Chapter 15 #2
With braziers on either side and pale smoke curling in the air around her, she looked mysterious.
Raised high on her throne and platform, she also looked the part—above everyone else.
Her scales were a pale shade of blue, her hair approaching a sky blue that didn’t exist on this world.
Truthfully, if not for the jewelry and her place on that throne, she looked no different from any of the other females.
Nisha trembled against my back as we were made to line up in front of her.
“She took my bracelet,” she muttered, not with fear, but with the sharp, defiant spark of anger.
If that was true, I could not tell which bracelet it was, for the Queen wore so many of them they all blended together.
Khawla didn’t bow, though our escort did, and I followed his lead.
She was not my Queen, and the disgusted look she gave me did not incline me to show her respect.
Not only that, but she was involving innocent children in her power play.
The rebel streak that had gotten me in trouble back on Earth was hard at work now.
I eyed the crowd, wondering who needed help, which children were happy and healthy.
Given the dire ‘Summons’ for us to come before the Queen, I thought this was it.
She would declare us traitors to the Clan and have us killed on the spot, but she seemed to take great delight in drawing out the process.
I knew her type, the skinny bitch was enjoying her power, and she wanted to milk every minute.
I barely listened to her drawled speech of injustice, danger, and betrayal.
I focused on Khawla and his younglings instead.
He had curled his tail in a loop around us; it pressed against my heels and curled over Rasho’s and Daois’s smaller tails.
His chin was raised high, almost to the point of jutting his sharp chin horns at the Queen, that had to be an insult, but she did not say anything about that.
He had stretched out his arm to cup Nisha’s back and mine, making his sigils glow and declaring me his mate for everyone to see.
When the Queen wound down from Khawla’s list of crimes, she simply declared his younglings to be impure—too mixed with Copper Tooth—and that mongrels had to die.
As the watching crowd gasped at that declaration, she continued that humans had no right to exist either: they were unwelcome on their planet and a threat to their way of life.
“They are all to be executed at dawn,” was her bold final statement.
It was not something that appeared to go over well with the crowd.
Perhaps they didn’t care if I lived or died, but they were clearly uneasy about doing that to children—and rightly so.
Anyone who could coldly proclaim they were killing a child in the morning was pure evil, so far removed from reality that they had lost all sense of right and wrong.
It was the kind of callousness I’d regularly dealt with back on Earth, where the UAR’s rules and greed meant people just like this Queen decided who got medicine and who didn’t.
As the crowd muttered and talked, the Queen gracefully swung herself out of her throne and disappeared deeper into the smoky interior of the building her throne was in.
Our escort took that as their cue to lead us back to Khawla’s small house and lock us up once again.
I couldn’t believe it, but I was almost relieved to be back there.
The news wasn’t good, but at least we had another night.
Too bad I’d seen no sign of Reshar at all, or I would have tried to convince him to help us.
Khawla made us food from the foodstores in her home, and I tried my best to entertain the kids, even though they couldn’t understand what I said.
Nisha mostly wanted to cling, and when Khawla tried to check in with them about which toys they absolutely had to bring, all she did was moan about a bracelet again.
It made Khawla’s face grow tight, and I reached out to squeeze his fingers and offer him reassurance.
“We’ll figure this out,” I tried to say.
“We have all night to escape.” He nodded, dipped down, and brushed a kiss against my cheek, then did the same to Nisha, which finally made her giggle.
The mood brighter, she played with her brothers while I sat down and watched Khawla fix that second snowshoe.
His tone was low when he started talking, pitched so his younglings at the back by the hearth could not hear.
“Nisha took off a gold and amethyst bracelet that belonged to Kusha. The new Queen appropriated all jewelry belonging to dead throne contenders, that included the bracelet. I can’t give it back; I haven’t figured out yet how to escape, let alone steal that from the Queen. ”
Sad for the little girl, I rose to pace through the small home myself.
We needed to do something—but what? Maybe it was silly, but I checked the back window twice, and then the front door to see who was guarding it.
At first, it was the same guy from yesterday, but he was relieved of duty in the afternoon by a new one.
I asked for Artek repeatedly, but they just ignored me or shrugged a shoulder and turned away.
Khawla didn’t even try; he sat around sharpening his spears and knives and handed smaller blades out to the boys to carry with them.
It looked like, lacking a plan, Khawla was ready to go to war.
I didn’t think that would help us, but with the day crawling by slowly, no better solution came to mind.
Still, we both knew we’d try to sneak away as soon as darkness fell.
So I urged the kids to take a nap and laid down with them to do the same, my body tight as a bowstring no matter how hard I tried to relax.