Chapter 4
Sazzie
The camp was in a state of great excitement, and it made for the perfect cover to slip away unnoticed.
Let them talk about fallen skyships and what sounded like many survivors.
I did not care. No, that wasn’t true. A part of me was as curious as they were—it wanted to turn around, go back, and ask questions.
Survivors? Of a skyship? It was unheard of.
It had only happened once before, as far as I knew.
My mind instantly flashed to the human male in med bay, the male I’d left only moments ago.
He was one of the survivors from the last incident, and that seemed just as miraculous.
It felt like a dream, sitting at his side while he was awake, while he talked.
Oh…the things he’d said. He thought I couldn’t understand him, but I could, and I had never been talked to the way he’d talked to me.
Beautiful? Kind? Sexy? Gorgeous? Those were not words that I’d ever consider using to describe myself.
I was a Naga female, first and foremost, and one covered in countless battle scars—scars that detailed a life filled with near-daily fights to keep my place on the food chain. How could he find me beautiful?
The scales along my spine shivered with unease and dread.
I was about to step back into the very life I had been trying to escape.
Elder Chen had made it clear that I had no choice but to face this head-on, or it could put the entire camp in danger.
He would not allow me to stay if it risked the sanctity of the Sacred Shaman Training Grounds.
I didn’t want to do this, but I also could not let my problems taint what the Shamans had built.
They could move—relocate their camp at a moment’s notice—but if too many challengers came here, it could expose the secrets I had sworn to keep before being allowed inside the camp.
Drawing a deep, shuddering breath, I forced myself to cross the final distance between myself and Khawla’s last known location.
He had said he’d remain until I was ready to assume my role as the new Queen of Thunder Rock.
The way he had said it made me feel like assuming that mantle was my only choice, but I refused.
I would not be like my mother, and I was done fighting.
This was about telling everyone I wasn’t standing in their way—that they could challenge each other and leave me out of it.
But I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple.
I never saw Khawla; his matte scales, a muddy dark blue that almost crossed into purple, gave him perfect camouflage beneath the dark purple foliage.
As the Master Scout, it was no surprise he was good at hiding, but I always felt there was more to it than that.
It was like he could turn invisible, like it was magic that made him disappear.
“Princess Sazzie,” he drawled, slithering out from behind the trunk of a tree that couldn’t possibly be big enough to conceal all of his bulk.
His long, thick tail coiled in a sinuous, undulating motion as he blocked my path, his spear lowered horizontally across his body.
He dipped into a bow, folding his body across the solid wooden staff of his preferred weapon.
I had always thought Khawla was as deep and mysterious as a pool of water, hiding what he thought behind the irregular amethyst of his eyes.
This male was cunning and clever, and he held his own agenda.
I wasn’t sure what to think of him or his continued presence.
“Master Scout,” I responded, freezing in place, uncertain what to do with the deference he appeared to show.
It had to be an act, because I could not fathom why this male would prefer me as Queen over any of the other females from the village.
His own mate was a prime candidate herself; she had always won her challenges.
It would not surprise me if she was here with the others to face me now.
So I could not trust Khawla—not for a minute.
I had to assume he would work to establish his mate as Queen.
“They arrived last night,” he said solemnly, shifting his spear to indicate the spiral of smoke rising from between the trees behind him.
“Made camp at that clearing. Too close.” I did not ask him what he meant by ‘too close.’ It could mean a number of things, and I was too nervous to give it much thought.
Too close to the Shaman Training Grounds?
Did he know the secrets of the Shaman camp?
I would not put it past this male to have been able to sneak up to the perimeter and see it all.
But at the same time, Khawla tended to be a stickler for the rules; I did not think he would do such a thing.
“Thank you,” I murmured, my mouth going dry as bone as I moved around him to head where he’d pointed.
The smokestack was an obvious beacon, and it would not surprise me if all the females who wished to challenge me had gathered there.
They had probably fought among themselves to decide in what order each of them would be allowed to face me.
Another shiver shook me, my scales whispering as they rubbed together along my spine.
I pretended not to see the surprised look in Khawla’s eyes as he followed me to the camp.
When I got there, I had to agree with his ‘too close’ assessment.
They had set up on a hillside, which permitted them a view over the woods, possibly allowing them to see all the way to the clearing where the Shaman camp was located.
This came too close to allowing females not yet Queen to discover the truth the Shamans hid—the history they kept alive by living inside the skyship relics, by flying them, and by using them as easily as breathing.
My stomach clenched painfully in my belly; that was my fault.
I should have left as Khawla had suggested, taken these challenges elsewhere. Too late now.
After my mother had died, I’d received her key to the camp from Chen, and it burned against my chest now.
A simple little disk of silver on a string, always hidden by the many gold- and jewel-encrusted necklaces my mother wore.
I wore no adornments and, thus, did not benefit from the jewelry’s protective effects.
The disk was plain to see for anyone who cared to look.
Pausing just before I would be visible from the clearing, I pulled the worn leather cord over my head and tucked the disk safely into a pouch at my hip.
Better. Khawla stared—of course, he did—but he did not ask, and when I haughtily raised my chin, he quickly averted his eyes.
I slipped from beneath the trees into the clearing silently, my ears picking up the sounds of raised voices and the hiss and clash of an ongoing fight.
It was exactly as I’d imagined—at least half a dozen Thunder Rock females, and they were deciding the challenge order by battling it out among themselves.
Astrexa, always my biggest nemesis, had fallen steeply from grace, but I was not surprised she was here.
Defeating the crown princess, the heir, would restore her reputation; she’d be extremely motivated and dangerous.
It was clearly visible in the vicious way she fought with her opponent, Scraikee.
The pair fighting did not appear to notice my arrival, but the other four females definitely did.
They fell silent, their ongoing argument abruptly ending as they focused their blue eyes on me.
Their various shades of blue to bluish gray were as familiar as they were threatening.
All my life, I’d been surrounded by Naga with shades of that color—like my father, my brothers, and, yes, my sisters and my Clan.
There had never been another home, but seeing them made me feel so unsafe that I also knew I never wanted to go back.
The word “home” brought forth only one image in my head—a thoroughly distracting image, given the situation: Reid’s brown eyes and the memory of his marked, muscled chest as he lay on the medical nest. Only, thinking of him in a nest made my stomach heat with a sharp burst of arousal, unlike any I’d ever experienced before.
What would it be like to curl up next to him?
To press my head to his chest, hear his heartbeat, and feel the shelter of his arms around me?
Proving how bad a time it was to get distracted, the female in the lead struck at me—thankfully verbally—while I was daydreaming.
“Ah, there she is! The new Queen. Done hiding, Sazzie?” She must have been the winner, the one who got to go first, because she charged down the hill toward me with an excited gleam in her eye.
The last time we’d clashed, I’d come out on top, but it had been a very close call.
“Evarah,” I said, forcing my voice to turn sharp and cold.
I couldn’t show fear; if I did, it was over before it began.
That gleam in her eye made me feel like she wasn’t going to back down from a fight, no matter what I said.
“Not hiding. Mourning! That was my mother, if you recall. Or have you been so hungry for power that you forgot to grieve for your Queen?” I drove that barb in as hard as I could, and it halted Evarah a few feet away from me.
She hissed but dipped into an appropriate bow and tapped her arms with her claws in a sign of respect and mourning.