Born of Ashes (Guardians of Ascension #4)(31)
Author: Caris Roane

Endelle laughed and for a moment stopped working some circulation into the woman’s toes. The one who’s keeping you from frostbite.

Oh. Well, I hope you aren’t into women because I’m not and if you take one f**king millimeter’s advantage of me I’ll have you by the short hairs. Got it?

Endelle laughed then chortled.

What’s so goddam funny?

Nothing, Endelle sent. Not a goddam thing.

Not much anyway, she thought. Except she actually liked Marguerite. So much spirit.

Which meant … shit.

Hey, I’m warm, Marguerite sent. I’m actually warm.

I brought you a comforter.

What are you, like some kind of angel?

That sent Endelle into another bout of laughter to the point that she had to wipe her cheeks with the back of her hands and she almost peed her boar’s skirt. Not hardly, she sent. But I’d better get to the point. Sister-bitch will be back any time. I cowed her for a couple of seconds but you’re her property and she thinks I’m here rustling.

This time, laughter rang through her mind. Sister-bitch. Oh, I like that. I like that a lot. If ever there was a fitting nickname, you just coined it.

Endelle nodded even though Marguerite’s eyes were shut fast.

The devotiate remained on her back, as still as a rock, except for a little light breathing thrown in. For just a moment, as Endelle watched the rise and fall of Marguerite’s chest beneath the mound of the comforter, she wondered what kind of world Second Earth had become that an obviously healthy young woman, with a perfectly understandable love of the male body, could be kept imprisoned for a hundred years under the guise of spiritual reformation?

Jesus. H. Christ.

Some things just hadn’t changed very much in nine thousand years.

Although she rather thought that her own reason for being here was worse in some ways, since she was thinking about moving this gifted woman to another kind of prison. How then did that make her any different from sister-bitch?

The toes were toasty warm now, and she withdrew her hand from under the comforter.

She rose to her imposing height, and because the bed was low to the stone floor, it was like staring down at a doll somehow. Thorne had chosen a real beauty in Marguerite but damn she was short.

She had planned on grilling Marguerite, on finding out the truth, but, man, her heart had started to hurt something fierce. She loved Thorne. He was the brother she’d never had and he was above all her comrade-in-arms.

It was often rumored that they were lovers but that had never been true—much too much an incestuous feel to it. No one, no one, could have tolerated what he put up with in her. So how the hell was she supposed to betray him like this by taking his woman out of the Convent and sending her someplace worse?

I’ll leave you now, she sent.

What’s your name?

Doesn’t matter. She chuckled again. Call me Angel.

Thanks, Angel.

Aw, shit. I’m leaving the comforter and I’m telling sister-bitch that if I ever learn she took it from you, I’ll feed her to the next death vampire who crosses my path.

Thanks … Endelle.

What the f**k?

She heard that telepathic laughter again. Hey, you’re not the only powerful ascender in this room. I just lack the ability to fight these f**king drugs.

Well, well, well.

Just … please don’t take Thorne away from me. He’s … he’s what’s kept me sane all these years.

Oh … shit. This just kept getting worse.

Bye, Marguerite. Don’t let Quenny get to you.

A slight pause. I won’t.

Endelle didn’t wait. Jesus, she was in deep and all she’d done was have half a conversation with a comatose nymphomaniac.

She folded back to her palace. She had thought first to return to her administrative headquarters but damn, she had so much to think about.

She touched down in the rotunda next to the one she used for the major ascension ceremonies.

She paced back and forth with a little levitation thrown in. The domes of her palace were so tall that a death vampire could have been doing a series of rolling loops and not touched any of the walls.

There were only three small white sofas in the white marble room. She had heard her palace referred to as Olympus more than once.

She paced in the direction of the balcony that overlooked the expanse of desert to the west of the McDowell Mountains. The land stretched out before her, mostly made up of oily creosote, the occasional saguaro, prickly pear, cholla. She felt like the desert right now, barren, full of thorns, dry as hell. Her temper had sharpened but lately her chest had been hurting. Since she was an ascended vampire, that ruled out heart attack, so what was going on?

Everything was changing, but nothing seemed to be improving. They were still losing the war to the little peach, that self-styled Commander and leader of the Ascension Liberation Army, Darian Greaves.

Endelle had an elite group of warriors at her command, the Warriors of the Blood, and they were still all that prevented the collapse of two worlds. But right now, her little band of men was fragmented with change.

Four of her warriors had bonded with their brehs. Maybe Jean-Pierre hadn’t completed the process but he was well down the pike. Jesus. Four. Four. Would she now lose Jean-Pierre as a warrior?

When Warrior Medichi had completed the breh-hedden with Parisa Lovejoy, he’d embarked on a new form of service, traveling the world as her ambassador and performing the ritual of royle wings alongside his breh. The couple shared the same wings, royle wings, which was all well and good and yes, they were helping to improve her image around the globe as a powerful ruler, but in the meantime she’d lost Medichi’s sword-arm at the Borderlands.

Her men were in deep shit. They protected the five Borderlands, keeping hundreds of death vampires from escaping to Mortal Earth every night.

Colonel Seriffe and Jean-Pierre had been working with the Militia Warriors, to improve their death vampire fighting skills. The problem—and it was a motherfucker of a big one—was that it took four Militia Warriors to bring down one death vampire. For whatever genetic lottery had equipped the Warriors of the Blood, they were so far superior in preternatural speed and skill that they could easily take on as many as eight death vampires at once. That was a helluva lot of power.

But she wasn’t going down that road. That road led to the Grand Canyon of five months ago when Greaves had called her out in battle and she’d lost over a thousand Militia Warriors.

So, no. Her thoughts stopped right there.

She had to live in the here and now or she’d lose her f**king mind.