Page 5 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
“Vampire—”
“How do I stop this thing?”
“Stop what thing?”
“This fucking ghost carriage. I need to get out.”
“You can’t justget out. We’re in the middle of the bridge.”
“Ineedto get out. Is there a secret code? Is it ‘stop the fucking ghost carriage?’STOP THE FUCKING GHOST CARRIAGE. Right now. Get me out.”
“Lu—”
“You’re telling me I’m the Queen and I can’t even stop this wack ride? What thefuck, Ashen. Get me out.Get me out get me out get me out get me out.”
Ashen pounds three times on the roof of the carriage and it lurches to a halt. I’m out the door before the wheels have even stopped turning.
“Lu…” Ashen says behind me. I can hear both amusement and concern in the way he says my name, but I’m too busy pacing by the stone railing of the bridge to stop and look at him. “Lu, you arefreaking out, as Ediye would say.”
“I know that. Of course I’m fucking freaking out. You just made me Queen of the goddamn Shadow Realm.What the fuck, Ashen. Can you even do that?”
“Well…I did. So…yes.”
“Then un-Queen me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“I would have to stage a coup. That would not look very good against my wife. Too reminiscent of Catherine the Great, really. It would not lend a lot of support to the idea that we have a solid marriage.”
“Wellgood, because we don’t have a fuckingmarriage, Ashen,” I say, twinkling my ringless fingers in front of his face as his grin grows more wicked. I jab him on his armor where his mark lies above his heart. “We aremated. Not the same thing.”
“Pretty much the same.”
“Not at all the same.”
Ashen smiles as I level him with a flat glare. His gaze drops down the center of my robe, down to my bare toes. “And how are you planning on getting to our accommodations? Walking?”
“Umm, yes. Unless you’ve suddenly developed teleportation skills I don’t know about.”
“But you have no shoes. And you’re in a robe.”
“Yes, thank you. I hadn’t noticed until you told me. It’s not like I was thinking about it the entire time I was on the dais being given the title ofQueen of the fucking Shadow Realm. It totally hadn’t occurred to me that I’m naked under here with fuckingjizzon my legs.”
Ashen snorts a laugh and looks across the sea before catching my irate glare. His eyes soften as his head tilts. “Pick your battles, vampire,” he says as he reaches up to shift a strand of hair from my temple, securing it behind my ear.
“I am. I’m picking this one.” I stay locked in Ashen’s scrutiny for a short moment before I pivot past him, heading for the souls yoked to our carriage who wait with eternal patience for our next instructions. “Where do the souls sleep?”
“Sleep?”
“Yes, Reaper. For fucksakes.Sleep. You know what sleeping is. It’s what you do on a bed when you’re not banging on those ridiculous sex sheets of yours.Where do they sleep?”
Ashen snickers at my reference to his sheets that I want to hate yet still can’t, but quickly subdues his grin as he takes in the ferocity of my glare. He shrugs and looks around. “Anywhere,” he says with a sweeping gesture of his hand. “They kind of stand in place and…sway.”
“Th… they… sss. Errrgh.” My ability to make words seems to evaporate as irritation boils over into rage. I take a breath and try again. “Theysway? They fuckingsway?”
“Yes…pretty much.”
