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  “No!” Brynn shook her head, her long hair whispering over her shoulders. “No—stay away from me!”

  “Princess—or should I say my Breeding Queen, for that is what you are now—my Queen, please behave yourself. And do not make things…difficult.” On the last word, X'izith rushed forward and seized her arms in his two upper hand/pinchers. With his two lower pinchers, he grabbed her legs and parted them, despite her struggles to be free.

  “No! NO!” Brynn shrieked. Kicking and fighting, she fishtailed her body, trying to get loose from him, trying to get away from the horrible, huge, insect body that was getting closer and closer to her own.

  “Be still!” X'izith hissed. “I do not wish to mentally incapacitate you as I did the captain and crew of the ship that brought you here—it would be bad for the royal grubs. But if I am forced…”

  His barb began to tilt upward, its sharp, dagger-like point aiming for the opening between her legs. The tip, still dripping clear venom, got closer and closer to her most vulnerable, delicate area.

  “You’re not putting that thing in me!” Brynn shouted at him as loudly as she could. “I don’t want anything in me there ever again! Get away from me! LET ME GO!”

  “You heard the Princess,” growled a familiar voice. “Let her go, you fucker!”

  To her surprise and disbelief Brynn saw Varin’s face, his broad shoulders looming behind the monster’s back.

  A dream—it has to be a dream. A fever dream brought on by the Blood Honey and desperation, she told herself but she couldn’t stop herself from speaking, even though she knew it must be an illusion.

  “My Kindred,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “Varin…oh Varin, is it really you?”

  “What?” X'izith started to turn but suddenly there was a bright silver blade in Varin’s right hand.

  “I said let her go!” he growled and slashed out, his arm coming down in a brutal, scythe-like motion.

  X'izith let out a high-pitched unearthly shriek and suddenly the long, dripping, black breeding barb was lying on the ground, now dribbling smoking venom from both ends.

  All four of the claws gripping Brynn’s arms and legs tightened unbearably for a moment and she was certain the huge bug was going to rip her into four quarters in his agony. Then she found herself dropped like a pile of dirty laundry on the ground as X'izith doubled over, clutching between his long, chitinous legs and shrieking so high and loud she felt her eardrums might burst.

  “No!” he shrieked. “My barb! You cut off my breeding barb!”

  “You shouldn’t have been sticking it where it didn’t belong,” Varin snarled.

  He rushed around the fallen form of X'izith, still thrashing in agony, and grabbed Brynn by the arm, hauling her to her feet.

  “Princess,” he said. “Can you run?”

  “I…I think so.” Brynn still felt light-headed from the Honey, sure this must be a dream. “Are you real?” she asked Varin.

  “I’m real and we’re both going to be really dead if he gets over that before we get out of here,” he growled. “So hurry up, Brynn—let’s go!”

  He led her, staggering and stumbling, out of the Breeding Chamber which inexplicably opened for him when he tapped the sphincter-like door. Brynn wondered why and if it would have opened for her if she’d gotten close enough to it to try it. But before she could wonder much, they were through, passing by two dead sentries and running on the frighteningly narrow bridge over the pits.

  Brynn staggered once and almost fell, but Varin pulled her back, his right hand locked around her upper arm in a death grip.

  “Listen,” he muttered to her as they came to the end of the bridge. “We might have to fight our way out. If that happens, stay behind me and keep up. I can’t pull you along—I’ll need my good hand for shooting.” He let go of her arm to resheath his long, silver knife and pull out a blaster instead.

  “Your good hand?” Brynn shook her head woozily. “I don’t…don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to. Just tell me you can keep up.” He looked at her earnestly.

  Brynn’s skin still felt horribly hot to touch and the edges of her vision were still tinged with red from the Blood Honey. But she refused to let the strange daze that had fallen over her when she was forced to drink it to take over again.

  She lifted her chin.

  “I can keep up, Varin—just please, get us out of here!”

  “Going to do my best.” He brushed her cheek lightly with his left hand, which was gloved. “You’re brave, little one. We’ll get out of this, I swear it.”

  “I believe you,” Brynn told him. “Let’s go.”

  They ran for their lives and somehow, she managed to keep up.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The scent of agony, which his injury released, drew workers—both sentient and not—to X'izith’s side. Both the high and low orders milled outside the Breeding Chamber uncertainly while he screamed and cursed and thrashed.

  The low-level worker whose job it was to administer Blood Honey to the Breeding Queens skittered around the walls and ceilings, distressed but not sure what to do. In its panic, it ate part of the severed breeding barb, chopping it up into bite-sized mouthfuls with its mandibles. X'izith looked on, unable to stop its mindless cannibalism because his pain was too great to control even the lowest under his dominion.

  They will pay, he swore to himself as the agony rendered him helpless and shamefully vulnerable. By the Nameless Ones, they will pay and pay and pay…

  At last the high-level worker he had given special access to came scuttling in through the irising aperture of the Breeding Chamber and stopped at X'izith’s side.

  “My barb…” he managed to gasp out.

  The worker understood at once—it forced the mindless one down from the ceiling where it was shaking with unease and, by means of chemical signals, instructed it to disgorge the numbing Blood Honey over the pitiful stump which was all that was left between X'izith’s legs.

  As the fierce, stinging anguish at last began to diminish, X'izith was finally able to speak.

  “Where…are they?” he rasped. “My Breeding Queen and the one who came and took her—the Kindred—where are they? Stop them!”

  But a quick chemical consensus of the Hive revealed that they Princess and the one who had stolen her had been allowed to pass through, mostly unmolested. Although they had had a short scuffle near the entrance of the Hive, they had, in the end, escaped.

  X'izith swore in the language of the Nameless Ones—those Gods of Nothing and Darkness that watched with greedy joy over the wanton destruction wrought by the Hive.

  “How could this have happened?” he demanded of the worker who was grooming his antennae with nervous compulsiveness.

  “Apologies, my Sovereign. It appears that the male who stole your Breeding Queen somehow convinced one of the non-sentient markers to spray him with the belonging scent. He was able to pass through the Hive with no difficulty, I am afraid—though he still killed several workers and sentries along the way.”

  “Unacceptable!” X'izith raged. “How could he know our ways?”

  “Did you not say he was a Kindred?” the worker asked. “While waiting for you to complete the courtship rituals on the planet Galen, I accessed information about his species. I thought it wise since I heard the name mentioned several times in conjunction with the Princess as I monitored your dealings.”

  “Yes, and what did you find?” X'izith buzzed angrily.

  “That there are few on this side of Night’s Window—the vast cosmic dust cloud that many call the Blind—but very many on the other side. In fact, they are the flesher species I was telling you about—the one we were sent information on via a strange signal that came to us from the other side of the cloud.”

  “Ah, yes—I do remember you saying that to me.” X’izith nodded. “But I was eager to go and breed my new Queen.” He made an angry, chittering sound. “Now she is gone and with her, any