Four Dead Queens(5)
Archia was once again safe.
Iris left her homeland for the first time on her eighteenth birthday, when she had been informed her mother had died. She sailed across the channel on a Torian vessel toward the palace. She took to her new world and throne without blinking, insisting she attend court minutes after her mother had been laid to rest beneath the palace. That evening she had stayed awake until the early morning, reading books on Archian history and diplomacy. Nothing could shake Iris. Not even the death of her mother.
Iris opened her green eyes to the vibrant blue sky—enjoying the break from the enduring golden palace. With the palace enclosed by a glass dome, every room, and everything within it, was cast in a golden hue. Even at night, the corridors blurred into a deep amber, as though darkness would not dare caress the queens with inky-black fingers.
When Iris looked to the clouds in the sky, she thought of her father. Not the father whose blood she shared—a man who’d never been identified by her mother—but the man who had raised her in Archia. When she was a child, he’d told her about the queens above, the deceased queens who lived in the quadrant without borders, watching the relatives they’d left behind. When she was alone, she would look to the clouds and share her gravest fears and most wondrous dreams, knowing her secrets were safe with them. Her most loyal confidants.
Then she came to the palace and met the queens. They spent every evening together—often staying up beyond a “respectable” hour to discuss their childhood, families and quadrants. Iris was no longer alone.
Still, she often looked to the sky, but now she spoke to her father, long dead.
“Father, I have not wavered,” she said. “Queenly Law is, and will always be, paramount. However, there are certain rules that pertain to the queens, to me, that I have come to see as irrelevant over the years.” Even speaking the words aloud felt wrong. Iris shook her head. She would need to be stronger, be a woman with an iron backbone. “We are the queens. We should be able to change the rules that do not affect the quadrants and the peace we uphold. We should have some control over our own lives.” She shook her head. “I will continue to fight for Archia and protect all we have, but I want more.” She shook her head again, thinking of the governor’s request. “Not more for Archia, but for me.” She hated how weak she sounded.
“I have a plan.” She let out a weighted breath. “I’ve been too many years silent. But no longer. Tomorrow things will change. Queenly Law will change. Tomorrow I will—”
A bee pricked her throat. An intense bite, followed by a dull ache.
Bees, and all other bugs and insects, were supposed to have been eradicated from the garden by a spray. Another wonderful Eonist creation, Iris thought wryly. Iris didn’t object to sharing her garden with the creatures that should come with it. But the advisors had insisted it was best, for Iris’s safety.
A smile appeared on Iris’s face; perhaps nature had conquered technology in the end, beating out the spray. She couldn’t wait to gloat about her findings to Corra at tonight’s evening meal.
The bee’s sting grew more painful, to the point where Iris was unable to swallow. Saliva pooled in her throat. Was she allergic?
She brought a hand up to the bite and found a gaping ridge of skin. When she pulled her hand back, it was darkened with blood. A wail gurgled from her lips.
A figure loomed over her, teeth gleaming with menace and delight. A thin knife reflected a slice of sunlight, dripping red.
Fury flashed through her as hot blood spilled down her neck. Her arms flung backward, knocking her crown to the floor.
An outrage! I am the Archian queen!
How dare someone cut my thr—
CHAPTER THREE
Keralie
Mackiel Delore Jr. sat at his heavy oak desk and rotated the comm case in his hand, his rings sliding along the metal surface, his brows low. He’d been strangely quiet since I’d handed it over, and during the long, cold walk back from the Concord, through Central Toria and down to the auction house located on the half-rotted dock. He hadn’t been this quiet since the day his parents died.
His pale skin and dark hair held the only resemblance to his father. Painfully narrow, he wore a waistcoat to help expand his width, and a bowler hat added to his meager height. Still, he was a fragment of his father, of who he wanted to be.
Mackiel Sr. had wanted a formidable protégé. Instead, he’d gotten a waif of a boy. He worried Mackiel’s presence would not instill the same kind of fear and admiration in everyone who’d dealt with him and his business of Delore Imports and Exports.
He’d been wrong.
Mackiel looked upon the comm case as though he was equally delighted and troubled by what might be inside.
“Are you going to open it?” I asked him.
“And tarnish the goods?” He wagged a finger at me, his expression lifting. “You know better than that, darlin’.”
I hissed as I took the seat opposite him.
“Hurt yourself, porcelain doll?” he asked with a grin. “You should be more careful with your goods.”
I rolled my eyes and gently rubbed my bandaged knee under my faded black skirt. My con clothes were at the cleaners; hopefully they could beat the blood out. It was my mother’s skirt. One of the few items I had of hers.