NOT POWER. NOT VENGEANCE

I am not a queen because I rule, I rule because I am THE QUEEN.

Birthed in my heart. Alive in my veins…

********************

Zorgan was a single stride from the balcony and there was neither an appearance from the riders nor Nadezhda.

‘‘Time slips through our fingers,’’ Prince San said gesturing boldly in address to the crowd.

‘‘We must move forward as there remains much to be done this fine night.’’

He turned to Zorgan with an indulgent smile. ‘‘Now Brother, step out into the balcony.

Surely no one here truly believed your wife would grace the occasion.’’

The laughter that followed was loose and unguarded, emboldened by wine and liquor most had drank.

‘‘I believe that’s enough jest for one evening, Prince San,’’ Queen Maeve said gently from her place, her tone soft but firm.

San heard and understood the warning beneath her sweetness, but his gaze flicked back to his brothers, unwilling to yield.

But then another voice stepped in before the Queen could press her subtle advantage.

‘‘With respect Mother, you’d be mistaken to overlook this.

It is no small slight to a monarch when one disrespects a royal gathering, intentional or not. But going into a balcony is a small matter for a man who has fallen over ten thousand men.

Is it not?’’

The Queen held the prince’s gaze, her eyes seething with silent fire. The prince met it, knowing full well he would suffer later- but he was past caring.

He needed Zorgan to feel this moment, to be stripped bare in front of all.

‘‘I do agree, son,’’ She said, her voice silk over steel. She took the last of her wine and tipped the goblet back, emptying it.

Prince San slipped into this moment.

‘‘Go on brother.

We will ensure you do not linger because of the rain. You’ve only returned from a distant land- we may yet send you home to your wife.

Or perhaps find a better woman to soothe the weight of your victories.’’

Zorgan’s lips curled into a smile that never touched his eyes. It was a phantom of cold and false.

San saw the look- the madness, the fury, the certainty. There would be reckoning.

With that, Zorgan turned and the guards stepped aside in practiced unison.

It was time.

One heartbeat.

Two heartbeats.

He was about to step forward when the great doors of one of the entrances, groaned open, pulling everyone to it.

The hall shifted.

A collective gasp swept the hall like wind through dry leaves.

A shudder ran through them as they recoiled, nobles and royals pressing back as if the storm itself had walked in.

Heads turned, and in no time, all attention that was once fixed on Zorgan now shifted.

Zorgan turned as well, following their gaze.

His heart staggered in his chest.

It was her.

Soaked to the bone, water cascading down her face, Nadezhda strolled into the hall like the grim reaper summoned by death. The silence bowed before her presence.

She spared no glance for the startled monarchs and dignitaries and not even a courtesy nod to acknowledge royalty.

Only a direct burning focus on the man atop the voice-tier, the man who moments ago had commanded the room from that point.

Her voice rang out, clear but edged.

‘‘Where. Is. My Husband?’’

Prince San looked as though his veins might burst through. He stood frozen, undone, caught between disbelief and probable dread.

He had to remind himself to speak.

‘‘You must be the wife?’’ Prince San said, his voice laced with mockery and surprise.

‘‘I was told you were ill and confined to your chambers.

Yet here you stand, pulled from your sickbed by sheer will? Remarkable. But this-” he gestured to her soaked figure, ‘‘-is hardly the manner in which one enters a hall of nobles and crowned blood-”

He didn’t finish.

Nadezhda’s hand was already in motion.

With fluid precision, she lifted her bow, drew an arrow from the quiver at her back, and aimed it directly at his face.

Gasps erupted as several nobles shrieked and pressed the crowd backward. The music had long stopped but the silence felt rhythmic.

Prince San froze. His chest rose and fell in uneven beats, the smirk on his face dissolving.

‘‘That wasn’t my question Prince San,’’ Nadezhda said, her voice colder.

‘‘Where. is he?’’

San swallowed hard, forcing composure into his posture. ‘‘Look young lady-” he began, voice strained, “I don’t think you know where you are, and this isn’t how a lady should conduct herself.

I’ll ask for your own safety, do you even know how to use tha-”

The faint sound of a bowstring tightening cut through his words.

The arrow sliced the air with a vicious hum, grazing past Prince San’s ear before embedding itself in the wall behind.

More gasps rippled as several ducked underneath tables and hid behind chairs.

San clutched the side of his head as blood trickled down his fingers, his eyes wide with shock, breath coming in frantic bursts.

‘‘That…’’ Nadezhda drawled in that same voice. ‘‘…was a harmless jest. The next,’’

She said, drawing another with icy precision, ‘‘Won’t be.’’

‘‘You stupid wench!’’ came a shrill cry. Princess Evadne surged to her feet, her voice cracking. ‘‘How dare you try to harm my brother?’’

Her cheeks were flushed, her composure unravelling.

She had been sulking in silence since the event began.

She knew of the plan- the whispered intentions of the princes to disgrace Zorgan- and though she had voiced her disapproval, she had been powerless to stop it. She had also hoped tonight would reveal to Zorgan just how undeserving Nadezhda truly was.

But now…

Nadezhda’s eyes snapped to her. Before Evadne could offer another word, an arrow soared, burying itself in the wall, inches above her head.

‘‘I desire your lips sealed,’’ Nadezhda warned, her voice a low, lethal growl… in that same cold, dead voice.

The arrow vibrated where it struck, a visible quiver of surrounding threat.

A panicked stir moved through the hall- princes, mostly of Valcreshian blood, began to advance toward Nadezhda from different corners, disbelief and indignation etched into their features.

The idea of what was happening was as insane as the person carrying it out.

‘A princess, a lone one from a Kingdom such as Isoloth, disrupting an event where kingdoms like Ysvaldir and Eryndor graced. Unpardonable! Unbelievable!

Death worthy!’

Nadezhda’s voice cut through the clamour with a scream, more panicked than theirs. ‘‘I said- where is he?’’

They did not answer and kept moving toward the ‘crazy princess’ and so she fired.

Arrow after arrow hissed through the air, striking the floor between advancing feet, grazing cloaks, and clattering near goblets.

Screeches rang; nobles scattered. The hall once thick with exuberance and wine, now swept with panic and the whistle of arrows.

Through it all, Nadezhda swirled as she fired, protecting her sides, her front and back like she was in a well-practiced dance.

Her bow was alight with defiance, and she wasn’t asking anymore.

She wanted to see Zorgan and she needed to see him now.

The last time she had turned her back when the most important person in her life had been in need, she still carried the burden of that moment.

She had been a child, but it didn’t erase the understanding that if she had stayed, she would have gone wherever her mother had. That she wouldn’t have had to endure those long painful years alone.

And now the Heavens seemed to have smiled on her and brought someone else whose care for her she had been too afraid to receive with both hands.

Her heart was tearing, ripping, ‘Zorgan… Zorgan… please where are you?’

She moved unwavering, dripping rainwater, with a steady bow and a maniacal fury.

The man whose presence had ignited this tempest stood rooted, solidly stricken.

A silence had fallen within him, deafening and absolute, only his gaze remained alive, tethered to the figure almost at the heart of the hall.

This could not be real.

Surely, he had already stepped through the balcony doors, and this was some fevered resulting hallucination brought by the weight of grief.

It had to be.

Yet no vision crafted by anguish could wear such splendour.

No hallucination could wield such defiant grace.

There she was- his wife, lithe in frame, ever distant in affection- now commanding a hall of royals to tremble and yield. And for what?

Not power. Not vengeance.

But for him.

A slow crescendo tremor, kissed by the Heavens, rolled in his core.

The remnant of the emotional shield he had tried to hold firm broke through.

The distance he swore to keep was gone, eternally obliterated by this sight of her.

He looked on as his voice caught in a whisper, his lips parting with a slow smile as her name fell from him like a word of worship, ‘‘Nadezhda… oh Rebel’’

Author's little note: The next chapter is paywalled. Nadezhda's story just began and it will be a shame to stop reading anytime soon. I look forward to comments and reviews and will respond to all of it with an account of my own. The name- Sapphire Peter.

Thanks for trusting me with your time.