Chapter 22 #2
It wasn’t until he’d lowered me to the ground, cradled gently in his coils, that I could see what had happened.
My hand fumbled to holster the pistol safely on my thigh while I stared at the sprawled-out body of the now very dead Queen.
She was lying face down, and the handle of a knife was sticking out of the center of her back.
Sazzie was hovering on her tail behind her, a slightly dismayed look on her face.
“She said she’d raze Haven. She said she was going to kill Zathar’s baby… ” she said, eyes huge in her face.
“Here,” Chen said as he lifted Corin’s hand away from my belly.
He’d been pressing on my wounds to stem the flow of blood, and agony blazed when he moved.
Then, light hit my flesh through my torn shirt, coming from the healing device that the old Shaman had been carrying with him.
In seconds, all the pain faded away, and my flesh started to knit back together.
Erish and the other elder I’d seen yesterday had come up to flank Sazzie, gently nudging her away from her mother’s corpse. “Do not worry, Sazzie. You won in combat; nobody will question your throne,” the blind elder said kindly, but that seemed to make the Naga female even more distraught.
“Won in combat? I stabbed her in the back!” she said in an oddly high-pitched tone.
It was a very feminine sound, and it was rather unexpected coming from a Naga female as battle-hardened as her.
But maybe all those scars that covered her meant something else.
She shrugged out of Erish’ grip to look my way, and her blue eyes reminded me so much of Zathar that it was startling to see.
“I don’t want to be Queen,” she said firmly.
“I just didn’t want her to harm anyone else.
” It felt like she was apologizing to me, but that didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like she’d harmed me.
“You did the right thing,” Corin said firmly, his silver eyes still locked on my face.
“You saved my mate.” That seemed to calm the Naga female down, and it made me feel calmer too.
Like it was finally settling in that the threat was gone—not just gone for now, but gone forever.
There was nothing standing in our way to be together.
Okay, there was one thing remaining: Vrash.
But that was more of a general threat, not a personal one like Asizza had been.
Sazzie sighed, then very casually avoided the hand of the elder on her left and dipped down to snatch her blade from her mother’s back.
“You are right. This had to be done. But I’m not going to be Queen.
” She gave Corin a nod. “Go, I heard about the situation at Haven. I will watch your human friend until he’s better. ”
My belly already felt normal again, but I still felt a little wobbly and unsteady when Corin and elder Shaman Chen helped me to my feet.
Corin didn’t stop touching me, his arm around my middle.
His tail gently pressed against my thighs to make sure I stayed upright.
Altare handed him Triff, and my heart went out to the bot.
He was a little scratched up and dented.
The cleaning disks at the bottom struggled to spin right, but his lights were still on.
“Thank you, Sazzie,” Corin said with a thoughtful look at the scarred female.
She didn’t look so fierce and warlike, even with a scar that bisected her face diagonally.
Her scales were dull compared to those of the elders that flanked her, and her expression was forlorn.
When Corin agreed to let her watch over Reid, her shoulders squared and she gave him a determined nod.
Interesting. There was more going on here than I could see right now.
Why was Sazzie, a supposedly typical Naga female, interested in a human guy?
As far as I understood it, most Naga females didn’t feel the mating bond. It was a one-sided thing.
I didn’t get to ask questions. I didn’t get a chance to recover from what had happened.
We had another fight to get to, and I needed to play a vital role in getting us there.
Even if I was still a little dizzy from blood loss.
A flask of water was offered as Corin helped me into the small ship and started to strap me into the appropriate buckles of the flight harness.
It didn’t fit right. Some of it was based on a creature with a tail, not legs, but he made it work.
The drink was salty, which took me by surprise, but Chen ordered me to drink it all, so I did.
I did feel better afterward: my hands no longer shook, and any cobwebs faded from my mind.
It was starting to feel like I might actually be able to do this again.
Though it was strange to get into a ship and fly while leaving Reid in the hands of still near-strangers, and a Naga female had offered to be his caretaker.
“Run me through it one more time,” the elder ordered.
Obediently, and under a dozen watchful eyes this time, I indicated what each button did.
They were worried, for obvious reasons. I was a little nervous myself, but I still remembered what I was supposed to do.
With Corin in the seat right behind me, his tail wrapped around my waist for extra security, I knew I wouldn’t fail.
“All right. You’re good to go. Remember, never go above the red line.” Yes, I knew that. Don’t fly too high, or we’d get caught in the EM field and crash this ship.