So I don’t look at him as I let magic spread through me. I let it all fall out. Charges and charges of power – just flowing through me, filling me up, pushing out from every angle.
I don’t attack Spencer’s remaining pieces.
Instead?
I go for the board.
Or at least, I try to.
For, at the last moment, something moves behind me. Something quick, something that snakes into my back, something that wraps around me, and something that throws me to the side.
Before I know what’s happening, I slam against the stone pillar. The move is so hard, that as my body strikes the stone, it cracks and crumbles around me.
I have a single moment of pure fear when my body screams at me that I’m about to be crushed, then whatever has a hold of my stomach yanks me out of the way.
I’m thrown to the floor with such force that as I strike it, stone cracks around me.
I can’t hear anything apart from this dense ringing in my ears that sounds like a choir of bells in my skull. The only thing I can feel is pain as it erupts up my side, plows through my middle, and shakes my knees and arms.
But I’m still aware of that grip around my middle – growing stronger, growing harder with every second.
More than that? I can feel my magic.
And it begs me to use it.
Just as whatever has a grip on my middle wrenches me off the floor and throws me through the air, I finally react.
I don’t bother to lash out with my magic laced fists. Instead, moving faster than I ever have before, I spread both hands wide. My swords form.
I think someone gasps. Maybe I make it up – or maybe I can just hear it over the sound of the wind whistling in my ears.
I can see what has a hold of me now – a tail. Or maybe it’s a long whip. White, small like wire, but one of the most powerful things I have ever felt. It’s entwined around my stomach, holding me fast with a grip that feels like a steel beam that’s been bent around my torso.
It sends me whistling through the air again and whips me toward a stone pillar on the opposite side of the roof.
I don’t allow myself to strike it this time. Using my swords, I send them twisting out in a halo of magical destruction. I don’t go for the whip around my middle – I slash into the stone pillar, obliterating it just before I can strike it.
It means the breath isn’t knocked out of me again, and it gives me just the moment of distraction I need.
Though this fight is unfolding faster than any I have ever been involved in, I have enough awareness to appreciate one fact – I am not fighting an ordinary pawn. This thing – whatever is controlling the whip around my middle – is categorically the strongest opponent I have ever faced.
I haven’t even clapped eyes on it yet, either.
And I know that’s the key.
The whip continues to whip me back-and-forth, slamming me into the floor then over to a pillar – but I retain full control of one of my swords, sending it spinning around me and using it to cut into the stone before I can be smashed against it.
With my other sword?
I send it out. I don’t know where. My senses are being consumed by the immediate power of the grip around my middle, by the scent of rock dust, by the awful certainty of what’s happening to me.
And yet, I retain just enough awareness to send that other sword out.
I hear somebody hiss.
Don’t ask me how, but I recognize that hiss. Even though I only heard his voice once – and even then, it was from afar – I know who I’m facing.
The man in the shadowy jacket. The man who made me feel as if I was dying from the inside out.
As recognition blasts through me, I finally find a target for my sword.
The whip around my middle forces me through the air, sends me barreling toward a massive stone wall that I swear wasn’t there a second ago. But as I sail through the air, I catch a glimpse of the deep shadow.
It’s just beside Spencer’s throne. Several meters to the left, behind a rock recess.
There.
Without another thought, I manage to spread one of my hands wide, and I send my sword spiraling toward that shadow.
With a crack, it lands, and I hear something gasp in pain.
In an instant, the whip around my middle loses all purchase and simply falls. I fall with it, but before I can slam face first into the pavement, I manage to shift around. I land on one knee with one outstretched foot, and plant a hand into the cracked stone.
I allow myself a single second to drive a deep breath into my lungs, then I jerk my head forward.
Though I’ve been thrown into multiple stone walls and sections of floor, I’m not bleeding. There isn’t a single cut on me. I’m shaking, I’m in pain, but I’m ready for the fight.
As I jerk my head up, my hair swinging past my face, I lock eyes on Spencer. This time it’s not long enough to be drawn into his penetrating gaze – but it’s just enough to see his wide-eyed shock as his lips crack open, “No, catch her—” he begins.
I still have one sword twisting around me, and as I leap upward, I open my hand and allow it to slam into my palms. I wrap my fingers around it, and there’s a suitable loud crack as I do, almost as if I’m inviting in the thunder.
I race forward.
My other sword is still attacking the shadow.
Don’t ask me how I possibly have the concentration to be able to control two swords at once. I was never a great multitasker – but this comes naturally. It’s an extension of my power. And for the first time ever, it’s a power I revel in. There isn’t a single thought in my head that I’m weird, that I’m a freak of nature, that I belong in some laboratory somewhere or just 6 feet under.
No, I fully accept my power, and as I do, more of it surges over my skin until I know I’m as bright as a star.
“No—” Spencer has time to say.
I reach the shadow beside him, and for the first time since the fight started, the man finally reveals himself.
He’s still in that long, dark jacket that practically reaches the floor, and he’s still wearing that hat that casts his face into full shadow. But I can see just a slice of his bottom lip. It’s enough to watch it jerk open, enough to hear him let out a primal hiss.
He slices his hand to the side, and another whip appears from nowhere. It jerks toward me, sailing through the air as it attempts to wrap around my middle.
I’m ready for it this time, though, and I twist to the side. I’m still holding one of my swords, and I bring it around, slashing at the whip just before the tip can wrap around my side.
Though it’s hard, I manage to slice right through it, and as I do, the shadowy man hisses and jerks back as if he’s just been burnt.
With my other sword, I slice at the man.
My aim is true, and the sword skewers him right through the middle.
Or at least, it should, and yet, as it punches through the front of his jacket, it’s almost as if his torso turns into air. I watch with wide eyes as the fabric simply jerks backward as if it’s on nothing more than a coathanger.
The man’s arms spread wide, his head ticks to the side, and somehow, the shadow of his brim still hides everything but his white bottom lip.
It opens wide and he lets out a breath. “You win, for now,” he says.
Then he disappears.
For the first time in my life, I don’t beat an opponent – he flees, and there is nothing I can do as a circle of dark, charged magic opens at his feet and he simply falls through it.
He almost takes my sword with him, but at the last moment I realize what’s happening, and I jerk a hand forward, spread my fingers wide, and call it to me with everything I have. It slams into my grip just as the man’s hat disappears through the crackling hole in the floor. I have enough time to see that he’s smiling.
I take my time to catch my breath, then I turn.
Spencer is still on his throne, but one hand is gripp
ed as hard as it can around the gold armrest, and he’s sitting forward. But either he doesn’t want to stand, or he can’t. His eyes couldn’t be wider, though.
Spencer’s two remaining pieces are still frozen on the spot, and so is Antonio – but not through magic. He’s staring at me in complete dumbfounded shock. His lips wobble, and even from here, I hear him breathe out one single word, “Queen.”
I pay no attention to it.
I now appreciate that I have to end this fight now. I can’t allow any time for any more surprises. For all I know, that man in the shadowy jacket may come back, and this time, he might bring more whips with him. Though it was easy enough to dispatch one, what would I do against 10, against 100?
I need to leave, regroup, and rethink.
So I do what I intended to do before he arrived.
With my two swords spinning around me, I go for the chessboard.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? The chessboard is what’s locking Antonio in place, right?
If I destroy it—
I don’t reach it. Just at the last moment, when I see my two swords spinning around me and magic charging into them, another thing loops around my middle.
It jerks me to the side, pulling me off course just before my swords can sink into the chessboard.
This time, it’s not a whip.
This time, it’s two arms. Strong, hard, warm. They can only belong to one man. For the instant they wrapped around my middle, I felt him. Every cell vibrated with his presence, every memory expanded at the knowledge he was near.
John Rowley.
He lands just outside of the chessboard. He’s shaking, all over, but that doesn’t stop him from leaning in and saying, “You can’t attack the board – it’s against the rules. It will kill you,” he manages.
I can hear his words – I can feel his breath. But both details are irrelevant. He could’ve just told me anything from stock tips to random comments about the weather – it wouldn’t have mattered, though. His presence is all that counts.
I feel limp. Exactly like I felt when I saved John from that gunman in his tower and he pulled me out of the way. I feel like a doll that has been pulled off the shelf or a robot that has just been turned off.
“You... you shouldn’t exist,” he says, and again I can feel his trembling breath brush against the hair along the back of my neck.
Spencer’s still seated on his throne, but now he’s pressed as far forward on it as he can, and both of his hands clasp the armrests.
I catch a glimpse of the side of his face, and that is more than enough to witness two emotions – shock and total gut-wrenching jealousy.
“Release her,” he spits. “She will be mine. I saw her first,” he says.
He sounds like a kid in a playground complaining about another bully snatching up his toy. But he isn’t a kid in a playground – and I’m not a toy. And that example undermines the true force behind his words, the power behind his eyes, too.
It’s clear with just one look in them that he believes what he’s saying – I’m his.
John doesn’t release me. Instead, slowly, finally, he turns over his shoulder and faces Spencer. “It doesn’t work that way. You know that. One does not take a queen – they earn her,” he says. And as he does, he finally looks at me.
And right there, in his eyes, I see what I have always sought to see. What I’ve wanted since the moment I met him. No, more than that – what I’ve needed since the day I was born.
Recognition.
It’s the strongest moment of my life. I’ll never feel anything with the same import as this. With one arm still loosely hooked around my middle, he’s close, close enough that I can see his entire face contract with hope and fear and longing and shame. So much emotion, too much to understand.
But I don’t need to understand it yet.
All that matters is he can finally see me. He knows who I am.
But the moment doesn’t last.
He finally unhooks that arm from around my middle and stands back.
I’m not injured – not really – and I can stand on my own two feet, but as he releases me, I wobble and stumble. It takes me a moment to press a hand into the cracked stone floor beneath me and to push up.
I’m shaking all over as I stare at him, as I desperately try to catch his gaze once more.
But John Rowley is no longer looking at me. With one hand rounded into the tightest fist I’ve ever seen, he’s facing Spencer.
Spencer is still seated on his throne, and from the exact way he’s pressed against the edge of his seat and his hands are clamped over the armrests, I can now confirm that he can’t stand. Something is keeping him locked there in that throne, and I wonder if it’s the chessboard.
“Run away. Get out of here now,” John says.
It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking to me. He still won’t face me. I stare at his rigid back as he now curls his other hand into a fist. The hard line of his shoulder catches all my attention as the faintest lick of magic presses over his skin.
“... What?” I find myself saying.
“Run away. You can’t have anything to do with this man. He will bring more unattached to fight you. Leave. But,” he finally turns over his shoulder and stares at me, and it is an entreating gaze I will never forget, “return. You know who I am. Come find me. I’ll help you.”
“He will lead you to death. Just like his forefathers wasted all of your other kind,” Spencer spits as he now presses so hard against the edge of his chair that I swear I can hear something cracking. His body is shuddering, too, and it’s almost as if he is forcing himself against invisible restraints. “You’re the last of your kind – and if you join him, he will see you fall.”
“Run,” John says, lips moving hard around the word. “Then come back to me,” he says.
In his eyes, I can see his wish. His desperate plea.
Come back to him.
I take a step backward.
Since this fight began, I’ve been giving in to my desire to get close to Spencer and John, but now, the desire to run away spreads through my chest. It’s a hard, quick, darting feeling, and it slices through my body, powering into my legs.
It sees me take a jerking step back, then another.
Finally, I turn.
I run.
I only look back once. As I do, I see John spread a hand to the side, and from nowhere, a golden throne forms. I see white chains spread out, connect to his ankles and arms, and lock him against the throne, but a second later, they turn invisible with a wisp of curling smoke.
The black and white squares of the chessboard suddenly become electrified, the white squares glowing so brightly, they could light up the city.
I reach the edge of the strange stone wall I’m on. For a moment, I stand there. The wind catches my hair, whips it over my shoulders. I stare as the game begins.
But then? I turn, and I run.
But I do not run far.
Soon enough, I escape from... whatever strange world I’ve entered. As I jump off this stone wall and make it around the side of Rowley Tower, reality re-forms around me. Soon enough, I find myself on an ordinary city street. I walk for several blocks until I allow my reality-bending spell to stop. Then I stand, flop my back against a wall, draw a hand up, and lock it over my face.
I press my eyes closed, and I breathe.
I breathe, and I breathe. But it doesn’t push away what just happened to me.
So I lock one hand on the sleeve of my leather jacket, hooking the fingers against the cold hide.
I let it comfort me.
And then?
I push off from the stone wall. I draw a hand up and spread it over my chest, changing my appearance. My long black hair is replaced with my short, cropped, strawberry hair, and my clothes are replaced with the business suit Antonio gave me this morning.
... I don’t know what I’m doing, but my body does.
Though by all rights I should run away, f
lee the city, and never return, I don’t.
I walk back to work.
I... it’s the only thing I can do.
When John finishes his fight with Spencer, I know he will return. I know he’ll look for me. But I know he can’t see through this disguise.
So will I reveal myself to him?
I don’t know.
I’ll have to find out.
The end of The Last Queen Book One. The Last Queen Book Two is currently available.
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The Last Queen Book One Page 15
