Page 99 of Queen
Guido whimpers, trying to fold himself behind me. My body is a wall, but a wall can only hold so long.
The first soldier lunges. I slash upward, dagger sinking into his arm. He howls, but doesn’t stop. The second swings the chains, iron screaming as it slices the air. The links catch my wrist, wrenching the blade from my hand. Pain rips through me.
“Zina!” Emiliano’s roar tears across the courtyard.
I whip my head—he’s fighting through the mob like the devil himself, every strike a death sentence, every man in his path falling broken. His suit is shredded, his chest streakedwith blood, but his eyes burn on me. He’s coming. But not fast enough.
The soldier with the chains yanks hard, dragging me forward. My knees hit the stone. Guido screams my name, his tiny fists beating uselessly against the man’s thigh.
Santino’s laughter cuts down from the balcony, sharp as shattered glass. “The Queen of Fire—brought to her knees by her own throne!”
Rage floods my veins hotter than the blood trickling from my wrist. I spit into the traitor’s face, hiss through my teeth, “Queens don’t kneel.”
I twist, drive my elbow into his gut. He grunts, stumbles, but the chains hold tight. The second soldier cocks his rifle, barrel swinging toward Guido.
“No!” My scream rips my throat raw.
Time fractures. The world slows to a heartbeat, a single inhale. My boy frozen. The gun rising. Emiliano too far.
Then the shot cracks—
But not from their gun.
The soldier jerks, a spray of red blooming across his chest. He collapses, rifle clattering beside Guido. The shot came from the gates. A sniper’s perch. Shadows in the dark moving like ghosts.
Not allies. More enemies.
The courtyard turns again, soldiers dropping under unseen fire. Panic surges. Even Emiliano falters for a heartbeat, scanning the rooftops.
I drag Guido to me, my body covering his small frame, blood and dirt smearing into his hair. Around us, the kingdom fractures—steel, screams, betrayal.
And above it all, Santino’s smirk widens. He spreads his arms like a false messiah, the fire behind him turning his silhouette into a crown of flames.
“You wanted war,” he calls. “Tonight you choke on it.”
His soldiers surge. The traitor with the chains yanks me back up, gun jammed against my temple now.
Emiliano’s roar splits the sky. He’s close. So close. But the cold press of steel against my skull tells me the truth.
The Queen of Fire has one heartbeat left.
22
emiliano
Storm of Blood
The gun at her temple freezes me mid-stride. My lungs seize; my boots slip on blood-slick marble, and still my eyes never leave hers. Zina—my Queen, my ruin, my fucking salvation—held in chains like an offering to gods I don’t believe in.
“Let her go!” My roar splits the courtyard.
The traitor jerks the pistol harder against her skull, his lip curled like he’s already tasted my defeat. Smoke claws the night. Brass shells ping across stone like angry hail. Somewhere to my left a man gurgles his last breath; to my right, a statue of Giovanni shatters, marble skull blown clean off. The villa is a battlefield dressed in velvet.
But I only see her.
She stands with her wrists shackled, chain bitten into skin, chin high enough to cut. Blood paints her mouth where someone dared to strike her. She doesn’t look at the gun. She looks at me. Calm. Commanding. As if the barrel to her temple is a minor inconvenience and the only thing that matters is whether I blink first.
At her skirts, the boy—our boy—clings like a shadow. Guido’s eyes are wide, unblinking, a shocky glass blue. His little fist is wrapped white-knuckle around something I recognize even from ten paces: the carved wooden knight he won’t release, the one they made him play with in hell. He presses it to his chest like it can stop a bullet.
