Hours later, night fell, and Aetha still sat in the bath. Eiri’el had been gone for some time. The bath had turned cold. Attendants had come by, surprised to find Aetha still there. She had commanded them to ignore her, to drain the bath and go about their work. As the bath had drained around her, Aetha marveled at the heat on her skin, the way blood throbbed in her tired body. Eiri’el often left her feeling like this, strange inside of herself. It felt like her body did not conform to the spirit it contained, like the places Eiri’el had touched had been somehow stretched or warped. Alone again, Aetha laid her head back and lay immobile for a long time, letting her bones ache against the hard stone of the pool’s bench and rim.

Well past midnight, an attendant spoke from the door. “My Queen, Sister-Queen Eiri’el’al’ain has asked after you. She awaits you in your suite.”

Aetha replied tiredly, “Yes, I’m sure she does. Tell her I’ve gone flying into the night, naked and hungry and mad as our mother.”

“My Queen?”

“Go away.” Aetha got herself up and plucked a silk robe from a hook as she left the baths. She tied it loosely about her body. Walking out of the foyer, out of their wing, she paused at a glistening suit of armor and pulled the decorative golden sword off its hip. Carrying this, her red hair a thin mat sticking to her skin, she descended into the dungeons with a slow, patient step.

She passed specimens they kept for bleeding. No angels left, no ossea, all of those long gone and their blood almost used up. But there was a small collection of high-born beauties they’d captured from rival nations, men and women in comfortable cells with nothing to do but attend to their own beauty and be bled whenever Aetha or Eiri’el grew hungry. There was a mix of anthral breeds: omnivates for lazy days and carnivates for days of bloodlust and action. There were winged tercaelo from the Rhyqirja mountains, whose blood granted a sharp mind and easy memory. There was a termins of Revan, a glass golem with no blood, but Aetha had wanted one for her collection and the King of Revan had granted her request. Aetha ignored the thing’s scowl as she walked past its unadorned cell.

Then Aetha came to the warded cell that Huntmaster Kan had put the beautiful beast in. Aetha had briefly glimpsed it that morning, wrapped tightly in chains that hummed with magic. Its blood had dripped into a series of vials overseen by the dungeon’s phlebotomists and golden guards. Now, stepping into that cell, Aetha saw that the chains hung empty from the ceiling, the beastly woman absent. The room was empty, except for one man.

A golden guard stood at the table of vials. An empty, blood-wet vial rolled off the table and fell clattering to the cell floor as Aetha watched. The guard heaved a heavy, sated sigh. He reached for another full vial of the beast’s blood, pulling the tube and cork from the top.

“How sad,” Aetha exhaled in a tired, quiet voice.

The golden guard stiffened. His armor shone in the moonlight coming in through the window. His helmet had been set aside, his hair patchy and thin, his scalp sickly gray. Oh, how great his hunger must have been, living for years on only animal blood.

But to Aetha hunger was no excuse. She pointed the golden sword at him. “You disgrace us all with your weakness. Artless thief. The beast’s blood is for the lips of your queens, not meant for your hideous stomach. I’ll have your family scourged for this. You’ll be strung up over the city gates for a week before I decide between executing you or leaving you maimed.”

The man bellowed a bestial sound, spinning and leaping across the cell in an instant. Aetha, unsurprised by his attack but caught off-guard by his speed, lifted her golden sword. He caught it in his hands and broke it, pulling it from her grip. He struck her with one arm so hard that he threw her from the cell, into the dungeon’s hall, where she hit the wall and fell on her side.

Aetha rolled to her knees to push herself up, and he was already standing over her, growling like an animal. He said to her, “I knew the beast’s blood would make me strong, but the fury. The fury! Ah, but perhaps that was already there. What do you deserve, my queen?” He struck her with a knee, knocking her onto her back.

She lay still, marveling at her own weakness, at how slow she’d been, how heavy she felt. Staring at the ceiling, Aetha thought about the question: What do I deserve? A strange question for a queen.

The guard approached again, but then there was a different growl, and the guard was gone. Metal clattered and meat tore. Blood burst on the wall and splashed across the floor. Aetha pushed herself up on her elbows, squinting at long shadows in the moonlight. She saw something immense in the dark, something cast in gray where it stood directly beneath a barred window. The walls shone, wet with the cool humidity of a tropical night. This shape, likewise, shone, muscles moving with breath, swelling and falling.

The guard’s body fell in two halves.

The beastly woman, not red but gray-blue in the night, turned toward Aetha. Her bladed helmet like a slice of the moon upon her head, her long braids trailing moonlight, she stood in the dark with all of the beautiful, terrible strength that Aetha remembered. And Aetha, weak and aching, stared.