Chapter 7 #2
“What are you talking about? Baby birds can’t eat us!” My queen giggles. “They have to wait for their mum. They hop along, opening their mouth, waiting for the worm to jump in, but if we just don’t jump in –”
She gasps as her friend jerks to a sudden halt. Her arms swing in circles as she careens forward, but instead of going straight and staying on the same branch, she weaves to the left, stumbling down a smaller one.
“Keep going! I’ll hold them off!” her friend shouts as she bends to grab hold of a twig still attached to the branch. She rips it free as she straightens. “For fuck’s sake!” she curses as I fly over her, leaving her to Jace.
Chasing after my queen, I reach her within seconds. I reach out to grab her, but just as I do, she looks behind her shoulder at me, and there’s so much delight in her eyes, I hesitate. When’s the last time I saw such purity?
I stop, letting her get away. Just for a few seconds. Just until she turns her head again to look at me, teasing me in what she thinks is a game of chase. When’s the last time I’ve ever been able to play?
Not since I was a young child, before I was drafted into the Razian army.
Shaking my head, I scowl at myself. I don’t have time for such nonsense. I open my wings, ready to take off, but she slows to a stop, then turns around to look at me.
“Awww, poor baby. Are you tired already?” she asks as she walks back towards me.
Giggling, she shakes her head as she cups her cheeks with both hands.
“What am I saying? Birds can’t talk.” Sticking her hands under her armpits, she starts to flap her elbows.
“Screee! Screee! This way, little birdie. We’ll find your nest. Screee! Screee! Follow meeee!”
I take a step towards her, and the biggest smile lights up her face.
“I knew I could speak bird!” she preens, and for another damn moment, I’m caught off guard. Fuck, I want her.
And not just for a signature.
Not just as my queen who I’m then going to kill.
I want her as –
Irritated with myself, I grab her arm. Her eyes widen as she cranes her neck back to look at me. Her mouth parts, and for one damn moment –yet again– I hesitate.
Jace is handling the other brownie. The centre of the city is above us by a number of branches. Not even the houses on the outskirts of the suburbs start this far down. It’s just the two of us, with the forest cloaked softly around us, and the stars shining bright above.
And those damn pink eyes staring up at me.
And those damn pink lips curved into a little O.
Desire slams through me – so foreign in its long absence.
But instinct remembers, and I lean down to –
“Chirp, chirp, scree!” she says so suddenly that it makes me jump.
She stumbles back.
Her arm rips free.
And then she’s falling over the edge of the branch.
“Screee-aaaaaaaaaah!”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jace asks as we meet up later. Both of the brownies are now in a cell in the castle dungeons, but I can still feel my queen pressed up against me as I plucked her unconscious body out of the air. She’s so soft and small, so different to the warrior women of Raza.
“Yes,” I say, ridding myself of the plague of my thoughts. She’s a signature, nothing more. I cross my arms as I face my head of security in the privacy of my chambers. “She’s perfect for what I need.”
“She’s an innocent.”
“She entered illegally. That makes her a criminal.”
“We’re not talking about a misdemeanour. You’re setting her up to be executed.”
“I need her to agree to marry me.”
He shakes his head. “Brownies aren’t allowed to say no.”
“They’re not supposed to scream either. I can’t take the risk that she’ll refuse.”
His jaw tightens. I know he doesn’t agree with this, but he doesn’t have the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders.
I need that signature, and keeping her alive afterwards will be more of a torture than her execution.
She might not die quickly while I’m pulling out her intestines, but she will die, and that’s more mercy than the Fates have given me.
“Raza will break her in more ways than she could ever imagine,” I say softly.
He exhales, knowing damn well what I mean. We’ve lost too many people.
Too many dreams.
Too many pieces of our soul.
If I marry her and keep her, it will not be a kindness.
There are worse things than death. A great deal many things.
Shaking his head, Jace runs a hand through his curly blond hair. “Fine,” he says eventually. “I’ll tell the Court we found them near the portal.”
Damning her to an execution.
For the portals to Earth were all closed off by decree of the archangels during the Great Extinction – a war that ravaged this world, along with the rest of the Seven Planes thousands of years ago.
If anyone tries to open them, an archangel will destroy the entire city that surrounds it.
In our case, given how much smaller we are, they’ll wipe out our entire forest.
The Court will be forced to demand her execution.
So even with us married, I will stay a ruling king.