Page 36 of Return of the Vengeful Quee

One of the crew members, a middle-aged man named Losh, dove for the creature closest to him. The Rakuuna batted away Losh’s sword, grasped his wrist, and twisted until the bones cracked. Losh screamed, and his sword clattered to the deck.

“We take the queen,” the bearded Rakuuna spoke in halting Caleran, his voice as brittle and dry as autumn leaves.

“Over my dead body,” Holland snarled.

“We accept your terms.” The Rakuuna lunged for Holland.

“Wait!” Charis held herself still, though she longed to rush down the stairs and put herself between Holland and the attacker. The Rakuuna paused, his head swiveling around like an owl’s until his black eyes met hers. “He does not bargain for me. If your queen has an offer, I will hear it.”

A strange sound came out of the four Rakuuna, like pebbles scraping over tin in a windstorm. It took a moment for Charis to realize they were laughing. Her eyes narrowed.

“No offer. We take the queen,” the leader said.

“And if we refuse to give her up?” Reuben asked, looking two seconds away from throwing his body between Charis and the monsters.

“Then we kill everyone except the queen, and we still take the queen. She stays alive until Calera.”

Until Calera.

Charis froze, a statue on the outside as everything inside of her tumbled and fell.

She wasn’t being brought back to Calera as a bargaining chip for Alaric, then. She was being brought home to be publicly executed, to drain the fire out of the rebellion. They’d killed the Rullenvor High Emperor when they’d taken over his kingdom. The only reason Charis had been spared was Tal’s fierce bargain for her life.

If that bargain no longer held, then the Rakuuna either had what they wanted from Alaric, or they’d realized the Caleran people would be difficult to subdue as long as she was still alive.

The Rakuuna turned toward Charis, and her crew instantly moved to place themselves between the monsters and their queen.

“Kill them,” the lead Rakuuna said as casually as if he was stating what he wanted for breakfast.

A Rakuuna with thick white braids wrapped in a circle around her head and a bluish tint to her scaled skin leaped past her leader, snatched a crew member named Wenshel off his feet, and tore out his throat. Another ran straight for Holland.

“I surrender!” The words tore their way out of her, born of desperation and fury. “Let them live. I surrender.”

She laid her sword down and then descended the stairs, every inch the regal queen she’d been trained to be. Surrender was strategy, not defeat. It kept her alive to learn her enemy’s weaknesses and exploit them. And it saved her brave crew members, especially her fearless cousin, from death.

The bearded Rakuuna smiled, revealing both rows of fangs, and unease sank into her stomach.

Why so amused? He’d known he could tear through her people and take her. Her surrender did nothing more than speed the process along.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs, her mind racing.

He hadn’t promised to spare her people’s lives. He’d said there was no offer. They were going to take her, surrender or not. He’d said nothing about the fate of everyone else.

Already the other Rakuuna were spreading out, surrounding her crew, black eyes glowing as they flexed their long fingers and bared their fangs.

Frantically, she grasped at her spinning thoughts, hunting for a way to save her people. The Rakuuna didn’t value human life. They’d demonstrated that over and over. So what did they value?

Power. Jewels from Montevallo. Having unimpeded access to the throne of any kingdom they invaded.

“I surrender my heirs, the heirs of Montevallo, and my uncle as well,” she said crisply, giving Holland a look that ordered him, for once in his life, to keep his thoughts to himself.

Holland simply raised one brow and looked around him as if wondering which of the other crew members was posing as Charis’s uncle.

The bearded Rakuuna studied her, tilting his head so far that his chin nearly pointed toward the sky. She really wished he’d stop.

“Heirs?”

“Surely your queen understood that the entire royal family fled from Calera, with the help of several heirs from Montevallo.” She gestured at the crew and went for the jugular. “Of course, I suppose you could kill them now. They’ve already gained quite a reputation among the rebels in Calera. Killing them would turn them into martyrs for a cause that needs very little spark to turn into a firestorm you have no hope of extinguishing.”

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