The Queen’s Bodyguard

Chapter 1

Theora

Queen Theora,

I was horrified to learn of the capture of your trading post at the hands of my soldiers.

Please know that no such action was ordered by me, and the ones responsible are being disciplined.

I return your post with the sincerest apologies.

If there are any damages, please make note of them so I may fully compensate you.

Despite this small hiccup, I’m very much looking forward to meeting with you in person so we can finally bring this awful war to an official end.

Highest regards,

Pyre Amani, Exalted One of Vespula

Theora had read those words over so many times the exquisite handwriting was etched in her subconscious.

Highest regards. Even without hearing the queen’s tone, she could sense the mockery.

A frail attempt to soothe Theora against reigniting war.

All of this coming from Vespula’s most decorated general, a woman who had assassinated her own tyrant queen, taking the throne only a month before Theora’s coronation.

Who claimed to want to right the wrongs of her colony, while also being the one who’d started the yearlong war in the first place.

Who had petitioned for peace talks…and then captured one of Theora’s most valuable trading posts three months later.

Theora had no interest in continuing this war, but she had no interest in being taken for a fool, either.

She folded the letter a few times and put it in the pocket of her dress, before removing her glasses to clean them and settling back in her seat to look out the window for the remainder of the ride home.

It was the only way to dampen her anxiety—she couldn’t possibly think of anything while admiring her colony, except that she was proud the Sovereign had chosen her as its queen.

After all, Aranea was one of the most flourishing and economically powerful colonies in the world.

Most of the colony was a stunning metropolis, the buildings all structured in perfectly geometric patterns and adorned in gold.

Still, its true power lay in the fact that, over a thousand years ago, it had been carefully built within and around the largest grove of silk trees in existence.

The trees resembled weeping willows to the untrained eye, and all throughout the city silken leaves the colors of warm sunset, gentle sea, and other jewel tones blew gently in the breeze, brightening everything in their glowing presence.

But it wasn’t so much the trees themselves that made the silk special.

If that were the case, they would simply be harvested to make fabric, exported for profit.

No, it was the Araneans that made the silk special.

They had a way with it that no other colony could begin to duplicate.

In Aranean hands, it could be woven into materials of varying density—from simple fabric to flexible armor to solid building materials.

Threads of silk were difficult to break in the first place, but in the hands of an Aranean they could become something powerful, beautiful. And, most importantly, indestructible.

Skyscrapers, subway trains, newer apartment buildings, the capitol building—all were made of the strongest material on earth, and all were safe places to be in the event of a natural disaster or attack.

Much of the rest of the colony—bodegas, the few automobiles owned by the nobility and the rich, bicycles—was made of steel.

Many of the buildings had been protected by the strength of the surrounding silk trees, but there were only a few historic buildings made of stone, from the Old Town, still standing.

War had seen to that.

The cleanup teams, made up mostly of volunteers, were headed home for the day—Theora had insisted they work manageable hours after the first few weeks, when they had finally stopped recovering bodies amid the rubble and ruin.

The Vespulan war commander had developed a new deadly weapon, a device that exploded with fiery force.

It severed limbs and burned everything within its range.

It was a weapon as difficult to study as it was to duplicate, since most remnants of the materials inside the device burned away with its own explosion.

But, now that the war was over, perhaps there was no more need to study it.

Theora wasn’t sure she could secure allyship with the Vespulans, as wicked as they were, but perhaps she could do something about these weapons in her peace negotiation demands.

Launching those explosives over the colony walls had been as cowardly as it had been cruel, and Theora wanted to make sure that could never happen again.

The sound of shouts jolted Theora out of her thoughts, her pulse easing as she recognized them as joyful rather than agonized. She smiled. She was close to the gates of the capitol now, and a large group of people had gathered near them to greet her.

“Slow down, Max,” she said, and her driver obeyed.

Her car was armored—an update she had immediately seen to after the war had started—but within the walls of her colony, protection was unnecessary now.

She rolled down her window to wave as the people cheered.

They chanted her name, throwing flowers ahead of her car to cushion her path.

The youths screamed and giggled, grabbing each other in excitement before the adults nearby quietly forced them to bow and wave instead.

Theora chuckled. She had done her fair share of swooning giddily over royalty—even while being raised and mentored by them—before she officially became an adult, and it was no longer considered culturally acceptable for her to show exaggerated emotions in public spaces.

So when she saw the statue of Queen Leveya, she quickly rolled up the window again, before emotions she couldn’t hide overtook her.

Another casualty of war. The statue had been vandalized in the past year—there was no saying when, as Theora had been occupied with strategizing, giving speeches, and assisting with war aid.

Still, it was a sobering sight. A large red X had been painted over the statue’s face, the hasty work dripping like blood.

But today, there was an added element. Painted across the front of the statue’s long, cascading dress was written, far more neatly and in black, Long Live Queen Theora.

The Araneans’ love for Theora was obvious—she had always cared for her people, even before she’d become queen.

Not to mention she’d just seen them through a brutal war.

The hate for Leveya…she couldn’t fathom it.

Perhaps her friend had been a little less hands-on when it came to leading, a bit less savvy when it came to ruling, but that was why queens kept advisors.

And besides, Aranea had been at peace for over a hundred years at the time.

No, it wasn’t Leveya who had provoked this war.

The previous Vespulan queen had been a tyrant but had never directed that energy toward Aranea—she’d preferred to terrorize smaller colonies with weaker defenses.

It was Queen Pyre who had changed the dynamic.

She’d always been a ruthless soldier, even before she quickly rose up the ranks to general, and it seemed her desire for violence hadn’t ended when she took the throne.

It was the Vespulans who had attacked and killed Leveya without warning, who had initiated war between their colonies.

Pyre and her wicked war commander, Kenzi, were to blame, with their explosives and their insatiable pursuit of power.

And yet it was clear that many Araneans didn’t see it that way. Theora’s own people didn’t see it that way. How quickly would they turn on her, she wondered briefly, if this peace negotiation went south?

A sob threatened to choke her, but she swallowed it back, regaining her composure.

No. That wouldn’t happen. The support of the colony was the only reason Theora was queen at all—well, not the only reason, but one of the most important.

An orphan girl, pulled from obscurity to be raised as a royal when she was no more than a baby, simply because she possessed violet eyes—the mark of a ruler.

An underdog, rags-to-riches inspiration of a tale.

Or perhaps it was because Theora had never felt herself to be above them, had always done all she could to be among them, to give everyone in her colony the best life possible.

Whatever the reason, the people adored her. Her people adored her.

Her people. They were the ones who made Aranea special. They were the ones she was fighting for, the ones who made getting through these next two terrible weeks all worth it.

This plan was as much for them as it was for her.

And she was determined it would go off without a hitch.

Theora dismissed the guards outside her room—as she had been doing every night for the past few weeks, in preparation for her plan. When they disappeared around the corner, she quietly bypassed her bedroom door and continued down the hall.

This particular hall was long, metal, windowless, containing nothing but the door to her bedroom and, at the end, the door that connected the capitol building to the ancient coliseum.

It was very utilitarian, unlike the hall to the original Queen’s Suite, which was so covered in ornate rugs and wallpaper it looked like an abstract painting.

A hundred years ago, when the modern monarchy was established, they’d chosen to build the armor-threaded capitol building directly against the coliseum, a colony treasure that had stood for at least nine hundred years.

It was the highest point of the city—though that wasn’t saying much—both structures locked in by civilization on one side and lush forest on the other.

From overhead, it looked like two cylinders fused together, the old stone kissing the new silk.