The Fire Queen (The Dark Queens Book 10) by Jovee Winters

Author:Jovee Winters [Winters, Jovee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JoveeWintersPublishing
Published: 2020-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

~*~

Xolotl

I raced through the trees. Feet bare and feeling every rut, every groove, dip, and stone beneath my flesh. But my legs flew as though I rode the winds.

The harpy eagle above me did not like it.

He screamed his fury and wheeled round and round before diving down toward my head.

I laughed and so did the wind beneath me.

The creature wheeled round, a ray of sun glinted off the tip of his deadly glowing beak. My heart caught. He knew.

But this memory did not go as it should, for suddenly a wizened woman dressed in a drab brown robe stood in my path. Immediately I stopped running, and the wind that was Quetzalcoatl vanished. Heart racing, knees trembling I stared at the being and wondered who she could be.

“Xolotl,” she said in a strained whisper, “you are not where you should be.”

“What?” I frowned, shaking my head and turning to glance behind me at a memory I’d once known so well but now was not what it had been.

The streets once overflowing with jungle foliage and twisted vines was nothing but red clay, cracked and dry. The huts that encamped aunts, uncles, husbands, wives, and children were gone. Their laughter gone with them. This was a desolate place now. Bones and death lived here now.

I looked back at the feeble woman, knowing in my soul she must be a witch. But why was she here? In my dreams?

Squaring my chest and lifting my chin I gazed up at her with the hardness of youthful arrogance. “Who are you, witch? Why have you come here? It is not I but you that does not belong here! Go!” I pointed, banishing her. Or at least, expecting that she should, but receiving a nasty shock when instead she merely chuckled with a dark, deep voice.

“Boy, do you mistake me for a simple witch? Well aren’t you cute.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I am a ferocious beast that will serve the sun in hell.”

“My apologies, little master,” she bowed formally, though I could see that she was frightfully ancient, her movements were lithe, nimble for one so old. I frowned harder. She was not as I’d first imagined. So, if she was no witch, then she could only be a…

“You are a goddess,” I whispered, skin suddenly prickling as I now felt the breadth and scope of her power wash over me.

But she did not cackle or scream, demand my blood for slighting her as I had. Her laughter seemed sincere and all I could do was shake my head. “Who are you? How is that I don’t know you?”

Again, she smiled, transforming her wrinkled countenance momentarily into something so stunningly wonderous that I felt blinded by it. I sucked in a sharp breath, but when I looked upon her again all I saw was the old beggar lady.

“Do not try to learn my name, boy. For here I do not belong.”

“Then why have you come, mistress?” I said, a wave of awe now shone in my tone.

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