The Reign of Queens: A Kingdom of Diamond Antlers Novel

by Zachary James

  I play with the fur cowl covering my pale shoulders and stare at the midnight blue silk, studded with glass that looks like a night sky. The gown is regal and was waiting for me on the silk chair in my bed chambers. There was also a diadem of blue crystal snowflakes. I deigned to leave it behind. “I don’t know what it’s like to be a Faerie queen of a Fae kingdom. I’ve only been an immortal queen of a Mortal kingdom for eight months. I can’t believe it’s already February,” I mumble to the table and Zube gives a condescending smile and pat on the shoulder. How many times will I change before I am finally able to sit and be lazy? I just want a world where I can be comfortable and not worry about my safety or others. At this rate I doubt I will have a moment to read a book before I’m dead.

  “We need to discuss what happened,” Lhys mutters to the table ending any spark of normal conversation. “The Proving was attacked by Evaflora’s army, or at least a piece of it. Thanks to Ariadae acting quickly a General of her Troglodyte legion is dead.” Everyone nods their heads towards me in thanks. I was only stopping a threat before he became something more or worse. I don’t feel like getting bit in the ass again. “Now, Ariadae has declared war on the Summer Kingdom even though the Frozen Army is all we have.” Lhys glares at me. “Why start this war, Ariadae?”

  “My mother plans to make all mortals on Abella be slaves and die beneath her rule,” I mumble. I feel like I’ve explained this a thousand times, but nobody understands the true threat my mother poses. “She is willing to attack the Faerie Kingdoms to do just so! The Troglodyte General said it himself. She wants an easy path to the Mortal Kingdoms and we were in her way.”

  “Why do you care so much for the mortals of Abella? Wasn’t it a Mortal Kingdom that decimated your army in the first place?” Lhys question seems absurd. How does she not care for the mortals? But I realize that she doesn’t get it, she’s never been a mortal and truly feared death. Maybe she has had a few brush ins with dying, but never will she die of age or disease or even starvation.

  “She is an immortal with a human heart,” Kane says to nobody in particular, but I can’t help but agree with him.

  “I was born a human, as was Brennan, and Evaflora! The mortals were created by Prometheus first and your husband was chosen to lead a new species! The Faerie Kingdoms were built on mortal origin and now as the Fae, we owe them our lives. They gave us life, so many centuries ago, and now we need to help them keep theirs.” Lhys is silent at my statement. I fear bringing up Brennan was too soon a wound to open up, but she needs to understand the necessity of saving the humans. No matter how she may disagree, it doesn’t matter! I am the High Lady of the Winter Kingdom.

  “What do you suggest we do then?” Zube openly asks to me and maybe even to Kane.

  “We gather an army and defeat the true enemy in this war,” Kane proposes and stares me in the eyes for the first time since the end of the Proving. He really looks at me, and I look at him. I see the agreement and rush of confidence within him and it’s contagious as it floods through me. I hate him so goddamn much, but he knows what I want and agrees with it. We both rise, our chairs scraping against the stone floor. Jax, Zube, and Lhys rise as well showing their agreement with what is to come. “Your mother.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ~Fayla~

  I expect the gift at my doorstep to be from Lunan, but instead my stomach twists at the sight of the jagged letters of the uneven sentences that seem to run on. He is the Vampyre King of Vampyra, the island off the coast of the northern peak of Abella. The sad part of the whole situation is that I didn’t even get a moment, after my dinner with the Vampyre royalty, to take off my dress before the package arrived. A small leather box, cold between my fingers, is tightly shut with a golden latch. The shimmering metallic rim makes me think of Lunan’s glimmering eyes. He almost ruined everything during the dinner when he growled. I do believe that Molaris has become suspicious of our connection, although she seems very distracted by her own connection with the High Lord of the Day Kingdom.

  I open the small box and within the leather gift is a necklace of braided black cord and hanging down the sides is curving, ivory fangs. At the necklace’s middle is a large ruby, uncut and jagged like a large rock. The size of the stone is a toddler’s fist, making it worth much more than it appears to be. A small torn piece of parchment within the box tells me that rubies are a symbol of love, and when a Vampyre gives you another Vampyre’s fangs they are very interested in you. As flattered as I am at Tyrion’s liking in me, I don’t feel a bit of regret as I snap the necklace, the fangs flying across the room, and throw the ruby in a bin within the bathing chambers. I don’t need gifts from a Vampyre when I have a High Lord that I’m mated to.

  “What on earth have you done?” A male asks from my doorway and my heart jumps at the thought of it being Tyrion, but instead it is Acacius. Relief, a human emotion, flushes my cheeks. “Molaris is furious with you. Now you need to have a Vampyre King enraged as well? How do you get off?”

  I roll my eyes. I’m sick of these Vampyre rules and court manners. “Please, the King only wants to bed me and have me bear a child. I’m not some cattle he can use for his pleasure.”

  Acacius closes the door to my chamber and a gloom shadows his blood red irises. I take a step back from his approaching gait and he whispers, “What is going on with Tyrion wanting to control the Fae Druids?”

  I’ve been meaning to ask Acacius the same question. “Do you think he knows about me? Us?” I toss the possibility into the air and Acacius takes it and runs with it.

  “It would explain why he is suddenly creating Fae allies and becoming more independent from the other Vampyres, but he must being using the Lunan for an ulterior motive.”

  “Like what?” I press on and look towards the door in fear that someone might be listening. “Molaris wants to speak with me about what happened during dinner. Will you go with me?”

  “I can’t,” he mumbles and I want to slam my fist against his face. “She hasn’t summoned me, or you, yet.”

  At mention of a summons the door opens and the man with bleached hair is staring at Acacius and me. He glares at the two of us and I know he remembers that brawl we all had before the Vampyre royals’ arrival and I can’t help but smile at the thought of the broken nose my maker had given him.

  You’ll be okay, Acacius whispers in my skull and I look to him. Hopefully.

  I walk with the man who leads me everywhere. I don’t care to know his name or even ask because I know that once I learn it I’ll be cursing the damned male. I am in enough trouble as it is from my cursed mouth. The last thing I need is both Molaris and her personal servant to want me dead. I am under her roof anyways, so it’s hard to slip by easily without being punished for my actions.

  I ascend the stairs into the throne room and I already hear shouting from Molaris on the other side. I can’t even think of who it might be before I open the doors and am gifted with the sight of… of someone I didn’t expect. Lunan stares at Molaris, who looks down at him from her dais. She has ditched the gown from dinner and wears all black, oil-shined leather armor. Her typical coronet of silver stars lay around her skull and the large, thick, midnight colored cloak is illuminated by the pulsing lights in the throne room. She looks regal, but crazy. Blood trickles from her nose showing signs of no sleep during the day and her ivory hair is unbound and tumbling around her shoulders in knotty clumps and whisking strands. She looks like the fierce, blood-thirsty queen she is.

  “Why did you really come here?” She seethes at Lunan who looks a bit bored of the Vampyre before him. They don’t notice my presence until the bleach haired servant of Molaris’ closes the doors behind me, locking me in with the feral beast. I smell the vile tang of Vampyre blood dripping from her nostrils and I assume Lunan does too. He looks at me, his eyes wide with surprise. I wish to say that I should’ve warned him, but now is not the time. “Why else would Tyrion bring you if not to torture me?”

  “AND YOU!�
� She screams and points to me, descending the dais in a storming gait of rage. She is losing it, truly crumbling from the inside out and I can’t tell if it has been from over time or if it has started since Lunan’s arrival. “You can’t seem to keep your damned mouth shut! And you have every male in my Kingdom pawing after you, and for what?”

  “Acacius would concur with your statement,” I say with a sly smile and I feel the separation of my soul from my body. I feel as if I’m watching my death come. The way I’m talking right now seems like I have a death wish. Or maybe I just don’t care for a lunatic queen. “And maybe I just have something to offer the men in return.”

  An exasperated growl rips from her throat and it sounds painful. I wait for the feeling of my bones going taut, of her controlling my blood, but then I start to wonder why she hasn’t used her power on Lunan yet, unless she is so drained from not sleeping during the day that she is too weak to conjure her ability and make people bend to her will.

  “Why would you think I arrived with Tyrion having a different motive,” Lunan asks. The sound of his voice makes a euphoric, life-giving chill rattle my body. Lunan makes me feel alive without even touching me.

  “Because of our past,” Molaris whispers and my ears perk. A part of me knew she had known him from somewhere else, but to hear why she is so shaken around him would be a great insight to her life. “When I was still a Faerie in the Summer Kingdom and you were living with Evaflora, we had sex.” My eyes flick to Lunan who stares apologetically at me. In what gods damned hell covered earth would Lunan have sex with this blood thirsty, manipulative bitch? Why would he even do it? “We had something,” Molaris adds, her fingers trembling as she approaches Lunan with a hunched back and bulging, blood shot eyes. She wants him so badly to remember, but all I want to do is forget what I’ve heard.

  “Molaris,” Lunan mumbles like he is comforting a small child. “We never had anything. My mother arrived and tried to kill you, but instead branded me with this scar,” He gestures to the jagged line from his scalp that descends through his brow, skips his eye, and starts up again on his cheek bone, dragging along his cheek to his jaw. Even with the brutal line marring his face, he is still inexplicably handsome and beautiful. Like a High Lord should be. “You ran off and were never seen again.”

  “You should’ve come after me!” She shouts as if he actually cared about her. “You never tried to save me from the fires in the garden or the wrath of your mother!”

  “He never loved you, Molaris,” I hiss, quickly protecting Lunan from the Vampyre queen’s growing rage. She may be upset with him for their past, but I have been boiling the water beneath her; I set the fire under her chair to spark this anger. He doesn’t see what’s coming, but I have been at the other end of her hatred and anger and I don’t want him feeling the full extent of her power, and rage. Even if she is weak, she is still a twenty thousand year old Vampyre. How weak can she truly be?

  “You shut your mouth, you immortal bitch!” Molaris spins on me and is snarling in my face in seconds. “Don’t make me finish what I started the night the others arrived.” Her threat doesn’t scare me as I know she is in an unstable moment of anger and Lunan would burn her to ashes before she could tear out my throat, or at least I hope he would be fast enough.

  “Don’t harm her,” Lunan warns with a rippling growl. Even I feel the crackling threat in the rumble of his snarl beneath my feet. The floating stars in the throne room seem to gloom over and dim from fear of the Fae Druid of the Solar. “I’ll do to you what my mother tried so many centuries ago.”

  Her eyes flood with crimson tears. Her bottom lip quivers as she looks at me, her face inches from mine. “You don’t mean that,” she whimpers and I see Lunan’s fingers begin to illuminate with embers and coiling smoke.

  “But Molaris, I do.”

  I feel the shift of my blood around my heart, the shudder in my steady beat. Before Molaris can explode my organs, my hands sparkle with bright lightning that rockets into Molaris making her scream and shoot across the room. Her burning cloak makes her look like a flying comet among the stars. Lunan’s hands erupt in flames and the doors bust open and slam against the walls, the boom echoing through the chamber. I feel the pulse of my power as I arch a bolt of lightning across the throne room; the blue cords sparkle like a whip and crack against Molaris’ servant’s face, burning his skin clean off. He shouts and screams and some phantom wind slams the throne room doors shut. Lunan sends a ball of red hot flame to the servant and ignites the Vampyre turning him to black ash on the ground. It only took seconds for the growing argument to turn into a raging battle.

  Molaris uses her throne of chrome spikes to lift herself from the ground. Her coronet of stars is gone and her blood tears stain her face and hair as she shudders and quivers like a possessed mortal. With a devilish smirk, cackling laughter pulls from her throat. A shadow steps into my peripheral vision and I turn to the cloud of black smoke. I go to strike it with my palm of netted lightning, but a dark hand grips my forearm stopping me. Lunan goes to attack the assailant, but stops himself when the shadows ripple and Acacius emerges from the darkness. He can manipulate the shadows. We all look to Molaris who is still laughing by her throne, but we begin to back away as lumps begin kicking and bucking from her shoulder blades beneath the fabric of her leather armor. As if a person is stretching their arms beneath her clothes, two large tents rise from her back and she twitches even more than before. Her smile widens and the blood leaking from her eyes and nose stains her teeth. Fabric tears and she unclasps the midnight blue cloak revealing large, membrane wings. A glinting talon peaks both and she stops her quivering and lets her wings flutter.

  “Lunan, Athena,” Acacius mutters grabbing our wrists. “It’s time to go.” He doesn’t break his stare at Molaris as he begins dragging me and my mate from the scene and towards the doors. She leaps into the air, the wings flapping, lifting her into the shadows covering the top of the throne room and I don’t see anything in the darkness above. I fear her descending upon us, but before she can do so, we slam the throne room doors behind us and take a large torch rod and stick it through the iron handles, locking Molaris within. It won’t hold for long, but it will give us time to leave and escape.

  “Let’s go,” Lunan says as he runs with Acacius down the first flight of steps to the landing. My maker and my mate stop to look at me and notice I’m not following them. My feet, firmly planted in the floor. “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to get out of here, Athena,” Acacius warns. “We don’t know how long she’ll remain withheld in the throne room!”

  “I need to do something first,” I say to my friends, my warriors, my family.

  <<>><<>><<>>

  I knock on the dark oak door and in seconds it swings open.

  “I knew you’d come soon,” Tyrion mumbles gesturing me to enter his chambers. The rooms may as well be a manor on their own. The center room is only a large chamber with seating before a hearth, burning brightly in the chilly room. Many doors lead off to different rooms for different purposes that may serve Tyrion well. “Did you like my gift?”

  “I loved it,” I lie as I saunter towards the love seat and rest my body on the silk sofa. Tyrion smiles and sits on a twin across from me. His grin appears more like a grimace from the shadows and the flickering flames. “Thank you, but it isn’t why I’m here to talk to you.”

  His thick eyebrow lifts at my response. “What did you come all of this way for?”

  I feel sick to my stomach as I pull the lacing off my golden bodice. My breasts seem to fill the fabric quickly without the restraint of my corset and I try to ignore Tyrion’s eyes, devouring my revealed skin. “I’ve been very lonely in this castle.”

  “As I would be,” he mutters, completely distracted by my slow and alluring undress. Women have the power to manipulate men, but men have the ability to overpower women, so the line I am walking is a dangerous game of my past and what I intend to do.

  “Pl
ease,” I whisper. I look to the large flames burning brightly and stand up pulling a lounge blanket with me. I drop the thick cotton onto the floor and remove the large overdress and lay down onto the blanket beside the fire. “Join me.”

  As if I put Tyrion under a spell he rises from his seat and squats down beside me, his face coming too close to mine. He smells my skin and the sweat beginning to bead on it from the heat of the fire. I try to avoid thinking of where Molaris is and how much time I’ve already wasted. All I have are seconds to complete what needs to be done. I quiet my beating heart in fear that with such a close proximity he will hear it.

  I lean on my elbows and let the King of Vampyra climb on top of me. My skin crawls and the Fae instincts still within me buck and scream with urgency and growing panic. “Have you ever been with a male of my title?” Tyrion whispers and I choke on the thought of his being on top of me. I try not to retch as I stroke a hand on his stubble covered cheek.

  “No, but I also never plan on it.”

  “What?”

  My sparks slice through his skull, quickly paralyzing him. Only burning a Vampyre or tearing them apart can kill them, so I wrap the cotton blanket around his stiff body. His black eyes dart around the chamber and look from me to the large flames burning next to him. I pull myself out from beneath him and kick the corner of the cotton blanket into the crackling embers. I squat down and place a kiss on his forehead. “Save a place for Molaris in hell,” I whisper with a lover’s purr and stalk out of the chambers before locking the door just as his clothes begin to catch fire. I won’t have these damned monsters chasing after me in my life beyond this hell.

  I run through the hallways and west wing of the castle with lightning speed. The feeling of being a Vampyre and Faerie is something I can’t describe. I can only die from being torn apart or burned, and I am faster and stronger than my Fae brethren. It’s something that only Acacius and I will feel the power of and I doubt we’ll be creating any more hybrids within these next two centuries. Besides, I’m not ready to be a maker.