Chapter 47
Forty-Seven
A good little slut fights for her king.
Even if he’s being an idiot.
- Arienna
Training to fight, it turns out, is bloody hard. Emphasis on the bloody.
I’ve been at this for five days, and I’m still not a very useful member of my team. Most of the time, our opponents ignore me so they can gang up on Frances. Nolan is the first to get knocked down. I try to help him by embracing my inner Fabia, but kicking kids still comes really hard to me.
As two cherubs jump Stevie, I charge in to help her.
But halfway there, I trip over my own feet.
I fall towards the ground, my arms flailing.
Spinning away from Stevie, Face-kicking Cherub –Clarissa, her real name is– flies over and kicks me in the fucking face.
I hit the ground hard, but at least I don’t lose consciousness this time.
I scramble to get on my feet, but she grabs a fistful of my hair and wrenches me onto my back.
“Ow!”
The whistle blows, and Stef releases me. Exhaling hard, I grasp the hand she offers me, which is full of strands of my hair, and sit up.
“You’re getting faster,” she says. “I only kicked you once this time.”
I work my jaw. “You only need one.”
She giggles and sits beside me. Despite them all taking pleasure in kicking my ass – and my chest and my legs and my face –this blocking thing is hard– they all jostle for the chance to sit next to me. I’m like one of those blind runts the rest of the litter takes care of.
As the next two groups are fighting it out, I catch sight of Fabia. I wave at her. She tilts her head at me as she walks up to Gallagher and whispers something in his ear.
“Orian, you’re in charge while I’m gone,” he says. “When I get back, I expect you all to be working as hard as if I was here.”
“Yes, sir!” Rising to his feet, the head of Squadron Raven stands at strict attention.
At nine years old, he’s bigger than a lot of the other kids, but he’s still a scrawny little thing.
“Okay, you asswipes,” he says as he addresses those of us sitting in the audience, “you have a hard day ahead of you. If you think you will get any mercy, you might as well go jump off a –”
“Easy, raven.” Gallagher puts a hand on his shoulder. “Leadership is about helping your team succeed.”
“Yes, sir.” He turns back to us. “Okay, you adorable, little cuddle bunnies,” he says in the same voice I use for the animals I find, “let’s all have some fun.”
Fighting back a grin, Gallagher turns to me. “Fabia needs you.” As he makes a bee-line for Echo, I head over to my best friend.
“I knocked over Killian earlier today,” I tell her proudly.
“Great job. Which one is he again?”
“Uh… one of the big ones,” I lie.
“Uh huh.”
“He’s the tallest.”
“So that makes him what?” She holds her hand at chest height. “About this tall?”
“And the strongest!”
“He’s six and you’re a grown-ass woman.”
“But he’s fast!”
Laughing, she slings an arm over my shoulders. “Come on. I need to talk to you.”
My smile fading, I look at my feet. For the last two days, she’s brought up Richard wanting to see me.
But the sharp pain in my chest has settled into a dull ache, and I’m not ready to rip that hole wide open again.
Nor am I ready to show him my progress – mostly because there hasn’t been a lot of it.
But I know I am capable of being Raza’s queen. Of being Richard’s wife and equal. I just need time to prove it. To him. And to me.
“How is he?” I ask softly.
“He misses you.”
“Is he… spending a lot of time... with Evangeline?” My stomach twists with nausea. Has he tied her up to a beam yet? Has he told her how much trust means to him?
Is she using my fucking safe word?
Does he listen to her when she calls it?
“I don’t know,” Fabia says.
We fall into silence as we walk through the barracks.
Ari waves at me – something he does every time he sees me.
He is cute with his freckles and easy laugh.
Pushing down my pain, I grin and wave back.
He’s terrifying to watch in the square, so I’ve been trying to study his moves given he has a bad wing and can’t fly.
Him and Fabia constantly go at it in a friendly way. As we pass him, she flicks him off.
“Faby, baby!” he says, pretending to grab her finger like one does a kid’s nose. Then he holds his own middle finger sideways and slides it through a hole he makes with his other hand. In and out. In and out.
“Keep dreaming, Ari.”
“Oh, I wi–” He cuts off with a small yelp.
I look over my shoulder to see Nicholas holding him by the scruff of his neck.
“Stop harassing people,” he growls before shoving him away.
Gritting her teeth, Fabia pivots to face him. “I can handle myself.”
“Clearly, but it doesn’t mean you should have to.” He walks towards us, his violet gaze never leaving hers.
Her eyes narrow.
“Have you two fucked yet? Because I really think that would help with a lot of your –” I yelp as she shoves me into the wall. Laughing, I stand back up.
Finally pulling his eyes off Fabia, Nicholas looks at me. “Someone wants to see you. I can’t say who, but I need you to follow me.”
“If it’s Richard…” I say, my smile falling.
“It’s not.”
Looking into his eyes, trusting him not to hurt me, I nod.
He gestures down the hall, but when Fabia starts to walk with us, he puts an arm in front of her.
“I’m coming –”
“It’s okay, Fabia,” I say despite the nerves twisting my stomach. “I’ll be okay.” Pushing out a smile, I joke, “And if I’m not, you know the first person to kill.”
Her lips tighten as she glances at Nicholas. Looking back at me, she nods. “I’ll talk to you later then.”
“Yeah.” I follow Richard’s brother down the hall. My eyes on my feet, I let the silence thicken between us.
“Do you think he’s right?” I ask softly, not sure if I want to hear his answer. Although I don’t know much about the man beside me, having only interacted with him a handful of times, he makes me comfortable, and I trust him not to lie to me.
“The thing about Dickie,” he says slowly, “is he – we lost someone very close to us because of this life. He’s afraid the same thing will happen to you.”
“But we all die.”
“Not like this.” His words, soft and pained, squeeze at the air in my lungs.
“Did they get tortured?”
“No.” He pauses as he knocks on a door and says, “I’m an idiot.”
“No, you’re –”
He holds up a finger, imploring me to wait. A second later, the door opens into a dark room. He gestures for me to enter, and ignoring the twisting of my stomach, I do so without hesitation.
As the door shuts behind me, Nicholas still in the hall, I have a moment of doubt. But then the light flicks on, and I know there’s no darting back outside.
A one-legged woman sits on the floor. A prosthetic leg rests against the wall behind her. “Sit,” she says.
As if given an order by Gallagher, I do so.
“My name’s Evangeline.”
“Bitch.” My eyes widen as I clamp my mouth shut.
She cocks a brow, but my gaze flies to her prosthesis.
Feeling guilty, I remember what I wished would happen to her. I hope she gets into a bad accident and loses a leg or something.
Oh my gods.
“How did you lose your leg?” I squeak.
“A Vylian cut it off when we were at war,” she says, and I sigh in relief.
“Redric?” I ask, recalling the only Vylian I know.
“Who?” Her eyes draw a complete blank.
“Someone Richard said you cursed. You kept shrinking his penis?”
“Oh, yeah. He mentioned him a couple days ago.” She waves a hand. “No. I killed the person who took my leg. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because you have become a threat to the kingdom, and it’s my job to eliminate such threats.”
“Oh, okay.” She said it so casually, the meaning of her words didn’t really click. A second later, they do. I jump to my feet, looking for something to hit her with. Would it be bad if I beat her to death with her own leg?
Reaching forwards, she grabs my ankle and yanks it hard. I yelp as I fall back onto my ass.
“I’m not here to kill you. Your death is the threat, which is why I’ve been guarding you these last five days.”
“You’ve been what?”
“You’ve had twenty-eight attempts on your life since you got here.”
I pale, trying to think if I noticed a single one. Nope. “And no one thought to tell me?”
She shrugs. “Most of them were only here to kidnap you to torture later. We would’ve found them before they killed you even if they did manage to grab you.”
My mouth flaps uselessly before I close it. Not knowing what else to say, I revert back to my brownie upbringing. “Thank you?”
She waves me off. “It’s part of the job.
Which brings me to why I’m here. You’ll talk to Richard.
He’ll probably say something utterly stupid that makes you want to ball punch him.
Feel free to; it’ll do him some good.” Her hand flutters again.
“But you will accept his apology. You will become his mistress after we marry if it so pleases him. And you will do it with a smile.”
I stare at her, absolutely certain none of the words I heard is actually what she said. “Sorry, could you repeat that?”
“No. Because you heard me, and I don’t like wasting time. Well, my time. I’m perfectly content to waste other people’s time.”
I stare at her. Then shake my head. “No,” I say softly.
Clearing my throat under her stare, I lift my chin. “You can tell Richard… he can go fuck himself.”
Her brow rises again. My heartbeat increases so fast I feel faint. But I hold her gaze, refusing to be a good little brownie who never causes trouble. Or a good little slut who does nothing but obey.
I’ve found myself in these five days. And I’m not giving her up. Not even for him. Tears burning my eyes, I refuse to let myself look away.
“Sit down, Arienna,” she says.
My knees buckle to instantly obey before I lock them and stay standing. Heat rushes to my cheeks. But bugger, does she know how to command a room. She already acts like a queen.
She chuckles as my heart hurts. “If it helps, I think he’s an idiot. Granted, I thought he was an idiot long before he pulled this shit.” She inclines her head with a grin. “But there you go. Now sit. And if you’re wondering, that is not a choice.”
When I stay standing, she rolls her eyes and goes to grab my ankle. I kick out at her hand. She wraps her fingers around my foot and twists my leg out sideways. Yanked off balance, I hit the ground hard.
“Ow, ow, ow,” I say as I cradle my ankle.
“Yeah, yeah. It hurts. But you being here almost caused Richard to kill himself today, so you are going to sit down and listen.”
“He what?” I rasp as I forget all about the pain in my leg. “Why did he – Is he okay?”
“Yes. Jace got him a healer before he stabbed himself too deeply.”
Shivering over her flippancy, I swallow hard. “Why did he do that?”
“Clearly because he’s not right in the head when it comes to you, which again is why I’m here.
He’s stopped being king in your absence, and Nicholas is doing a pretty shitty job in his place.
So Raza needs you to woman up and finish doing whatever it is you’re doing here.
Tonight.” Her eyes harden. “Then I will be taking you back to the castle before he does something even dumber.”
I want to leave now. I want to see him right now and make sure he’s really okay, but my legs won’t move towards the door.
My body’s shaking too hard at the thought that I almost lost him and didn’t even know.
That horrible scream I made the night Fabia poisoned him rings in my skull, making me want to claw at my ears in a desperate attempt for silence. But if I do as Evangeline says…
“If I go to him tonight,” I say, each word increasing the volume of that scream, “I will lose him.”
He will never see me as his equal because I haven’t made it there yet. He will ‘protect me’ like a delicate flower in the breeze, not realising that flowers bend in the wind; they do not break.
“No, I don’t think you will,” she deadpans. “I’m pretty certain he’s going to lock you in his sex room after this.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” I say, standing up.
The pain of my decision is shattering every breath inside me.
I can’t bear thinking my decision is going to hurt him in any way, but I want forever with him.
I want forever where it’s me and him. Not him with me on the sidelines just doing what he asks, letting him control my life like some corpse in a Brownston play.
“I don’t want our relationship to be like that. ”
“But you do want a relationship with him still?” she asks slowly, her head cocked to the side.
“Yes! Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because he’s an idiot.”
“Well, yes, but…” I step towards her. “I just want us to be equal. I want…” My breaths are coming too quick. My brain is struggling to get the words out without jumbling them. “I want to be his queen.”
“You know a queen executes people in the square, right? You’ll have to torture them.”
“Yes.”
“But you can barely hit little kids. You hesitate every time.”
“That’s different.”
“You’re losing sleep over stabbing Stephanie, and that bitch deserved it.”
“That’s also different?”
She stares at me, and I stare back, my brain shouting that I’m having this conversation with his fiancee, the one he picked to replace me. She’s never going to agree with me.
Laughing, she leans back, stretching her one leg out in front of her. “Fuck. Okay.” She nods.
I stare at her, baffled. “Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll make you queen.”
My mouth falls open. I jerk it back up, blink a few times, then shake my head. “You can do that?”
“Yes.” She cocks her head with a smile. “But I’m going to need something from you in return.”
“Anything.” I sit back down, my heart hammering out of my skin. I can feel it everywhere inside me, or maybe that’s the air – electrified and burning.
“Tell Jace and Richard about the photo on Echo’s desk.”
“I don’t know who –”
She waves her hand. “That’s not relevant. Just describe it to them.”
I blink. “That’s it?”
She nods. “It’ll drive them fucking crazy trying to figure out who they are.” Throwing her head back, she laughs with a madness that scares me.