Page 7 of Red Queen

I can see her, almost taste those lips and the satin of her pale, gleaming skin. Even in the melee the bright blue of her eyes hooked in deep.

Curse her for wanting to restore the old ways and the bloodletting of humans.

“General?” Ivan asks.

I open my eyes, his shadow long in the dancing candlelight, the blue of morning’s first light staining the floor.

My fingers curl into fists at my sides, hidden beneath the long sleeves of my tailored black coat, the fabric whispering over the hilt of my sword.

“Speak your mind, Ivan.”

“We must do something,” he says. “Throw down with the new queen or rise up. We?—”

“Eleanna lives.”

Ivan comes up to me. He’s clad in his military garb, dark and severe, every inch the warrior. The faint gleam of his cropped hair and the iron-gray of his eyes mark him as a man who has weathered countless storms. His presence is both a blade and shield—reassurance in the midst of mayhem.

We may not have taken part in the battle, but we both know one is coming. And where we are in the world is most definitely mayhem.

“She is hard to miss.”

“The battle is done in the castle, is it not?” I don’t need to stay to witness the fall of Sagori. Ivan’s silence is answer enough. “Loyalists switched to save their skin, or perished. Or fled.”

A fifth column will rise.

Battles and wars changed in many ways, but not the rise and fall of power. And not those who fought from the shadows for their beliefs.

Those things never changed. And the fifth column? If Catarina had her way everything would be under her rule. And every loyalist to Sagori ground to dust. Staked.

“Those who got out have not mentioned her, General Amanar. Our spy left when the battle grew too big. She vanished. That spy, as you know, barely got out.” He shifts, those clever eyes moving over me. “You should be careful.”

“I will not hide away. And if her body was there, that news would have spread faster than the encroaching day. Eleanna got out, and she’ll be more dangerous to those who betrayed her than ever.”

I keep my own emotions under tight control.

“Her words stirred anarchy, General Amanar. The old ways are not welcomed by all.” Ivan’s voice is low. He rests one hand on the hilt of his sword.

“Nor should they be.” My reply is terse, as I stare out into the slow dawn that stretches across the grounds. “But Eleanna moves forward.”

“Some don’t see it so.”

I want to yell the time for our discussion has passed. But I don’t think it has. She’s not dead. I know it as I know myself. “Problem is Eleanna’s fucking blind to the edges of the precipice she treads upon. She lacks the diplomacy needed.”

What she does is speak truth unvarnished. And it’s how I know she’s a true queen. Not a politician like Catarina who can manipulate words and situations, bending them to her. She’s as unmoving as Eleanna, but the red-haired beauty’s transparent. Catarina would have the world think she’s bending to it until she has her power. Makes her move.

Makes? Made.

“Do we know if any loyalists to the real queen got out?”

“Some,” he says. “Some. But they’ll be in hiding.”

“She must have got out when they did. Otherwise her head would be on a pike.”

I cast him a look, straightening up.

“Then we must ready ourselves,” he says, his tone steady as ever. “Wait, watch.”

“And you? Your loyalties?”

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