[2018] Reign of Queens

by Melissa Wright

  So many things in this realm were not real. So many things were props, reminders and constructions from their memories of home. From a time the older Iron Bound could barely recall.

  “It’s not just humans,” she whispered. “You bring everything?”

  He reached for her, touching her sleeve as he explained they would only move a portion of it—some small part of that whole so that both realms could live—and he heard the hiss. It echoed through the forest like a stone over water, skipping unpredictably from spot to spot to spot. His grip on her tensed, and both of them froze.

  “What is it?” Mackenzie whispered.

  He met her gaze for one heartbeat, and then pulled her to his chest. “Hounds.”

  Arms wrapped tight around her, he lifted them both, darting through the air only paces above the ground. The blue-green limbs and iridescent leaves rushed past, motionless despite his speed. Mackenzie clung to him, pressing her face into his shirt to not see. Her weight was too much for him with the poison still lingering in his blood. She was human and this was not the human world. He would not outrun them with her, not the king’s best hounds. He could feel them gaining, their low, slithering forms scooting across the forest floor. Giant salamander-like bodies with sharpened claws, snakes merged with dogs in some ancient dragon form, too fast and too smooth and able to maneuver better than any other beast. And he couldn’t fly.

  “Hunter, what’s wrong?”

  Mackenzie’s words were cut by their speed, her cheek brushing the skin of his neck. He was holding her, she was wrapped in his arms, and he could do nothing but sacrifice her to the dogs. To Azral. To the king. He faltered, her back brushing the greensward, and he whispered into her ear, “I’m sorry.”

  They crashed to the ground, Hunter taking the full force of the contact. Mackenzie gasped, clutching him tighter, and they rolled onto the soft blades of grass. His fingers slid across her back, finding her arm to pull her to her feet, and they were running, the hiss of the hounds echoing off the trees around them. Sssssskkk. Ssskk. Ssskk-kk-kk-kk.

  It was too late. There was nowhere to hide.

  Their feet landed in the ash fields that bordered the forest, a wasteland that could be mistaken for sand. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  Mackenzie’s fingers dug into his arm as she forced him to look at her. “What is happening? Hunter, what—”

  The ssskk, ssskk, ssskk interrupted her, her dark eyes going wild. It was like a knife in the gut. “I can’t get away from them,” he said. “I can’t—”

  A hound jumped at her, bursting through the ash at their feet. Its body was wide and flat, a slab of black amphibious skin. To Mackenzie, it would look leviathan, a horned snake with teeth and arms.

  She screamed.

  “Halt!” Hunter ordered, pulling her behind him and slamming the poison beast to the earth. Clouds of ash rose, covering its massive form with dust and sand. If it got past him, it would eat her alive. The ssskk, ssskk, ssskk echoed through the trees, so close behind them, and more beasts struck, their ecstasy in the hunt surpassing his command.

  “Halt!” Hunter yelled again, taking a free hand beneath the neck of one beast to flip it back into the third. They were drooling, snarling, overcome. They’d found a human, a human in their realm.

  The first in nearly three thousand cycles.

  Mackenzie was in hysterics, all but crawling up his back. It only incited them further, their hooked jaws snapping and barking as they leapt at Hunter’s back. He twisted, repeating the demand and infusing it with power, but he’d not yet recovered from his wounds and their flight had drained him. One of the monsters shot past, thrusting hard from its tail to clear Hunter’s frame with incredible speed. He grabbed it midflight, yanking down and twisting the beast’s jaw. It landed on its back with a solid thump, letting loose an earsplitting yowl.

  “Halt!” he repeated, his voice a roar. One of the hounds went to heel, a second whimpered, and a third slithered its tongue out with a hungry growl. There were too many of them. They were too eager. The first taste of blood was going to drive them beyond this frenzy.

  The leanest of the beasts stared Hunter down, lingering just behind the others as it waited for a clear shot, a dangerous glint in its eye. It wanted the girl. Wanted her badly.

  Hunter pointed a warning hand toward the beast, the metal of his medallion hot in his fist. They could see the spark of it between his fingers, they would know what metal could do to their blood. It was a reminder of his power. A reminder of his position. Three of the dogs let out high-pitched whines, but the last wasn’t backing down. Mackenzie’s chest heaved behind Hunter, terrified breaths her only sound. She knew not to run, didn’t she? She knew to stay there, behind the safety of his command.

  “Heel.” Hunter’s voice was low, deadly. The offending beast flipped its head, baring teeth in a snarl. Hunter didn’t flinch, daring it to move with his glare.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Azral, standing before what was left of the guard at the edge of the grasslands. His lips were curved into a vindictive smile.

  Chapter 17

  “I am bringing her to the king,” Hunter said as the guard made their way across the field of ash.

  Azral smirked, his sharp gold eyes never leaving Hunter. “By all means. We wouldn’t want to spare the king the pleasure of this extermination.” He nearly purred the words. “It is a rarity indeed.” He ran a finger over his lip, the jagged bits of what remained of his raven claw on full display. “Carac, the girl.”

  And then Carac slammed into Mackenzie as Hunter turned, every fiber in his being wanting to reach out, grab onto her as her feet were lifted from the ground. But he could not, even as she screamed, even as the dogs nipped at her heels.

  He could not.

  Azral gave a second command, and the rest of the guard took to the air, where they would no doubt parade their human prize into the palace walls, taunting and tormenting the entire way.

  Hunter had time before they killed her. The king would make a spectacle of it, festivities before the great reaping day.

  He had to stop it. He didn’t know why, how this girl had become so important to him, but his chest felt as if it was being torn from within, the rest of him afire. He couldn’t stop seeing the way she’d looked at him, feeling the touch of her skin. The scent of her was still on his clothes. He turned to Azral, only the two of them and a pack of savage dogs remaining atop a field of ash. Hunter couldn’t fly. Azral was waiting for him.

  “Go,” Hunter said. “I will be along.” He’d be dead if he showed the other man weakness, and they both knew it.

  “Are you well, gatekeeper?”

  Hunter let his chin drop a fraction of an inch, his voice even lower. “Are you questioning my order, kingsman?”

  Azral’s lip quirked. “Very well. I shall inform the king of your arrival.”

  Hunter waited only until Azral’s form was fading into the aether before he released a call to the sky. He had never voluntarily called on his father’s prize, but there was no way he could allow Mackenzie to be on her own for the amount of time it took him to walk.

  Drawing all of his power, he stood tall, waiting for the beast to drop down upon him. He’d have only one chance to take her, a blink of an eye before she was gone. The virago liked to play games with the king’s men; she could just as easily roll him and move on as allow him the shot at seizing hold.

  The virago was ancient, the mother of so many human legends. Her body had the lines of a horse, wings broad and strong, charcoal feathers streaked with black. Up close her magnificence was terrifying. Raven hair flew over her shoulders in a silken mane, hiding the slant of her ears. The sharp lines of her dark face held the only clue that a hint of humanity might remain behind her gloss-black eyes. And Hunter knew that beneath those full lips rested sharp teeth, had seen them stained with blood. The lean limbs ended in talons capable of severing a man’s head in one quick move.

  The virago’s wing beat
echoed far away, and the dogs began to tremble at Hunter’s feet. “Cease,” he told them, a release from command. They scrambled to escape, claws digging into ash and bodies falling over each other in their haste. Hunter watched the sky, waiting for the virago to swoop in, graze him with her talons, and give him that instant’s touch to catch a ride.

  What happened instead caught him by surprise. The beast glided down, alighting on the ash mere feet before him. Her wings pulled in as she drew herself up, coming to rest so close that Hunter had to resist the urge to step backward.

  She glowered down at him. “She sees what you’ve done, boy.”

  The virago seldom spoke directly to anyone, including the king, and to Hunter’s ears her voice seemed especially strange. He inclined his head. He’d felt her presence more than once over the past weeks in the undying lands, though he was never certain whether she’d been watching for her own entertainment or to report to the king. “I can only hope that I’ve not offended you, my lady.”

  She let out a breath with a sound that might have been amusement. “There are games in the winds, these many days.”

  Hunter looked the virago in the eyes. “I assure you, that has never been my intent.”

  The virago leaned close, towering over him. “She speaks of treachery and deceit, young chosen, which is not your own.”

  “You know who opened the gate,” Hunter said. “You know what Azral wants.”

  “The kingsman is not why you called her, she thinks.”

  Hunter nodded. “I have been poisoned. I was hoping you could return me to the king.”

  “She will take you,” the virago said. “You will draw strength from the castle where they wait.”

  Hunter’s chest tightened. “Thank you,” he said, moving toward the virago’s back.

  Her head dropped, blocking his path. Her black eyes pinned him there, her voice low. “You will alter this destiny, young one. You will keep those bound by iron in the dying lands.”

  “By my honor,” Hunter promised. “It is my burden to bear.”

  She sniffed, tossing her head like a charger and losing all semblance of humanity as she drew her wing back for Hunter to climb on. He jumped cleanly astride, clinging to her as her body flexed and took to the air. He would be to the palace quickly enough, but he couldn’t help counting the minutes until they arrived.

  The approach to the king’s hall gave Hunter time to think. It was time to plan, but not time to decide how to plead. There was no way of knowing what deceptions Azral had laid in place.

  They rose over the city, the virago soaring low enough to keep their movement in sight. As Hunter scanned the city’s walls, he could only imagine what the scene would look like to a human. There was nothing earthly about it, it was nothing like a kingdom from her fairytales, a palace made of glass. It was dark, alien. It was ash and skeletons, constructed into broken shapes. It was sinister, despite the light that surrounded it.

  In the center of the city, the power was strong. He could feel it on his skin, draw it into him like a breath. But where the power was strong, the light was a blur, no longer the whorls and color of the outer forests. Here was the gray heart of the dying lands. To Mackenzie, it would look like a forest of concrete and stone.

  To Hunter, it was nothing but ash.

  The Iron Bound grew thicker beneath their flight, some of them airborne but most on their feet, standing in groups among the pillars and borders of the city gates. They were gathering, growing anxious for action amid the looming day of reaping. A tangled fusion of sound floated up to them—laughter and music, the occasional clap or howl—suffused with mingling scents, unearthly and holding the trace of something foul. Masked revelers draped in robes and vine bunched near breaks in the stone where the energy swelled, circling around the cat-beasts to watch them brawl. And then Hunter saw a mass of them, hundreds of Iron Bound surrounding a platform before the castle grounds. He tensed, leaning forward to act, but the virago saw it too.

  She swooped down, releasing a cry that scattered the crowd below. Dark blood spattered Hunter’s leg, thrown from a wound the beast’s talons had dealt to a man below. She slid through the revelers, her massive wings and claws breaking the crowd into a run. Iron Bound were falling, taking to the air, and rolling on the ground to escape her. Hunter felt the tautness in her shoulder, and had the prickling sense she was enjoying it. She shrieked, knocking three more men to the ground, and he had to tighten his grip as she swung to the side, widening her path and circling back for the platform at full speed.

  The virago’s talons landed on the hardened ash, skidding forward to bring them to rest only inches before the king’s guard. The virago’s chest heaved, her breath the heavy purr of an earthbound stallion. A king’s guard bowed, sliding away with the gesture, and three more took to the air, never turning their backs on the beast.

  Carac stood open-mouthed several yards beyond the others, the leather of Mackenzie’s jacket tight in his grip. Hunter couldn’t see much of her from his perch, and he jumped down, clearing the virago’s wing and at least four feet of space with each step. Azral watched from the edge of the platform, a smirk twisting his lips. But Hunter didn’t spare a second glance at him. He was only looking for one thing.

  “She is for the king,” Hunter said, grabbing Mackenzie’s arm in a show of roughness. Carac was still stunned, his grip not coming free until Hunter pulled Mackenzie to the side. “The king,” Hunter repeated, giving the man a glare worthy of his rank. Carac opened his mouth to stutter a reply, but Hunter was gone, pushing past them to step down into a parting crowd.

  It was eight hundred steps to the castle. Eight hundred steps to give Azral a chance to defy him. His power had been on a near-constant draw since they’d approached the city, but Hunter couldn’t allow himself to fall. Not now. Eight hundred steps. But it wasn’t important anymore, he reminded himself. He’d broken the code, betrayed their law. It was all just a matter of time.

  And Mackenzie, gods, Mackenzie. She’d not even recognized him, not even realized when he’d grabbed her arm. She was in shock, staring blankly into the space beyond.

  Hunter flew. He wrapped her in his arms, lifted her into the air, and soared toward the castle walls ahead.

  Chapter 18

  Mackenzie didn’t come to until he touched her face. They were locked safely away in Hunter’s suite of rooms, the space that would most resemble her home, and he pressed a palm to her cheek, begging. “Please, Mackenzie, please.”

  She took a shallow breath, blinked a couple of times, and then her eyes cleared. He wasn’t sure she remembered where she was, couldn’t tell if she knew what was in store, until she began to cry. Her shoulders rose in a long, shaky breath, and then started to shudder with sobs. She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around Hunter, and he held her while she cried, and cried, and cried.

  “Mackenzie,” he whispered, running a hand over the mess of her hair. He wanted to tell her it was okay. But that would be a lie. So he just held her, patting her back and touching her skin, doing all the things he’d kept himself from doing before. Because it didn’t matter now.

  “Wh-wh—” Mackenzie’s breaths stuttered, choking her words. She drew away from him, sucking in breath and wiping her face. Her lashes were dark with tears, the tip of her nose pink. It was the first time Hunter noticed the whisper of freckles across her cheeks.

  He pulled a piece of cloth from the ripped hem of his shirt, away from the blood that still stained its side. “I’m sorry,” he offered, handing her the cloth, and she seemed to realize they were in a new space. She blinked, glancing around Hunter’s suite. It was the same pale stone, but he’d made it comfortable, bits and pieces of the things that would remind him of his other home. Things from the undying lands.

  Mackenzie’s fingers dug into the cushion beneath her, fabric the likes of which she’d not have seen since she’d been dragged through the gateway. “Did you, did you bring this?”

  Hunter shook his head, seein
g the room again through her eyes. In their simplest terms: a couch, a chair, doorways to other rooms. But as different as they were from his father’s rooms, they were even further from her world. “No. Materials from there do not last long. I’ve had to create them from the things on this side.”

  There was a harrumph from across the room, and Mackenzie jumped. Hunter resisted the urge to pull her to his side. “It’s okay,” he whispered.

  The small woman moved toward them, her willowy limbs covered in sheer fabric and hides. “Boy speaks of lies,” she said cheerfully, sidestepping a chair and coming to rest at Mackenzie’s side. “Krea makes room for him. Krea.” She pointed a finger at her chest, her dark, round eyes narrowing on Mackenzie as if to watch for her understanding of the words.

  Mackenzie stared at the woman, open-mouthed. Krea was not so unusual among his kind, but less normal in Mackenzie’s eyes. Her face was circular and smooth, once-olive skin a strange shade of green. But her hair was pulled back into a braid, only making her visage appear more alien, and she was exceedingly petite, barely coming to Hunter’s chest. The virago and Krea were older, had been on this plane longer, and so were more changed by the energy. More powerful and less human.

  Krea blinked, the movement slow over lashless eyes, and it came to Hunter then why Mackenzie had been alarmed. She hadn’t understood a single word any of the others had said until Krea. She’d been trapped and alone in this strange world, and their taunts had been no more than terrifying noise.

  He touched Mackenzie’s hand, sliding his fingers around hers. “This is Krea, Mackenzie. She is my…” He struggled for a usable word, then settled on, “Maid.” Krea bowed, billowing fabric over her slender frame making the movement more pronounced. “Krea is an expert with languages,” Hunter explained. “She remembers every word.”