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

by Isabelle Olmo

“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.”

“Be good to her, Hester. She’s the grandmother of a queen.” Hester took a sharp breath and sobbed. “I will, your majesty.”

He paced, and eventually, his hands went for the parchment he kept secret above all. The same drawing he’d studied fervently the night Edgar died, the same paper he’d caressed and studied for years. Perhaps it was time to tell her. Perhaps it was time to tell her exactly how deeply he felt, even though he didn’t understand his own feelings.

“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.”

“Intimacy is not just sex, darling. Intimacy can just be this.”

“The day comes fast, but not as fast as you,” Alton murmured, and Almira startled.

It was obvious the crowns finally coupled and barely a person was ignorant to that in the entire castle.

The hours were her enemy, their minutes a chant of loss.

“Four years you’ll suffer, and then you’ll wonder at the price. But the path is set, and cannot be undone,” the witch hissed.

The witch looked at Hira and her face paled. “Another Balikian. A marked one. The prophecy is true then.”

“And so, it begins, the last of this age! I’ve seen the arm! Sisters, I’ve seen the Arm of New Verden! The Great Balikian War begins!”

“I thought I lost you.” He took her hand and kissed it. “I’d come back and haunt you,” he smiled.

“Don’t worry about me, captain. I’ve always wanted to outrun an army.”

I’ll carry my life-debt until the moment I wish to redeem it. You must allow me that.”

There’s rumors they are working with another, but that person has not yet revealed themselves.”

“I believe you horsefuckers owe me coin,” M said.

“If Arrigo is allowed his bitch, then I’m allowed mine.”

“Take their weapons. I can’t be losing all my captains.”

But why was it that she was the one who must keep herself in constant check for the benefit and comfort of men?

but Hira ran toward him, sliding between his legs as she knifed him right in the testicles.

“Oh no, you made your choice,” she said. He ran and she threw the axe at his back. He landed dead on the floor.

It was in that moment, as Hira’s eyes widened, that Almira realized the Balikian blue eyes still lived in her. All she had to do was look at her younger cousin and she would see her father.

“I don’t like you much, majesty, but I hate Arrigo more,” Ivar said.

Almira intercepted before the two destroyed the tower as they grappled or fucked.

“I had no choice, did I? You lot looked pathetic waiting for a man to rescue you.”

His eyes had lost their brightness and shine. Taken the way the sea takes sandcastles from the shore.

When he kissed her again it tasted of their old kisses. Full of hope and love, not desperation and pain. She understood that grief and wounds would haunt them some days. Those waves would engulf them. But on other days, the sea would gift them a respite.

“I think you and I are in an intricate web we do not understand,” she said.

“Protect the queen and her king,” Captain Sanaa said.

“I’ve learned to like new things,” he said softly.

Tonight, was not for the kingdom. Tonight, was for them.