I threw my body at the door. Each impact against the metal beam sent pain smarting through me, but I didn’t care. I did it again and again, taking a small amount of pleasure in the pain, in the resoundingboomI made each time.
When the right side of my body throbbed and ached, I stopped. Bruises were already forming along my arm and hip.
I backed away from the door and stared at the knots in the woodthat looked like eyes, at the wrinkle beneath them that curled like lips around a smirk.
Just as fast as the rage came over me, it receded back into its fiery depths, and I grew very quiet. Deathly quiet. A predator’s silence. Barely even breathed.
I was Gods-Chosen. I was Queen Amunet Khada, daughter of Shaya, heir to Conqueror Zaid. I would not be caged.
I looked at the smirking door and smiled right back.
THIRTY-SIXSAMIRA
Queen Amunet had many parties over the sixteen years I’d served her. Even just circling with trays of food or wine had been fun. There was dancing, spectacularly vibrant clothes—and music. Gods, I loved the music. Flutes and harps and drums, they filled the space with an energy unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Sometimes, I’d pretend that I was a guest, a shy wallflower, observing my friends and waiting for someone to invite me to dance.
The Lunar Feast didn’t sound anything like Amunet’s parties.
There were no flutes or harps, only drums. Some were a deep thrumming to match my heartbeat and others were as high as a bird’s trills, the rhythm changing every few minutes. I couldn’t help but wonder if Keir was responsible for one of them, which made me think of our conversation earlier today. What he’d said about my runes. How he’d looked at my scar, the brand of my shortcomings. The fire of mortification started to climb its way up my neck again, so I crumpled the memory into a ball and chucked it into the farthest corner of my mind.
Wild laughter rose above the drums, high-pitched and rowdy, and roars drowned out all the rest. Roars I hadn’t heard since that night they’d come for the Gods-Chosen. Bear roars. Low and hungry and frightening.
The fireplace painted my room in a comforting warm glow, but it didn’t help chase away the memories that wrestled forward, no matter how hard I tried to crumple those up, too:
Amunet’s green eyes, wide and frantic.
Tabia’s apologetic smile as she left me.
Men torn to pieces.
Bright yellow eyes in the darkness.
A knock sounded at the door, and a little girl’s voice called, “Queen Amunet?”
I shook off the bad memories and opened the door. “Milena,” I greeted her, doing my best to sound chipper. “Is everything all right?”
She was bundled in my fur cloak, the hem of it a train behind her, and her blue eyes were panicked. “Everything is so loud and I—” She cut off with a gasp when another bear’s roar rocked the longhouse behind her.
“Come in, come in.” I stepped aside quickly.
Milena scurried in, clutching her Ketet doll in a white-knuckled grip. Her skittish eyes kept darting to the door. Sympathy swept through me.
“Would you like to sleep here tonight?” I asked her gently.
In answer, she scampered to the bed and burrowed into the blankets.
Smiling, I crawled in beside her. It didn’t make much sense, but I suddenly felt a lot better having someone else in the room with me. Even if that someone was a five-year-old girl.
Milena blinked. “Are you crying?”
“No,” I said, and quickly wiped away any evidence to the contrary. “Just yawned.”
Milena took my hand under the covers, eyes knowing. “I don’t like the noise, either.”
I laughed softly and gave her hand a squeeze. Another roar blasted, and she ducked under the covers.
Protectiveness rose up inside me, momentarily chasing away my self-pity as I stared at her quivering form. Milena had been ripped from her family not once but twice, and those gods-damn Shifters were making her new home a terrifying hell.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was out of the bed and wrapping a coat around my shoulders.
