Immediately, Vore scuttled across the nest toward the gate, keeping to the lengthening shadows as the sun hovered low on the horizon. The dark fae wizard simply disappeared.
The dragon twitched, his sinuous neck rasping against the ground, but he didn’t join them. Very little surprised me any longer, but I couldn’t puzzle out his reasoning for staying. Perhaps he wasn’t as bloodthirsty as he so vocally advertised. Or maybe he simply wanted to wait for full darkness so he could fly lower without the risk of being seen by humans.
Shara looked at me with a quizzical tilt of her head. “I thought for sure my general would wish to feast.”
I gave her a slow, sultry smile. “My feast is here, Your Majesty. As long as you’re feasting on me.”
“Can Vore and Merlin alone take care of so many thralls?”
I huffed out a laugh. “Prepare to be astonished, my queen. Your ushi-oni’s hunger knows no bounds. From the glimpses I’ve Seen outside of queen nests, he could devour all of the thralls you marked himself in a matter of an hour. It’ll be interesting to see how many the wizard can get before Vore finds them.”
Tlacel returned with more water and proceeded to scrub the thrashing thrall while the other two Blood held him down. The thrall kept trying to shred them with his jagged teeth, so Itztli stood on his neck, pinning his head to the ground.
Shara stood, regretfully removing her nails from my arm. I took her hand and tucked her arm through mine, delaying while the rest of her Blood deployed to be absolutely sure the enemy thrall wouldn’t have a single opportunity to so much as touch her with his filth.
Even her alpha moved past me to join Itztli in simply standing on one of the thrall’s arms. He howled, his limb crushed beneath our alpha’s formidable weight. But his screams silenced immediately when Guillaume’s sword dug into his scrotum.
The thrall stared up at the knight, eyes wide, unmoving.
“Human or Aima, thrall or Blood, very little scares a man more than steel in his manhood.”
The dragon slithered closer to the thrall, flashing his teeth and wicked claws.:Cut me off a tasty tidbit, knight.:
“Not yet,” Shara said lightly. “I’ve had nails and teeth in your manhood, G, and you certainly weren’t scared.”
Guillaume dug the tip in a little harder to the thrall, making him whimper. “That’s a different situation entirely, my queen. Nothing gets a Blood harder than his queen’s attention on any part of his body. Shred my dick or bite it off as you will. In the end, I know your magic will regenerate whatever needs healing.”
She stretched out her hand over the thrall, wrist up, andallowed a small drop of blood to well on her skin from where she’d pierced herself.
One drop.
Colors sharpened despite the fading sunlight. My senses heightened. My canines ached as badly as my cock, eager to sink into my queen. I breathed deeply, loudly, sucking in as much of her scent as I could. We all did. Even—especially—the thrall. Though his hunger was now warped with a desire to contaminate and foul her magic rather than embrace her.
In her bond, I saw a small smear of something on the thrall’s lower right side near his groin. Though when I looked with my own All Seeing eyes, there was no such shadowy spot. Only the pasty, grayed skin of a corpse. She moved her hand closer to the spot, tipping her arm to allow a single drop of blood to splat on the shadowed smear.
The thrall shrieked as if Guillaume had shoved the entire sword up his rectum like the Impaler. He thrashed so hard he dislocated his own shoulder and broke his spine beneath her Blood’s boots. Though he still screamed—until Shara called her blood back to her. Revealing a simple black symbol of thin lines, curves, and dots etched in the thrall’s skin.
“A sigil.” Her voice echoed like a distant call from thousands of years in the past, taking me with her. To the crumbling ruins of Arcadia where the cult of Despoina first began. Sacred herbs burned in a brazier, mixed with kykeon, the drink of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Then carefully etched into each of her Blood’s skin in a nondescript area.“Seuls mes yeux peuvent voir.”
“Only my eyes may see,” Guillaume translated softly.
Shara blinked, pulling herself back to the present with a grimace. “All of Jeanne’s closest Blood will carry such a sigil on their bodies. That’s why they look like blanks even to Sekh. They probably each also found ways to eliminate her blood from their bodies, so I can’t use that to track them either. Any other ideas?”
“I can start by Seeing this asshole’s entire life as far back as possible,” I offered. “I’ll note any other faces he reveals to me and See them as well. That may give us other locations or clues that may help us track them down.”
At her nod, I immediately shifted my focus to the thrall’s face, tracking his comings and goings for centuries, though I continued listening as much as possible.
“Then we go to each of the blood circles she stole,” Guillaume added. “Claim the nest as your own, release anyone trapped inside, and let the general See the activities inside each of those circles. One by one by one. It’ll take time, but that will allow us to build a full picture of the Dauphine’s former activities.”
“You weren’t her only goal,” Leonie said.
Which drew all of our attention to her. She didn’t wilt beneath so many eyes, even formidable Blood powered by our queen. Shara blazed with all the power of She Who Is and Was and Always Will Be, but she hadn’t hesitated from returning Leonie’s power to her. Power that had multiplied through agony and torture, then combined and regenerated with Isis and Coatlicue’s magics.
Leonie stood strong and proud at Shara Isador’s side. Healed. Whole.
And pissed the fuck off.
Leonie tipped her chin up proudly, her eyes gleaming with power. “Her bond with me went both ways, to a point. She was strong enough to hide most of her intent and thoughts from me, but as time passed and she continued feeding on me, that bond widened. I gleaned more from her than she wished. There’s a queen in Mexico she suspected of having produced an heir, though no formal announcement was ever made.”
