Papers sprawl and the words etched into them spin beneath her glare. A multitude of problems and minor skirmishes to be dealt with. Requests for money, retribution, bids for her time. A second. A minute. An hour.

The life of a Queen at war.

Nigh on five years deep, she rarely remembers a time before. Her entire Queenship hedges on the outcome. 

Varnick’s war had started the morning of her coronation. 

She could still hear the screams from outside the castle as her mother’s right hand man, Becephus, laid that glittering crown on her head. Gold and ruby, delicate and cold, vibrant against her midnight colored locks. It had cut into her skin more aggressively than she ever imagined. Salt water tears pricked at the corners of her jade eyes as she stared out at the gathered aristocracy. Becephus’s thumb brushed her cheek, ridding her of the pesky tear before it could fall and she felt a surge of thankfulness. The people behind him filled barely over half of the chamber. Unusual, but she was too distracted by that weight, his support, and the screaming to care.

As Becephus stepped back and raised his deep baritone of a voice to fill the room, drowning out the outsiders, her heart had stuttered in her chest. For the first time in her life she wondered if maybe this wasn’t the path meant for her. She heard the words of her oath, his prompting for her to follow and devote her life to the Kingdom of Naem.

“—and to uphold our values and livelihood to the best of your ability as Queen?”

“I do.”

Two little words. They echoed in her skull every time she looked at those pages. Those words kept her blockaded in on all sides, between a promise and the war. She would give nearly anything in an instant to have that war ended. Lost from the pages before her in the memory of that day she sighs, contentment in each note the sound strikes.

“And so, people of Naem, I give you—”

“—Queen Dovera?”

Becephus’s voice rings in discordance between her past and present as he swings open the door to her office hard enough that it bounces back after hitting the wall. She jolts from her chair. Executing a clean somersault across the floor, and scooping a hidden blade from the loose floorboard in the corner within moments. He’d barely taken two steps into the room by the time she’d retrieved the dagger and squared up to him. Her deep emerald eyes remained wary even after she saw who it was.

Slowly she raises herself to her full, intimidating, six feet and some change of height. The top of his head barely comes to her chin as she closes the distance between them and settles her hips against the front of her desk. Gleaming, the edge of her silver blade taps against her knee as she eyes him. The trust inherent in the moment when he brushed that tear away had faded over the past five years. She was no longer the trusting little girl with a heavy crown. Just because mom relied on him doesn’t mean she has to.

Worries writhe at the edges of her mind, questioning his presence in her chambers at such early hours. The sun only barely breached the horizon. Maybe he was hoping to find her papers unguarded...maybe wishing she was asleep at the desk. An air of unease hovered around him and had only grown in recent months. Her skin itched with it.

His face had melted with wrinkles in the past five years. He must be pushing sixty by this point. Still she will not allow her guard down. Her eyes trace his, the way his hands hover, loose by his sides. The easy, ready stance of one with the past of a warrior. His eyes linger on the blade in her hand. Knowing this, she slips the pad of her thumb along the edge, subtly ensuring him that it is still quite sharp with the red welling from her skin.

“Yes Becephus?”

At her tone of voice something utterly unnatural happens. He fidgets. His fingers twitch and tension coils in the strands of muscle under his skin. She registers it all with ease and her heart stammers. Not good. 

“They’ve broken the outer wall.”

The jolting of her heart halts. The world spins to a dead stop. Silence rings in her ears and vibrates her brain.

“That’s impossible.” Naem’s capitol, Rovilde, rests atop a low-slung mountain with impenetrable walls that have stood through centuries of her family’s rule. They can’t fall.

“They’re surging through the lower city now. Rushing the castle.” His words are cold, empty, and his eyes echo the same sentiment. He’s already distanced himself from what’s to come, clearly. “They’ve killed hundreds of citizens and the guard is broken, trying to fight them in the streets. Being downed by the dozens. You have to hide.”

“I won’t.” The words fly free before she can consider them. Her fingers tighten to a white-knuckled grip on the handle. “This is my Kingdom. I will not hide as they tear what is mine apart.”

His black eyes thrum with midnight and disbelief. Burning her. Her own flick away from that weight as she slips the dagger into a sheath at her tailbone, standing from the lounging position in one smooth motion. Her mind rushes with thoughts of what to do next, how to bring the guard and military back together from their fractured state. Pieces shift and multiply in her mind. Drifting together and splintering again as soon as she thinks she might have a reasonable strategy. The thoughts fire at a rapid pace. She turns her back on him, straightening the papers on her desk and tucking them into a shelf for later review.

That’s all it takes.

The floorboards creak as he lunges at her. Telegraphing his intentions seconds before his fingers brush against her spine, grabbing for the blade sheathed there. Her mind electrifies when that sound screeches into being, which is the only reason her right foot manages to kick backward and connect with his knee as she twists out of his grasp. Guttural curses spew from his lips, piercing her ears. Pushing upward with her left leg she uses the momentum of her spin to launch onto the desk facing him.

That tension and unease from before becomes a raging inferno around them when their eyes meet again. Her molten gemstone gaze glares into the depths of eyes she once trusted. Her mind offers up the truth in shreds and pieces. How many times did she capture him lingering places he didn’t belong? How many days was he unable to be found just when she needed him the most? How many documents weren’t quite where she had placed them?

“How long have you been spying for Daliye?” She asks. The name burns her tongue. 

As she stares his hobbled form down, he appears even smaller than usual from her perch atop the desk. He’s kneeling on the floor. His hands cup the knee she kicked out, but she is not so foolish as to underestimate a foe based on size or positioning alone. Her father taught her that lesson well. Time and time again. 

Becephus’s fingers stray from the knee she kicked, toward his boot. Twitching. She crouches on her haunches and yanks the dagger free from its sheath. Cold metal gleams, one edge still painted with her blood. She swirls the handle in her palm. Begging him to take that step.

Try me. Her mind screams. 

The volatile pit of her emotions thrash beneath the surface, itching at her fingers with the need to fight. Adrenaline surges through her bloodstream, igniting her nerve endings as her face lifts into a dastardly smile. Red dribbles down her thumb and into the grooves of the hilt from where she sliced the pad open a minute before. She presses her fingers tighter into the softly worn material that knows her hand as well as she does. This blade has been hers for as long as she can remember. 

Beyond the window she can hear the crashing of metal in the early morning sunlight, but her eyes will not drift from the threat before her. The battle rages without and within. Dovera exhales, long and slow, pressing all the air from her lungs. The moment that last shred of breath dissipates Becephus launches into action. His face, which she thought she knew better than nearly anyone’s, morphs into a terrible snarl. The lines deepen, furrowing his features into that of a stranger.

Her jaw ticks and teeth grind together under the weight of her rage. It fills her to the marrow as he vaults toward her. His fingers tug a spindle-thin blade from the edging of his boot. It's almost comically small in his large, liver-spotted hand. That knife could do little to harm her, and it's that which triggers her realization that he must have poisoned the blade. She catches her lower between her teeth as her body unfolds atop the massive mahogany desk.

His arm swipes toward her left ankle and she jumps over it, snapping her foot forward in the process to smash into the side of his skull. When she lands it is on her right leg only, she dips before catching her balance as her left foot connects with the surface. Her eyes track emotionlessly as he moves with the momentum of her attack, using it to throw himself around to the side of her perch.

“Becephus. You should know better than this.” Her words scratch at her throat, void of anything but derision.

“And you should have known better than to twist this place as you have. Your parents would roll over in their graves if they knew.”

“Yet, they’re dead. They know nothing anymore.”

“Once you might have cared about that fact.”

“Once, you wouldn’t have been itching to take my life.”

His eyes devour her as the words pass her lips and she knows with aching clarity just how true that statement is. He hasn’t been her man for a long time according to the hatred shimmering behind that bloodlust. Her stomach vaults for a second, but in the end he’s just one more person yanked from her grasp in this terrible war.

“You’ll never win.” Her statement is a breath and his head dips, tucking his chin close to his chest as he gazes up at her. Ready.

“All I need is contact.” His thin lips curl back from misshapen teeth.

A grotesque memory of a smile turned rancid with the venom in his mind.

“They’ll never take my throne or my crown.”

She crouches low, gathering her legs under her and nearing his line of sight. His eyes bore through her. She catches her cheek between her teeth. Gnawing on it.

When he takes a single step forward she launches herself. Springboarding off the desk as easily as breathing she flies through the air. Her body curls into the fetal position as she flips over his head. She can just barely hear the breath leave his body over the pounding heart in her ears. Her eyes stay wide open through the motion. She releases a huff of air as her feet connect with the ground long before he reacts. His elderly condition has weakened his response times. 

As his head cranks toward her she slams her much smaller weight into his back. Kicking his right ankle out from under him at the same time. His body teeters. Leaning forward. A crash sounds as he collapses face-first onto her desk. The papers taunt her as they flutter and fly from the intrusion. She can’t afford to be distracted by them.

Quick as a viper, her free hand strikes. Her sharpened nails bite into the sensitive skin at Becephus’s wrist. Forcing him to release the poisoned blade.

“Why,” she whispers in his ear, her body arched over his. Pinning him in place. “Why would they send a weakling of a man like you to finish the Warrior Queen?”

She presses her own dagger into the soft and quivering skin of his wide stomach.

“As if you could ever best me.”

“I never needed to best you.” He spits. Flecks of saliva darken the paper under his cheek.

The words register slowly. Her hackles rise and blood heats. Her ears strain to hear over the cacophony of her body. A single creak. Surprise paints her blood and she drives the dagger home. Becephus cries out in pain as cold metal slices through flesh and organs. She can hear gurgling as she tilts the point up to pierce a lung. 

“You should have stayed loyal to your true Queen.”

“He has.” A cold, frostbitten voice cuts through her final words to Becephus. She doesn’t jump. Becephus’s words were more warning than she needed to understand the truth. Dovera tugs, pulling her blade from the sheath of his skin. Her body is coiled taut as a spring when she turns.

Her dark green eyes pierce the newcomer. The blood-slicked blade in her hand cools rapidly in the open air. She doesn’t know the man before her. His eyes are a vibrant violet that threatens to drown her. He’s on par with her in the height department but far surpasses her in weight. His body is muscles stacked upon muscles. Not that it will help him with whatever idiotic mission he thinks he’s here to complete.

He is handsome, in a goliath way. Just the way she would like if he weren’t here to end her life. She can already imagine the overly aggressive way he’ll fight. Swinging for her as though she’s a gnat to be swatted. Her lips curl up in a torturous smile.

“You’ll fare no better than his traitorous soul.”

“So you believe.”

In his meaty hands there are two short swords, the length of his forearms they dangle at his sides. Not even at the ready. He will fall swift and fast. Her gaze scans his features. His face is all angles and lines. There is a hardness to it that suggests he doesn’t lose easily. Today he will. Those eyes are the softest thing about him and still they spell out death. His nose is large and sharp, aristocratic in any other face. He has lips that form nothing more than a thin line when pressed together as they are now. Desire awakens in her. Stirring low in her abdomen like a midnight leopard, ready to strike.

If only he weren’t here to kill her.