Hive Queen by Sinclair, Grayson (positive books to read .txt) 📕

and she was furious that I dared to attempt to subjugate her. I hated it as much as she did; this was an intelligent being, not one of my little ones who had degraded to nothing but instinct. What I was doing was wrong, was the worst thing I’d ever tried to do, yet I had no choice. For us to succeed, Misumena had to die.

Her consciousness fought hard against me, but this was in my blood. It was what I was born for. No matter how wrong it was, I was good at it. I smothered her will against my own and suffocated her until she gasped for air. As the holes formed in her psyche, I slithered my way inside and broke her spirit.

As I finished working my way through her mind, she slumped over onto the ground. Her mind retreated in on itself as I bludgeoned my way through her. I’d done irreparable harm to her, and the brute force method had broken part of her psyche. I would have to control her manually if I wanted to get her to go over the edge.

Reina said dead, not disabled. If we want to beat her trial, this has to happen. I steeled myself and let all of the chitin in my body flow out of me and through my feet into Misumena. My body was light as a feather after the heavy chitin entered Misumena and molded itself over most of her body. I focused on the limbs and pushing my magic as far as it could go through her.

She rose on my command, but working two separate forms of magic at the same time was the most exhausting thing I’d ever done, and not even a couple seconds after I’d completed the spell, I started shaking as my mana fled from me.

Need to hurry. I lumbered the shell of Misumena toward the edge of the waterfall. Her legs scuttled into the river, and with each step, they splashed more water into the air to rain over me. When we reached the edge, I spared one last look at the Gloom Knights, who were rushing toward me, and I pushed Misumena over the ledge.

  The fall was much shorter than it looked as I rode atop the nearly brain-dead carcass of a fallen god towards what I assumed would lead to my death.

My world was a blur of blue as the rushing water kept pace with us as we both aimed for the shallow and rocky depression at the bottom of the cliff.

With a bone-jarring, teeth-gnashing crunch, we hit the bottom, and I went sideways as my legs forgot how to work properly. My bones ached, and a dull, throbbing pain radiated up my entire body and squeezed until I nearly suffocated, but I was alive.

I was alive, and Misumena was not.

For a while, I lost track of time as I fought to keep consciousness as my head ached with the backlash of being inside Misumena while she died.

Before the fight, Gil had rappelled down the waterfall using a length of rope tied to a stake and had sunk his numerous giant spikes into the ground in a wide circle. His trap had been very effective.

Misumena landed on nearly half a dozen of the sharpened wooden sticks, four of which hadn’t broken in half when she landed on them. They stuck through her body, the tips protruding through her carapace dripping with blood. One of them had come half an inch from sinking into my calf, and I heaved a sigh of relief, which turned into a hacking cough as even more pain coursed through my lungs.

But I was alive.

When my body stopped shaking with the brush from near death, I shivered as blistering cold water droplets from the spray of the waterfall hit the nape of my neck and slid down my back.

“Cold!” I shouted, nearly jumping out of my skin.

I shouldn’t have moved, because the act revealed I was far weaker than I’d noticed at the time, and I sagged to my knees as a sharp pain thrummed through my head and my vision swam as a wave of dizziness rolled over me. Mana depletion. I’m still holding onto the spells. Need to cancel them before I pass out.

“Shit! Eris, are you okay!” Gil shouted.

Gil, along with the others, was standing at the edge of the waterfall, leaning over it to stare down at me.

“I’m…I’m fine,” I said, my voice dripping fatigue.

A tide of emotions flooded through me as the wall between my mind and Sam’s tore down. He was in tremendous agony.

Sam!

“Gil, call Sam!”

I let the magic controlling Misumena ooze out and fade away. The spell that allowed me to manipulate my chitin took longer to unravel, but the control spell was what took the most out of me. The chitin liquified and slowly started seeping back though Misumena and back to my body.

Misumena jerked in the throes of death, her arms spasming and coiling in on themselves.

Something hard poked me in the stomach, but I barely noticed. “Ow, that stung,” I said, rubbing at my stomach.

Something warm and wet clung to my fingers. I glanced down at whatever had hit me.

One of Misumena’s translucent legs was sticking into my abdomen. I don’t think that should be there. A low ache spread from my stomach to my spine, and I couldn’t hold my body upright anymore.

Something caught in my throat, and I coughed, trying to dislodge it. A river of blood poured from my lips. What? What’s happening?

My mind caught up with my body, and I screamed through a mouthful of iron. A frigid winter settled over me, and then nothing else mattered. I was tired and wanted to sleep.

So incredibly tired.

Endless sleep called me, and I answered.

Chapter 17 - Heist