Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(43)

“That’s a good bet,” Breakfast said, grabbing Una and pushing her back toward the bottleneck. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

Lily saw Caleb pull a pilfered steak knife out of his boot. She put out a hand to stop him. “No, don’t! If you kill her, the entire Hive will be alerted. We’ll never get out of here alive,” she said.

“Oh, we’re getting out,” Rowan said. He snatched Lily up into his arms before anyone could tell him not to and started kicking at the wax around the Queen’s belly to get into the room beyond.

“Rowan! Where are you going?” Tristan snarled.

“We’ll never be able to jump up that long drop. We have to go this way,” he snarled back.

The Queen’s belly spasmed next to Rowan’s head. Lily laid a hand on the swollen skin as she suffered through another contraction.

“Poor thing,” she whispered, torn for a moment and wanting to help.

She saw the look of distaste on Rowan’s face as he went back to kicking his way through to the next room. The rest of the coven seemed to collect themselves from their initial shock and joined him. The wax was thick and soft, and it absorbed their blows rather than shattering, making it difficult to move aside.

Lily thought for a moment that the Workers covering the Queen would attack them, but they didn’t. In fact they hardly took any notice at all, and continued on as if blinded by their single task of tending the Queen.

We may not be so lucky with the Sisters, Rowan said in mindspeak, picking up on Lily’s thoughts.

He broke through the wall of wax and put Lily down. Protect Juliet, Lily told them in mindspeak. She’s the only one besides me who can’t fight.

Breakfast, Caleb, and Una formed a circle, keeping her and Juliet in the center as they moved out. The rest of the Queen’s abdomen lay alongside them as they moved forward.

Careful, Tristan warned them all in mindspeak.

There were lines of little Workers scuttling to and from the body of the Queen on the floor and the coven had to tread gently not to step on them. The Queen’s body was at least thirty feet long and ten feet high and supported by wax buttresses that obscured the end of it.

Stop, Rowan said, raising a hand. There was movement up ahead. Rowan looked at Caleb and tilted his head. Caleb slid forward silently at Rowan’s command and melted in the shadows. A few moments passed.

I think it’s safe, Caleb said. Just move slowly.

They came forward and saw Warrior Sisters lined up at the end of the Queen’s abdomen. Lily stopped short when she saw them, and then noticed that these Sisters looked different. They had lighter bodies, wore no armor, and they didn’t carry whips; nor did they seem to see anything but the task before them. With each spasm of the Queen’s abdomen, a translucent white egg the size of a backpack dropped from her tail into the waiting arms of a Sister. After the large egg was birthed, the Sister waited with her other hand held aloft for a drizzle of tiny Worker eggs that she caught and cupped protectively to her chest before hurrying off with the whole clutch.

I think I’m going to be sick, Una said.

Steady, Rowan replied. Everyone stay calm. Act like you belong here and they probably won’t even notice us.

Rowan led them past the docile line of Sisters to one of the less-used hexagonal tunnels that led upward. The passage let out into a storage chamber that had two dozen wax sarcophaguses. As they weaved their way through them, Lily saw male bodies squirming inside. Their pale and heavily muscled limbs were twisted up with black veined wings. She was glad they all had their faces turned away.

Drones, Tristan said. Keep moving, Ro.

The next ramp opened into a huge cavern. Towers of wax held six-sided cells, each with the dark shape of a growing Sister just behind a protective film. Along one wall Sisters were bringing the newly laid eggs to empty cells. Next to them, Sisters were bricking up the cells with wax from their mandibles. Rowan led them away from the action.

They made their way up a series of ramps and tunnels, and the smell of pollen and honey grew stronger. Workers by the millions buzzed in and out like a black fog. She was scared to inhale and possibly swallow one of them. The walls dripped with honey and Lily could taste pollen dust, bittersweet and chalky, in the back of her throat.

These Workers are coming back to the Hive from the outside, Caleb said. Where are they coming in?

Breakfast spotted it first—a black haze of bee bodies that obscured what was probably the exit. The coven made its way there slowly. True Warrior Sisters, the big-bodied, thick-armored, whip-carrying kind, hovered around the exit. They perched on the dripping walls and licked the honey with their long, tubular tongues. Their heads twitched lightning fast, constantly on alert, but their senses were directed out into the world beyond, not back inside the hive.

This is insane, Breakfast said in mindspeak. Lily felt his heartbeat quicken.

A Warrior Sister detached from the wall and landed in front of the coven with a smacking sound. Her human hand reached back to milk her stinger for venom as she tasted the air, uncertain and trying to decide if there was a threat. She paused, transfixed on Rowan, who stood point. His chest was pumping with blood and breath.

Lily could feel fear rising in her coven like a swelling tidewater that lifted them, weightless and kicking, off the safety of the shore. The rolling draft from a million shivering wings spun the scent of panic throughout the hive in an instant. The rest of the Warrior Sisters by the entrance turned as one.