Queen Yavara Ch. 46

"Onward!" I called, raising my sword, "Onward!" I encouraged as my men flowed past me, "There's a bitch up there waiting to get fucked! First man there gets her while she's still tight! Last man there won't even touch her sides!"

"Lord Huntiata!" A voice called from behind me. King Lucas Ternias was making his way up the right side of the corridor, my men racing past him. "I need her alive!"

"If you want to tell the boys how to fight, then I suggest you grab a sword and get in front!" I barked, grabbing him by the scruff, "In case you didn't notice on your way up here, my boys have been getting their shit kicked in every step of the way. They're gonna be wolves by the time they reach the top floor. Are you going to stop them?"

"Unhand me!" He snarled.

I rested the point of my blade beneath his chin. "You don't tell me what to do, Your Highness. When they put that crown on your head, you remember who bought it for you."

He sneered. "You're a brute, Huntiata, and brutes are awful brave when brutality is at hand. Kill me then. Become the king, and see how brave you are when you have to face real power."

I pressed the blade a little harder. "If Lady Straltaira were alive, I'd put this in your brain right now."

"But she's dead, Huntiata, killed by that woman up there. I'm all you have."

"You miss my point, Ternias." I growled, "You're replaceable."

"So are you." He snapped, and walked by me. "Onward, men!" He called, "Onward to victory! I'll make a knight out of every man that gets to the top!"

The men cheered and raced by him. He looked back at me, and sneered.

LEVERIA

I could hear the clash of steel clearly through the door. They were on the last flight of stairs. After the last guard fell, the protection spells would kill a dozen men, but then there would be nothing between them and me.

I bit down on the belt, and pulled it tight. It squeezed my arm below the bicep, and I clenched my fist until I could see the vein standing from the silky flesh. Carefully, not wanting to hurt myself, I angled the needle, and slid it into the blue vein.

"Ow." I muttered, the belt falling from my teeth. I kept my finger on the plunger, and waited, listening for the sounds that would preclude my end. I wasn't holding onto hope, but simply savoring the last moments of clarity before I died in the cold comfort of heroin's embrace. The ringing of steel, the clash of iron, the screams and shouts, the pounding on the walls. How many royals had heard that cacophony before the end? Many. The weak, the stupid, and the overreaching almost all died like that. I wonder what they would label me? Probably all three. The shearing of metal became louder, the drone of voices became clearer. I tested the plunger with my finger, waiting for the sounds of footsteps in the hall. How long would it take for the drug to get to my brain? Two heartbeats, I'd heard. I'd pushed all the furniture in front of my office door, and all the furniture before my bedroom door. It would take them a few minutes to get through it. That would be when I pressed the plunger. I heard a pounding of footsteps right on the other side of the wall. They were coming. I took a deep breath, and... wait.

The other side of the wall? I looked to my right. The other side of the bedroom wall wasn't the hallway; it was a chimney—no, it was the hidden passageway to the bay. The pounding wasn't footsteps. Someone was beating their fists against the brick wall. Faintly, I heard a voice. "Leveria?!" It called.

I looked down at my arm to make sure I hadn't just inadvertently killed myself. The syringe was still full, and I was still lucid.

"Leveria?!" It called again, "Leveria, you stupid cunt, open the fucking door!"

My heart jumped in my throat, and I sprinted across the room, and yanked the lever down. The brick wall slid away to reveal... her. She was in a nun's habit, her robes stained with blood, her face wild, her eyes filling with me. I ran into her arms, and she reeled back and slapped me in the face.

"You could've left THREE HOURS AGO!" She screamed, thrusting her finger down the passageway, "Do you know what I had to do to get here?!" She looked at the needle in my arm, and snatched it away with a disgusted expression on her face, "You melodramatic bitch. Everything has to be your way, doesn't it? You can't compromise on a single, fucking, thing!"

I rubbed my stinging cheek, savoring the pain of it more than the greatest pleasure. My eyes had welled halfway through her tirade, and now they filled to the brim. I flung my arms around her, and kissed her hard, believing in god for the first time in all my life. She struggled against me, saying such foolish things as, "We have to go now!" and "If we stay here, we'll die!" but my lips silenced her, and my tongue ceased all objection. She kissed me back, her hands finding my curves, remembering the shape of me. We stayed like that for a beautiful second, then she forced us apart.

"Leveria—"

Now it was my turn to slap her. "You betrayed me!" I snapped.

"On accident!" She growled, "How was I supposed to know Sofia was working for Ternias the whole time?"

I blinked. "Sofia?"

"She was going to kill me and marry Ternias." Elena said, then looked over at the remains of my husband. "Eric?!"

"He was the hidden traitor from the last conspiracy. I know, I didn't think he had it in him either."

She turned back to me. "You really thought I'd choose Ternias over you?"

"You made it quite clear that you would."

"I was bluffing!"

"Could've fooled me."

A sudden crash sounded from the hallway, followed by an ear-splitting shriek. The last guardsmen had fallen, and the first trap had been sprung. Elena tugged my arm. "Come on!"

"I'm not going."

She gawked at me. "I will straight-up knock you the fuck out."

"And where will you take me? On a rowboat to some farming village? Ternias will never stop looking for me, and I refuse to live in fear."

Three more successive bangs sounded from the hall, and an explosion came after. There was silence, then footsteps. Someone walked the length of the hall, carefully choosing their footing until they were at my office door. "Hey!" The soldier yelled, "We're clear! Let's get the cunt!" There was an answering cheer, and the pounding began at the door.

Elena grabbed my arm. I snatched it away, ran over to Eric's corpse, slid the cuffs off his fingerless hand, and tightened them around my own. Before Elena could stop me, I threw the keys over the balcony. She dove after them, and just barely caught herself on the railing. In the next room, a crack sounded, followed by the splintering of wood. They'd broken through the door.

Elena whirled on me. "You had to fucking do it!"

"I did." I grinned.

"Goddamn you, Leveria." She growled, brandishing her dagger.

"You don't have to stay." I said, "You can still flee, Elena."

"If I live through this, I am going to beat your ass to death, I swear it."

"Just as long as you say you love me while you do it." I beamed.

She looked side-eyed at me, and grunted. I'd hoped for a romantic last kiss, but she didn't even touch me. She threw the furniture out of the way, flung open the bedroom door, and charged in with a scream.

ELENA

"Huntiata!" I screamed, bursting through the door.

The watchmen were quite startled to see a knife-wielding dark-elf nun come screaming out of the queen's bedroom. That shock afforded me three easy kills, as I went from man to man with indiscernible speed. The men behind them regained their bearings faster than I'd hoped, and rushed me at once. I caught a blade on my dagger, ducked a slice, spun on my toes, and cut through one man's throat. I caught his sword as it fell from his hands, and used its point to pivot on the floor, and deliver a high kick to a man's chest before I tumbled backward, slicing upward. The slice split one man's face in half, and the two parts of it opened like a book to reveal the contents of his head. Another man came charging to my side, and I parried his sword, let his momentum carry him down our sliding blades, and then cut his throat as he crossed me. A final man charged me, screaming full-throat, and I ducked his swing, grabbed the back of his head, and shattered the glass of Leveria's communication mirror with his face. He wheeled around with a sweeping strike, and I leaned to let it pass over my chin, then shot upright to imbed my blade into is eye.

"Huntiata!" I screamed again.

For a second, the room was empty. Then a dozen men burst throat the door, and more flooded in after. I charged them outright, not giving them a chance to surround me. Three men in front thrusted their points at once, and I leapt over them, swinging across their shoulders to decapitate two, and brain the third. I fell in a tumble, rolled onto my feet, and swept in a vicious circle, chopping four legs off at the knee. They went down shrieking, their split knee caps wobbling grotesquely, blood pumping from the stumps. I slid forward just before a pike went in my back, and caught a decapitating strike on my sword. Before they could pin me, I put my weight on my heels, and jumped backward, the point of my blade leading the way. I impaled two men, pulled my sword out, whipped it to slash a third's belly, then came around to chop into a fourth's head. A big fellow came barreling after me, and I sidestepped to let him run off the balcony. His scream carried after him, then cut short with a distant splash.

"Huntiata!" I screamed a third time.

I dashed at a man with a pike, dodged his thrust, and let the pole go across my leaning chest just to put my sword through his mouth. Using him as an offensive shield, I drove the blade through another man's chest before rending their bodies in two, and hacking a third man through the shoulder. He went down screaming, and the man behind him rushed through the fountaining blood just to find my dagger in his belly. Backhanding the stab, I rolled off his doubled-over body, flailed out with my sword, and cut a man's jaw clean off. I descended, sprawled out and exposed, a man's pike was barreling toward me. I couldn't get my sword-arm free, and so I abandoned the weapon and twisted out of the way, but not in time. The edge of the pike cut through my side before the point of it was imbedded into the man I was rolling off. I cried out, clutching at my ribs and backing away.

The room filled with watchmen, dozens turning to scores, so many that there wasn't a space between them. The front row of pikemen harried me toward the balcony, shark's grins on their faces.

"Huntiata!" I screamed over them. They just laughed, thrusting their sharp points at me, making me step closer and closer to my end. "Huntiata!" I screeched. The men in front laughed harder, some of them mimicking me tauntingly. They thrusted, and I parried two blows before the third caught me in the shoulder. I yelped, leaping backward. My butt landed on the edge of the railing, and I tipped precariously. "Huntiata!" I shrieked louder. My call was only answered with more laughter. The pikes retracted, their points glinting in the torchlight.

"Huntia—" And they thrusted once more, cutting off my voice, sending me toppling backwards. I flailed to catch the railing, but my fingers only brushed it. My stomach dropped as gravity took hold, and I fell screaming into oblivion. The wind stole my voice. The tower became small. The sky seemed to fall before my flailing arms and legs. The seconds stretched through eternity, then stopped suddenly. A picture of a purple sky lit by a full moon swam in my vision, then darkened to blackness. There was no warmth, nor cold. There was nothing. My last awareness of myself dwindled, and my last breath slowly seeped from me. A thought stayed in my mind for the last moments. It was an image, mostly black, but in the middle, there was a... what was there? It was a... a...

LEVERIA

"Elena?" I asked softly, almost as though she was simply making coffee in the next room. I'd heard the scream, I'd heard it fade, and I'd heard the splash below, but I couldn't believe it. "Elena?" I called again.

Eric's dead face was slack beside me, but his bloodied lips seemed to grin. I pulled on the chair, but it was an oak piece, much too heavy for me. I looked over at my knife set. It was well out of reach. The laughter in the next room quieted.

"Ok, where is the bitch?" A man asked.

"That's the royal bedroom right there."

"The one that dark-skinned savage jumped out of?"

"That was Elena Straltaira."

"Traitorous whore. Can't believe they let that darky slut in the Noble Court. Ray, go check the bedroom, see if there's anyone in there."

The door creaked open. He was a young man, maybe only eighteen. He was handsome with a kindly face, his features fair and gentle. He looked at my husband's body, then he looked at me. What story he deduced from the scene, I did not know. I shook my head at him, pleading with my eyes. He chewed on his lip, then looked over his shoulder.

"Don't!" I whispered.

He looked back at me, the conflict playing across his face.

"Don't!" I begged, tears cornering my eyes.

His expression softened. He looked from me, to the open passage in the fireplace, then to the cuffs on my wrist.

"Key?" He mouthed.

I shook my head, tears streaming down my cheeks. "Ambassador Straltaira kidnapped me. She handcuffed me to this chair, and she... she made me watch what she did to my husband!"

"Hey, Ray, what the fuck's going on in there?" Someone yelled.

"This place is rigged with traps!" He called over his shoulder.

"Do you see the queen?"

"I'm looking!" He yelled impatiently. He chewed on his lip, looking around the room. His eyes fell upon the bloody snippers. He took them, and slid the blades around the chains of my cuff. He gave an exerted grunt, squeezed, and the chains broke free.

"Thank you!" I whispered.

He put his finger to his lips, looking nervously at the door. "Come on." He mouthed, and took my hand. He slid along the wall until he got to the doorway, peeked through the slit of light, then held up his other hand. "On the count of three, you run to the passage." He mouthed.

I nodded.

He held up one finger, then another, then another. I ran behind him, using his body as cover, and he yanked me around, and threw me through the doorway. I was sent sprawling into my office, my vision filled with booted feet. There was a moment before my realization where I wondered why he had sent me on this detour. Then my flesh prickled, and a terror like I'd never known crept into my chest. I looked up. All around me were faces. Some were bearded, some were ragged, some were bloody, and some were fair, but they were all strangers, and all merciless, their blue eyes filled with avarice and hate.

"Look what I found!" Ray jeered behind me.

Someone whooped, and the whole room filled with sardonic laughter. I scrambled backwards on my hands and heels, and smacked into Ray's shins as he shut the door behind him.

"Where are you going, Your Highness?" He sneered down at me, "Your loyal subjects are here to pay tribute!"

"I've got two sacks full of treasure just for you!" A man grinned down at me, grabbing his crotch.

"I got a pair of jewels as well, and a staff to go with them!" Another chortled, looming above me.

"Sorry I didn't pay my taxes on time." A bearded older man cackled, "But I guess now's a good time to make a deposit, eh, Your Highness?"

"Right in the royal bank!" A man snatched me by the heels, and I kicked him in the face. His head shot back, and he howled with laughter, "Oh, she's still got some fight in her!" He grinned wolfishly at me, blood running from his nose, "I like it when they squirm."

"Get up!" A man growled, and his fist was in my hair, hauling me to my knees.

"You look so pretty in that red dress." Another man growled, pawing at the shoulder straps, "Did you wear it just for us?"

"Here's your crown, my queen." Someone laughed, and adorned my head with my tiara, "It looks so pretty on you!"

"Such a hot little piece!" Growled a bearded man, "I can't wait any longer!" He wrenched down his pants, and his stinking fat cock shot out. He palmed the entire top of my head, and moved it forward.

"I'll bite it off!" I snarled, baring my teeth.

He drew a dagger, and sneered behind it. "You bite something off; I cut something off."

"Is that so?" I asked, and before he could answer, I snatched the combat knife out of his boot, and drove it to my chest.

"Whoa there!" Jay laughed, grabbing my wrists, the point of the blade quivering just a hair before my heart. I struggled with him, pulling with all my might, but he just held my arms out before me, and roared, "Three cheers for Queen Leveria, the slayer of Queen Leveria!"

"Hoorah! Hoorah! Hoorah!" They cheered, and broke out into applause. I didn't want to cry, but I couldn't stop myself. Tears of frustration poured from my eyes as I feebly tried to die, but sweet death would not come to me.

"What's the matter, Your Highness?" Jay sneered, "I just saved your life."

I twisted in his arms, and he held me without effort. With a flick of his wrist, the dagger slipped from my hands, and clattered between my legs.

"I'll kill you." I hissed, then screamed, "I'll kill all of you! You think you know suffering?! You think you know pain?!"

"No, but you will." Came a familiar voice. The crowd of men parted, and Lucas Ternias stepped before me. He savored the sight of me, his eyes running over every inch of my splayed body until they met my gaze, and a victorious sneer crawled across his thin lips. "Do not call this woman 'Your Highness,' or 'Your Grace,' or 'my queen.'" He said, "Do not even call her 'my lady.' She is no one. She is nothing. She isn't even a whore, for she will not demand that you pay. She's just... a toy. My gift to you brave men who have fought so valiantly for your country."

"Lucas..." I hissed, "don't do this."

"Lucas?" He raised his brows, "Is that what you call your king?"

"I'm begging you." I whispered.

His smile grew broader. He stepped between my legs, and loomed over me. Then he extended his hand, his family ring glinting in the torchlight. "Show me how you beg." He said softly, "Grovel like the beggar you are, and I will show you mercy."

I got onto my knees, the tears flowing freely down my cheeks. I leaned forward, closed my eyes, and planted a kiss upon the ring. He pulled back his hand, and I looked up at him. He wasn't smiling anymore, but his eyes were laughing.

"Soldier, what is your name?" He asked Jay.

"Sergeant Jay Kaylinia, Your Highness." He answered.

"A sergeant, at your age?" He smiled, "What an enterprising young man you are. That box you have in your had. Do you know what those syringes are filled with?"

"No." I whispered, "You said you would give me mercy."

"So I am, in a way." He said, the corner of his mouth turning, "Were you as practical a woman as you pretend to be, you would see it as mercy. But pride has always been your folly, and you cling to it still. Let me remove that folly from you."

"What is this, Your Highness?" Jay asked.

"Liquid congeniality." Ternias said with a wry smile, then turned on his heel. "Keep her alive and in one piece, gentlemen. I have use for her."

I felt the injection in my shoulder, and the plunger depress. I whimpered. My body went cold as the last tendrils of fear took me, then... they were gone. I was hot. I was so hot. The world was bathed it warm colors, and the smells saturated my mind. Men. So many men. I reached feebly for the dagger between my legs, but my wrist caught the hem of my dress, and the silken fabric moved like liquid between my legs. I was wet. So wet. My fingers retracted before the hilt of the dagger, and a man picked it up off the carpet. Oh, the carpet was so plush, the little fibers running along my flesh, whispering through my nerves. It was a gentle sensation, but I did not desire gentle sensations. I looked up at the man before me. His cock was still out, rigid and thick, a froth of precum bubbling delectably from its tip.