Chapter Eighteen. Eshe
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Eshe
“Like I was saying, I challenge you to a koju, Abena,” I state loud and clear in front of a throne room full of Mwuaji members, loyal and disloyal. Faithful and sycophants.
My heart pounds as I stand here on the precipice of the moment I’ve spent the last nine years planning for, dreaming of. What I could’ve never imagined was my ears still ringing with the bogeyman Huntsman’s yell of mine or his defending me against Ekon.
Yeah, that was on absolutely no one’s Bingo card.
Part of me wants to look over to the sounds of fighting, to make sure Malachi is coming out on top. But I have to trust that he is. That’s his battle—one he willingly took on for me. This one here, with Abena, is mine.
And it’s time to finish it.
Abena emits a bitter, harsh crack of laughter and paces back to her “throne.” Gripping the back of it, she sneers, whipping a hand down at me.
“You really think you can come for me, Eshe? Challenge me? Take what’s mine?
I don’t give a fuck what video”—she flings an arm toward the wall—“or evidence you believe you have. None of it means shit. I’m oba here.
I’m queen. And I was right to send that bastard Huntsman after you to root out the snake in my family.
My family, you traitorous little whore. All these years, I saw your hate for me.
Your thoughts and plans to turn my family against me.
But, bitch, you will never be me. The truth is you’re nothing but a nuisance, nothing more than the shit I accidentally step in on my way out the door.
And I’m going to treat you the way I would that shit on my shoe: I’ll wipe you off and throw you away.
Accept a challenge? You must’ve inherited that arrogance from your mother, and look where she ended up. Dead, in the gutter.”
I chuckle, pushing past the need to shoot that tongue from her mouth for speaking on my mother like that.
Abena’s pathetic, desperate. Either that or cracked, because there’s no way she can actually believe there’s a way out of this. No way she can spin that video on the flash drive given to Zuri by the informant she and my mother found.
“A koju’s been issued, and either the reigning oba accepts it or rejects it. And if she rejects it, she’s conceding defeat and abdicating the crown. That is Mwuaji law,” Tera states from my side.
“I don’t need you to quote the law to me,” Abena snarls. “My family wrote it. Yours just serves it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Abena.” Tera stalks forward several steps, her lip curled in an ugly sneer as she looks my aunt up and down.
“I only serve the rightful Mwuaji oba. And that’s not you.
But since you know the law so well, you also know you must accept or reject the koju issued by the challenger, who is your niece.
The daughter of the woman, our queen, who you had killed.
” With every word, Tera’s voice hardens, becomes darker, lower. “Do you have an answer, traitor?”
Bisa and Taraji step forward. And on my left, Richter and Moorehead follow suit.
“You either accept, Abena,” Bisa says in his rumbling, raspy bass that rolls like ominous thunder through the room, “or we kill you ourselves for treason. Which hand do you want to die by?”
“Please say mine, Auntie,” I taunt.
“You—you can’t—” Her lips part as she stares first at Bisa, then the other kapteni.
She surveys the room, but her loyalists are condemning in their silence.
None of them move forward to aid her, to defend her.
Her gaze, bright and liquid hot with hatred, swings to me.
I read her capitulation there, and triumph streams through me as she stalks down off the dais.
This is it.
This is fucking it.
Not once does it occur to me that I’ll lose this challenge. Not when I’ve dreamed of the scent and texture of her blood on my skin for years. Pictured what her death mask will look like as I witness the last flames of life flicker from her eyes.
No.
Losing isn’t even a possibility.
In moments, the circle around us widens, and I note the strategic points my Seven and Miriam take up. My eyes clash with Malachi’s, and I allow myself to feel that second of relief that he’s safe. He nods, and I return the gesture, reading the message there.
Take care of business.
Get my revenge.
In my head, I still hear the faint echo of his mine. I tuck that into the corner of his mind, carrying it with me as I turn to face Abena.
She shrugs out of her long, white fur robe, leaving her in a white bodysuit and leather pants. Accepting the dagger Richter passes her, she faces me, her teeth bared in a snarl.
I smile.
“The rules are,” Tera announces, “no one from the outside can assist or interfere. And this koju is to the death. No mercy. Do you both understand?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s get this shit over with,” Abena spits.
Rage swirls in me, but instead of flowing crimson and burning hot within me, it’s cold, focused.
I noticed every cut, every bruise on Malachi. I noticed his missing finger.
Oh, she about to pay for old and new.
Palming my bowie knife, I deliberately run up on her, not giving Abena the opportunity to advance on me. The glitter of uncertainty in her eyes feeds my soul, and I’m going to be gorging on that shit by the time I’m finished with her.
Abena swings at me. I duck, spinning low. Her blade whistles above my head, and I swipe my knife through her top to slice through the skin just beneath her breast, drawing first blood. She whirls around, and I crouch, waiting, anticipation humming through me like a berserker’s battle cry.
Pain saturates her features. Good.
In seconds, rage overtakes the pain, and she comes for me, bending low, knife aiming for my stomach.
I grab her wrist and take the cut to my upper arm when she yanks her hand away.
Gritting my teeth, I flick my dagger, slicing her across her breast, shoulder, ribs.
She stumbles back, crimson seeping into her clothes, looking like a slasher-film victim.
She presses her palms to the seeping wounds.
Her chest heaves, and the heavier she breathes, the faster the blood pumps from her body.
I see the moment desperation and panic creep into her eyes, and I revel in it.
With a growl, she charges toward me, and I meet her halfway.
Abena flips the knife into an ice pick grip and swoops her arm in a hooking motion, slicing down toward my chest. At the last second, I brace my wrist against hers just as it sweeps past me and grip her elbow with my free hand.
Turning, I slam my bowie knife into her stomach, twist it, then wrench the blade free.
Her scream bounces off the walls as she bends over, palms slapping the floor.
“To the death, Auntie,” I whisper.
I raise the knife above my head to deliver the final blow to her spinal cord when a blast hits me in the back, sending me tumbling forward.
Pain explodes through me, and through it, I dimly hear a lion’s roar of fury and pain.
Shaking my head, I push myself to my hands and knees, trying to suck in air, but instead it’s like I’m inhaling shards of glass.
I look up, and Malachi is above me, a gun in his hands, aimed toward one of the balconies.
Another shot rings out, and dimly I’m aware of a body plummeting to the throne room floor.
Shaking my head again, to try and clear it of the fog creeping in from the sides, I crawl toward Abena, who is pushing to her knees.
No. That desperation that I glimpsed in Abena’s eyes just moments ago whistles through me, wild and burning hot. I’ve come so close. No one is going to steal her death from me. Rip my mother’s justice from me.
With the last of my strength, I feel for the knife I dropped, grab it, and plunge it into her neck. She gasps, clawing at her throat. Blood bubbles from the wound and her mouth. As she falls back, I tumble on top of her.
“See you in hell.”
Her eyes dim, then glaze over. Fierce satisfaction and a brutal joy soar through me. I did it, Ma. I did it.
“Eshe.” Pain racks my body, and I gasp again. Blood fills my throat, mouth, and I cough, trying to clear them. “Baby, open your eyes. Look at me.”
The demand in Malachi’s voice, the ache in it, impels me to lift my lashes. Hell, I don’t remember closing them.
“Don’t you fucking die on me,” he orders, his eyebrows drawn down over his nose.
His gray-blue eyes are nearly black as he stares down at me, cradling me against his chest. Behind him, I glimpse Tera, Nef, Kenya, and Maura, worry and grief etching their faces.
I know it’s because of me. This pain … it can’t be good.
He buries his face in my hair. “Don’t leave me, Eshe,” he rasps directly in my ear.
“Don’t you … Everyone who’s ever mattered—who I’ve ever loved—has left me, I can’t lose you, too.
I can’t, baby. Please don’t leave me here without you. I’ve waited so long…”
A shudder quakes through his big body, and I try to lift my arms, to wrap them around him, to promise I’m not going anywhere. But neither my arms nor my tongue seems to be working.
And as I sink into darkness, my ears and soul ring with his tortured, hoarse scream.