Page 33 of Queens Ride Horny Dragons
I smoothed my hand—one of the only parts of my body that didn't hurt—down his back to iron out the wrinkles there. "I know this may come as a shock, but some people really don't like me."
He gazed at me for a moment. "The idiots?"
I nodded. "The idiots."
"They're irrelevant, then."
"Such a big word for a nine-year-old."
"I'm almost ten," he reminded me with a sniff, and then pointed to the screen. "Here. That lady is carrying a dress."
She sure was. A red-head, one of the shifters with a feather duster I'd seen in the hallway across my room. A little bit more searching, and she was also the one who’d let the rappellers with chains into the castle through a side door. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek as I glared at her. Karma would be an absolute bitch to her. I would make sure.
"Okay. Can you make a copy of the one with the dress, too, and add it to the others?" I asked, crossing over to the window.
"Yeah," he said, watching me carefully as I slid it open. "What are you doing?"
Trying not to throw up at the moment. On this side of the castle, the ground bustled with activity as swarms of shifters took their seats for the coronation. Thousands of them, all here to see me. Most to watch me fail or see me dead.
"The second thing…" I tore my gaze away from that horrific scene and turned to Asa. "I mean the third thing I would love for you to do for me is listen to my voice once I'm outside and show the clips on the side of the castle wall that I tell you. With sound if there is any. There are speakers on stage already. Is that possible? Like soon-ish?"
"Anything is possible." He smiled and cocked his head. "Guess who taught me that?"
All my love for that kid lodged in my throat. I blew him a wobbly kiss on my way out the door.
"Where are you going?"
With my hand on the doorknob, I stopped to compose myself, to look down at my jacked-up skin, to feel the empty space inside me where my harem belonged, and then burned it all down with rage so I could do something about it. "I'm going to go get my fucking crown."
Chapter Eight
Gasps drowned out the sounds of the waves crashing against the cliffside two hundred feet below us as I marched up the middle aisle to collect my crown. Dragon shifters turned and gaped. Some reeled back in horror at the sight of me, and honest to god, some even clutched their pearls. Some of them were probably in on Petra and Rio's little plan, so to see me here, alive, without my harem as protectors… Pretty sure I was blowing their minds right about now.
And it was going to get a lot worse. For all of us.
I took my place on the raised platform, and without waiting for the small symphony on either side of the stage to stop playing, I opened the glass box on the pedestal, took my crown, and set it on my own damn head. The music sputtered out into sour notes as I did, and I turned to face the whispers, the glowers, and the shocked expressions of those I now ruled.
I stayed quiet as I swept my gaze over them, stretching the silence out until it turned awkward, so Petra, Rio, and the red-headed shifter woman who'd brought the poisoned dress to my room and played a part in my harem’s kidnapping could squirm. Petra and Rio sat side by side near the middle aisle, their expressions a cross between smug and surprise that I wasn't dead. Me too, honestly.
My gaze ticked to Dox, the old bearded shifter Vance had introduced me to, sitting on an aisle seat near the front on the edge of his chair, his friendly gap-toothed grin on full display.
"Dox, remember when you said I could ask you for anything?" The microphones carried my voice far and wide, surprisingly cool and calm.
His eyes widened, and he slid forward farther until the chair began to tip before he caught himself. "Yes, Your Majesty. Of course."
I found the poison-dress woman sitting among the sea of shifters standing just a few feet behind him, but I avoided looking directly at her. "PLéase stand up, Dox, and start walking toward the back of the crowd. I'll tell you when to stop."
He popped up and did so.
Murmurs rippled through the shifters, likely them wondering if I'd lost my damn mind. Petra and Rio glanced at each other nervously, then slouched with relief when Dox passed by them.
When Dox had almost made it to the woman, I said, "Asa, the one with the dress."
Immediately, a video flickered over the castle wall to the shifters' left, like a TV screen only much, much bigger. It clearly showed the woman with the dress, carrying it up the steps toward our private hallway.
The murmurs turned to gasps.
"Grab that shifter to your right, Dox, the redhead there, and take her to the dungeon," I ordered.
