Page 102 of A War of Crowns

But this was no game. This was not simply a meeting of egos.

Calix’s life hung in the balance.

Aldric set his jaw and lunged forward. He feinted to the left before shifting his focus toward the baron’s right, seeking to sweep the other man’s leg out from under him.

But before he could finish the move, Crestley shot his arm out and wrapped his still gloved fingers about the midsection of Aldric’s glaive. The peacock’s eyebrow arched as he braced them both with a strength Aldric never would have guessed was hidden beneath all that silk and lace.

“Stop!” shouted a woman from the edges of their duel.

The queen.

“Stop at once, the both of you!”

While Crestley turned his head to glance at the woman hurrying toward them both, Aldric let go of his glaive with his right hand andpunchedthe other man as hard as he could, directly in the groin.

“I said stop!” the queen shouted again, close enough now that Aldric could nearly feel the anger crackling off of her.

But it didn’t matter. He had won.

“You…cheated…” Crestley croaked as he crumpled to the ground at Aldric’s feet.

Aldric simply smirked at that, though. No one had said he had to fight fair.

“Yield,” he commanded while lifting his polearm and holding it threateningly right alongside the side of the baron’s head. “Or I’ll crack your skull like an egg.”

“You most certainly will not,” his bride hissed from her place now looming over him. “Stop this nonsense at once.”

“Or what?” Aldric softly asked her, though his one-eyed gaze remained on Crestley. He still waited for the man to yield. “What shall my punishment be, wife? The dungeons?” He shot her a quick, sidelong glance. “A flogging?”

The queen’s jaw flexed. Her nostrils flared.

Aldric looked back down at the man kneeling in front of him just in time to see the full heat of the baron’s hatred burning in his eyes when he whispered, “You are going to regret this,dwarf.”

Taking his gaze off the queen was a mistake, though.

He didn’t see it coming when the woman suddenly gripped him by the shoulder and forcefully shoved him away from the bested peacock.

The pain of his armor pressing into all the many wounds peppering his skin saw him gritting his teeth to keep from crying out.

She stepped between the two of them. “I told you to stop and you will stop,” she softly commanded, her eyes only for Aldric. “I leave you alone for five minutes—five minutes—and this is what you do?”

He frowned at her.

But she kept going.

“I gave youonecommand, Crow. To behave. And instead of doing that, I find you…” Her mouth worked a moment before she concluded, “Brawling.”

Aldric barked out a laugh, earning a deep frown from the queen. But he didn’t care. He waved Kyn over and growled, “Your peacock threatened one of mymen—”

“Then you come to me if there is a problem,” the queen insisted without pause. “This is Elmoria, not Drakmor. Justice is delivered from my lips, not at the end of a blade.”

He turned his head and lifted his gaze to meet the burn of her own. Before he could answer her, though, his men were upon them.

Calix reached him first. “You had me worried there for a moment, Your Highness.”

Aldric snapped a glare Calix’s way. The other man had the good sense to take a step back at that look, giving Kyn the space to step in and unbuckle the leather brigandine from Aldric’s chest.

“Never again, Calix,” Aldric snarled while letting Kyn do what he must. “And that goes for the lot of you,” he added for the rest of his Sons. “I want no more complications.” Silence was all that greeted him, though, until he snapped a question of, “Am I understood?”

---