wait, Your Majesty.” Lancelot reached down into his boot and pulled out a slender knife to press into my palm. “You may need steel to break the locks.”
I’d gotten complacent with Guillaume’s many knives hidden all over his body, so I hadn’t thought to bring my trusty pocketknife. “Thank you. Vore, come with us. Everyone else, watch for an attack. Gwen, once we free her, we’ll move her onto the ledge so you can assess her injuries.”
The hump didn’t rise any higher, constrained by the chains. If she was alive, she wasn’t moving or breathing. Okeanos eased one of his tentacles deeper into the mud, feeling along the chain until he found the cuff.:Her arm.:
:Good. We’ll take this end, Vore. See if you’re able to break her legs free, or if we’ll need the knight’s blade to pry the locks open.:
The ushi-oni used one of his legs like a lever to lift and pry more of the smaller lumps up out of the mud, while he carefully carved layers of mud away, looking for her ankles. Okeanos lifted her arm higher for me, chain taut, but he couldn’t free her arm entirely from the mud.
With one hand, I gripped some of his smaller tentacles around his mouth, leaning out so I could reach down into the mud. Eyes closed, I focused on touch. Not just mine, but his as well. The tip of his tentacle curled around her wrist and probed at the lock. Showing me exactly where I needed to pry the tip of the blade to free her arm. Clanking against the cement edge, the chain went slack, plopping back into the mud.
One arm free. Okeanos already had another tentacle working through the mud, searching for her head.
Goddess, please still be alive, Leonie.
As if she heard my silent prayer, her body heaved. Something lunged up out of the mud with a roar. No. That was Okeanos. He flung me sideways, tumbling into the muck. Tossing me away from whatever attacked. His tentacles slammed with brutal, meaty thuds.
But I smelled his blood.
7
OKEANOS
Tasting my environment was second nature in this form. Analyzing. Cataloguing. Sensing prey even a hundred or more meters away had been the difference in whether I survived in my prison or not, especially as a child. I’d learned to hunt and feast on things that might be considered repulsive. Excrement of other predators still carried nutrients I could and did assimilate in order to survive.
The filth in this pit didn’t shock or repulse me, though I couldn’t sense the dark power of pain and misery that so disturbed my queen. I tasted death and decay. Disintegrating iron chains. Remnants of humans who’d perished. No rats, snakes, insects, or worms, though, which was odd. Only the leeches had been feasting on the refuse and the trapped queen.
Beneath her, a tentacle picked up a new taste. Something bitter, akin to death, but not decay. If pure hatred had a taste?—
Then I tasted metal. Not rusted but pure hardened steel. Like the knight.
Roaring a warning, I thrust my queen toward her other Blood, trusting him to either catch or at least protect her. As far away from the steel as I dared without worrying she might beinjured against the concrete. I wrapped my tentacle around the thing that tasted bitter, ignoring the steel. At least until I got the attacker out from beneath the trapped queen.
Covered in mud and slime, the attacker stabbed at the meaty muscle wrapped around it, but I tightened and wound around him. Just as slippery, and I was stronger, too. Well fed by my queen and a massive kraken king in my own right, no puny two-legged creature had any hope against me. I hauled him out of the mud and wrapped more tentacles around him. Trying to foul his sword arm, though he still managed to hack one of my smaller tentacles off. I had plenty more. Realizing my advantage, he threw his sword at my head, trying to skewer an eye with surprising accuracy.
Something blurred past me, knocking the sword aside to clatter harmlessly against the cement. The other queen’s knight soared past me and sank into the mud, driven deep by his momentum. I snagged him around the throat and pulled him back out, adjusting to his arm as soon as his head broke the surface.
