JК
Swallowing Darkness :: Гамильтон Лорел
Страница: 198 из 242Where was her mate? Where was her balance? The ring on my hand pulsed once. It had been known as the Queen's Ring for centuries. Andais had given it to me to show her favor. But she was a thing of destruction and war only. I was life as well as death; I was balance. The ring had once belonged to a goddess of love and fertility. Andais had taken it from the Goddess's dead finger.
Death should never take the tools of life, because it won't know how to use them. But I knew.
There was a rain of pink petals around me and my soldiers. The ring pulsed harder, hot against my finger. Something moved at the edge of the clearing. A white figure limped out from among the trees. It was Crystall. The last time I'd seen him, he'd been in the queen's bed, being tortured to a red ruin. One of the serious downsides to being immortal and being able to heal from almost anything was that if you fell into the hands of a sexual sadist, the "fun" could last a very long time.
She'd picked him as her victim because he'd been one of her guards who had tried to answer my call. He would have come to L.A. with me, but Andais declared that she could not lose all her guard to me. So she punished those who had to stay but did not wish to stay. She wasn't getting volunteers to take the place of the guards who had come to me. She'd been too harsh a mistress for too long. The men knew what to expect, and they just weren't signing up. That had made her even worse to the men she still had. Crystall showed that as he moved into the clearing.
When he could no longer lean on the trees, he fell to the ground on all fours and began to crawl toward us. The soldiers aimed their guns around him, as if they expected to see what had injured him coming out of the trees. It was a thought. Where was the queen? Why was she letting Cel and so many of her nobles go against her express orders? It wasn't like her to sit idly by if she could punish people. But watching Crystall crawl, seeing the bloody wounds on his body, I thought that she might be busy. Sometimes she fell so far into her bloodlust that she forgot everything but the pain and flesh under her hands. Was she somewhere intoxicated with sadistic pleasure while her son imploded her kingdom? Had she lost control to that degree?
I started moving toward Crystall. The soldiers moved with me, guns trained on Dilys, on the trees, on the dark, but I wasn't sure there was anything to shoot right now. Later. There would be things to shoot later.
Dilys called across the field in her voice with its edge of fire sound. "Your bloodline is corrupt, Meredith.
Death should never take the tools of life, because it won't know how to use them. But I knew.
There was a rain of pink petals around me and my soldiers. The ring pulsed harder, hot against my finger. Something moved at the edge of the clearing. A white figure limped out from among the trees. It was Crystall. The last time I'd seen him, he'd been in the queen's bed, being tortured to a red ruin. One of the serious downsides to being immortal and being able to heal from almost anything was that if you fell into the hands of a sexual sadist, the "fun" could last a very long time.
She'd picked him as her victim because he'd been one of her guards who had tried to answer my call. He would have come to L.A. with me, but Andais declared that she could not lose all her guard to me. So she punished those who had to stay but did not wish to stay. She wasn't getting volunteers to take the place of the guards who had come to me. She'd been too harsh a mistress for too long. The men knew what to expect, and they just weren't signing up. That had made her even worse to the men she still had. Crystall showed that as he moved into the clearing.
When he could no longer lean on the trees, he fell to the ground on all fours and began to crawl toward us. The soldiers aimed their guns around him, as if they expected to see what had injured him coming out of the trees. It was a thought. Where was the queen? Why was she letting Cel and so many of her nobles go against her express orders? It wasn't like her to sit idly by if she could punish people. But watching Crystall crawl, seeing the bloody wounds on his body, I thought that she might be busy. Sometimes she fell so far into her bloodlust that she forgot everything but the pain and flesh under her hands. Was she somewhere intoxicated with sadistic pleasure while her son imploded her kingdom? Had she lost control to that degree?
I started moving toward Crystall. The soldiers moved with me, guns trained on Dilys, on the trees, on the dark, but I wasn't sure there was anything to shoot right now. Later. There would be things to shoot later.
Dilys called across the field in her voice with its edge of fire sound. "Your bloodline is corrupt, Meredith.