Queen of the Sylphs by L. J. McDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

along with something else. She could feel it, a growing need to know. Heyou wasn’t the type to question, but she could feel it was going to happen anyway. Even as she cringed, she wondered how he waited so long.
    “You’re upset. You’re sad all the time. Why? It’s worse now. I don’t understand.” He glanced around, searching for something to attack, something from which she needed defense. Other battlers appeared, drawn along garden paths by his distress. Solie recognized Dillon, Claw, Hector, and Blue, and she hoped they wouldn’t come closer. She didn’t want their scrutiny. They thankfully held back, sensing her reluctance.
    Heyou was a very young battler, inexperienced and likely to defer to older battlers like Mace, even if he was the one who slept with the queen. He wasn’t stupid, though, and his gaze finally settled on the playing children and the mother with her baby. He couldn’t help but notice. Solie couldn’t stop staring.
    “You want babies?” he asked in a whisper.
    Solie took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Oh,” he managed, and she heard a world of hurt in his voice. She put her arm around him, hugging him, and he held her back, his emotions as sad as her own. That just made her feel worse, for there was nothing he could do about it. Heyou couldn’t give her children, and she didn’t want to be with anyone else, not even if he would allow it. She could order him not to mind, but to do that to a battler would destroy him. She couldn’t be so cruel. Not even to gain a child.
    A noise sounded: battlers tense and suddenly roaring, flashing into the sky as smoke and lightning. The playing children froze in fear. Others ran, the new mother joining them. She looked back fearfully over her shoulder as she did.
    Solie started to rise, all thoughts of children gone. Heyou’s arms went around her, his upset trumped by the urge to violence. He didn’t shift form, though. He stayed to protect her.
    More battlers flashed upward, rising over the town and moving to the east. Solie saw the big cloud that was Mace fly overhead, and she looked at Heyou in surprise. “What is it?”
    He stared after the others, his body tense. “An air ship.”
    Solie was confused. Air ships were an uncommon form of transportation, being expensive and requiring enough air sylphs to carry the load, but they did exist. Battlers didn’t normally react so badly to them.
    Heyou picked up on her confusion. “The air sylph carrying it. She’s from a hive.” He frowned. “She has a queen.”
    Solie gaped. A queen? How was that possible? Sylphs who crossed through a gate from their old world lost all connection to their original queen. They took masters in order to stay in this world and feed, but they were generally singular in their connection. The only way to turn a woman into a queen connected to many sylphs was for a battler to take her for both master and lover. The Valley was the only place in the world where women were allowed mastery over any kind of sylph, let alone a battler. That truth was also something they kept very secret. There wasn’t anyone outside the Valley who knew how Solie became queen.
    “Are you sure?” she asked, suddenly frightened at the possibility.
    In the distance she could see a wide-sailed ship heading toward the Valley, still tiny against the mountains behind it. A dozen battlers circled it.
    “Yes.” Heyou tilted his head to one side, his emotions turning speculative. “But Ril’s on that ship. He says it’s okay.”
    “Really?”
    Solie focused on the vessel again, concentrating. This would never come to her as easily as Heyou; she might be queen, but she was still human. Faintly, though, she could hear the call of Ril, one of the first battlers to join her hive, telling her they were back, that they’d succeeded in what they needed to do. That—
    “They found Lizzy!” she crowed. She was so glad to hear it. When Lizzy Petrule was kidnapped, Solie never thought