Chosen by Sin (43 page)

It was as though she wasn’t there. As though she’d faded and was
covered head-to-toe in an illusion of death. Her skin gray and mottled, her
eyes wide in her sunken flesh. The leaves she wore, dead and rotting. He
blinked, and the image disappeared. His Queen was whole and beautiful before
him, body lush and spread, ripe as spring, hot as summer.

She stared at him with an expression he’d never seen before. As if she
didn’t want him. He kissed her deeply, plunging his tongue into her mouth as he
slid inside of her.

They were one.

Orgasms erupted around him, each offering of seed and honey greedily
taken by the magic. He felt the first spasm within him, his essence pouring
into her as he ground himself deep, the climax wrenching, as though his seed
had become heavy, liquid gold.

She shifted away from him so that he slipped out of her, the final
potent lashes of his seed falling to the earth.

He heard the fire roar and die—Wrong.

His Queen lay beside him, crying, and the whole night was as dark and
still as the dead. Cerdwellyn stood, pulling her to her feet.

Her breath made a strange hitch and then she struck him, hand open, so
that his head cracked to the side. “Where is the portal, Cerdewellyn? We have
come so far and there is nothing!” She hissed the words at him.

Cer didn’t bother to touch his face, tasting blood at the corner of his
mouth. He strode away from her, towards the smoking coals and the witch who had
served him for decades.

The lines on the witch’s face were etched even deeper with the night’s
failure. She started speaking as soon as he was near. “It should have worked.
The spell was perfect. You did your part. But the Queen—Did you not see
it? You hurt her, Cerdewellyn. If she were still your equal, that would have
been impossible. She is no longer the true Queen, my lord.”

“She has been my Queen for time beyond measure,” he said, words hollow
with fear.

The witch’s voice trembled. “But that doesn’t mean she still is. There
was another before her, and now there is another to replace her.”

He shook his head in dismay, pressed his lips together hard, even as
his gaze strayed to the fire and then out into the distance. Through the trees
and towards the ocean. Where the barest, faintest hint of light was—and
the newborn female babe conceived with all the magic of the Fey.

“And where is my Queen then?” he asked harshly, even though the answer
was plain.

“You know, Sire. Surely you feel it. Affection, a shared history is
irrelevant. Survival is all that matters now. The Queen will understand. She
knows her duty.”

“She is but a babe. It will be years before she could perform the rite
as a true Queen must. If I open the portal and we go in…we cannot come out for
years, not until she is old enough to perform the rite and break the spell.”

He looked around at his people, cursed Lucas again for forcing them
into this situation. “Tell the settlers. They come with us, to wait for
Virginia Dare. If they want to live, then they must come below.”

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