[2018] Reign of Queens

by Melissa Wright

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, only nodding to Emily before heading for the door. “Have a wonderful stay.”

  I touched his shoulder as he passed. “Here,” I said, brushing away his memories of the couple in 402. “Let me get the door for you.”

  He walked, slightly dazed, from the room, and then seemed to remember himself halfway down the hall.

  “What?” Emily said from behind me.

  I’d jumped. Again. “Nothing,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

  She peered out beside me in time to see the bellman enter the service elevator. I pressed her back into the room and latched the door.

  Emily stood staring at the plates of food, so I unrolled the napkin and handed her a fork. I kept the knife, and began cutting the sandwich in half, and she followed my example by dumping the condiment bowl and portioning out salad. There was only the one chair at the desk, so she moved the plates to the center of the bed, and climbed in to sit cross-legged by the headboard. I sat on the opposite side near the end, and picked up half a cheeseburger from our shared platter.

  I was on my last bite when she said, “So… Mister Smith?”

  Unprepared, I almost choked.

  She smirked, quite nearly a smile, and bit into a French fry. “Where did you learn all of this?” she asked. “This cloak-and-dagger stuff?”

  I laughed. “Cloak-and-dagger?”

  She shrugged.

  “I didn’t,” I said honestly. I picked up a grape and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. “This… this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  Emily leaned forward, and I regretted giving her any clue to the unreliability of the prophecy.

  I dropped the grape. “I was never supposed to be on the run. Before all this, it never crossed my mind I’d be doing surveillance, or misleading Council, let alone protecting someone. It wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “The plan?” she asked.

  “They had it all figured out,” I explained. “Taught us everything we’d need to know.” I met Emily’s eyes. “They trained us all right, just not for this.”

  “Us?”

  “Morgan,” I said. “Morgan and I were educated in the ways of the blood, learned in the ideals of Council.”

  “Morgan,” she said, “he’s the one I saw at the warehouse? He’s your brother?”

  I nodded. “My older brother. The first born.”

  “The chosen one,” Emily whispered. She’d lost her appetite as well, dropping her last fry back to the plate.

  “He came into this world knowing he would rule,” I said, thinking of the devastation he would cause, of the thousands he would kill, of the rest he would send to war. Of the end of our lines. All for power. I let go of the thought, finding Emily once more. “When I came along a few years later, he decided I was to be his underling, that I should serve and bow to him.” I wiped my hands on a napkin and tossed it onto the tray. “He feels he’s owed this by Council, by all of us. Nothing in this life will ever convince him any differently. The idea of the prophecy has warped his sense of being, his principles.”

  Emily pulled her knees up tight, tucking her hands over her bare feet. “And so he’s been waiting? All this time, searching for Brianna?”

  A harsh laugh escaped. “He’s not exactly been sitting idle, no. Morgan has had an abundance of unpleasant pursuits in the years before we found her.”

  Emily sat up, suddenly rigid. “We?”

  “Council,” I said. “We of the blood.” I stood to collect the tray. “But it was one of his minions who finally tracked her down.”

  “How did they know?” she asked. “How did they know, after all this time, to look for her?”

  “It wasn’t her at all,” I said. “It was us. It was that a son was finally born to our line.”

  Emily paled, and I knew she was remembering the words of the prophecy. The prophecy that, not so long ago, had only been a fiction in her mind, the ramblings of an eccentric parent.

  I gave her a moment to gather her thoughts as I slid the tray into the hall. When I returned, she was already recovered and waiting for me to continue.

  I sat on the bed opposite her. “The prophecy says that ‘a daughter of great power, born of the serpent with eyes of the sea, will bring absolute conflict’. That’s not much to go on, really. So Council has been watching for the other clues. Namely, ‘the heir to the dragon’s name will rule with their union.’ It doesn’t seem like much, until you count the fact that the dragon hasn’t had an heir in a few hundred years.”

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said, “but my mother… Well, maybe she did explain it, but I guess I didn’t really listen to everything she said. I just thought it didn’t matter, that it was a story.”

  “Where did I lose you?”

  “The dragon?” she asked.

  “I don’t suppose you could know that,” I said. “A lot of the words in the prophecy actually mean something else. They were written in the old language, and even we don’t reference things the same way now. The dragon points to my family’s bloodline, one of the Seven. Those who had ruled in the past. And an ‘heir to the name’ is an unusual one, since names weren’t even passed as such when the prophecy was written, but it says that the chosen one must be male.”

  “And there weren’t any before?”

  I shook my head. “Not for a very long time. The blood was passed mother to daughter until Morgan was born.”

  “How do you know?” she whispered. “I mean, how can you be sure?”

  I shrugged. “Council has been studying the prophecy since before any of us were even born. I suppose we just trust them to understand the clues and hidden meanings.”

  “Have you seen it?” she asked.

  I smiled. “Yes. Only me—they didn’t trust Morgan with it.”

  She leaned closer. “Was it… Did you know?”

  I leaned forward as well. “I did.”

  A sad smile crossed her lips as she leaned back against the headboard. “I wish I had seen it. I wish, so much, that something could have convinced me. That I could have believed her.”

  “You did,” I said. “When it counted.”

  We sat silent for a moment, and I could see exhaustion take over Emily’s features. I glanced at the brown plaid chair in the corner, and then brushed my hands over my jeans before standing to go to it.

  Emily grabbed my arm. “Aern?”

  I turned back to her.

  “Tell me Brianna is safe.”

  “She is,” I promised. “She will always be safe.”

  She drew me toward her, gaze dropping as she pressed me back on the pillows to curl against my chest. The motion was tentative, but she had done it nonetheless.

  I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “You will both be safe, Emily. I swear by it.”

  The Division

  I stared at the toes of my boots until morning. I didn’t look at the girl in my arms, at her honeyed locks that had dried, uncombed, into loose ribbons. I didn’t watch the skin of her bare arm, draped easily across my cotton-covered abdomen, or the way her lips occasionally twitched while she slept, tucked neatly into the crook of my arm.

  And I certainly didn’t think about the way her cheek felt, pressed to my chest. At least, not until she began to wake.

  A quiet rumble came from deep in her throat and she burrowed deeper into my shirt before the arm wrapped across my middle drew in and then unbent over me in a stretch. The rest of her body followed, both legs straightened out, her bare feet pointed to the black television screen across the room.

  And then her eyes shot open.

  I smiled at her stunned face as she stared up at me, only inches away.

  She kept her gaze on me, but pulled her arm back, hand half open as she decided whether to press my chest in order to raise off me. I made no move to ease her escape. This close, I could see each of her dark lashes, the faintest of freckles on her cheekbones, the curve of her lip…

  She swallowed hard, and then abruptly remem
bered herself and rolled back and onto her knees. “Aern.” It came out breathier than she intended and she quickly cleared her throat.

  “Sleep well?” I asked, leaning forward to move my feet to the floor.

  She seemed unsure for a moment and then relaxed, stretched again, and decided, “Yes.”

  When it appeared she was going to ask me the same, I said, “How do you like your eggs?”

  This threw her again, but she finally answered, “Scrambled.” And then, “Thanks.”

  I walked around the bed to call in our breakfast order, and Emily made her way to the bathroom. As I raised the handset to my ear, I found the closet mirror opposite her and was distracted from my task.

  She paused in front of the sink, looking incredulously at her reflection. Her lips formed some silent words that I couldn’t make out, though I tried, and then they stilled, pursed, then relaxed. She sighed deep, rubbed a hand numbly over her cheek, and turned to reach for the door. Our eyes met, and for one brief moment, she watched me watch her.

  And then she closed the door.

  I ended my call to the sound of her fumbling with the coffee maker. I crossed to the window and drew the curtains and shades fully open to stare out into the city. It was early, and the sun cast a rich amber glow against the haze. The light threw shadows behind the tallest buildings, banks and corporate offices, completely unaware of the looming apocalypse. So many of them. Oblivious to the prophecy, to the war we were fighting to save us all. They didn’t keep their history, didn’t know of Council’s wish to return to the way things were. When our kind held dominion over all. They didn’t even know we existed. If Morgan succeeded, they would think him merely another human.

  Until the killing began.

  “Coffee?” Emily offered from beside me.

  I took the cup, and then struck by the sight of her in the early morning sun, forgot myself.

  She pretended not to notice as she turned to face the window. Her hair was tucked behind her ear and she wore three-day-old clothes, but she’d straightened them both, and her cheeks wore a thin layer of softly scented lotion.

  “Thank you,” I said. She looked at me as if she wasn’t sure why I was thanking her, and I raised the coffee. She nodded absently. “Not a morning person?” I asked.

  An undecipherable huff escaped her. “I guess not.” She shook her head, thoughts elsewhere. And then, “So, about that phone call yesterday.” She glanced down at her cup; her thumb flicked anxiously at the mug’s grip. “You’re going to drop me off at a safe house?”

  “We’ll talk about that,” I said. “But after breakfast.”

  A knock sounded at the door and Emily’s head quirked to the side, birdlike, as she speculated how I’d predicted it. I sat my cup on the desk as if it wasn’t out of the ordinary at all, and retrieved the tray from the bellman without letting him in.

  We ate in silence and Emily finished before I’d made it halfway through my food. She sat in the plaid corner chair, napkin covering her empty plate, and hands crossed over one another in her lap. I sat in the desk chair, trying to ignore her impatient stare while I buttered my second slice of toast.

  As I took the last bite and wiped my hands on a napkin, she straightened, rigid with attentiveness. I stood to move her plate and my own back to the tray before turning to her.

  “I’m not taking you to the safe house,” I said. “I’m taking you to your sister.”

  The force with which she leapt from the chair and launched herself at me was incredible, and I nearly staggered back into the desk, dishes and all. Instead, I stood in shock, her arms wrapped tightly around me in a hug so fierce it was disarming.

  She was gasping, and I gripped her shoulders to push her away, just enough to see her face. “Emily, there’s something you need to know…”

  But she was crying.

  Her wide, green eyes glistened with moisture as she looked up at me with unfathomable hope and relief washing her features. “Emily,” I repeated, and one tear escaped the outside corner of her eye, tracing slowly down her cheek. I brushed it away with a thumb and my chest tightened. What was I doing?

  “Emily,” I said firmly.

  She nodded dazedly and made an effort to pull herself together. She shook herself, and suddenly her eyes were dry, clear when they met mine again. “Something I need to know?”

  She said the words, but I didn’t think they’d fully registered. “About where I’m taking you,” I explained. “About… the Division.”

  As quickly as her embrace had sprung upon me, it was gone. I felt suddenly bereft, and it was dizzying, alien. She had moved back, never taking her eyes off me, face blank with shock that was swiftly turning to horror.

  “The Division?” she whispered, and it was unclear if the words were meant to question me or convince herself of what she’d heard. Either way, she didn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.

  “She’s safe, Emily. They won’t hurt her. It was the only way—”

  “You took my sister to the Division?” she hissed.

  “I had no other choice. They are the only ones I could trust with her.”

  She looked sick. And afraid. Her gaze flicked to the door and I stepped sideways toward the bed, hands up in the palms-out gesture reserved for wild animals, in my attempt to block her long enough to explain. I threw everything in my sway toward her, pleading for calm, and for a moment, I thought it worked. Until she had a knife point aimed at my chest.

  “Don’t,” I said tightly, battling with anger that I’d left a weapon within her reach and alarm at the speed at which she’d retrieved it.

  She didn’t speak, but I could see she was measuring her options. Suddenly her questions the previous night took on new meaning and I couldn’t help but wonder about her own “education.”

  My stance adjusted to more of a ready crouch. It was only a serrated stainless blade, but I was quickly becoming aware of her capabilities. She had eluded Morgan’s men. Certainly they wouldn’t have considered her a threat, merely another human, easily swayed. But she had still managed to find us, walk herself into that warehouse. His warehouse.

  The lingering pain in my shoulder became a niggling distraction.

  “Let me past,” she said in an unsteady voice.

  “You can’t, Emily. Let me explain—”

  “Let me past,” she repeated, though this time it was saturated with hatred and despair.

  “You’ll never find them,” I said. “Not without me.”

  She considered that for less than a second before tightening her grip on the knife. “There is no with you.”

  I hadn’t expected her to know the Division. But the revulsion in her words made me wonder if she knew more than I. “I have to keep Brianna safe,” I said. “I will do whatever that requires.”

  She narrowed her gaze on me.

  “You can’t do this.”

  “Stop me,” she said, and I could see her decide to make a move.

  “I won’t let you,” I warned. “I can’t—”

  Emily rushed me. Her moves were swift and sure, and left no doubt she’d been training for most of her life. She might not have believed her mother, but she had certainly paid attention in class.

  Her knife bit at me with quick, short dives between practiced leg sweeps and palm thrusts. She kept herself low, as small a target as possible, and free from my grasp. She knew I wouldn’t hurt her, or didn’t care, and worked to use my size against me. All I could do without injuring one of us was avoid her strikes.

  She feigned left, and then darted right, but instead of stabbing at me flipped the tray, dishes and all, at my upper body. It should have given her the opportunity to slip by, but I was no back-alley mugger. I got a secure grip on her arm and swung her around, her back toward me, to grab the other.

  I had her trapped by a firm hold on each arm, just above the elbow where I had the best leverage, and the knife fell to the floor. For half a second, I thought that meant she’d given up, but she d
rew her bare feet together over it and made a clumsy thrust toward my thigh without pause. I dodged the blow, but she’d lost her footing so my movement dropped her to kneeling. She tried to roll forward and catch me off balance and it nearly worked, but I was not physically unsteady, merely thrown by her maneuvers. By the idea that she—Emily—could fight this well.

  I pulled her from the floor and she drew her legs up fluidly before kicking out to shove off the dresser and propel herself into me. I struggled to hold her. It was not unlike holding a cat. Some wild, ninja, cat.

  I braced myself, legs wide, and drew her against me to twist her arms securely within mine. I pressed a hand to her neck to prevent her from smashing my face with the back of her skull and said evenly, “Emily, I don’t want to hurt you.”

  It was probably mostly true.

  She didn’t speak, simply raised her legs from the floor, forcing me to hold all of her weight. I sighed.

  “Give,” I said. “Give and have a conversation with me or so help me—”

  My threat was cut short as her bare right foot shot out to connect with the corner of the flatscreen television. I caught the move just in time to save her from flipping it toward us and spun around to throw her onto the bed. She’d no more than had a chance to roll over before I was on her, pinning her down on all points beneath me. She jerked, but it was too late, I had her. I sat atop her hips, my knees pinning her forearms while my legs, bent behind me, trapped her just above the knees.

  Were she able to move, my free hands could discourage the notion, but she wasn’t, so I simply sat there, staring down at her, reminding her that she never had a chance.

  She was furious. I wasn’t sure exactly when she’d lost her cool, but her cheeks were flushed and her jaw tight. Her hair had gone wild, splayed over the mussed blue comforter behind her. Her chest heaved, both her and the bed covered in bits of scrambled egg. Spots of something dark had splattered her shirt. I felt a tug at the corner of my mouth, but the look in her eye told me I was about to get an earful of something.

  I’d never know exactly what though, because, suddenly, three loud knocks rang through the room and the atmosphere transformed entirely.