Angela Knight, Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, Diane Whiteside - Beyond the Dark by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

Queen Tou stood before the narrow window in her private office, watching the sun god's disk sink like beaten copper into the sand. A woman with needs like hers could only rejoice at the approach of darkness, but a mysterious restlessness held her where she was. Her harem would be waiting, hard already in anticipation of the pleasure she would bring.

How many of those beautiful men would it take to sate her desires tonight?

Her body heated at the question, a flush riding up her skin from thigh to brow. The little slave girls who sat on the floor behind her quickened their fanning.

Over the years, she'd discovered her body slaves had to be female. Boys grew into men too fast and began to want her. As slowly as Tou was aging, she didn't always notice when that happened—and it could be awkward. She was like a cat in heat, she sometimes thought, drawing all the toms to her door.

She rolled her eyes to herself. The gods had blessed her strangely on that long-ago fateful day, shaping who she was as much as what had come before.

She'd been a fifteen-year-old orphan before those divinities intervened: friendless, hopeless, cast out from her village for stealing bread. The exalted elders of her tribe had raped her first, just to make sure she understood how wrong her attempt at avoiding starvation was. Escaping into the desert had been her only choice, and she'd done it with every expectation that she would die. Instead, she'd found a chamber beneath the burning sand: the secret temple of her personal gods.

Even now, she couldn't guess why they'd chosen her.

She'd stumbled into that ink-black hollow in ignorance, hoping only for a scrap of shelter from the sun. When its walls had melted and embraced her, she'd thought she was dreaming. When it called her "goddess," she knew she was. Strange visions had speared through her, lights and colors and whirling stars. She was promised children, heirs who would guarantee that her strong blood lived on. Her mind had been sharpened, her body changed. When she crawled out, gasping, after the transformation, she'd been more than healed.

She'd been a queen-to-be, if only in her mind.

As she'd sworn, she'd built her palace around the chamber, its entrance hidden from all eyes but hers.

She'd sworn revenge as well, the final fruit of which was almost in her grasp. That coward, Ravna—"the King's Justice" he'd been called then—would pay for overseeing the violation that was done to her. He'd pay for sending the others off so he could rape her one last time himself. Forgive me, he'd mewled as he tore his way into her battered young body. I cannot help myself.

Tou was happy to help him earn forgiveness. She'd make him forfeit the one reward the gods had given him and denied her.

"Blessed by the gods," she murmured. "With everything but a child."

Truly, those who ruled human fates were more capricious than the wisest could comprehend.

"My queen," said a voice she knew and loved well, one of few with the right to enter her presence unannounced.

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