“And we did it. We stopped Odili from getting to the queen, and I killed Dejen Olujimi.”
Jabari hadn’t seen it. He’d been in the room with the queen at the time, losing another fight to an Indlovu. But he’d seen the aftermath of Tau’s fight with the enraged Ingonyama. Dejen had been blinded, cut to shreds, and stabbed through the heart. Tau had fought the Greater Noble alone. It should have been impossible for him to survive the fight, let alone win it, but then again, Tau had a secret. He had, Jabari thought as he pictured his brother’s burning, a few secrets.
“Odili fled and we gave chase. He was trapped, but by then the Xiddeen were at the gates,” Tau was speaking too fast. “Zuri called a dragon to make the Xiddeen back down and Odili had his men attack the creature to create enough confusion to allow him to escape. Zuri couldn’t keep the dragon under control with Odili’s men attacking it. It went mad and killed people.”
Jabari didn’t want to hear anymore.
“It was going to kill my sword brothers.”
He’d heard enough.
“But you stopped it. It blew fire at good men, and another good man shielded them, taking the brunt of the blast, saving them.”
It felt like Jabari was gasping for air, just like the night when the fires had engulfed him, boiling away even his spit and tears.
“The dragon turned on Zuri then,” Tau was choking up, his words coming out in a broken stutter. “It… it attacked her… it… Zuri died that night and Odili escaped and the queen leashed the dragon. She leashed it, threatened the Xiddeen with more fire, and gave the warlord his son in exchange for a reprieve.”
Jabari didn’t know any of this. He didn’t know Zuri was dead. He’d known Zuri his whole life.
“Before long, the Xiddeen will be back to finish what they started,” Tau said. “Our people are split. The Royals have aligned themselves with Abasi Odili and the self-styled Queen Esi. Many of the other Nobles have sided with them too.”
We’re all dead then, thought Jabari.
“It can’t end this way. It can’t. There’s still so much to do.…” Tau trailed off again. “Keep fighting, Jabari Onai. I could use the help of a good and selfless man. I could use the help of a real hero.”
Jabari was having trouble again. He was in agony and had denied himself insensibility for too long. He was fading out, but he struggled on, if only to hear what his brother’s killer had to say. It wasn’t Tau he heard next.
“Champion,” a woman’s voice said, “you’re needed.”
She stepped in and out of view. She was wearing a Gifted’s robes. Zuri, was Jabari’s first thought, but Tau had told him that Zuri was dead. It couldn’t be her.
The chair beside Jabari’s bed creaked and a shadow fell over him.
“Keep fighting,” Tau whispered. “We’ll get the man who hurt us both.”
“Champion, we must hurry,” the Gifted said.
“Abasi Odili won’t escape the hurt he’s done,” Tau said to him. “Keep fighting and I swear that before it can consume us, we’ll burn our pain to ash in the fires of vengeance.”
if you enjoyed
THE RAGE OF DRAGONS
look out for
THE WOLF OF OREN-YARO
Chronicles of the Bitch Queen: Book One
by
K. S. Villoso
A queen of a divided land must unite her people, even if they hate her, even if it means stopping a ruin that she helped create. A debut epic fantasy from an exciting new voice.
“They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.”
Born under the crumbling towers of her kingdom, Queen Talyien was the shining jewel and legacy of the bloody War of the Wolves. It nearly tore her nation apart. But her arranged marriage to the son of a rival clan heralds peace.
However, he suddenly disappears before their reign can begin, and the kingdom is fractured beyond repair. Years later, he sends a mysterious invitation to meet. Talyien journeys across the sea in hopes of reconciling their past. An assassination attempt quickly dashes those dreams. Stranded in a land she doesn’t know, with no idea whom she can trust, Talyien will have to embrace her namesake.
A wolf of Oren-yaro is not tamed.
Chapter One
The Legacy of Warlord Tal
They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.
Hurricanes destroy the villages and they call it senseless; the winter winds come and they call it cold. What else did they expect from my people, the Oren-yaro, the ambitious savages who created a war that nearly ripped Jin-Sayeng apart? I almost think that if my reign had started without bloodshed and terror, they would have been disappointed.
I did not regret killing the man. He had it coming, and my father had taught me to take action before you second-guess yourself. My father was a wise man, and if the warlords could’ve stopped arguing long enough to put their misgivings behind them, he would have made them a great king. Instead, they entrusted the land to me and my husband: children of that same war they would rather forget. The gods love their ironies.
I do regret looking at the bastard while he died. I regret watching his eyes roll backwards and the blood spread like a cobweb underneath his wilted form, leaking into the cracked cobblestone my father paid a remarkable amount of money to install. I regret not having a sharper sword, and losing my nerve so that I didn’t strike him again and he had to die slowly. Bleeding over the jasmine bushes—that whole batch of flowers would remain pink until the end of the season—he had stared up at the trail of stars in the night sky and called for his mother. Even though he was a traitor, he didn’t deserve the pain.
More than anything, I regret not stopping my husband. I should have run after him, grovelled at his feet, asked him to stay. But in nursing my own pride, I didn’t give his a chance. I watched his tall, straight back grow smaller in the distance, his father’s helmet nestled under his arm, his unbound hair blowing in the wind, and I did nothing. A wolf of Oren-yaro suffers in silence. A wolf of Oren-yaro does not beg.
Almost at once, the rumours spread like wildfire. They started in the great hall in the castle at Oka Shto when I arrived for my coronation, dressed in my mother’s best silk dress—all white, like a virgin on her wedding day—bedecked with pearls and gold-weave, with no husband at my side. My son, also in white, stood on the other side of the dais with his nursemaid. Between us were the two priests tasked with the ceremony—a priest of the god Akaterru, patron deity of Oren-yaro, and a priest of Kibouri, that foreign religion my husband’s clan favoured, with their Nameless Maker and enough texts to make anyone ill. They could pass for brothers, with their long faces, carp-like whiskers, and leathery skin the colour of honey.
My husband’s absence was making everyone uncomfortable. I, on the other hand, drifted between boredom and restlessness. I glanced at my son. He had stopped crying, but the red around his eyes had yet to disappear. It was my fault—on the way to the great hall, he asked for his father as any two-year-old would, and I snapped in return. “He’s gone,” I told him in that narrow corridor, where only the nursemaid could hear. “He doesn’t want us anymore.” The boy didn’t understand my words, but the sharp tone was enough to send tears rolling down his cheeks, a faint reflection of how I had spent the night before.