A Queen's Pride

by N. D. Jones

  Claire came and stood beside him. To his surprise, her arm settled across his shoulders, holding him in a loose hug.

  “We’ve had unsubstantiated and hard to believe reports coming in from all over the state and country of a lion-headed woman in a red dress. Details are sketchy but customers at Salty Night Bar and Lounge, a popular watering hole in Ngaso, swear a lion-headed woman froze everyone in the bar then proceeded to brutally kill five men. Once the men were dead, the lion-headed woman disappeared, leaving everyone else unharmed.”

  Claire kissed his temple. “Ngaso is only sixty miles from here.”

  Ngaso was also home to Fort Lekate, the base for many of the Rogueshades involved in the Sanctum Hotel attack. Claims of a lion-headed woman, no matter how absurd it sounded, along with Frank’s death, and the involvement of Sergeant Major Hernandez and his wife were too many points of convergence for Silas not to think the Shona were involved.

  “One year and two days, Silas.”

  He’d spent the anniversary of the attack on the felidae keeping himself busy so as not to drive himself crazy remembering the girl’s parting words. Death does not knock on the door.

  “It has to be a hoax.”

  “I would be inclined to agree, if there weren’t people who could actually transmutate into predatory cats. It does sound crazy, though. But Frank is dead only two days after the anniversary of the massacre at Sanctum Hotel.” Claire pressed the phone into his hand. “Talk to our daughter. She’s convinced the lion-headed woman will come after you next.”

  Silas didn’t want to speak with Audrey. Her concern for his safety only served to remind him that his daughter, like his wife, thought him guilty. He was, dammit, but it hurt like hell to have his family know that kind of terrible truth about him.

  Phone cord pulled taut, Silas held the receiver to his ear. He did his best to soothe his daughter’s fears, all the while saying nothing as his wife removed clothing from her closet.

  Silas had lost his party’s trust and his credibility with the public. Silas was losing his wife. He might also lose his daughter. Frank was dead. No great loss there, but his death signified another turning point in his life. The lion-headed woman hadn’t come for him, at least not directly. It seemed young Sekhem Asha cast a bigger shadow in life than her parents did in death.

  “I’m fine. I’m safe.”

  Silas hadn’t heard Audrey cry since a pimply faced kid she affectionately called her “boyfriend” had dumped her for another girl. Silas had been secretly pleased. The boy wanted more than his daughter was willing to give. He’d felt every bit the proud father that day, happy he’d raised a girl unafraid to stand up for herself and to stick to her beliefs. But taking a stand, even when right, could hurt, and wasn’t that a sad epiphany for a forty-eight-year-old man?

  Silas had no idea how long he spoke to his daughter on the phone or the last words he’d said to his wife after helping her load her car with suitcases he’d bought for family vacations. What he did recall was going to bed alone in a house once filled with love, laughter, and joy but had slipped into a depressing state of silence.

  Closing his eyes, and drifting into a fitful slumber, he dreamed of a girl roaming the halls of an empty house, tears rolling down her cheeks and two ghosts trailing behind her. The scene replayed over and again.

  The same sorrowful girl. The same dark house. The same protective ghosts.

  A dream. A nightmare.

  Lonely is one, a honeyed voice spoke in his mind. Sleep well, Chief Royster. Sleep well, for where a woman rules, streams run uphill.

  Silas’s eyes popped open.

  Chapter 16: Great One of Healing

  Kingdom of Shona

  Temple of Sekhmet

  She heard them before she saw them—Ekon, Mafdet, and Tamani. They were her family, the only reason she’d returned home instead of hunting down Chief Royster and then gorging on the blood of humans.

  “Do you know how many times I’ve trekked up this hill to a temple without a statue or our sekhem?”

  “As many times as Ekon and I have. I told you I would call when Asha returned. Go to work.”

  “How am I supposed to work when the sekhem is MIA? What do you suggest I tell her council?”

  “Tell them their sekhem is making the world safe for Shona,” Ekon said.

  “Right now, Asha’s safety is my greater concern. It’s been three days. I think we need to have a serious conversation about next steps. We can’t keep wasting our time returning to this temple with the hope that Asha will miraculously appear.”

  “Asha will come home.”

  “Mafdet, shit, you keep saying that but she’s not here.”

  She crashed to the temple’s floor, silencing the bickering. Splayed facedown, and momentarily disoriented from Sekhmet’s magic and her graceless landing, she didn’t move.

  Footsteps ran toward her.

  She pushed to her hands and knees, head down, claws extended and cutting into the floor. She growled.

  The footsteps halted.

  She could smell them. Their blood. Hear them. Their heartbeats. She scrambled backward in a defensive crouch.

  “It’s all right, Asha. You’re home now.”

  Mafdet. But the Asha she’d known, cared for and loved hadn’t been all right. She’d died, like so many Rogueshade had by her vicious hands. Hafsa Sekhem Asha had perished, along with Sekhem Zarina and Khalid Bambara.

  “You really have turned into Sekhmet.” Tamani’s scent floated to her—love but also sadness. “Look at you, my sekhem.”

  She hadn’t wanted them to see her this way—covered in blood and smelling of death. So much death. So many sins.

  The Rogueshades but also hers.

  She scooted farther away until her back hit the wall where Goddess Sekhmet’s statue had once been. Raising her head, she saw them. Worried and tired but also relieved. They’d waited for her to return, having faith in her when she’d spent three days questioning her sanity and morality.

  Mafdet and Tamani stood next to each other, dressed in their familiar Shieldmane uniforms and wearing twin expressions of concern. She’d been gone too long, and she’d worried them. She hadn’t meant to do either.

  But it was Ekon’s smile that gave her pause, confused her even. She’d turned into something unrecognizable, a creature of war and destruction. She’d relished the power from her goddess, as well as the fear the mere sight of her invoked in her enemies. Yet, with her family and coated in the blood of those she’d slain, the form her revenge had taken wasn’t the image she’d wanted them to have of her.

  But she didn’t know how to transmutate back into her human form. The transformation had happened only once, with Stormbane, and that hadn’t been deliberate. After he’d shot himself, she’d transformed back into Sekhmet. Again, without conscious thought.

  Ekon moved around Mafdet and Tamani and toward her. In an eerie similarity to how Stormbane had knelt in front of her, his hand atop hers, Ekon also knelt, his body wonderfully close. He reached out to her, but not in the same way Stormbane had.

  Ekon cradled her lion’s face with his large, gentle hands.

  She wanted to weep, to bury her face in the crook of his neck, to seek his forgiveness for sins committed against others.

  “Sekhem Sekhmet is a title worthy of Hafsa Sekhem Asha.”

  She’d terrorized without mercy. How could Ekon say her name with tenderness and reverence?

  “Mi Sun Choi called when you were away.” He scratched behind her ears. “She said the Common Peace Coalition Party is ready to move forward with your parents’ plan whenever you are.”

  For a year, she couldn’t fathom any plan that didn’t involve blood and death. Could she now? Was she capable of leading Shona in a direction separate from her grief? Had her bloody rampage set her parents free or did their spirits still wander the mortal plane?

  One of Ekon’s hands traveled to her chest and over her heart. She hadn’t felt it beat in three lo
ng days. The organ fluttered, leapt. “Sekhmet may be a warrior goddess of war, destruction, and plagues, but she is also a sun goddess of healing. You choose. War and plagues or sun and healing? Answer this question, my sekhem, which version of Sekhmet do you believe your mother named you after?”

  She’d done little the past year but think. She thought about vengeance and justice, not about growth and the future. Raising her hand, she placed it over Ekon’s heart. Dried blood caked her fingernails.

  Fingernails not claws.

  She thought she understood why she’d transformed at Stormbane’s home.

  Truth. Vulnerability. Pain but not anger . . . forgiveness.

  Closing her eyes, she gave in to the power of Ekon’s truth. Not a revelation but the opening of a door she’d kept closed because walking through it had been a more terrifying prospect than floundering in sorrow.

  Self-pity looked suspiciously like defeat.

  Mafdet and Tamani joined them, completing her family circle. They hugged her. Kissed her. Accepted her as she was—wounded but ready to begin the healing process.

  Her choice. Warrior goddess or sun goddess? War and plagues or healing?

  She sank into Ekon’s arms, her face, her human face, pressed to his solid, supportive chest.

  Mafdet kissed the top of her head and Tamani wiped away her tears that, for the first time in a long while, weren’t born of sadness.

  Tears of hope.

  “Sekhem Sekhmet.” She lifted her head from Ekon’s chest, permitting him to help her to her feet. “Duality. Harmony. I cannot be one or the other. I must accept that I will forever be both. Warrior and healer.”

  She’d brought destruction and plagues. But she had yet to learn the difficult art of healing. Sekhmet would begin with herself.

  Following Tamani and flanked by Mafdet and Ekon, she left the temple of her transformation, and walked down the path to a house that she’d forgotten had once been a home. It wasn’t a magnificent structure by any standard. Not a mansion or palace, not even a sprawling compound like the First Evolution Union’s headquarters in Minra.

  The two-story white stone façade surrounded by a landscaped garden had never ceased to conjure a smile from her. No matter how many countries she’d visited with her parents, returning home felt like taking a deep breath after a spring shower—refreshing, cleansing, and freeing. She inhaled through her mouth, appreciating her home in a way she hadn’t in twelve long months.

  Tamani hugged her. “Take a shower, eat . . .” Grinning, Tamani leaned back from Sekhmet and laughed. “Then again, you’ve had Rogueshade buffet for three days. I doubt you’re hungry. Maybe you’d like a glass of warm milk to wash down your breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

  Mafdet tsk-tsked. “You’re not funny.”

  “Who’s the general and who’s the Shieldmane?”

  Mafdet ignored Tamani but asked her, “Who remains, or did you devour them all?”

  “All except for Chief Royster.”

  Almost imperceptibly, Mafdet’s right hand shifted to the knife sheathed at her waist. “Good to know. You won’t ever hear me say this again, but Tamani is right. You need to wash the filth of those humans off you. Eat, if you’re still hungry. Rest, if you’re tired. There are matters Tamani and I must tend to, so you’ll have the house to yourself. Ekon will be here. Let him be of assistance.”

  Ekon shifted beside her, giving movement to the sudden burst of awkwardness she felt at Mafdet’s not so subtle implication. Not a suggestion, of course, but an acknowledgment of the inevitable.

  Tamani slapped Mafdet on the shoulder. “You’re the least tactful person I know.”

  “I’m friends with your mate and mother, so I know you’re lying.” Mafdet shrugged off Tamani’s hand. “What would you like for us to call you? Are you ready to accept Zarina’s gift?”

  A gift as opposed to a burden. The difference in perspective had her turning away from her house and gazing out at the expanse of land. She’d traversed every inch of the acreage with her parents—on two feet as well as on four. Asha in Ebox meant life, which was what her parents had given her in every sense of the word. They’d loved her, taught her, guided her, even scolded her, when needed. They’d also trusted her to lead her best possible life, making decisions from the place of us and we, not from I and me.

  She shifted back to her family, their gazes expectant. Smiling, she kissed each of their left cheeks. “I thought Asha dead. When I look at you all, as well as my home, I know that’s untrue. Asha still lives inside of you, but also inside of me. But I am no longer wholly Asha, as I can never be fully Sekhmet. As Mom once told me, mortals aren’t meant to carry the weight of a god. But a part of me now does.”

  A difficult confession but one that had to be made.

  “I didn’t take Mom’s words literally enough.” She raised her hand to her heart. “Protectress of Shona, Great One of Healing, those are the names the goddess whispered to me when I accepted her powers into my body. But they aren’t mere names or even titles, but charges. My charge. The same charge Mom gave me before she died.”

  She kissed them again, but on their right cheek, a formal display of affection from a sekhem to her loyal Shieldmanes.

  They lowered to a single knee and raised their eyes to hers.

  She’d refused the formal induction ceremony of a new alpha. No one questioned her legal authority to rule. She’d been the Shona’s hafsa sekhem, so the transition to alpha had been politically seamless but emotionally jarring.

  She still had no interest in a formal induction ceremony. But there, among her family, she would pledge her soul to them, as they had already pledged their bodies to her.

  “I am Sekhem Sekhmet of the Kingdom of Shona. Alpha of our land. Protector of our people. We are bountiful and blessed.” In turn, she touched their heads. “We are deadly in war—strong of heart and sharp of claws. We are glorious in peace—sparkles of light and harbingers of faith. I am daughter of Zarina and Bambara Leothos, and you are my beautiful lights, my forests of rose petals.”

  Sekhmet’s fingers grazed Tamani’s upturned face, an unspoken request for her to rise. The general did with lithe crispness. “You are Tamani Volt, Guardian of the Gates.” She kissed both of her cheeks.

  “And you are Sekhem Sekhmet—Protectress of Shona.”

  Tamani’s smile, more so than her words of loyalty, warmed Sekhmet. She nodded to Tamani, giving her leave to proceed with her day. Hopefully, less worried about Sekhmet’s safety and mental wellbeing.

  She listened to Tamani’s retreat then shifted her focus to Mafdet. Her godmother had been a staple in her life, as much as her parents had been. Perhaps one day Mafdet would share her complete story with Sekhmet—maybe when Sekhmet was older or the heartache she’d caught glimpses of in Mafdet’s eyes, over the years, ceased to burden her heart.

  Without Sekhmet’s silent request to rise, Mafdet stood—tall and lean, and so very beautiful of form and spirit.

  “You are Mafdet Rastaff, Slayer of Serpents.” Sekhmet slowly lowered her gaze to the blade Zarina had gifted to Mafdet decades ago. While Mafdet held many secrets, not all were hidden from Sekhmet, so she lingered on the blade’s handle, guaranteeing Mafdet wouldn’t miss the meaning of her next words. “Mafdet, Great Cat of the Nation of Swiftborne.” She kissed Mafdet’s cheeks then whispered in her ear, “Not very subtle, my felidae cheetah, but neither are the condoms you keep leaving in my bedroom.”

  Sekhmet kissed Mafdet’s cheeks again. She really did cherish her godmother, even more after Zarina’s death.

  Mafdet’s gaze slid from Sekhmet to Ekon then back to her, mouthing, “Use them.” Aloud, Mafdet said, “And you are Sekhem Sekhmet—Great One of Healing.”

  Mafdet cut her eye to Ekon once more before strolling in the opposite direction than the one Tamani had gone.

  Sekhmet tugged Ekon to his feet, grinning up at him from a face in need of a thorough washing. Hand in his, she led him toward the sliding glass doors. “T
amani was right, I need to shower. Wash my back?”

  “Umm, what?”

  “As eloquent as ever.”

  Halfway through Zarina’s office, Ekon stopped, forcing Sekhmet to do the same.

  She turned to face him. “What’s wrong? Do you not wish to share a shower?”

  “More than anything, but that’s not it.” Ekon fidgeted with the hem of his shirt for only a blessed second before he spoke his mind. “You gave Tamani a title, Mafdet two, but me none.” Ekon shrugged, but there was nothing nonchalant in the gesture.

  Her unintentional slight and his hurt had her wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder. “Like Sekhmet’s ten thousand names, I have many titles for you. Of them, one is closest to my heart.”

  “I—”

  She hushed him with a finger to his chin but wanted to place her lips to his. Not yet. Not until I can come to him unsoiled of mind and of body.

  “Ekon Ptah, you are the Beautiful Soul, Lord of Truth, He Who Listens to My Words but Also to My Heart. You are my Finder of Ways, my Inspirer of Felidae Kind.” Sekhmet kissed his throat, his pulse strong and fast, his skin salty and delicious. “Sublime One. Adorable One.”

  Yes, adorable, especially when he smiled at Sekhmet with youthful jubilation. She caressed his grinning face, loving the way it lit up even more from her touch.

  “Are those a sufficient quantity of titles, or must I stroke your ego by listing more?”

  His boyish smile gave way to a roguish man’s smirk. “My ego isn’t the part of me in need of your stroking, my sekhem.”

  She opened her mouth to offer a teasing reply but snapped it shut. Two figures hovered beyond the sliding glass doors. Fingers laced with each other, they nodded to Sekhmet, turned, and then floated in the direction of the Temple of Sekhmet.

  “I have to go.”