Free STARGATE ATLANTIS: The Furies (Book 4 in the Legacy series) by Jo Graham

to Waterlight, her voice light. “He is very pretty, this one of yours. Will you make him pallax someday?”
    Waterlight tossed her hair in a fair approximation of Steelflower. “Perhaps,” she said. “If he continues to please me.”
    “Very pretty,” Steelflower said as he flushed beneath her gaze. “You have good taste, sister.”
    “Thank you,” Waterlight said. She looked down at the human on the floor. His form was bestial as Bronze was graceful, and yet he too seemed affected, a fine layer of moisture standing on his skin. “I am minded to give him to you, if you stand as ally with me.”
    Thorn hissed, but she turned to him. “We must have allies,” she said quietly. “And this is better than all else that is before us. I should rather an elder sister than an overlady.”
    “You are like to have neither,” Thorn began, but he did not finish. He would not speak so before Steelflower. It would be more than unseemly. Open disrespect of his queen would make him despised.
    “Then this one will accompany me to my ship,” Steelflower said.
    Bronze blinked, putting himself forward. “But is that not dangerous, my queen? He is an animal, and not a tame one. What if he should harm you?”
    “This one?” Steelflower said contemptuously. “He has not it in him. His mind is open to me, and he can no more raise his hand to me than you to Queen Waterlight.” She turned the human’s face up to the light, her dark green nails biting into the skin of his face, turning it this way and that. Her eyes were on his, and she smiled a thin, cruel smile. “You are mine, are you not, human?”
    “Yes,” he whispered as though it were dragged from the core of his being, his body swaying forward as though the touch of her skirts were balm.
    “Then make your abject obeisance,” she said, and released him.
    He bent, graceful as a blade, his head to the floor, his lips to the toe of her boot. “I yield,” he said.
    Steelflower smiled. “You see?” she said to Waterlight. “He is quite tame. I have no fear that he will harm me. I hold him entirely with my mind.”
    “I have never seen a human who was not hand-reared behave thus,” Waterlight said, and her eyes were shining. “You are very strong.”
    “Yes,” Steelflower said simply. “We will go to my ship.”
    “Will you not stay and talk with me a little?” Waterlight asked. “Surely if you name me sister…”
    Her head whipped around at the same moment as Steelflower’s, both their ships registering surprise at the same moment, Thorn’s a millisecond later.
    “There is another hive ship coming out of hyperspace,” Thorn said. He turned to look at Steelflower, his voice as dry as ever. “Perhaps it is Queen Death, and you may show me your alliance.”
    Waterlight gulped.
    The third blade reported very correctly. “There is a transmission coming in. Shall I put it on the screen here?”
    “Yes,” Waterlight said, her back straight as Steelflower’s beside her, the human crouching at her knees, almost touching her leg. “Sister,” she said.
    “I do not fear her,” Steelflower whispered. “And neither must you.”
    The image on the screen resolved. Not Queen Death as she had feared, but an older blade, his face seamed with age, a star tattoo about one eye. For a moment, a moment only, he hesitated, seeing the queens together. “My beloved queen,” he said, dropping his head in deep respect. “I have come to rendezvous with you as you directed. It is my honor to serve you, and my pleasure to see that you are well.”
    Steelflower did not blink. “My dear Guide,” she said evenly. “You are as always the model consort.”
    “Four hundred men,” Thorn said tightly. “We are reading four hundred men aboard your hive, and shields are raised. Is this how you bring alliance?”
    “Guide is tender of my safety,” Steelflower said. “And sometimes overzealous. Guide, drop your shields immediately so that Queen Waterlight may see that I intend