Mina’s mind snapped back to the present, but she answered her sweet nurse over time. “Yes. It does.”
She could feel it, the fire blood of Dominik melding with the magic inside her own, awakening something she knew was there all along but was too afraid to face.
The gathering storm of Morgrid’s making swirled with enraged violence, blocking out the stars and the moon. Morgrid finally opened her eyes and bellowed to the night sky. “Winds of night! Heed my call! Take my blood. Make them fall.”
She’d taken a blade from one of the fallen soldiers and sliced open her palm, raising it to the freezing gale, which thickened with icy crystals. The crystals crackled and grew as they rocketed down from the dark heavens. Nikolai cried out as he ran to where Sienna lay, blood pouring from her head, when a six-inch spike of ice embedded in his back, knocking him to the stone floor, immobile.
Mina backed up to the parapet, shaking her head in helpless rage as the deadly shards crashed into stone and into her friends and warriors. None of the icy spikes even touched her. They wouldn’t. The queen needed her alive. But it could kill everyone she knew and loved. Panicked, she leaned over the parapet wall to see on the battlement just below a dagger-size shard impale Mikhail’s wrist, forcing him to drop his sword. Dominik slung his weapon and scored Mikhail across the upper chest, just missing his neck as Mikhail leaned away. Mikhail’s blood spattered the air. Two more ice daggers impaled his thighs, dropping him to the ground. Dominik grinned like the feral predator he was, edging toward his wounded prey.
Mina screamed, gripping the stone of the parapet wall, claws pricking, blood burning.
Far down below on the field, ice daggers and ice swords fell from the sky, piercing the soldiers of the Black Lily army. A rain of ice daggers fell upon Lord Rathbone, his horse squealing as it fell and rolled over the vampire who’d helped her to become queen and had joined her cause.
Another hail of ice blades fell upon Arabelle, Marius, Friedrich, and Grant, who fought back to back, the shards hitting their marks and felling Friedrich to the ground, unmoving.
Kostya pushed his army of rabid vampires forward, bellowing the call to kill them all. In a swarm of screams and blood, the vampires descended and leaped upon the Black Lily army, ripping and clawing them all to the ground. The human army fought, but few could stand up against the rage-filled monsters the queen and her son had created.
Another troop of them filed in from the gaping hole in the wall, coming up behind Lord Rathbone’s army, behind her own Arkadians, slicing through throats. The vampires were on more equal grounds, but with Queen Morgrid’s ice daggers felling Mina’s people one by one, soon there would be no one left standing.
They were losing. And if they lost, she would be a slave to Dominik, for a child to be born of her, ripped from her womb and sacrificed in a black rite to bring an eternity of darkness across the land.
Panic seized her as she watched in helpless horror. “No.”
Then, she heard the call of the white woman inside her. Mina. It was the white witch of legend who spoke to her from within. It is time. Awaken the white queen from her long, long slumber.
Morgrid laughed behind her, a sinister chill filling the air. “What’s wrong, Princess? Not what you had planned with your little army?”
Mina swiveled to face her.
Morgrid flinched at something she saw in Mina’s eyes. Yet her haughty demeanor remained unchanged. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m speaking to a queen, aren’t I?”
Morgrid narrowed her menacing gaze as the ice daggers she summoned from the black sky continued to rain down upon Mina’s friends. Upon her own love. Hart wolves yelped and howled on the field as they were stabbed through.
“Yes,” said Mina, crawling up onto the parapet and then standing slowly as the wind threatened to tip her over. “I am a queen.”
The burning fire of Dominik’s blood coursed through her veins with savage fury, lighting her up with palpable energy that crackled in the air around her. Magic sizzled along her skin.
“I am the white queen of legend.”
Mina’s voice deepened. Darkened. A beast speaking the words. Her body pumping hot and hard, no longer with blood, but with pure powerful magic. Pouring lavalike through her body as her senses intensified, amplified well beyond a vampire. All she could think and feel and yearn for was fire. She smelled it come from her lungs as she breathed deep, smoldering to life inside her own body, the furnace buried at the core of her being.
When she spoke again to Morgrid—now stupefied in place, staring with blatant shock at Mina—her words were barely audible through the earth-deep growl resonating with peril and doom.
“And I am going to kill you.”
…
Dominik smiled, his throat dripping blood where Mina had bit him, easing in a circle. Mikhail didn’t move, his stance straight, his fist clenched on the hilt of his double sword, the gold-tipped blades winking under the moonlight.
“So you’re the one who stole what was mine. Some untitled nobody who couldn’t even make the Legionnaires. Had to start your own little guard.”
“She was never yours.” Mikhail bent his wrist, twirling the blades menacingly. “She never will be.” The moonlight cut the butcher king into harsh angles and lines, but all Mikhail saw was the perfect point and angle he’d slice to remove the bastard’s head. “There are many reasons I want to kill you.” His words were smooth as silk, low and sonorous like a poison that slid into one’s veins without one ever knowing. “The innocents you’ve butchered over the years. The villages you’ve raided and destroyed, including my own mother’s. The countless number of people you’ve terrorized for your own pleasure. But you’ll die tonight for one reason alone.” He took a threatening step forward, his gaze sharp on his opponent’s movements. “Because you dared to touch one hair on her head.”
He scoffed, puffing up his barrel chest. “I touched a lot more than that.”
Red dominated his vision. Mikhail dove onto his enemy. They met in a violent clamor of steel on steel.
Bleeding from the icy shards that had pierced his body in at least seven places, Mikhail crawled up the parapet wall to reach for Mina’s dagger, sheathed in his boot. Pain lacerated his body. Dominik drew closer with certain intent to make the killing blow. Another needle-thin shard of ice hit Mikhail directly in the chest, piercing deep. The shock of the sharp pain distracted him long enough for Dominik to slice across the wrist of his one good hand. The severing of his tendons forced the dagger from his fingers, clattering to the stone.