The queen's chamber was a cathedral of carnage.
Bones lined the walls—thousands of them, stacked in macabre pillars that reached toward the darkness above. Silk draped from every surface, thick as rope, pulsating faintly with some inner light. The air was thick with the smell of decay and something else, something old, something that had been down here for far too long.
And in the center of it all, Caelus fought the queen.
The pure blood vampire moved like smoke, his red eyes blazing, his hands dripping with blood—not his own. Blood manipulation. He had turned the queen's own ichor against her, pulling it from her wounds, shaping it into blades that spun through the air like saws.
But the queen was faster than she looked.
Eight legs. Four arms. A body the size of a carriage, covered in chitin that deflected most of Caelus's attacks. Her eyes—dozens of them—tracked every movement, every feint, every flicker of his crimson gaze.
