"Say that again," Bellatrix said, in a tone that could have frozen over every circle of hell and still had cold to spare.
"Your affair. With Gavriel Sterling. Dexmon’s best friend. A man the sa age as your son."
"You wouldn’t."
"Try ."
"You would never say a word about that." Bellatrix’s voice dropped and she leaned back in her chair, watching Serena the way a cat watches a mouse that just tried to bite. "Because the only way to expose is to expose him. And we both know you don’t have the stomach for that."
Serena crossed the space between them and leaned down until she was level with Bellatrix’s eyes. Close enough to see the thing Bellatrix never let anyone see. The mask had seams.
"Bet," Serena said.
Bellatrix’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. She looked like a woman who had been handed a foreign object and told it was a weapon.
Three decades of court politics. Four languages. A vocabulary that could flay a man alive at fifty paces. And this girl had just countered all of it with a single syllable.
"Gavriel is Dexmon’s age. He’s not the one having an affair. You are. You are the married one. You are the one with a crown and a husband and a kingdom watching. Gav is a twenty-sothing-year-old man. The court will call him reckless. They’ll call you a predator." She paused, letting it land. "And while we’re listing things the court will find interesting, how many tis have you poisoned ? Openly? Because I’ve lost count, and I think the kingdom might like a refresher."
Bellatrix stood.
The slap ca fast. Hard. The crack of palm against cheek echoed off the stone walls, and Serena’s head snapped to the side.
Serena’s cheek blood hot and she tasted copper.
Bellatrix resorting to hitting ant Bellatrix was nervous. Her bluff worked. She’d never compromise Gav. But she would rattle this bitch any day of the week.
Serena turned her head back. Looked Bellatrix dead in the eyes.
SMACK.
The sound was sharper than the first one. Bellatrix’s head jerked. Her hand flew to her face. Her eyes were wide. As if no one, in her entire life, had ever hit her back.
Fifteen minutes ago Serena had been crying in a broom closet. Now she was bitch-slapping a Queen. The trajectory of her day was truly remarkable.
Bellatrix recovered in half a second. Because of course she did. She was Bellatrix Drakenfell, and she had not survived three decades in this court by being slow.
She grabbed Serena by the front of her dress and shoved her into the wall. Serena’s back hit stone. The air punched out of her lungs.
This dress was borrowed. Elara was going to kill her. Assuming Bellatrix didn’t finish the job first.
Bellatrix pulled her hand back for another slap.
Serena caught her wrist.
Bellatrix’s eyes widened again. Serena might be thin, but her grip didn’t budge.
"Let go of ," Bellatrix hissed.
"No."
Bellatrix yanked her wrist. It didn’t move. She yanked harder. Nothing. Her composure cracked, just a fraction, and she swung with her other hand.
Serena caught that one too.
They stood there, locked together, Bellatrix pinning Serena to the wall, Serena holding both of the Queen’s wrists in a grip that should not have been possible from a girl her size. Bellatrix’s chest heaved. Serena’s didn’t.
If this bothered Bellatrix, and it clearly did, she hid it about as well as she hid her affair.
She pulled again. Then once more, as if the third attempt might yield different results.
"Are you finished?" Serena asked.
Bellatrix headbutted her.
The ghost of every Drakenfell queen rolled over in their crypts. It wasn’t graceful or regal. It was the single most undignified thing a Queen of Drakenfell had ever done in the history of the bloodline, and it connected with Serena’s nose hard enough to make her vision white out for a full second.
Serena released her wrists.
Blood ran from her nose, over her lips, down her chin. She wiped it with the back of her hand, looked at the gold sar, and then looked at Bellatrix, who was breathing hard and already regretting the headbutt because her forehead was throbbing and she was too proud to touch it.
"Did you just headbutt ?"
"Self-defense," Bellatrix corrected, voice clipped, as if she hadn’t just used her skull as a weapon. "You were restraining ."
"You slapped ."
"Semantics."
"How?"
"Irrelevant."
Serena stared at her.
And then, because the entire situation was so absurd that her brain couldn’t process it any other way, she laughed. One short, wet, bloody laugh.
Followed by another smack.
Harder.
It was the wrong move. Laughing then smacking Bellatrix Drakenfell was like poking a sleeping storm dragon with a stick and then asking it to calm down.
Bellatrix shoved Serena into the wall. Pinned her by the shoulders. Then her hands moved up to Serena’s throat.
Bellatrix’s fingers closed around her neck, and the pressure was imdiate. Real. Not a warning. Not a threat. The Queen of Drakenfell was choking the Crown Princess in a receiving room during a court recess.
This wasn’t anger. This was Bellatrix deciding that the girl in front of her knew too much to leave this room talking.
Serena saw spots.
She had a very clear thought, sharp and detached through the encroaching darkness: Elara is never going to believe this.
Her knee ca up, fast and vicious, and connected directly between Bellatrix’s legs.
Bellatrix made a sound that no queen in any kingdom in any century had ever made in public. Her hands released Serena’s throat.
Her body folded. She staggered back three steps, one hand braced on her knee, the other pressed between her thighs, her mouth open in a silent scream that was sohow more undignified than the headbutt.
She looked, for one horrifying mont, exactly like every man Serena had ever kicked between the legs. Gender, it turned out, wasn’t a factor.
Serena sucked in air. Coughed. Pressed her hand to her throat.
Bellatrix recovered first.
She straightened. Then smoothed her hair, and adjusted her bodice as if the last forty-five seconds had not happened.
Took one dignified breath. Then tackled Serena.
They went down together. Bellatrix landed on top, and her fist connected with Serena’s jaw. Not a slap this ti. A punch. Closed fist.
The Queen had abandoned all pretense of dignity and escalated to actual brawling. A sentence no historian in the Drakenfell archives would ever be allowed to write.
Serena’s head cracked against the stone floor and the room tilted.
She pushed herself up, turned to Bellatrix, and punched her right back across the face. The sound ricocheted off the walls.
Bellatrix’s head snapped to the side. For one full second, she didn’t move. Then she turned back to Serena with blood on her lip and murder in her eyes.
Her knee drove into Serena’s ribs with everything she had.
That one hurt.
Not surface-level hurt. Deep hurt. The kind that shot through her torso like lightning and reminded her that those ribs were still bruised, still tender, still healing from being thrown off multiple dragons and blasted across an underground lake.
The pain whited out her vision for a full second and she made a pained noise, curling instinctively, arms wrapping around her midsection.
Bellatrix pulled her fist back again.
The door opened.
The room looked like two cats had been locked inside it. There was blood on the wall, a chair was overturned, and both won were breathing like they’d just run a mile. Gav had seen battlefields more organized.
He took one look at the scene and dove between them.
"Stop. Both of you, stop."
He grabbed Bellatrix’s arm mid-swing. Tried to pull her off Serena.
Bellatrix’s elbow swung back, wild and uncontrolled, and found his groin at full velocity.
Gavriel’s vision went white. His knees buckled. Every thought he’d ever had vacated his skull in a single, excruciating instant.
There was a very short list of things Gavriel Sterling had not been prepared for today. Being elbowed in the dick by the Queen of Drakenfell while trying to break up a fistfight between said Queen and his best friend’s mate was at the top.
The fact that he had slept with one of them and was in love with the other made this the single most complicated groin injury in Drakenfell’s history.
User Comments
0 comments from readers