Page 72 of Queen
For the first time, something flickers in his eyes—not fear, not shame. Amusement. Maybe respect. His lips twitch, a ghost of a smile that never touches his storm-dark eyes.
The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s war, unspoken. A battlefield drawn in bloodlines and damnation. Neither of us lowers our weapons—his beads, my steel. His faith, my fury.
And the cathedral waits, breathless, to see which of us strikes first.
A Crown of Thorns
The rosary dangles between us like a curse, its beads swinging slow, deliberate, mocking. I don’t flinch. I won’t. If I bow now, he wins. If I hesitate, I’m already dead.
So I step forward—closer—until incense clinging faintly to his shirt mixes with the copper bite of ash in the cathedral air.My hand moves faster than thought. My palm cracks across his face, the sound shattering through the hollow vaults like a gunshot.
The sting burns my hand. His head whips to the side, a red bloom blooming sharp on his cheek. His jaw flexes, but he doesn’t stagger. He turns back slow, eyes blazing—not shock, but fury that I dared.
He seizes my arm, grip bruising, pulling me close until his breath scalds my cheek. “You don’t belong in our bloodline,” he spits, voice low, venomous, the words shaped like a blade meant to cut deeper than steel.
I bare my teeth in a smile sharp enough to wound. “You’re right,” I whisper, steady, unyielding. “I belong above it.”
The blade answers for me. I drive it upward, edge pressed to his throat. Steel kisses skin. A single bead of blood blooms bright against the edge. He stiffens, his fingers tightening on my arm, but I lean closer, letting my words cut as deep as the knife.
The silence that follows is heavy, thunder waiting to break. Then Santino jerks back, tearing his arm from my grip with a snarl. His hand lifts to his throat where my blade kissed him, thumb smearing that bead of blood across his skin.
“You’re just a pawn,” he snaps, his voice rising, echoing through the cathedral like a curse hurled from the altar. “A pawn pretending to be Queen.”
His words should cut, but I let them slide off me. Giovanni’s whispers in the dark, Emiliano’s promises edged with ruin—men always tried to tell me what I was. They never understood until it was too late: I’m the one rewriting the rules.
I raise my chin, my voice iron, final. “And you’re the bastard who’ll kneel before me when this is done.”
The words hang like prophecy, etched into stone. His jaw ticks, his eyes narrowing, fury laced with something he doesn’t want me to see—fear.
The cathedral groans as wind pushes through shattered glass, the sound mournful, ghostlike. Above us, the broken stained glass scatters moonlight, throwing shards of color over our bodies—red for blood, black for shadow, gold for crowns.
It feels ordained. A Queen and her would-be usurper, facing each other in ruins that once demanded confession. Tonight there will be no forgiveness. No saints, no salvation.
Only crowns. Only thorns.
And only one throne.
Blood for Blood
The drive back is longer than it has any right to be. The city sleeps beyond the tinted glass, but I can’t shake the phantom scrape of Santino’s voice trailing me out of the cathedral—death dressed up as scripture. I don’t tell Emiliano what passed between us. Some things stay locked in bone and blood; silence is the only armor I can trust.
By the time I reach my rooms, exhaustion hangs heavy, a wet cloak I can’t shrug off. My fingers ache from gripping the blade too tight; my throat is raw from words I refused to scream. I shut the door behind me, lean my forehead to the wood, and let my lungs relearn air.
Then I see it.
A small box. Unadorned. Resting dead-center on my pillow like a crown left by unseen hands.
Cold slides down my spine. Every step toward the bed feels like walking into a grave I didn’t know was dug for me. I sit. The mattress sighs under my weight. My hands hover over the lid, steady in a way my pulse isn’t.
I already know whatever waits inside is going to cut deeper than Santino’s venom, deeper than Emiliano’s threats, deeper than the fractures I’ve been binding with grit. Still, I lift the lid.
A wooden soldier stares up at me—the kind Guido used to march across the nursery floor while making battle sounds with his mouth. The paint is chipped, the little sword snapped clean in half.
My soldier. The one I pulled from Giovanni’s trash and hid under a loose board because I refused to let him erase the proof of my child.
Only now the soldier’s chest is slicked with a thin smear of drying blood. Not a staging. Not a gore-soaked performance. Just enough to whisper.
I set it in my palm. It’s warm, as if it’s been held recently. My thumb finds the old nick along the base—mine, from years ago. This is the same piece. Whoever placed it here pulled the past out by the roots and set it on my pillow like a curse.
