Warrior Queen (Skeleton Key)

Warrior Queen (Skeleton Key) Read Free

Book: Warrior Queen (Skeleton Key) Read Free
Author: Shona Husk
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out what was going on before he tried to run again.
    After securing the storeroom, the soldiers nudged him forward and up the stairs. Not only were they women, but the one in front of him had pointed ears.
    He blinked and glanced behind him, which earned him a poke in the back of his thigh with the knife.
    She also had pointed ears. Her eyes were dark and she had two scars on her cheek. The kind that looked deliberate. The number of men she’d emasculated?
    He decided that he didn’t want to know.
    But he did want to know who he was going to see. “Who is the Heavenly?”
    The woman in front spoke without looking at him. “Keleti the Heavenly, Queen of Telsila. What son of the South does not know who he is at war with? Or are you dumber than you look?”
    In this situation Bryce decided it was better not to confirm how dumb he was. He had no idea what they were talking about. Or who they were talking about, only that they were at war and it appeared that he had been mistaken for being on the wrong side.
    That didn’t explain the ears. And they didn’t look like they’d been cut in some body modification ceremony. Maybe he’d been abducted by aliens.
    Warrior aliens.
    Female warrior aliens.
    Which made no sense, and was just a little too close to a fantasy he’d once had after watching a sci-fi movie. These women might tie him up, but it would not be for fun times.
    The more rational explanation was that he’d poisoned himself with alcohol and was dead. Which meant that he couldn’t die again…or could he? This wasn’t what he’d been expecting from heaven or hell.
    But if he was seeing the Heavenly, maybe he was about to be let into heaven. In which case he really regretted throwing a pot of piss on the warrior.

Two
    “ I will not surrender my daughter to those barbarians.” Keleti knelt at the table covered in cloth maps. For one, her daughter was not a thing to be surrendered or bargained with, and that the People of the South thought she was wasn’t a good sign. For two, if Keleti weakened, they would think the kingdom weak and they would ask for more and more, and then one day they would all be people of the South with their weird permanent marriage customs that treated women as little more than cows.
    “It isn’t your daughter as much as the magic, Heavenly.” The delegate from a nearby city said.
    “You think I’m not aware of that?” She crossed her arms and rested back on her heels. Around her knelt delegates from other cities in her domain and beyond. “We should’ve known the day we started trading with them that something like this would happen.” That had been when her mother was Queen. The men of the South had refused to trade with women at first. They had tried to buy wives the way one bought livestock. Some women had willingly left with them. Some had returned. Keleti didn’t like the tales they told.
    “They would prefer to fight a king,” another delegate offered.
    “That is their problem.” They were the invaders on her people’s land. They didn’t get to pick who they fought. Telsila was the first walled city to be threatened. A coastal fishing town in her domain had already fallen. Fallen faster than anyone had expected. The army had destroyed it to prove a point as there was no other reason to go after fishers. Keleti had felt the sting of the news. She should have had an army ready to meet the Southerners, but they had caught her by surprise. If the army got past her this time, there would be another Heavenly waiting to fight them. There were no men who could take the form of a hawk. The Queens of the North would protect their people.
    “You could give them a king.” One of her advisors spoke up. He lowered his gaze, but she knew he wasn’t volunteering.
    They’d had this argument before. If she took a consort, the Southerners might think twice. Maybe. But who said that she was ready to take a permanent lover and entrust some of the day to day running of her domain to

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