Queen Takes Queen

by Joely Sue Burkhart

  6

  Nevarre

  Wheeling in slow circles above my new queen’s nest, I couldn’t still the tumult fluttering like a trapped bird in my chest. Uncertainty burned in my veins, suffocating me.

  My fate had already been determined. My time had run out. I was dead. It was too late for me.

  Until Shara Isador called me back from the dead and breathed life back into me. But why me?

  I still didn’t know why I’d been given a second chance. I had already suffered the ultimate failure. I’d lost everything, including my life. I certainly didn’t deserve another chance. Let alone a queen.

  Though Brigid had been a druid not a queen, I’d sworn my life to her. She’d found me at my lowest point and brought happiness and hope back into my life, rather than the desolation I’d been living. Her court had been a simple three-hundred-year-old cottage on the outskirts of Inverness. She dyed and spun the wool from our sheep and made trinkets that we sold at fairs and tourist shops all over the countryside. They looked like simple wall hangings with Celtic knots and carefully woven scenes, but each piece was made for a specific magical purpose. Ward your house. Increase your fertility or wealth. Heal your sick. Improve your crops.

  Certainly a long fall from grace for a Morrigan son.

  No queen. No nest. No sibs. No family.

  Only a druid witch who’d loved me despite those failures.

  Looking back, those decades with Brigid had been some of the best of my life. She’d taught me so much about life and love and family and simple pleasures. A newborn lamb. Silvery moonlight dancing across the moors. The gleam of firelight on her glorious sunset hair. With her arms around me, the missing hole in my chest dulled to an ache that was almost bearable. Until I lost her too.

  With night falling fast, my eyesight wasn’t as sharp. I turned back toward my queen. The scent of her blood was thick on the air, pulling all her Blood to her side. She’d bled a great deal, though I wasn’t sure what she’d done. The air was thick with magic and blood, going straight to my head. Drunk on magic. Drunk on my queen’s blood. Drunk on her sex.

  She’d tasted me last night and fucked me under the stars. I’d thought nothing could move me again after I’d lost Brigid, but I’d been surprised at how easily and quickly I responded to Shara. How well I fit into her existing Blood. They’d welcomed me without any resentment or strife, even a dead raven. Even her big alpha hadn’t questioned my right to serve or cast shadow on my abilities since I’d obviously failed so severely in the past. If they only knew the half of my failures…

  I wouldn’t survive the loss of this queen.

  In the darkness, the woods around her house looked different. By sight alone, I would have said I was lost. The shape and texture of the forest had changed. New trees grew where I swear nothing but snowy gardens had been before.

  Trees.

  In a circle about her house. A ring in her nest.

  I dived for the ground, shifting at the last moment so that I made a running landing on my feet, stumbling to catch myself until I fell on my knees before Shara.

  She stood under the spreading branches of a gnarled ancient Norway spruce. A tree that wasn’t native to Arkansas or even North America to my knowledge and it certainly hadn’t been here just an hour before.

  In fact, this particular tree had once grown in Morrigan’s Grove in my mother’s nest. I’d climbed these limbs as a boy and my first queen had taken me beneath its branches. It felt so familiar that I didn’t rise from my knees. I just knelt there, trembling, looking up at the glorious branches.

  “Nevarre? What is it?”

  “Morrigan’s Grove.” My voice broke, and I didn’t care. “These trees grew in my mother’s nest, until her consiliarius betrayed us and the trees were destroyed. We lost them. We lost everything. I saw them heaped in a pile and burned to nothing but ash on the wind, yet you recreated it. How? How is this possible?”

  She shrugged. “I offered blood to Gaia, and this is what She grew. I needed something to help us protect the nest from the ground, and now I can feel the roots stretching out fingers deep into the soil, forming one giant network. It’s like they’re talking to each other, and to me.”

  My brain said it couldn’t be the same grove. The same trees. It was impossible.

  My magic was another story. It leaped in my blood, eager and restless, ready to be used. Magic that I’d lost when the last beloved tree had been ripped from the earth and burned.

  She cupped my cheeks in her hand and turned my face up to hers. “You’re crying. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I whispered hoarsely. “It’s… wondrous. I never thought… I never hoped…” I buried my face against her stomach. “My queen.”

  She stroked her hands through my hair, holding me close. “Morrigan was your queen’s goddess?”

  I shook my head against her. “My mother’s. My queen was Elspeth White, but she dissolved our bond when we lost the grove. Then I lost Brigid too, the druid witch who took me in when no one else would.”

  “How?”

  The image of the fatal car accident flashed through my mind. I let Shara have it, seeing it like a movie. Our farm truck careened off the road into a steep ravine. “She saved me with her magic, but I never knew why. Not until now.”

  Shara’s doubt was bitter on my tongue. A simple car accident shouldn’t have been able to kill me, not a son of Morrigan, even without a queen to power my magic. But the flames had been so intense, the ravine too deep. We couldn’t have crashed in a worse place, and I hadn’t been able to save us. I deserved her doubt. I had failed to protect Brigid, and now I was alive and she wasn’t. “Flames erupted immediately so hot and intense I couldn’t breathe. I started to shift automatically, but my wing was so badly broken on impact I couldn’t even think to fly. Let alone carry her.”

  I felt Shara’s bond sliding through me, liquid moonlight touching those old shadowed places of pain. Reliving those memories hurt.

  I relived them every night.

  She paused the memory playing out in my head. We’d run off the road and crashed into the ravine. I smelled gasoline. Blood choked me, dripping down my face. Feathers were sprouting from my skin, the raven starting to emerge. Slowly, she backed up the memory, flashing scene by scene. The truck flying through the air. Veering off the road. The bluest eyes in the world looking into mine, framed by brilliant red hair. Freckles sprinkled across her cheeks.

  Brigid.

  :She’s beautiful,: Shara whispered. :She loved you very much.:

  I couldn’t answer. I hoped that I’d made her happy while we were together, even though I’d failed her in the end.

  Shara backed up the memory a bit more and my eyes watered. Something flashed across the windshield like a lightning bolt. The heat and brightness made my eyes tender, streaming again, even from the memory.

  “Ra,” she said aloud. “He caused her to swerve off the road.”

  I tasted blood in my mouth, hard iron and cold hate grinding through me. “The god of light killed my Brigid?”

  “I’ve seen that light before. He tried to kill me too, though not with a car accident. I’m sure it’s his signature, though.”

  The knight managed to make a very disgusted sound even in his horse form. :I agree. It’s him.:

  The trees whispered around us. Leaves and branches speaking the ancient language I hadn’t heard in hundreds of years.

  Ra. Retribution. Punish him. Ra.

  I met my queen’s gaze and she nodded. She heard them too. She was part of the grove now. It spoke to her too.

  Standing, I slashed my palm open on my fangs and walked closer to the giant pine. My knees trembled, not with fear, but awe. These trees were sacred, impossibly old, and magical beyond even my understanding, and I’d been privileged to grow up in the grove. The sight of these glorious old trees bulldozed into a pile and burned had brought my entire clan to their knees and my mother had died of despair.

  Reverently, I plac
ed my bleeding palm on the ancient trunk. I’m sorry I failed to protect you.

  The bark moved beneath my hand as if the heart of the tree surged, pushing outward. One bough brushed my cheek and the whispering wrapped around me. Not words, but a feeling. Forgiveness. Peace. Fate. Destiny.

  We were all connected. We were all brought to this moment for a reason.

  Her reason. Morrigan’s. And Shara’s. They were united in this goal.

  My magic pulsed in my blood, dancing with joy and burning with retribution. The heavy beat of my heart was Her war drum. My raven, Her messenger.

  The Battle Goddess blessed me with Her shadow and Her wings. I would fly to war with my queen, her goddess, and mine.

  And Her Shadow would blot out the mighty sun forever.

  SHARA

  Urgency thrummed through my nerves. Morrigan still had a great deal of work to do. Her grove wasn’t complete yet.

  The heart tree was missing.

  My knees quivered, though, and hunger burned in me. I needed to feed before I could continue.

  Nevarre’s blood drew me like a moth to a flame.

  Need pounded in me, but I stopped before I touched him. He’d already lost someone he’d loved, and that pain was still fresh. I could feel the memory of Brigid’s death throbbing like rusted spikes driven into his heart.

  Deeper, I felt betrayal like cracked, splintered bones. So much loss and anger burned in him, eating at him like a cancer.

  He turned toward me, but kept his back pressed against the rough bark of the tree. Branches swayed gently around him, his long hair tangled in the limbs. Earth music rose around us, singing in welcome and joy. A beloved son who’d been lost, now home.

  Though he was worn and weary, he’d been welcomed with open arms.

  “Not weary,” he whispered. “Broken.”

  His sadness and pain tightened my throat. Finding the grove again was bittersweet for him. I hadn’t known the trees’ significance, but I couldn’t change what Gaia had given back to us. I needed to protect my nest and my Blood. The network of roots still dug deeper into the earth below, now interlacing with the surrounding forest. Trees spoke to each other, whispering of creatures moving in the night, the cold of snow on bare branches, the promise of spring.

  A sense of wrongness miles away. A thrall, I thought. No, a pack of them. They smelled my blood on the air. Mindless hunger pulled them closer, even though they knew what waited for them. They could smell my Blood too. Yet they’d come. They’d linger outside the nest like scavengers.

  “Let them come,” Rik growled. One big arm came around me, drawing me back to his chest. He lifted his other wrist up to me, silently offering up his blood.

  But if I bit him…

  I’d rather he be inside me first.

  “Your wish is my command, my queen.”

  I turned and draped my arms around his neck. “Would you be up to feeding two of us at once?”

  His nostrils flared. “Of course, if that’s your wish.”

  I loved that he didn’t question my motives. If I wanted or needed something, he’d take care of it. No matter what it was.

  “Daire,” I whispered, holding my hand out to him without looking away from Rik’s face.

  His eyes softened. :You heard his silent wish today.:

  :Of course.:

  The warcat rubbed against my legs and Rik’s, twining around us, his rumbling purr like thunder.

  “I need you to shift so you can do the biting,” I told him. “I don’t want to get distracted yet. I still have too much work to do.”

  I’d never cease to be amazed as I watched him shift back to my sexy Blood. The warcat folded up, rolled inside, until he was Daire again. No bones popping, pain, or effort. Easy.

  “You make it easy,” he purred, rubbing against me. “You make it possible.”

  I moved to the side a bit, making room for him against Rik. With my left arm around Rik’s neck and my right tucked around Daire’s waist, I settled between the two of them.

  My first two knights. The ones who’d saved me at my darkest hour.

  “Where should I bite him, my queen?” Daire whispered in that rumbly purr.

  “Hmmm.” I pretended to think about it a moment. “If you bite his neck, I’m too short to reach. You should probably bite him lower.”

  Daire waggled his eyebrows, making me laugh. “How low, my queen?” He dropped to his knees and rubbed his head against Rik’s abdomen, looking up at me through his tousled hair. “Maybe here? They say that blood drawn from the groin is more potent and hot.”

  But Rik wasn’t amused by our game. He bent down, snagged an arm under my butt, and hauled me up high against him. “My queen never goes down to her knees. Let alone in the snow.”

  Pressed up against him, I was starting to regret my decision not to bite him.

  “Later.” his low voice crashed like falling boulders.

  “Promise?”

  “You know it.” He gave a hard look at Daire. “Get on with it. She hungers.”

  Daire slid in beside me, still purring as he sank his fangs into Rik’s throat. He groaned deep in his chest and took several swallows before lifting his head.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, remembering our first night together.

  How they’d had to help me, bite for me, because I didn’t have fangs.

  Now, I had huge fangs—with a serious side effect. So they still had to help me, and I didn’t mind one bit. Not anymore.

  How could I, when I loved them so much?

  Locking my mouth over Daire’s bite, I drank Rik down. So good. So strong. I couldn’t imagine his blood being any hotter or more potent, even if I’d sunk my fangs into his femoral artery. His blood settled me, my rock and foundation, unshakable.

  Still purring, Daire curled up beside me, licking the trails of blood that I’d missed. Rik held us both to him. Taking care of us. Loving us. And I could cry at how beautiful it was.

  Daire licked at my mouth, wanting me to share. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded in the slightest. Tasting Rik’s blood from Daire’s mouth was a heady, erotic act that would quickly have me dragging them both to the guest house. But tension still coiled inside me, my nerves tight like a drum. Keisha Skye was going to attack, and we weren’t fully prepared yet. Not until the heart tree was done.

  :No,: Rik said before I could move. :Make your own bite.:

  Daire did as he was told, sinking his fangs into the other side of Rik’s throat. :You taste different. Stronger. Fuck me sideways, but that cobra bite made you taste even better.:

  Rik made a low noise like distant thunder, his arms tightening on us. Listening to his bond, I kept a careful sense on his health. I couldn’t risk weakening my alpha, no matter how good he tasted.

  He snorted, dropping his head so his chin rested on me. :You could never weaken me. Even if you drained me until I couldn’t stand, all you’d need to do would be to give me a few sips of your blood and I’m stronger than ever. Take what you need, my queen.:

  I sensed movement to my left and smelled Nevarre’s blood. He didn’t interrupt, but made himself available to me by leaning against Rik, his arm coming around me too. Then Mehen, of all people, pressed against Daire and me both, a silent offering. He couldn’t shift, not until I allowed it, though in his bond, all I felt was eagerness.

  He wanted me to feed. He wanted to fuck. All of us. It didn’t matter who, as long as he was part of it. Though the vibration from Daire’s purring was doing some serious arousal for my oldest Blood. So of course Daire purred louder and shoved his butt back against the other man.

  If I didn’t hurry up and grow the heart tree, we were going to have another orgy under the stars.

  Not that I’d mind in the slightest…

  But I had some serious work to do first.

  Lifting my head, I looked up at Rik as I licked his blood from my lips.

  His eyes smoldered, heavy and intense. :I think Daire has been punished long enough, my qu
een.:

  My heart leaped and I smiled, blinking back tears. Finally, I’d have my cuddle buddy back in my bed.

  Daire, like a little shit, purred so loud and so hard that I could probably come just from leaning against him. Though he might have done that as much to torment Mehen as me.

  Instead, I turned to Nevarre. Before I could say anything, he lifted his hand to my mouth, offering his blood. Before, he’d tasted like ancient Celtic magic and wind-swept moors, at least that was what my mind thought. Now, he had a darker, subtle edge in his blood. The clang of swords. The raucous call of war ringing in his bond. A slow, insidious shadow that crept across the land, obliterating even the strongest and mightiest of warriors.

  :Morrigan has returned my gift.: He whispered in my mind. :I am Her Shadow once more.:

  :What does that mean?:

  His mouth hardened in a grim slant, his eyes the hard, stone-cold glint of a brutal sword. :Not even the god of light can stand against Her Shadow.:

  :Good.: I licked his palm but then lifted my mouth, taking his bleeding hand in my own instead. Our blood dripped and mingled, trailing down our wrists. :Let’s grow the heart tree now.:

  Lowering our hands so our blood dripped onto the ground, I started walking, slowly, waiting for Gaia to tell me when to stop. I hadn’t realized exactly what She’d led me to do before, but it looked like the grove completely surrounded my house, a tighter ring inside the blood circle I’d laid to create the nest. My manor house wasn’t perfectly center, but set back toward the rear of the grove. I walked toward the center, listening to the earth music. Trees whispered, swaying gently, calling to the creatures of the night. A few birds already roosted in the ancient branches that hadn’t been there an hour ago. A fat squirrel scurried beneath a gigantic oak, scooping up a fresh bounty of acorns that had fallen from the mighty tree.

  The ground itself pulsed with life, feeding roots water and nutrients. Worms and beetles loosened and primed the soil, responding to the fresh leaves that had dropped onto the melting snow. The ground seemed warmer with the trees, as if their life force was so strong that they could change the very temperature of the ground and air around them, bringing a thaw in the dead of winter.