Queen and Conqueror (The Queen's Red Guard, #1)

by Isabelle Olmo

Their army was surrounded. Her people were dying.

First lines

Yes, the gods of death and war were always ravenous for their next meal. She’d never seen them, but she’d felt them. They enjoyed licking the air by her face whenever she lost a loved one. The night Edgar died, they danced in the shadows of her room and chanted his name to torment her.

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“You forget I am a woman; courage doesn’t define our character.” “I raised you differently.” He scoffed dismissively. “You raised me differently in a world unchanged.”

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“Men will never be ready for women like us, and it is not our job to ready them.”

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“A dragon cannot be a dragon if it is not thrown into the sea to learn how to swim.

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Her face was a mask of annoyance and he guessed she hated when she lost her serenity. Couldn’t she see how spectacular she was when she did so? Likely not. Likely she’d been trained to dominate the dragon rather than embrace it.

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She stood abruptly. She seemed twenty feet tall, and her eyes bore down into him so much that he almost lost his breath. She was magnificent.

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Let her be the sun to the kingdom; he would be waiting for her by moonlight. He would live each day knowing that while she played her little royal game, come nightfall she would be mad with wanton desire.

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“When I’m in you, I want you to say my name. Dream my name and want my name. Want it so bad that you lose all sense. I want you senseless.”

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She pinned him with her stare. “General, what do I have on my head?” He stared at her passively. “Majesty, I–” “What do I have on my head?” Her tone was slow and harsh. His face reddened. “A crown, my queen.” She smiled. “Then I believe you’re in my seat, general.”

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Still, her calculations were many; he knew but a tip of what there was to know. She frightened him a little. Perhaps a lot.

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He wanted to say he recalled all her words. Even the ones she threw on the ground like discarded petals. How he’d collected them and stuffed them in his pockets like a lunatic. How he replayed them as he fruitlessly sought sleep. How they haunted him as he drank heavily to tune out the noise of the world.

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“Perhaps we shouldn’t attribute certain characteristics to men and women. We should allow each person to decide how they’d like to speak. Then we wouldn’t analyze what is proper.”

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“There’s days I must hold myself in a tight fist to not fall to my knees and beg you to care for me in the manner that I have desperately and uncontrollably grown to care for you. Everything I do is to get a reaction from you, to watch you smile or anger, I want to see the spectrum of your emotions, even the bad ones. I want to bask in them.”

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Sanaa warned her that men were not ready for such women. But why was it that she was the one who must keep herself in constant check for the benefit and comfort of men? She tired of these shackles. Queen of the world and still, she needed gloves.

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