The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash 4)

“Run, Poppy.” Momma gasped. “Run.”

I ran. I ran toward her—

“Momma—” Claws caught my hair, scratched my skin, burning me like the time I’d reached for the kettle. I screamed, straining for Momma, but I couldn’t see her in the twining mass on the floor.

I saw Papa’s friend in the doorway. He was supposed to help us—help Momma—but he stared at the man in black as he rose from the mass of twisting, feeding creatures, and his bitter horror filled my mouth, choking me. He backed away, shaking his head, leaving us. He was leaving us—

Teeth sank into my arm. Fiery pain ripped through my arm and lit across my face. I fell, trying to shake them off. “No. No. No,” I screamed, thrashing. “Momma! Papa!”

Deep, forbidding pain sliced through my stomach, seizing my lungs and my body.

Then they were falling all around me and on me, limp and heavy, and I couldn’t breathe. The pain. The weight. I wanted my momma.

Suddenly they were gone, and a hand was on my cheek, my neck. “Momma.” I blinked through blood and tears.

The Dark One stood above me, his face nothing but shadows beneath the hooded cloak. It wasn’t his hand at my throat but something cold and sharp. He didn’t move. That hand trembled. He shook. “I see it. I see her staring back at me.”

“She must…he’s her viktor,” I heard Momma say in a voice that sounded wet. “Do you understand what that means? Please. She must…”

“Good gods.”

The cold press was gone from my throat, and I was lifted into the air, floating and floating in the warm darkness, my body there but not. I was slipping away into the nothingness, surrounded by the smell of flowers. Of the purple blossoms the Queen liked to have in her bedchamber. Lilacs.

Someone else was with me in the void. They drew closer, a different kind of darkness before they spoke.

What a powerful little flower you are.

What a powerful poppy.

Pick it and watch it bleed.

Not so powerful any longer.

Waking was a chore.

I knew I needed to. I had to make sure my people were okay. There was Casteel. And that nightmare… I wanted to get as far away from it as possible, but my body felt heavy and useless, not even connected to me. I was floating somewhere else, and I drifted and drifted until I no longer felt weighed down. I took a sudden, deep breath, and my lungs expanded.

“Poppy?” A hand came to my cheek, warm and familiar.

I forced my eyes open.

Kieran hovered above me, just like…like the Dark One had in the nightmare. Kieran’s face was only fuzzy around the edges, though, not unseen to me. “Hi.”

“Hi?” A slow smile spread as a rough laugh left him. “How are you feeling?”

I wasn’t sure as I watched his features clear even more. “Okay. I think. What happened?” I swallowed—and stiffened—at the earthy, woodsy flavor in the back of my throat, quickly becoming aware that I was lying on something impossibly soft. “Did you feed me? Again?” I didn’t hear Reaver or anyone else. “Where are we?”

“One question at a time, okay?” His hand remained on my cheek, keeping my eyes on his. “That shadowstone arrow was coated in some kind of toxin. Millicent said it would only leave you unconscious for a few days—”

“Millicent?” My brows furrowed.

“The Handmaiden. That’s her name,” he told me. “Since I’d trust a pit viper over her, I gave you blood, just in case.”

“You…shouldn’t have given me more blood. You need it.”

“The wolven are like the Atlantians. Our blood replenishes itself quickly. It’s one of the reasons we heal so fast,” he said, and I remembered Casteel saying something similar. “Does your arm hurt at all? The last time I checked, it looked healed.”

“It doesn’t hurt. Thanks to you, I’m sure.” I started to turn my head, but his thumb swept over my chin, holding me there. My heart stuttered as something else he’d said came to the forefront of my mind. “How long have I been out of it?”

The way he looked at me sent my heart racing. “You were asleep for about two days, Poppy.”

I held his stare, and I wasn’t sure which thing hit me first. The salty breeze lifting the sheer curtains from a nearby window. The soft bed I lay upon that had always been big, no matter how small I’d been. The lack of the Huntsmen cloak and the muted gray, sleeveless tunic Kieran wore in its place. Or that the eerie rhyme I’d heard in my nightmare had been slightly different. I turned my head. This time, Kieran didn’t stop me. His hand slid from my cheek to the bed. Beyond him, I saw a sweeping marble and sandstone ceiling higher than many homes—one painted in pastel blues and whites—between curved columns that flowed from the walls and along the dome-shaped…tower chamber.