First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera 6)

Footsteps, softened by the croach, approached her. Isana lifted her eyes enough to see a young woman's bare feet. Her skin was pale, almost luminous. Her toenails were short, and the glossy green-black of vord chitin.

"Let her up," the Queen murmured.

The men holding Isana down withdrew at once.

Isana didn't want to look farther up - but it seemed somehow childish not to, as if she was too frightened to lift her face from her pillow. So she pushed herself from the floor until she was kneeling, sitting back on her heels, composed her wind-raveled dress along with her own equally frayed nerves, and lifted her gaze.

Isana had read Tavi's letters describing the vord queen he had encountered beneath the now-lost city of Alera Imperia, and had spoken to Amara regarding her own experience with the creature. She had expected the pale skin, the dark, multifaceted eyes. She had expected the unsettling mixture of alien inconsistency with everyday familiarity. She had expected her to bear an unsettling resemblance to the Marat girl, Kitai.

What she had not expected, not at all, was for another achingly familiar face to appear, contained within the canted eyes and exotic beauty of Kitai's visage. Though the Queen resembled Kitai, she was not identical. There was a subtle blending of the features of her face, as parents' faces would combine in the face of their child. The other face within the Queen's was one Tavi had never seen - that of his aunt, Isana's sister, who had died the night he was born. Alia.

Isana saw her younger sister's face in the vord Queen, muffled but not subsumed, like a stone lying quietly beneath a blanket of snow. Her heart ached. After all this time, she still felt Alia's loss, still remembered the moment of awful realization as she stared at a limp bundle of muddy limbs and ragged clothing on the cold stone floor of a low-roofed cavern.

The vord Queen's distant expression suddenly shifted, and she jerked her head back from Isana as though she had smelled something vile. Then, an instant later, seemingly without crossing the space in between, the vord Queen's eyes were immediately in front of hers, her nose all but brushing Isana's. She took a slow, seething breath, then hissed, "What is it? What is that?"

Isana leaned back, away from the Queen. "I... I don't understand."

The Queen let out a low hiss, a boiling, reptilian sound. "Your face. Your eyes. What did you see?"

Isana struggled for a moment to slow her racing heart, to control her breath. "You... you looked like someone familiar to me."

The Queen stared at her, and Isana felt a terrible, invasive sensation, like a thousand worms writhing against her scalp.

"What," the vord Queen hissed, "is Alia?"

Rage struck Isana without warning, cold and biting, and she flung the memory of that cold stone floor against the sensation upon her scalp as though she could crush the worming caress with the very image. "No," she heard herself say, her voice flat and cold. "Stop that."

The vord Queen twitched, a motion that moved her entire body, like a tree swaying in a sudden wind. She twitched her head to one side and stared at Isana, her mouth open. "Wh-what?"

Isana felt the creature abruptly, her presence coalescing to her watercrafting senses like a suddenly rising mist. There was a sense of complete, startled surprise in her, coupled with a child's flinching pain at rejection. The vord Queen stared at Isana in wonder for an instant - an emotion that segued rapidly toward something like...

Fear?

"That is not yours to take," Isana said in a hard, firm tone. "Do not try to do so again."

The vord Queen stared at her for an endless moment. Then she rose with another eerie hiss and turned away. "Do you know who I am?"

Isana frowned at the vord's turned back. Do you? she wondered. Why else would you ask?

Aloud, she said only, "You're the first Queen. The original, from the Wax Forest."

The vord Queen turned to give her an oblique look. Then she said, "Yes. Do you know why I am here?"

"To destroy us," Isana said.

The vord Queen smiled. It was not a human expression. There was nothing pleasant in it, no emotion associated with it - only a movement of muscles, something performed in imitation rather than truly understood. "I have questions. You will answer them."

Isana returned her smile with as blank and calm an expression as she could find. "I fail to see why I should do so."

"If you do not," the vord Queen said, "I will cause you pain."

Isana lifted her chin. She found herself smiling, very slightly. "It would not be the first time I have felt pain."

"No," the Queen said. "It would not."

Then she turned, took two long strides, seized Araris by the front of his mail coat, and lifted him into the air. With a motion of perfectly unfiltered speed and violence, she spun and slammed his back against the croach-covered wall. Isana's heart caught in her throat, and she waited for the Queen to strike him, or rake him with her gleaming, green-black nails.

But instead, the vord Queen simply leaned into the unconscious man.

Araris's shoulders slowly began to sink into the glowing croach.

Isana's throat tightened. She had read reports, spoken to holders who had seen their family or loved ones trapped beneath the croach in a similar fashion. Those so entombed did not die. They simply lay passively, as if they had drifted into a light sleep in a warm bath. And, as they drowsed, the croach slowly, painlessly ate them down to bones.

"No," Isana said, shifting forward into a crouch, lifting one hand out. "Araris!"

"I will ask questions," the vord Queen said slowly, as if chewing the words to test them for flavor, while Araris sank into the gelatinous substance. She released him after a few moments, though he continued to be drawn slowly into it, until only his lips and nose remained free of the croach. She turned, and her alien eyes glittered with something that Isana could sense as a kind of raw, uncaring fury. "You will speak with me. Or I will cause him pain you cannot imagine. I will take him away from you, little by little. I will feed his flesh to my children before your eyes."

Isana stared at the vord Queen and shuddered, before lowering her eyes.

"You are a momentary curiosity," the vord Queen continued. "I have other concerns. But understand that your fate is mine to decide. I will destroy you. Or I will allow you to live out your days in peace with those other Alerans who have already seen reason. Live it with your intended mate - or without him. It means little to me."

Isana was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "If what you say is true, young lady, then I cannot help but wonder why you are so angry."