Chapter 1

CHAPTER1

I’m the first woman in history to be made a queen while wearing nothing but a thin silk robe with jizz stuck to her legs.

That’s the second loudest thought in my brain right now.

The first is quite simple. It goes like this:

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.

I look across the room at all the Reapers kneeling before me and those few thoughts are all I can grasp on to.

I’m naked under here.

I have jizz on my legs.

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.

A few Reapers are slower to fall to a knee, but Zida makes quick work of whipping them into shape. She slides off the dais with a thunk and approaches one demon who glares up at me, refusing to bow. A look of ‘oh shit’ passes over his face as the snake draws near. He starts to drop, but Zida’s already decided it’s too late for him. Her massive white head raises high into the air then comes crashing down over the demon, engulfing his body and muffling his scream.

She gulps him down, boots and all.

Anyone still standing drops to their knees.

“Fuck that was super gross,” I whisper, trying not to move my lips in case anyone is chancing a glance up at me. “Ashen.”

“Lu,” he whispers back, not looking up from where he’s bent before me.

“You missed it. Dude just got eaten by a snake.”

“I heard.”

Zida slithers back up onto the dais, the lump of the fresh meal in her belly sliding past. She coils behind me, her head hovering in the air above mine.

I’m just…I’m gonna pause right here for a minute. It’s surely an imposing sight for anyone who dares to look up, this bigass snake hovering over some wack hybrid vampire chick who moments ago was the biggest bounty of their land. So, yeah…I think I can take a second to collect myself. I just need to glare across the room like I’ve conquered this place all Mother of Dragons GOT style.

So, there’s silence.

A long stretch of silence.

Ashen shifts but doesn’t look up. He doesn’t have to. I can feel the worry in him, creeping beneath my skin.

Fucking fuck. Fuck.

When Ashen offered me the match to burn this place down or the mercy to save it, I didn’t think the latter meant me running the place. I’ve never run shit. That probably sounds surprising, given my super long history in the Living Realm, but commanding armies is different from being the fucking queen of a realm of your worst enemies. And half the time, I didn’t even enjoy the running armies part. I liked to mess around and fuck shit up without the responsibility, like in the days of Tomoe Gozen. She’s the one who ordered us into battle and led our conquests. I just had fun chopping off heads and battling with my lady warrior friends and eating the occasional douchebag.

Fuck.

I’ve gotta say something. And it had better be good. Because I’m surrounded by demons, and I can guarantee most of them would love the chance to rip my throat out.

I walk past Ashen, and he stays down on one knee until I stop next to his shoulder. He rises to follow just behind me, his sword rippling with flame as we descend the dais with Zida drifting in our wake like a wave of white scales.

The crowd parts.

I don’t let the end of the silver spear clutched in my hand touch the floor until I stand by Eshkar’s severed head. I look down at it for a long moment as my heart riots, thrumming loud beats in my ears.

This is a lot to take in, not just for me, but for everyone here, whether friend or foe or something in between. Everything in life has seemed to pass like a great thunderclap. So many years were just spent dragging on and on, one to the next. And now there’s a beautiful, dark storm, and flashes of glorious lightning, and danger and beauty. There’s life in the living.

“We immortals are used to stasis, aren’t we,” I say, speaking as much to the head as to anyone else, my voice measured and quiet. “It feels like centuries go by without change. Unending. Every day the same. Then, suddenly, a cataclysm. And everything is different on the other side of a moment.”

I bend down, lacing my fingers into Eshkar’s soft hair. I stand again and turn his face toward me. I stare into his open eyes. They look almost fake, like something from a bad taxidermist. I peer into those glassy eyeballs and wonder what went on behind them. How many years he worked at shaping and molding this place to his design. And now all his future plans are dissolving, leaking right out of his head.

I wonder if he ever felt what I felt. The reaping. When I lived for a breath of time within Ashen, the moment when he took Davina out of the Living Realm. The slip of a soul, sliding through a palm. Sorrow and fear. A demon wrenching secrets from its keeper. Unraveling a history. Sending the soul of an immortal to deteriorate in servitude, or loneliness, or rage. I wonder if Eshkar ever truly felt what the Reapers of his realm do. What Ashen did.

I lift my gaze and look across the audience. “Stasis. That’s the insidious fallacy of time. It’s an illusion. Because every day was different. Each one was incrementally worse than the last. A little more despair. A touch more anger. Regret. Guilt. It was all used against you, to keep you doing the Council’s bidding, no matter if it was right or just. And slowly, mercy ceased to even exist.”

I lower Eshkar’s head to my side. I look toward the crawlers shifting at the edge of the audience, restless, their eyes on mine. I hear the whisper of their fragmented thoughts like I heard the hybrids in the Living Realm. And the souls, I can feel them too. Their presence. Their confusion and suffering.

I turn and walk back to the dais with Ashen by my side as Zida slithers around us. I catch sight of the faint pink mark on her scales where I wounded and then healed her. Her head stays in line with my legs, the slit of her silver eye watching me.

The smoke behind the dais rolls up the wall, as thick as a waterfall. I watch it as I walk up the stairs with the spear in my hand, and a realization washes over me. It’s as though I’ve ascended into an epiphany.

I can still get my revenge on this place. I can make it into what it doesn’t want to be. And the mercy I deliver will be the match that burns anyone who stands in my way.

There’s a gust of power that seems to blow from the bottom of my stomach, lifting my chest. It pulls at my throat. It’s the fleeting thought that this can be mine. I can rule this place.

I can wield power like I’ve never felt before.

I stop at the top of the stairs and turn to the audience, their eyes a sea of flames as they watch me back from bent knees. “We will deliver justice. And we will deliver mercy. We will bring this realm back to its purpose and we will find the true war and we will win it.”

I pivot and start walking toward the center of the dais.

And that’s when I learn my first lesson as Queen of the Reapers.

Never turn your back on the Shadow Realm.