Queen of the Sylphs Read Online Free

nesting chamber and went down a connecting corridor on the other side, flowing up and over a battle sylph guard as she did. He turned his lightning-formed eyes upon her, and she hurried on, a little uncomfortable. The baby battlers were adorable, but their older brothers weren’t. They stared, more now than ever.
    Hurrying down the corridor, she turned a corner so that the young guard couldn’t see her anymore. The passageways here were many thousands of years old, but the hive was still growing, as did the fields that supported it. This hive was huge and ancient, the walls of the corridors shiny from the passage of thousands upon thousands of sylphs.
    It was the queen’s chamber she was going to now, to rejoin her sisters. It had been a long time. She’d been sent with a raiding party to a distant nest, and they’d been gone far longer than expected. The whole trip had been strange. Healers weren’t usually sent away from the hive, and she’d felt terribly exposed. She’d been itchy as well, as she’d gone into a growth spurt she wasn’t expecting that nearly doubled her size. Still, the raiding party were all back and safe. None of them was lost—thanks in part, she hoped, to her own efforts.
    She moved into the queen’s chamber, passing another battler as she did. Like the other one, he stared, but his regard wasn’t quite so uncomfortable—though it was no less unsettling. He was big and mature, his energy levels impressive enough that she wondered if he’d drawn the attention of the queen yet. Probably not. The queen had more than enough lovers as it was.
    She turned and sidestepped, skittering out of his way. As she passed, he formed a tentacle out of his mantle and stroked it along her belly. Sucking her own mantle upward, she shot through into the queen’s chamber and left him behind.
    Her six sisters looked up, all of them white and gleaming, their half dozen eyes swirling patiently. They were smaller than she, but they made room willingly as she settled down and stared up at a sylph still far larger than herself, glad to finally be back.
    You’ve returned, the queen said, voice rumbling in her mind. The queen stretched herself, nearly doubling in length. Her latest mate nested against her—a battler she’d named some confusing combination of sounds on a whim—his red eyes taking in everything.
    Yes, my queen, the returned healer answered. As she did, she wondered fleetingly if that was imagined disgruntlement in the queen’s tone.
    Leon Petrule stood on the deck of the Racing Dawn , watching for any sign of land on the endlessly blue horizon. For two days the ship had been flying, carried through the air by the power of an ancient air sylph, but even at her speed it would be another three days before they reached their destination.
    It was better than the trip out had been. That voyage had taken weeks, for the ship they were on stopped at every port during its sea voyage south, picking up passengers, dropping them off, and risking pirate attack at every moment. This ship didn’t have that problem. Pirates didn’t have air sylphs to carry them above the clouds, and even if one did, they wouldn’t have battlers. Leon glanced a few feet over to his own battle sylph. Ril wasn’t as powerful as he’d once been, thanks to an injury, but he still had the strength to wreck any ship that might threaten them.
    Right now, the battler didn’t look threatened by anything at all. In his human form, the blond-haired sylph leaned against the railing and the woman beside him, his arm encircling her waist. Lizzy Petrule in turn leaned back.
    Lizzy. His daughter. She now shared Leon’s battler, though her relationship with Ril was vastly different. Leon pondered that with a bit of amusement and still a touch of shock. The amusement was at the idea that the battler might want a physical relationship. The shock came from the fact that he’d found it with his master’s eighteen-year-old daughter.
    Not that he