Chapter 3 #2
“You have news? Are we ready to set our plans in motion?” she drawled, her eyes narrowing at me. Shrewd woman would know I had avoided that flicking tip. She rose from her throne with slow, lumbering movements fitting with her bulk that nearly entirely disguised the swelling of her pregnant belly.
The words she spoke with a loud, carrying voice and around me the courtesans lying about on the pillows eagerly leaned in to hear what I had to say.
Feeling like I was on familiar ground again for the first time in hours, I bared my teeth in a grin.
“Everything is moving according to plan, my Queen. Another day and the last trebuchet will be finished. Three days and we will stand on the field of battle, victorious!”
My words were met with eager shouting and clapping, the warriors roaring as they slapped their chests.
The Queen settled back down on her pillows with a happy smile stretching across her once-beautiful features.
“Well done, Krashe…” she drawled when the boisterous noises died down.
She ran her hand over the swell of her bare breast, already thickened in preparation of feeding her coming youngling. “I should reward you for your work.”
The crowd, of which at least half were her own offspring, was completely silent as the Queen unspooled her coils and started winding them around me.
To move away now would be a grave insult but I could not allow this to continue either.
I hadn’t wanted to coil with her in years, and now that I had met Nomy, the thought made nausea rise in my belly.
I needed to distract her but the only thought that came to mind was to mention the prisoner; it would put an end to this immediately.
I couldn’t get those words to cross my lips, it would put my mate in direct danger.
It was already a miracle that the Queen had not heard of Nomy’s presence yet.
She was unpredictable, if she knew, she might demand to see the prisoner, or she might not care at all.
“It is reward enough to serve the Clan, to find food for our hungry younglings,” I rasped out.
Tapping my fist over my chest I added with a growl, “I serve them. Now I must leave to finish the work. Until then I am not deserving of any reward.” I dipped into a quick, slightly disrespectful bow and shook myself free of her insidious grasp under the collective sound of many Naga gasping in shock.
While the Queen threw back her head and started laughing, amused rather than insulted, I exited the palace. Glaring at sycophants that seemed to get in my way as I tried to leave just reinforced my reputation. I was the only one in the entire Clan that stood up to our ruler, and she liked it.
As soon as I was free of the palace and the stifling sweet scents that clung there, I headed for my private quarters.
My home was the same as the one I’d grown up in, a small wooden building set up against the back wall of the Hearth Caves.
It was a spot away from the wells of water and not too far from a latrine tunnel.
Not exactly prime real estate, and because of that I had more space than most, and also more privacy.
Inside my home, I locked the door behind me with the mechanism I’d made for it, and then I stripped myself of my weapons and belts and rushed for the barrel with water I kept on hand.
With rough motions I started cleaning my coils, eager to rid myself of the sensations of the Queen’s touch.
My thoughts spun as I contemplated my mate.
She changed everything. She challenged everything I thought I knew was right.
She was found near a sky-ship, she came from beyond the stars, and I only knew what the lore said on that.
She was supposed to be dangerous, a threat to our existence.
A threat that had once played an integral role in the destruction of our entire society.
Then I pictured Nomy’s small body, her luminous blue eyes, and her so delicate and soft flesh.
She was no threat, she had fought me at her best and all she’d done was nick my scales by sheer luck.
The harm to her own hand had been far greater than the harm she had managed to do to me.
No, she wasn’t a danger to my people. The only danger was to my sanity; I already craved to return to her side and wallow in her scent again.
Just remembering her made my cock stir in its pouch and I pressed the base of my hand to the slit to keep it from extruding.
Nothing had ever stirred me the way she did.
Mates that ignited the markings on our bodies were almost unheard of, a gift mostly remembered from the past. I knew my parents had been such mates, but they had been the last pairing like that in our Clan.
Mostly, the Queen picked males for the females to produce a youngling.
Pairings that remained together to rear those young were uncommon.
Usually a female weaned her youngling at the start of the first molting, and then handed it to the father to raise further.
Younglings were raised by combined effort, in groupings that often remained brothers or sisters for life.
My mind flashed to my own upbringing. My mother and father had cared for me till my third molting, so I had no ties to other younglings as though they were my siblings.
I was the only child they had, and they often journeyed beyond Bitter Storm territory, traveling everywhere with me.
I had seen the insides of many ancestor caves and buildings, seen the marvels of technologies that my mother was supposed to report and destroy. And all she did was study them.
I hissed in anger. My mother had betrayed the Clan and our teachings, teachings she was supposed to uphold.
And the Queen, then just one of many princesses, had been her closest friend.
It was why I’d thrown my loyalty in her camp when the Queen, who was just called Lasra at the time, had taken out the previous Queen and assumed the throne.
Now I tried to push aside my anger at what my mother had done and focus on what I needed to discover.
Lasra had taken on the lorekeeper role when my mother had died in a scuffle with another female.
As her closest friend that had made sense, but I knew that my father had hidden all of my mother’s things from her before he’d vanished in the wilds a few years later.
I needed to find those items and search for lore about the creatures from beyond the stars.
I needed to know what danger they possessed.
If the prisoner was any indication, it couldn’t be a physical threat.
Tossing the wet rag in a basket, I cast my eyes about my home.
I had some vague ideas of where my father would have hidden my mother’s lorekeeping things.
I suppose I should be happy with myself that I had never given in to the impulse to search for them yet so I could destroy them or hand them over to the Queen.
I had to arm myself with all the lore I could find before I faced my mate again.