The Reign of Queens: A Kingdom of Diamond Antlers Novel

by Zachary James

  He instantly knows who I’m talking about when he says, “He arrived last night in a state of panic. He barged through the castle doors and interrupted our family’s dinner. My mother cried at the sight of her son. It’s been seventeen years,” he looks at me saying it’s my fault. I don’t understand his desire to blame me for Jax’s absence; they were the ones to exile him, his own family. “My father was surprised, but immediately became the High Lord he is and sent out the Frost Guard to search for you.”

  “Who is the Frost Guard?” I ask, my breath coiling in the dark air.

  “They are the sentinels of the High Lord, and the Frozen Wardens are the guards of the Fae in the Winter Kingdom.” That makes some sense. I never thought of different ranks of guardians having different names, but also who knew that Fae even existed. I didn’t even know about the existence of Faeries and the Forsaken until I entered Elkwood Forest for the first time this past summer. Anything could be possible. Kane looks into the impenetrable night ahead. Darkness is roiling between two trunks of towering pines. A noticeable chill makes his body quake, as well as mine.

  Two Arbors step out of the trees. The pine trees that I thought to be trunks rising into the night were really Arbors blending into their surroundings. Kane has his sword drawn and poised to strike at the Forsaken who stand, waiting for him to make the first move. My own Fae instincts rake down my back like claws, so I turn on my heels, drawing an arrow in my recurve bow, aimed into the shadows that were once behind me. At first I don’t notice anything, but then there is a pair of clouded red eyes that wink open.

  I hear Kane snarl before he leaps into battle with the Arbors behind me and I hold the arrow steady before me. I’m at a standoff with an Umbra who is only a rippling dark blob, blacker than the surrounding night. The scarlet eyes blink once, and suddenly they thin and become ovular. The scarlet bleaches to a deep ocean blue. The shadow grows porcelain skin from nowhere and pointed ears frame the skull. A chest swells and long, smooth legs stand in the snow. Moon white hair flows in the wind shielding the naked girl. She smiles with a demon’s grin and I focus on her face. She is a Fae, but nobody I recognize. Crackling lightning surrounds her palms and I stand my ground, like the Umbra, both of us unmoving. I no longer hear Kane in the heat of battle, but I can’t look away from the Forsaken before me. I will shoot when my Fae instincts tell me to. When I was first in Elkwood, as a human, my Fae instincts felt like a heavy stone in my chest and now that I’m a Faerie I understand what they are.

  The Umbra doesn’t move. The young beautiful Faerie is idle in the now glowing darkness, illuminated blue from her crackling lightning. An inkling of thought crawls into the back of my mind and it feels like a punch in the gut when I remember what Novid said to me the day I left Equadoria. Meet the girl who sparkles like lightning and the male who blazes like a thousand suns. Although I have no idea who the Umbra is, a part of me does. The girl who sparkles like lightning. Before I can ask the Forsaken anything about the apparition, it hisses, revealing a mouth full of blood and elongated fangs, longer and sharper than the Fae’s. An arrow whistles over my shoulder and through the Umbra’s middle, making it shatter into nothing.

  I whirl onto Kane. “Why would you do that?” I shout and immediately notice the Arbors, now nothing but splintered wood scattered in the snow. Large ice spikes have risen out of the white mounds and are covered in shattered wood. Although Kane comes from the Winter Kingdom fire burns brightly behind his eyes. “You obviously weren’t going to do it! I took care of the damned thing!”

  “It wasn’t going to hurt me,” I gesture to where the girl was standing between the trees and even as the words leave my lips I know them not to be true.

  “And curiosity didn’t kill the cat,” he rolls his eyes and I do the same, crossing my arms. “Let’s just get you back to your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I’ve never said those words out loud and for some reason, it feels good. Kane’s brows furrow together in confusion.

  “So, what is Jax to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I dodge the question and Kane throws his hands into the air, obviously finished with the conversation.

  “Whatever,” He strings his bow over a shoulder and I do the same. “I’m sick of talking to you anyway.” Suddenly I don’t like the presence of Kane over Jax. He is rude and doesn’t understand what’s going on with Evaflora and the Forsaken, then again neither does Jax. He still doesn’t know about the Umbra attacking me as an image of Novid at the castle and telling me to “meet the girl with lightning and the male who burns like fire.” I guess after this I’ll have some news to share with him when I arrive in the Winter Kingdom. If I arrive in the Winter Kingdom.

  Kane walks ahead into the night, ascending the forever lifting Archaic Mountain. I have no choice, but to follow. I understand that Archaic Mountain is the tallest mountain on Abella, but never did I expect to be climbing day and night! Jax and I had walked along the border of the Autumn Kingdom and the Spring Kingdom before we got separated. The High Lord of the Autumn Kingdom hates having trespassers on his land, but the High Lady of the Spring Kingdom is known to take traveling Faeries against their will, so we deigned to avoid both threats. Now that Kane and me are on the Archaic Mountain Range, we have no fear of any threats, besides the damn Forsaken.

  “How far are we from reaching the top?” I pant through jagged breaths that slice my throat. Kane shakes his head.

  “You’re like a faeling,” He mumbles and even though I just met him, I know him enough to be aware that his eyes rolled. So do mine.

  “Sorry, Your Highness,” I feign a gleeful courtier’s voice making fun of his title. “Did I disrespect your graceful ride on your unyielding high horse?”

  Kane answers with a growl that sends chills down my spine. I want to stop, but my mouth won’t let me. I sort of find enjoyment in teasing him. “Or am I, the High Lady of a mortal kingdom not worth your righteousness?” His eyes flick to me, eyebrows knitted together in rage that flows off of him. I feel a wave of building heat from his skin, at least two yards away from me. “I didn’t know that mortals were such inconveniences.” His upper lip curls back revealing gleaming teeth.

  “Jax shouldn’t have wasted seventeen years of his life on you,” His words are like a stab to the heart ruining any fun I was having. “I’d rather him bring home a human whore than whatever you are. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought you back from the dead!”

  My hand print is bright red on his face and the resounding smack that stings my hand sends ravens scattering into the night sky. He doesn’t even lift his large hands to his throbbing cheek and tears threaten to spill from my eyelids. I will not cry. I will not give him the satisfaction of his words hurting me, but they did. No matter how much I want to deny it, I can’t.

  Kane’s eyes immediately soften, his mouth opens, eyebrows curling upward in regret, sadness maybe. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I just get hot headed when I’m scared”

  A tear breaks past my barrier and I wipe it on my sleeve as I begin marching up the mountain. “No! Fuck you!” I hide my shaking breaths, but I still know he can hear me. Even if he does want to, he doesn’t attempt to apologize again. These Archaeminza brothers are two peas in a damned pod! They both seem to pick arguments with me and also use their words as daggers. Fuck Kane and Jax. They’re both assholes.

  My body wants to fall into a deep never-ending sleep, but my brain is swelled, scattered, and needle-focused for anything in Elkwood. I won’t sleep comfortably until I arrive in the Winter Kingdom and with thick walls between me and them, the Forsaken. Ever since that first attack with the two Arbors and the Umbra, I haven’t been threatened by any Forsaken. I’m thankful for it.

  I thought too soon.

  A Troglodyte with blue scales breaks through the brambles to my left and on instinct I dash for the right. My ankles are at odd angles on the uneven slant of the mountain side. I stumble over my steps as the Troglodyte closes
in on me. Kane shouts from somewhere, far behind the Troglodyte now grinning at me with a reptilian grimace. My Fae instincts are screaming within me and I try to weave between trunk after trunk of the pine trees. I am now positive the trees lean in my way because it feels as if every two feet I’m changing and shifting my course around the bark covered trunks.

  I hear the whine of a sword being pulled from its sheath and my body, extremely tired and full of pulsing adrenaline begins to tremble. Before I can quicken my pace into my screaming leg muscles, a sharp blade slices down my calf, making my scream howl into the night and my body to tumble to the snow. I follow gravity down the side of the mountain. My ankle twists and I cry out again, I think I hear Kane scream, but all I see is snow, darkness, white stars, a night sky, and pine needles. What seems like a thousand daggers stabbing into my skin, morrow deep, are the sticks and thorns from trees and brambles shattering beneath me. I’m rolling, trying to stop myself, but when I throw out my arms or legs to stop more sticks and thorns stab into me.

  It feels like, long, painful, agonizing ages, I tumble down Archaic Mountain, until my back cracks against a tree. If it weren’t for my Fae body, every bone beneath my skin would be shattered. My vision blurs at the edges and dark spots threaten to spread. Coppery blood fills my mouth and I spit into the snow, staining the white fluff with crimson. The tree stopped my fall, so with quivering limbs I try to move. Pain sparkles like electricity up my body. When my brain stops its heavy rattle, I reign in my focus and notice I’m staring at the sky, dark green pines loom around the opening of the moon peeking through the canopy. I feel the trunk against my back, but I’m lying down. How is this possible? I begin to wonder if my eyeballs flipped in my skull before I roll, begrudgingly, to my right and the tree trunk vanishes. I’m falling straight down a twenty foot drop towards knotted thorns. A scream tears my throat as the sharp needles grow closer and closer every second with the roaring wind of my fall. I need to try and save myself from death, so I turn my body, not wanting to split my skull open and let my back smack against the thorns first. Sticks and vines shatter like glass and I fall even further until my back smacks against a jagged surface that feels like stone. My spine meets the ground, and a skyward facing bone tears through my flesh on the left side of my abdomen, going through me. My body instantly arches against the shooting pain and feeling of bone rubbing on bone. The sharp marrow, that rips into my flesh and grinds against my ribcage, conjures the memory of my father’s steel sword reverberating against my ribs echoing throughout my skull. My blood curdling scream doesn’t stop the agony and flaming pain that makes me flush all over. Tears spill down my face and I don’t want to move. The pain is enough to kill me and I start to think about the darkness that surrounds me in this thorn prison I’ve landed in. Trembling and hissing at the pain, flashing through every movement, is all I can do to withstand the agony. The bone that penetrated through me is stuck to the floor, so I have to lift myself off of it. The morrow touches my own making me shout and shake. My screams and sobs echo within the dark cell made of brambles and I hold a firm grip on the hole in my side. If I don’t die from bleeding out than I’m going to die of either infection or starvation. For a moment, I feel sorry for Jax, never knowing what happened to me, unless Kane is fine and makes it back. After our fight earlier, I wouldn’t blame him for going to the Winter Kingdom without me and saying he couldn’t find me. And know that I am alone, bleeding out of a hole in my side, and a cut on my leg, and the thousands of splintered bark pieces stabbing into my clothes. I pray for a familiar face besides Novid or Gaston.

  “Help,” I call up to the hole in the thorn ceiling that I fell through. I see the tree that I fell from, suspended high above the drop. “Somebody! Anybody please help me!”

  My voice drops to a whisper, but even in the darkness of the cave it echoes through the grotto. “Please…”

  I look around me as I drop to my knees against the uneven floor. What I thought to be jagged rocks is broken bones, human bones. A sob escapes my mouth and so does a wail, “HELP!”

  A rippling growl that sounds like rolling thunder booms from the back of the cave, in the darkest corner, and I finally realize that this thorn prison isn’t a prison at all. It is a home. It’s a nest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ~Ariadae~

  Somehow, I didn’t lose my weapons in the tumble. I’m equipped with a quiver of arrows, a bow, and a dagger. I draw the dagger not wanting to release the pressure on my abdomen. Shifting steps and moving feet approach the shaft of moonlight, shining through the broken hole above me, shake the entire nest. I prepare myself for a Demised beast, the size of a castle, but instead, a tusk drags along the ground of bones. Grey, leathery, wrinkled skin emerges into the light and a smooshed face with large teeth protruding from the monster’s jowls soon follows. The ginormous beast somehow fits within this grotto and it has become surprisingly cramped.

  Large bones, erupting from its back scrape against the vines and thorns that make up the ceiling. An inkling of memory slithers from the jagged scar along my shoulder. I remember this monster’s claws tearing open a wound on my arm with its talon from around a tree. What I thought was a startled white stag that saved me, is who I now know to be my mother, distracting the monster from killing me. She wasn’t ready for me to die because she knew I’d find my way to the Tree of Light. That white stag isn’t here anymore. I’m alone.

  Its ink-well eyes are like orbs of glossy oil, hidden by the wrinkles of the beast’s face.

  “We have met before,” My shaking voice doesn’t hide my fear. I have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and now am worse than before. I don’t have my mother to save me. Even if she was here she may only fight the Akuji to kill me herself. The Akuji is the boogieman of the Fae. Parents of Faelings would use the Akuji to make their children go to bed or follow the rules and Jax recognized it. If I hadn’t killed the Rune Witch then I could’ve brought this monster back to its tomb in the Rune Yard. It’s too late now, I could have avoided this death, but I thought the Rune Witch was trying to release a monster that could destroy Abella, not trying to bring one back.

  It answers with a nod and a humble growl. If growls can be humble. The Akuji doesn’t rip me apart, or eat me, not yet anyway. I wait for my Fae instincts to shake, kick, buck before the pounce of the monster, but nothing comes. I look into the calm, adamant stare of the Akuji and the monster seems happy to do the same.

  “ARIADAE!” A scream with thankful glee comes from above and I don’t break my stare with the Akuji as I drop the dagger and fall to my knees sobbing. It was tall before, but now on the ground, the Akuji is the size of an average home. “I’ll get you out of there!”

  The Akuji’s snarl ripples through the air and I can see the waves of heat from the beast’s mouth in the moonlight shafting through the broken ceiling. The darkness closes around my vision, threatening to suffocate me as I stare at the obsidian storm cloud of the Akuji’s irises. I’m losing too much blood. I don’t see or hear Kane arrive, but the last thing I remember is the Akuji backing up into the darkness of the grotto as I lose consciousness.

  <<>><<>><<>>

  A frigid breeze claws me from my sleep. I didn’t dream about anything unless someone carrying me across the cobblestone streets surrounded by stone buildings towering high to the clouds that are so close I can touch them, was a dream.

  I’m greeted by a pale, regal face with a crown of ice atop onyx hair, pin-straight. Her eyes are the same ice blue as Jax’s and so is the dark hair, so I immediately know it’s the High Lady of the Winter Kingdom. She smiles down at me, although her eyes are full of fear.

  Feet scuff against the ground and wood scrapes against stone as suddenly Jax is looking down at me, his face in a panic. The white room is blindingly bright and the cold table beneath me feels as if it is made of ice. A chill makes me shake and the High Lady looks to her son, the exiled heir stripped of a title. “Do you have any food in Equadoria?”

  Jax jus
t ignores the comment and brushes the hair off of my forehead. A cold sweat clings to my skin and I barely feel it. I barely feel anything and I quickly fall into a state of panic. Jax hushes me but it doesn’t stop the fear. I’m paralyzed!

  “Watch out,” the High Lady says with the voice of falling snow, soft and elegant. I don’t feel anything, but my eyes droop until I’m sent back into an impenetrable darkness.

  <<>><<>><<>>

  I lose track of the days. Each time I think I’m dreaming I’m awake and every time I think I’m awake I’m dreaming. The memory of the girl with lightning powers flashes through my mind with a distant thunder. Darkness will surround me and when I try to peer through the dark, I find nothing. But suddenly, in the distance, a warm flickering light appears, two, twin balls of flame. They illuminate dark colored pants that belong to a body, so I approach the being carefully. When I get nearer the flames vanish, and so does the man.

  I know it’s the male who burns like a thousand suns, but how I know, I’m not sure. Every time I see the twin flames at his palms I feel connected to him. As if my powers want to correlate with his. Not my Telekinae ability, but the Void. That purple smoke-like fire that burns inside of me is like a crackling, beating heart. The Void appeared when I was reborn as a Faerie. Somehow my new body unlocked another chest deep in the ocean of my mind.

  A mist surrounds me as I stand in the open oblivion, not cold like death, but warm like a summer sun. I wear a white shift with a pale blue brocade across its papery fabric. I feel tightly wrapped bandages around my waist and my left calf, where the Troglodyte cut it open. A person cries out in pain before me and I run further into the dark towards the strangled groan. As if triggered by my location, Jeremiah appears and now it’s my turn to cry out in pain. Tears slide down our cheeks as I take in his beaten, bruised, and cut body. His brown curls are clipped to the skin and I almost vomit at the reek of bile on him.