Page 65 of The Princesses of Ruin (The Princesses of Ruin #5)

T he Spider Queen roars and pulls against her webbing. I am too small to do anything but watch and wait. Guards try to attend her, but she doesn’t let them near. Her pedipalps form a cradle at the opening of her womb, waiting to receive the child that will emerge.

I was not born this way. She says I hatched from an egg, but when I did, I was not quite what I should’ve been.

All I see are creatures like me, their legs connected to a lower bulbous abdomen and an upper body with arms. She says she has made them all this way so that we’re not alone, but that once they only had two legs, and she did, too.

Will the baby she births have two legs, or eight like me? Will it be my brother, or my sister? Will we be friends?

The Spider Queen screams again, the power of her voice making the cavern walls tremble. This delicate construct she has created in the space between realms, a world between worlds. She made it all for me and fills it with life so that I may grow and become strong.

I’m not big enough to hunt on my own yet, but soon, she says I will learn with her. I’m excited for that day. I’m excited for a friend.

Something appears at her womb’s canal, red and soft. Blood drips from the opening and colors her silvery silk. She pulls on her restrains and bears down, screaming until the whole realm grows quiet with her pain.

The child slips into her grasp, and something else comes after it that slops to the ground. She picks it up, and severs the connection to her baby with her fangs.

The Spider Queen’s black face is highlighted by the drops of blood smeared across her lips. I move closer, wanting to see the child she has birthed.

Her top arms come down around the baby and pull it up to her chest. The screaming thing latches onto her breast and quiets immediately.

The Spider Queen reaches a leg toward me and I climb it, crawling up into her grasp. She holds me beside the baby, and I inspect it closer. Pale skin, black and red fluff on its head, two wiggling legs on the bottom and two arms on top.

No bulbous body like mine.

“This is my daughter,” the Spider Queen says to me.

I swallow and try my voice again. “Daughter.”

“Very good,” she praises me. “You must carry her to her father.”

I cock my head. “Why?”

“Because she cannot be raised here with us.” She gestures to my father, Iksah. “This harsh world is designed for our kind, and she is too different.”

I nod, though my enthusiasm wanes. “I wanted a friend.”

The Spider Queen caresses my face with her gentle hand. “I’m sorry, Keinan.”

“Will you make another child? One more like me?” I ask, my voice still holding a buzzing quality that the Spider Queen’s does not .

She shakes her head. “I don’t think I can, my sweet, but even if I could, my mate is on Gaien. He is the only one I would make another child with and…”

Her voice fades away.

“What is it, my queen?”

She smiles at me, but there is pain there.

“I didn’t look like this before. I looked like her,” she says, bouncing the daughter in her arm.

She must mean that she’s too different to be with her mate again, but that seems silly. Her upper half is the same shape as the daughter’s.

“You are b…byew…beautiful,” I say, struggling to form the letters with my thin lips pulled tight over sharp teeth.

Her smile becomes warm and loving. “Thank you, Keinan.”

The daughter begins to scream again. The Spider Queen quickly crafts a vessel of her softest silk and wraps her.

“I can create an opening just large enough for the two of you,” she says, moving us toward the Looking Water.

Her forelimb moves across the surface of the dark pond she’s told me never to touch, and images come alive within it. There is a two-leg man with black hair and scarred skin. He lays down, eyes closed, in a space that is strange to me.

The Spider Queen smiles and wetness falls from her two largest eyes, the blue ones. I use my hand to brush the wet away.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Tears,” she says. “I’m crying. It can mean that I’m sad, or happy, or sometimes frightened.”

“What are you?”

She looks at me. “All three. ”

She passes the bundle of the daughter into my grasp. It’s warm and smells of blood, but something else, too. I don’t understand the scent.

“Hold her close. Do not drop her.”

“I would never drop the daughter,” I say.

“Nyxari,” she says, stroking a black finger down the child’s cheek. “That’s her name, if he asks.”

“Nyxaaari,” I repeat.

“Yes,” she says, fondly.

The Spider Queen steps over the water, her limbs stretched out on either side.

She tilts us until down is in front of us, and up is behind.

She removes a small, glowing rock from the silken pouch on her hip and dips it into the water.

The array of colors ripples out from the point, and suddenly, the air changes.

The water is an opening just big enough for me and Nyxari.

She wraps a silk lasso around my abdomen and lowers me through the worlds. The air is colder here, and so dry. It smells like him, and some part of it smells like the Spider Queen. There are so many things I don’t understand, so I try not to focus on them, only the man.

I land on the ground and it’s solid, but soft. I climb the apparatus he’s on and stare at him. He’s unconscious, and not rousing, so I press my forelimb into his leg.

He jerks upright, a sharp thing in his hand.

Nyxari screams and I shield her from the weapon, covering her body with my own.

The man breathes heavily, his air stained with something sharp. He rubs his eyes and follows the line of silk up to the ceiling. When his gaze returns to me, his eyes are wide and glistening with the wetness the Spider Queen said was sadness, or happiness, or fear .

“The daughter,” I say, revealing a little bit of her to him.

He sets the weapon aside and leans forward, reaching for the bundle. I pull her away and hiss. I don’t understand why I do this. I was instructed to deliver her, and he’s reaching out to take her.

He moves slower the second time, and I release the child into his arms.

She’s crying, and so is he.

“Nyxari. Her name,” I say.

He glances at me and then pulls the daughter closer to his mouth. His lips pucker and he presses them to Nyxari’s forehead.

I jump down and move toward the opening back home.

“Wait,” the man says, reaching toward me with pain in his scent. “I want to come with you.”

Why would he question the Spider Queen’s choice? He must not understand.

“There is no future for her there. Raise her here.”

“Then…when she’s raised, I want to come with you,” he says.

“Why?”

“I need her. Scarlett…please.”

“Scarllllett.” I imitate his words.

“My wife, my love.”

“Your mate,” I say, remembering the word she used.

He nods. “Yes, my mate.”

His frail body could never survive long in our world, but maybe if the Spider Queen protected him, he would fare well. He is desperate for her and perhaps, one day, I could come back and bring him through. The opening is too small for the Spider Queen, but he could fit.

“How many years to raise her?” I ask .

The Spider Queen told me I grew quickly, my mind enhanced by the magic of the dark goddess who infused all of us when we moved through the doorway here. But I don’t know if that is how Nyxari will grow.

“Twenty years…”

I don’t know how long that is, but the Spider Queen will.

I look up through the doorway home. She’s watching, her eyes leaking and leaving ripples on my passageway. She pulls the silk between us taut and thrums the string to our basic words she has been teaching me for hunting.

“Yes.”

I look back at the man. His gaze is pinned on the opening, on the sight of the Spider Queen.

“No less lovely,” he says, tears spilling down his cheeks.

He thinks she is beautiful, too. Good.

I climb the silk, stopping at the top.

“I will return to take you in twenty years.”