She choked the food down as best she could. The elder Queen ate steadily. The younger queen was finished within two minutes and sat there staring at them, her expression unreadable.

The younger queen then turned to her mother. “Why?”

“We partake of a meal together.”

“Why?”

“Because it might make us stronger.”

The younger queen absorbed that in silence for a moment. Then she asked, “How?”

“By building bonds between us.”

“Bonds.” The younger queen blinked slowly, once. “What need is there for restraints?”

“Not physical bonds,” her mother said. “Symbolic mental attachments. Familiar feelings.”

The young queen absorbed that for half a dozen heartbeats. Then she said, “These things do not improve strength.”

“There is more to strength than physical power.”

The young queen tilted her head. She stared at her mother, then, unnervingly, at Invidia. The Aleran woman could feel the sudden heavy, invasive pressure of the young queen’s awareness impinging upon her thoughts. “What is this creature?”

“A means to an end.”

“It is alien.”

“Necessary.”

The young queen’s voice hardened. “It is alien.”

“Necessary,” repeated the elder Queen.

Again, the young queen fell silent. Then, her expression never changing, she said, “You are defective.”

The enormous table seemed to explode. Splinters, some of them six inches long and wickedly sharp, flew outward like arrows. Invidia flinched instinctively, and barely managed to get her chitin-armored forearm between her and a flying spear of wood that might have plunged through her eye.

Sound pressed so hard against Invidia’s eardrums that one of them burst, a wailing thunderstorm of high-pitched, shrieking howls. She cried out at the pain and reeled out of her chair and back from the table, borrowing swiftness from her wind furies as she went, embracing the weirdly altered sense of time that seemed to stretch instants into seconds, seconds into moments. It was the only way for her to see what was happening.

The vord queens were locked in a fight to the death.

Even with the windcrafting to aid her, Invidia could barely follow the movements of the two vord. Black claws flashed. Kicks flew. Dodges turned into twenty-foot bounds that ended at the nearest wall of the dome, whereupon the two queens continued their struggle while crouched on the wall, bounding and scuttling up the dome like a pair of dueling spiders.

Invidia’s eyes flicked to the ruined table. It lay in pieces. A ragged furrow was torn through one corner, where the younger queen had surged forward, plunging through the massive hardwood table as if it had been no more a hindrance than a mound of soft snow. Invidia could scarcely imagine the tremendous power and focus that would be required for such a thing to happen—from a creature who had been born, it would seem, less than an hour before.