Chapter 7
Seven
The queen sits at the top of the Razian hierarchy. Beneath her kneels the king.
The only kneeling I’ll do for a woman is when her legs are spread before my tongue. - King Richard
If I wasn’t already planning on killing the Court, I sure as fuck would be now.
They let it leak that I’m looking for a bride, and now every female noble, influential merchant, and war hero has requested a private audience.
Most of them I’m able to refuse, but I cannot afford to offend them all.
A king needs his allies, and when I extinguish the Court, I’ll need powerful ones to have my back.
Especially since there are whispers of a coup again.
Nothing substantial, of course. Not yet.
But I’ve caused too much tension by offering Vyla, the fairy kingdom to the north, a way to surrender rather than annihilating them completely.
Half of the populace is saying it’s a clear sign of weakness.
That this is why a man isn’t fit to rule Raza.
The other thinks it’s a plan of idiocy. That it will cause the other three kingdoms we’re at war with to attack us harder, thinking we’re ripe for the picking, and if they do so all at the same time, we could be the ones being annihilated.
So when the door to my study is opened for the seventh time tonight, I school my face into a mask of pleasantry and look up from my work.
Yet another woman stands before me, hoping to take my crown.
But the mere fact that she is here means she will not be the one I marry.
I need someone I can manipulate. Who isn’t bright or ambitious.
Who does not know even the basis of our laws.
And who is too naive to see me coming until my knife is in her back.
“Your Majesty,” the woman says, bowing at the waist until I can see the back of her neck.
Fighting the urge to stab her in it and have Jace clean up the mess, I wait to hear her out.
As she drones on, it isn’t lost on me that this is what the Court wants – keeping me too busy to see to my royal responsibilities, let alone to any of my nefarious plans.
It’s been six days since that damn wedding, and with every day that passes, the Court has more time to discover what I’m up to while I don’t have the time to make sure they can’t.
So I burn through our conversation as fast as possible – pleasantries, respecting the influence of her family, flirting with her just enough that she thinks she has a chance at my hand but not so much that she’ll turn spiteful when she does not get it, and then kicking her out. Politely, of course.
As soon as Jace closes the door, I focus back on my work, shifting through the ridiculous pile of public grievances laid upon my desk.
Most of them are about our upcoming peace treaty with the Vylians.
Five months ago, I led our troops to a hard-won victory, conquering not just the border area that our two kingdoms have been fighting over for centuries but also a handful of Vyla’s major cities.
I carved a clear path to their capital. I could have enslaved them all, including their king, but instead, I waved a white flag.
A move that will “destroy our kingdom”, according to the grievance in front of me.
My brows pinched, I start to read further, but I’ve not made it one paragraph before the next knock sounds.
With a curse, I push to my feet and head for my study window.
Yanking it open, I lean out and tumble into a roll.
My wings spread out, and I take off under the glow of the firefox moss that fills the lamps of our city.
Jace joins me in the night sky, chuckling in a way that makes me want to tear off his wings and watch him fall to the ground below. “Only you would be upset by spending an evening with beautiful women,” he teases.
“They’re not women. They’re locusts.” Ready to strip the very life out of the world, chewing it down to bone.
None of them wish to marry me to rule by my side.
They will hold more power than me as soon as they’re crowned.
Then my life will be theirs to end because the Court will push it into their head (if the thought’s not already there) that I am no longer needed.
I am Raza’s first ruling king, and they are determined that I will be the last.
“Shall I kidnap a commoner for you then?” Jace says.
“They are more likely to be illiterate and less likely to be knowled–” I stop, my eyes narrowing as a movement along the great trunk of our tree catches my attention.
Hovering in the air, my wings beating rapidly, I search through the darkness for what I just saw.
Or think I saw. Maybe it was only a trick of the –
“What the fuck?” Jace says as he hovers beside me, our translucent wings glowing softly in the night.
“Go get Echo,” I say, drawing one of the many knives I keep on me.
She’s the head of my Royal Guard and will be able to organise an attack force within seconds.
A cold calm rushes through me as I prepare to kill the enemy daring to invade our home.
But Jace grabs my wrist before I can dive on top of it and slit its throat.
“I don’t think it’s a Jokeni,” he says.
It doesn’t have the thick body of a beetle-like Okahi nor the long, slithering tail of an Alzan. What else can it be but one of the bipedal ants we’ve been fighting in the east?
In order to defeat the Vylians in one big push, I pulled in troops from all around Raza.
Doing so left us momentarily weaker on our other fronts.
A Jokeni assassin could have easily slipped through the holes in our defences.
They move erratically, darting from one side to the other, just like the silhouette climbing our tree is.
But before I can pull free of my bodyguard’s grip, I see it. A flash of pale-pink hair catching in the moonlight. Jokeni do not have hair, their entire bodies, just like the Okahi, are made of an exoskeleton.
“What the fuck?” I say, truly surprised for the first time in a long time. “Is that... a brownie?”
“Pissed off her feet, by the looks of it,” Jace says. “Though the one following her looks more sober.”
It takes me a second to pull my eyes away from the bob of light-pink hair. It takes me even longer to spot the other silhouette I missed because my eyes keep darting back to the first brownie.
But there she is. Another one, moving in a straight line – or as straight as a line can be when climbing our great tree given the buttress roots snake along the forest floor.
Natural spikes sprout from them too to stop the larger animals from trying to climb the trunk, but they’re too small to deter us smaller races.
I blink. Look back at the drunk brownie as she reaches the first branch. My chest tightens more the longer I watch her. I don’t like surprises.
“What the fuck?” I say again because what else is there to say.
“Are they… invading us?” Despite our two kingdoms being at peace, brownies still have to request entry into our cities, but the idea of them winning a war is preposterous.
They have zero defences, zero weapons, and zero witches.
Magic takes time to learn, and they do not have any schools.
Jace shrugs. “I doubt it. I bet they’re trying to invite us to another orgy.”
I frown as I fly down a bit further, scanning the roots of the tree until I spot the post box we built for them centuries ago.
Any invites are to go in there. Inside the box are runes that will crumble any paper into dust so it can never be full.
They think we get the invite, and we don’t have to clean their bodies off our branches or the forest floor after they fall to their deaths.
And they always fall to their deaths – because someone pushes them.
“The box is still standing,” I say, but my mind has already left that thought behind as the gears turn on another. Her arms careen wide. She stumbles towards the edge, and I no longer care why she’s here. I’m going to have her as my wife.
“She’s perfect,” I say as I dive down, shifting the stroke and timing of my wings.
Her friend grabs her by her wrist and hauls her back before I can snatch her out of the air by her waist. With a yelp, Sober Brownie spins in place and starts to run along the branch of the tree, dragging her friend behind her.
“Run!” she yells, and my eyes narrow as I land on the branch of the tree.
Jace lands beside me in half a second. “Did she just yell?” he asks. “I thought brownies aren’t supposed to yell?”
“They’re not supposed to climb our trees either,” I say, hesitating for a second. Perhaps she isn’t as perfect as I think she is?
But then the head of pink hair turns to look at me over her shoulder. Our eyes lock. My breath catches, and I know perfection when I see it.
Lifting her hand, she waves at me. “Fabia! Look, it’s a baby bird! He doesn’t even have his feathers yet.”
“You fucking idiot! Just run!”
“Did Lilac-Hair just curse?” Jace asks, but I don’t care. She isn’t the one I want.
“Separate them,” I order as I spread my wings again. “We need to grab them before someone sees. I’ll take the pink one.”
I take off before he can question me, but he keeps up alongside. Jace’s reflexes are second only to the head of the Royal Guard. There’s a reason he’s my head of security.
We fly a lot faster than they can run. My queen –a name that slips through my mind so easily– keeps trying to look over her shoulder. She keeps tripping over the bark of the branch, and if it wasn’t for her friend, she would’ve fallen at least six times already.
“Wait! I think it needs help!” she says as she starts trying to tug herself free.
“We need help! We never should’ve come here!”
“But what about our plan?”
“Forget the plan! We’re not going to be alive for the aftermath to be our problem!”