Page 2 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
I bend down, lacing my fingers into Eshkar’s soft hair. I stand again and turn his face toward me. I stare into his open eyes. They look almost fake, like something from a bad taxidermist. I peer into those glassy eyeballs and wonder what went on behind them. How many years he worked at shaping and molding this place to his design. And now all his future plans are dissolving, leaking right out of his head.
I wonder if he ever felt what I felt. The reaping. When I lived for a breath of time within Ashen, the moment when he took Davina out of the Living Realm. The slip of a soul, sliding through a palm. Sorrow and fear. A demon wrenching secrets from its keeper. Unraveling a history. Sending the soul of an immortal to deteriorate in servitude, or loneliness, or rage. I wonder if Eshkar ever truly felt what the Reapers of his realm do. What Ashen did.
I lift my gaze and look across the audience. “Stasis. That’s the insidious fallacy of time. It’s an illusion. Because every daywasdifferent. Each one was incrementally worse than the last. A little more despair. A touch more anger. Regret. Guilt. It was all used against you, to keep you doing the Council’s bidding, no matter if it was right or just. And slowly, mercy ceased to even exist.”
I lower Eshkar’s head to my side. I look toward the crawlers shifting at the edge of the audience, restless, their eyes on mine. I hear the whisper of their fragmented thoughts like I heard the hybrids in the Living Realm. And the souls, I can feel them too. Their presence. Their confusion and suffering.
I turn and walk back to the dais with Ashen by my side as Zida slithers around us. I catch sight of the faint pink mark on her scales where I wounded and then healed her. Her head stays in line with my legs, the slit of her silver eye watching me.
The smoke behind the dais rolls up the wall, as thick as a waterfall. I watch it as I walk up the stairs with the spear in my hand, and a realization washes over me. It’s as though I’ve ascended into an epiphany.
I can still get my revenge on this place. I can make it into what it doesn’t want to be. And the mercy I deliver will be the match that burns anyone who stands in my way.
There’s a gust of power that seems to blow from the bottom of my stomach, lifting my chest. It pulls at my throat. It’s the fleeting thought that this can be mine. Icanrule this place.
I can wield power like I’ve never felt before.
I stop at the top of the stairs and turn to the audience, their eyes a sea of flames as they watch me back from bent knees. “We will deliver justice. And we will deliver mercy. We will bring this realm back to its purpose and we will find the true war and we will win it.”
I pivot and start walking toward the center of the dais.
And that’s when I learn my first lesson as Queen of the Reapers.
Never turn your back on the Shadow Realm.
CHAPTER2
The ax cleaves right through my momentary burst of confidence, shattering it into a hundred tiny fragments of bone.
A fuckingax.
Honestly, it’s a first.
You’d think in five thousand years and more battles than I care to list that I might have encountered one lodged in my body before. But you’d be mistaken. Arrows, yes. Swords and daggers, of course. Pikes, yes, multiple times. A few corkscrews, wooden stakes (stupid humans and your myths), a pencil, even a mace in my guts once, which was pretty fucking gross. But an ax? No. I didn’t even notice someone holding one.
Lesson Two of the Shadow Realm: pay closer attention to who is carrying what.
Lesson Three is one I’ve known for a long time. I just need to apply it despite my shock and pain and rage.
Don’t let them see you weak.
Theshunkof the ax lodging into bone still reverberates in my mind. My scapula and the ribs beneath are shattered, pins of bone and the sharpened edge of the blade piercing into my lung. I manage to stay upright by leaning on the spear still clutched in my hand. Thick blood cascades into my chest with every torturous breath.
Don’t let them see you weak.
Zida’s rage is incandescent, as blinding as her brilliant white scales. She coils around my legs and keeps me standing as she hisses at the audience. But before she can descend the dais and strike at the onlookers, Ashen is already there.
I look over my uninjured shoulder. The crowd is parted, watching as Ashen clasps the ax-thrower’s throat in a vice grip. The demon is big, burly. Thickly muscled. Definitely the ax-carrying type. He reminds me of Gallus. But where he’s blocky, he’s also slow. A little cumbersome. By comparison, Ashen is tall and swift, strong but with the kind of power that’s graceful and lithe. He’s fluid, adaptable. And cunning.
Ashen squeezes the demon’s throat, his rippling blade aimed at the rival Reaper’s heart.
“You dare to injure my wife.” Ashen’s voice is cold. Clear. Measured. The control he has over his rage makes him ten times more menacing than usual.
“She is no queen,” the man spits through gritted teeth. His eyes flick to mine.
Ashen tightens his grip, pressing the tip of his sword to the man’s chest. “You dare to evenlookat her. In fact, I will make sure you cannot.”
His movement is faster than I can even track.
