“Some of the younger girls drew this for you guys,” Connor says, handing Xander an A4 envelope. He opens it, revealing hand-drawn thank you cards full of love hearts and rainbows. There is one for each of us by name. Xander takes his own, a small crease between his brows as his fingers brush over the letters of his name in pink and yellow. Connor clears his throat. “There’s something else for you and Lia in there as well, but you can open it at home.” Xander makes some notes about what more is needed, and after making some calls, we head back into the sky.
Not far from the regional safe house, Hyacinth Dabu and her pack hold the dethroned hyena queen captive in an isolated town where no one asks questions. The house is aging, but it suits its purpose as a negotiation outpost. Hyacinth is a shrewd leader, and though she hasn’t announced her capture of the matriarch yet, word of her disappearance has unsettled the hyena community. They know what it means when a leader goes missing.
“I’ve set her up in the dining room,” Hyacinth says as she lets us into the house. “I haven’t gotten everything I want yet.”
Lady Hyena sits tied with obsidian chains to a steel chair. There’s strain at the edges of her eyes, and the air is rank with her sweat, pain, and anger. They have allowed her trips to the bathroom and minimal food, but not much else. “Would youtorture an old woman, Scythe?” she says, her cunning eyes beady and dark on me as Xander and I come to stand before her, dwarfing the room. “I know that is your preferred method. Have you finally found your boundary with an old woman?”
“The thing is,” Xander drawls, “that it works very well. And the issue we find ourselves with is that you won’t talk.”
“Of what use istalkingwhen the deed is done?” she spits. “My rule has ended. I will be killed for my part in it.” She means the spell she put on us to exchange reginas. Katerina Crocodylus may have instigated the spell, but the hyena queen made it possible.
“What’s Mace planning?” Xander asks. “We know he’s recruiting for his pseudo-military. Does he want a dictatorship? Does he want to overthrow the humans and make an empire for himself?”
My guess is that this is Mace’s fantasy. To claim recompense for the serpent purge of the previous generation and gain the ultimate power. While the power fantasies of most beasts are rarely achieved, Mace Naga is not most beasts. He has already eliminated the state council and made bonds with the human leaders. For animalia, we keep territory business private. Other countries or states will likely not interfere with changes in power. They will simply watch and wait for the outcome. That’s the way it’s always been.
“You don’t know what dark powers you’re playing with,” she says. “Powers Mace kept private even from me. Even from most of his generals.”
That piques my interest. “If he’s kept it so secret, how is it you know about it?” I ask.
“He’s been hinting at something grand for years now. Some ancient serpentine weapon.”
Xander glances at me. Serpent magic has always been mysterious. Blood magic, venom magic. These are thingsserpents keep close to their chests, and we already know basilisk magic was used to gain power over the council. What other secrets does the basilisk have? Things seem to point back to Mace’s most powerful general. “Do you think he’ll come for you?” I ask abruptly. “Do you think he will come and save you from me?”
A cold smile curves her lips. “No.”
“Then why protect him?”
She searches the air around me. “Tell me what you see when you look at me.”
I consider for a moment and am happy to tell her the truth. “A poisoned aura. You’ve taken many lives and don’t regret it. Many secrets and many lies.”
She nods. “I imagine it’s much the same when you look at the other underworld leaders. Ha! It’s probably the same when you look at yourself in the mirror.”
I smile without humour. “There are demons in my mirror.”
She sobers. “He’s going to come after you. He’s not going to let you get in the way of his plans…which I’m assuming you are going to try.”
“If we know what theyare,” Xander says, throwing his hands in the air, “we might get to choose.”
“If I were him,” she says. “If I were bitter and hateful about the way my people were treated for the last fifty years, then I would want to kill them all. Wouldn’t you?”
“I have a regina that wouldn’t let me do that,” Xander says.
The lady hyena tilts her head back and cackles. “Exactly!” She quietens, regarding us. “Only a regina knows what a regina is truly capable of.Thatwas Katerina’s downfall.” She grins, crooked and gloating. “She never was one, after all. She had a rex.” Xander stills as he realises what she means. “And the only thing worse than a rampaging, revengeful regina is a rampaging, revengefulrex.”
When Hyacinth Dabu closes the door quietly behind us, she gestures to something she’s set on the small dining room table. A clear glass canister, filled with a dull white powder.
My heart jolts in my chest, rage and fury and agony mixing into one maelstrom in my mind. Xander goes as still as stone.
“We found this in The Collector’s secret stores,” Hyacinth says gently. “It’s Aurelia’s right to have it back. In the wrong hands it could do great damage.”
She doesn’t need to say what the bad powers in the world would do with powdered Boneweaver bone. Reverently, I take the canister, cradling it to my chest. “Thank you, Hyacinth,” I say. “I’m not sure what my regina will do with it, but at least she will get to decide on her own terms.”
Xander and I leave the old house and its occupants behind in silent contemplation. Our flight is also filled with an icy silence, laden with the implications of Lady Hyena’s words. But it’s because of our late and silent return to Animus Academy that we see our regina returning from the far north in her phoenix form, where she’d no doubt been all night, without anyone knowing.
Chapter 50
Savage
