Chapter 45 #2
But still my skin crawls. It feels too damn exposed on the forest floor. Would Jace and Evangeline let her stay down here? No. So maybe she’s in another city.
Maybe I should let her go.
I think about how torn up she was about Saragese. If I drag her back to my side, she won’t survive my world.
A growl claws its way out of my throat.
No.
She’s mine, and I’m hers dammit. If she’ll still have me.
I will figure it out. With Evangeline as queen, that’ll allow me to shelter her from the worst parts of Raza.
I can ease her in slowly. I can keep changing our barbaric laws.
I can wait until she’s ready to be queen, and then I can –somehow– kill Evangeline so I can marry Arienna again.
Or maybe… Maybe I give my ex the crown. She’s crazy, but she won’t destroy Raza. She’ll protect my sister’s legacy perhaps even better than I. My chest tightens as I think about an actual future with my queen.
We can move up to Vyla’s border.
Fight for peace in a different way.
“How is she?” I ask Jace. He’s already given me his daily report on her, but I want to hear it again.
“She’s alive and well and doing better than you. She eats and showers every day. You want a berry?”
“No, I don’t want a fucking berry. I want her.”
“You can’t eat h–” He cuts himself off, but I can hear her giggles ringing in my ears. She would’ve laughed so fucking freely at that. Will she still? Or did I break that? Break her?
Struggling to breathe, I walk faster. Then run. Trying to expunge this desperate energy.
He keeps pace beside me. As annoyed as I am with him though, I’m also grateful to him. He could’ve insisted I bring a whole group of guards with me to Brownston. That would have felt too damn suffocating when I’m already struggling to suck in air.
To find peace through the chaos of my thoughts.
I can give up my crown…
Evangeline isn’t a Morningstar…
I can fake my death, making Nicholas king. Then my ex can marry him...
An hour or so later, I slow to a walk again. We’ve left the suffocating stalks of the meadow and are in a bit of open air. My heart is racing, but it’s a fucking tortoise compared to my thoughts.
“I need to see her.” Spinning towards Jace, I hope like hel he can see the words on my face.
The decision I’ve made – the one I should’ve made as soon as that vote was in.
I never wanted to be king in the first place.
I’ve kept going all this time because Aurelia meant so much to me – means so much to me still, but she is dead, and she would’ve wanted this.
I can see her smiling so purely in my mind, can almost feel her arms around me.
“You’ve finally started living again, Dickie. I’m proud of you.”
Jace nearly breaks in front of me. And I know he can see it.
Guilt slams into me. I stumble back. If I heal, I will be leaving him all alone. “Jace –” I start.
He shakes his head. That triangular knife he carries, the one she gave him all those years ago, spins in his hand. He cuts himself over and over again. His arms. His chest. Even his face.
“Jace –”
“Stop,” he hisses. “Just stop.”
Blood pours down his body. He breathes heavily. Shakes too damn hard.
Shit. On our last holiday with Aurelia, we went to see Brownston – the very one my queen is from. I shouldn’t have taken Jace here. Not this close to her anniversary.
“You will see her,” he finally says, his words tight as he looks at me, “when she asks to see you.”
Wiping his blade on his sleeve, he then pockets it.
But he doesn’t smile. Doesn’t slip back behind that mask he always wears.
I stare at him, trying to think of what to say.
It was never easy, patching up the hole Aurelia left behind in the both of us, helping him through his pain.
But now it feels impossible when he’s still grieving her and I’m ready to move on.
When I want to pass her dream of Raza on to someone else so I can spend my life with my queen.
To be happy with her when I robbed Jace of his princess.
My throat tight, I take a step towards him, but a loud buzzing freezes me in place. He stills too. Our hands are the only things that move, sliding slowly onto the hilts of our blades.
We are outside the wasp runes of Kholar. All it’ll take is one sting to kill us.
The irony of being killed by a wasp isn’t fucking lost on me. If I go out this way though, I’m murdering whatever asshole made this my fate.
“Do you see it?” I whisper to Jace, searching for it as well as I can without moving.
“No.”
It’s coming from –
As it bursts out of the foliage and flies straight at us, Jace draws the sword at his hip. I throw myself at him though, tackling him to the ground before the wasp can get in range of his attack.
“What the –”
“It’s one of” –I hiss as I roll off him and onto my feet– “Arienna’s! Don’t kill it.”
“Are you crazy!” But when he jumps back up himself, his sword raised, he doesn’t go on the offensive. We stand side by side, my knife out despite my desire not to kill the thing.
It hovers in front of us, its colourful body playing dress-up to the dark nightmare of its stinger. As I take in the teal of its thorax, I’m reminded of my queen. It’s her favourite colour.
I slip my blade back in its sheath. There’s no way I can kill it now.
“Dickie, I swear if you die out here, I am throwing you a brownie funeral.”
“They didn’t kill Arienna.”
“You don’t even know if this is one of hers! And this could be the murdery one.”
I look into its giant black eyes. It definitely looks like a murderer. My skin buzzing, I take a step towards it as I try to think of its name. “Bo?”
It flitters around in front of us, darting side to side as if it’s trying to figure out where it wants to stab me first. My face? My chest? My ass? Trying not to think about that, I search my memories some more. Ah, I think Bo is the one that died.
You mean murdered.
By another one of the wasps.
“Delilah?” I ask hopefully as I take another step. Jace curses behind me. That was the nice wasp, right? Now that’s a fucking oxymoron if there ever was one…
The buzz seems to get angrier; its flying more erratic. My stomach dropping, I say, “Hyatt?”
It lands. Then seems to… purr? It’s a softer vibration, and it’s cleaning its front legs as if it doesn’t have a care in the world anymore.
“Dammit, Richard,” Jace says. “Just make sure I have a clean shot.” He must’ve put his sword away, trading it for a throwing knife. Or two. Or three. I don’t look behind me to check; I don’t trust the wasp not to sting me if my back is turned.
Slowly, I take another step towards it. When it walks up to me though, I nearly shit myself. How the hel did Arienna cuddle these damn things? And I know she cuddled them. The way she hugs everyone gives me a heart attack. Does she know how easy it’d be for someone to stab her?
My heart pounding, I try to stay calm. If I panic, Jace will panic, and when Jace panics, he kills things. And the last thing I need when my queen is already upset with me is to be the bearer of bad news.
So I stand without so much as a breath to move my chest while Hyatt sniffs me. Sweat beads down my back. I highly regret putting my knife away.
But then the wasp pulls back, spreads its wings, and flies off.
Staggering, I look at Jace.
“It’s coming back,” he says tightly.
I turn my head around, only to be instantly puzzled by its weird loops of flight. “That’s not normal, right?”
Hyatt flies towards us, then back. Towards us, then back. Circling loops and spirals that are confusing the hel out of me.
“The only thing I know about wasps,” Jace says, “is that they’re evil fuckers.”
“Arienna likes them, so they can’t be all bad…”
“No. She just doesn’t care if things are psycho monsters.”
My chest tightens. Fuck.
All this time, I’ve been thinking of her as a brownie. But she’s so much more than the stereotypes of her people.
Would she have seen the monstrous heart of Raza not as something to fear but to love? Could she be queen?
It doesn’t matter. Nicholas will take my place.
“Shit,” Jace says.
“What?” I ask, my eyes still on Hyatt.
“I think it wants us to follow it.”
I blink.
Blink again.
“What?”
“Shit, it’s going to lure us back to its lair and eat us.”
“I don’t think that’s how wasps hunt,” I say as I take a step forwards. Hyatt flies off, making more happy buzzing noises. I take another step more confidently this time, but Jace grabs my arm.
“How do you know that?” he hisses.
“Because… I’m not an idiot.”
“Great. You have no idea.”
“Look. Fabia took on a wasp. Don’t you think you’re being a bit –” I blink. “Huh. I guess that’s where she learned to fight.”
“No shit. She’s a monster wrangler.”
“And you’re the head of my security, so grow some eggs, and come on.”
Muttering, he takes the lead, a set of throwing knives in each hand. “You know, if all of Arienna’s pets were kind, Fabia wouldn’t have had to learn to fight them.”
“Shhh. I’m pretty certain she said Hyatt doesn’t like loud noises,” I say as we fly after the insect.
“I’m whispering, dickface.”
“Do you know how good wasps can hear?” I don’t, but it just seems unnecessarily risky.
Jace moves silently ahead of me, for once not making some smartass comment.
In about a minute, the wasp lands on a fallen log. It purrs when we land beside it. Then it crawls into a hole in the log and disappears into the dark.
“Oh hel no,” Jace mutters.
I am thinking the same thing, but I crouch over the hole anyway.
“Don’t you dare –”
Throwing my legs over the edge, I drop down into the dark. I spread my wings out as soon as I can.
“Are you dead?” Jace asks.
“No.” The rays of the sun peek through the hole above me, as well as from both ends of the fallen log. I hover in the air for a moment as my eyes adjust to the lower level of light. Jace enters during this time, and when he screams, I jerk back and draw a knife.
“That’s a fucking scorpion!”
“Where?” I see it as soon as I ask. Sitting –lying?
– down in the middle of the log, not far from me, is a dark shape with a tail curving above it.
It jerks away from us, snapping its pincers – no, its pincer.
It only has one arm. And its tail is cut short.
The first of Jace’s knives, which he threw as he screamed, is embedded in its nub. The second blade is in its back.
“Holy fuck,” he gasps.
“Where’s Hyatt?” I ask, looking around the log.
“Probably off to find some more dumbass prey to feed to its scorpion overlord!”
“I don’t think – Oh, shit.”
“What?” Jace screeches as he spins around in the air, no doubt trying to find whatever’s causing my breaking calm.
“Put your knives away.”
“No –”
“It’s harmless. Look at it. It’s running away from us, not towards.” I wave at the scorpion as it scrambles backwards. “It’s hiding in this log because it can’t defend itself.”
He curses without pause as he puts his knives away.
“So…” I say slowly, trying to figure out how to say this without making him want to kill the thing. “I don’t think… Hyatt is a boy.”
“Who the fuck cares?”
Well, you are in a sec…
I clear my throat. “I’m pretty sure Arienna told me that Jack-in-the-Box wasps lay eggs in scorpions.”
His eyes widen. “They fucking do not.”
I nod despite the horror ripping at my insides. “I think that’s why she gave them their fun name.”
“Fun?”
I try for a smile, then drop it. Nothing about this is going to be ‘fun’ in any way, shape, or form. “I think… Hyatt has just dropped off the grandkids.”
“What the fuck do you mean, she’s just dropped off the grandkids!”
“Well… Arienna must be the closest thing she has to a mum.”
“No. No, you are not – We are not. No!”
I grab his arm to stop him from throwing another knife at it.
“I’m not suggesting to take it back to Kholar.
” I pause. Or maybe I should threaten to if he doesn’t tell me where my wife is.
.. No, he’ll just kill it then. “But we can feed the scorpion so it survives long enough for the larvae to come out.”
“Come out? Come out! Dickie, they’re not going to pop out of its anus like a beaded butt plug. They’re going to chew their way out of its body – everywhere. At once.”
“And once that happens, our job will be done.”
“We don’t have a job! It’s a scorpion! Full of wasps. That we don’t like. Just let it die. Let them all die.”
“They’re her kids, Jace.”
“They’re not her kids.” He pulls away from me. “Oh my gods, this is what happens when you don’t sleep for three days. You become delusional.”
“I’d sleep if you tell me where my wife is,” I growl.
“Fuck. Fuck,” he mutters, ignoring me completely.
“If Irin and Megan ward both ends of the log so nothing can get in to eat the scorpion and we bring it some food, I think it’ll be fine. We can drop supplies down the hole we came through.” Then I can blackmail Arienna into coming back if she wants to see her grandkids.
My throat closes as I realise the truth of that statement.
She loves wasps even though they kill their siblings.
She loves monsters even when they have nothing worth loving.
“Fuck,” I rasp as Jace continues his tirade of curses.
Flying out of the log, I land on the forest floor and try to breathe. The sun bathes me in its warmth, but I still feel so fucking cold.
My wife is stronger than I ever gave her credit for. She’s stronger than anyone I know.
Whereas we all hide from the pain of death, shutting people out in fear of losing them later, Arienna embraces it. She loves regardless. She loves fully and freely. Wasps only live a few weeks, yet that doesn’t stop her from giving them all that she has.
My world will not break her.
It can’t.
Because Arienna does not fear death.
She acknowledges it. She embraces it. She sees it as part of life.
And life – that she loves in all its forms.
Flying back to Kholar, I’m desperate to find my wife so I can apologise and beg her to take me back.