The Wolf of Oren-yaro (Annals of the Bitch Queen Book 1) Read online

  “I said the last time we saw each other that you didn’t let me explain,” I said.

  “Why does it matter?” he asked. “Could it change the past? Will it undo the truth?”

  “It happened once before our wedding. I was faithful to you throughout our entire marriage, Rai.”

  His face flickered. Was he thinking of his own mistakes? Did he know I knew? “Regardless of the circumstances, we were already betrothed. What you did…you neglected to think of the repercussions. As it happened, I paid attention to the innkeeper’s story. You were with him before our wedding night: three days before our wedding night, to be precise. The same wedding night when we supposedly conceived our son.”

  I felt my stomach turn at his words. “Thanh is yours,” I managed to gasp out. Call me naive, but I had never once considered this angle, that Rayyel would question the son he had been so proud of. How was I supposed to know? He had given me nothing to go on, nothing except…

  I remembered the letter, the one I had stuffed in my desk back home, half-unread. He must’ve asked me then. He must’ve asked me. I hadn’t answered. And then the years flew by…

  “How sure are you?” he asked.

  “He’s yours,” I stammered. “If you see him…”

  “I’ve heard the reports. He looks more and more like you as he grows up. A spitting image of Yeshin, others say. Who is his father, Talyien? You want it to be me, that much is plain. Forgive me if I can’t just take your word for it. I have spent the last five years trying to find a way to learn. I’ve travelled through the Kag and as far as Dageis. Only in Ziri-nar-Orxiaro did I finally learn of a way they will know who sired him.”

  “All these years…this is what you’ve been doing? You’ve been trying to find a reason to cast him aside?”

  “Call it what you will,” Rai said. “I had to. For as long as there is doubt, I cannot knowingly proclaim him my heir. What would you rather I do, Talyien? Pretend it never happened? I have a duty to our people. You did too, or so I once thought. I cannot say what your priorities are anymore.”

  I watched him walk towards his desk, at the pile of papers. “I've been researching how the Zarojo work with the agan. There is an academy of mages to the south. I am told they can provide me answers, perhaps lend me someone I can bring back to Jin-Sayeng. I intend to travel there. Governor Zheshan had made arrangements and lent me a portion of his guard for protection. My ship leaves this morning.”

  “I thought you wanted to speak with me first."

  “That was before I had learned you were with that buffoon again." He began to straighten the papers before picking up a scroll with a golden seal around it. He stuffed it into his robe.

  “And if they say otherwise?”

  He stared at me.

  “Thanh is yours,” I said. “From the moment he was born, he was yours.”

  “Just like you were once mine?” he asked dryly.

  I ignored the insult. “These people will tell you anything. They are using us to throw a rift as wide as an ocean in our own nation. Surely you've heard of the reports back home. By all the gods, Rayyel—set aside this ridiculous tirade. It's been five years. Come home with me. See the boy for yourself. You will know the moment you lay your eyes on him. He is just like you, Rayyel. The way he talks, the way he moves, the way he shuts himself in his room to read instead of riding with me. Listen to me, Rai!"

  The door opened. I stiffened, thinking it was Agos, but it was only Khine. “We spotted men on their way here,” he said. “I think they’re from the governor’s office.” His eyes flickered towards my husband. “Is everything all right?”

  “Out of respect for what we once had, I will let you walk out of here alive,” Rai said. “What you do from here on out is your business. Zheshan, at least, knew what loyalty meant.”

  “They would lie to you,” I said. “These Zarojo, these mages. You didn't see Yuebek, the things he said, the lies.”

  His eyes hardened. “I have to believe someone.”

  “Let’s suppose the warlords somehow overlook the fact that you’re going to bring Zarojo witchcraft, or whatever they call it here, into court. You can’t even talk about the agan back home without people making signs of every deity they can think of! These people are using you, Rayyel. Did you know the extent that Yuebek took to force my hand in marriage? He copied your handwriting, he hired assassins to concoct this elaborate scheme…he killed his own wife! You cannot trust them! And what do you think they’ll do if they find out about this back home? They will kill Thanh and seize control before we can prove anything. They already think it, Rai. Our son is surrounded by snakes.”

  “Do not refer to him as our son. Not until I’m sure.” He straightened his sleeves. “You know I'm doing the right thing. If you truly believed that the land came first, you would agree with me. Think of the war we could be averting. ”

  “We are not averting anything. We are creating war as we speak, Rayyel!”

  “I will not have it said that the Ikessars entertained a farce that would ruin the land.”

  “What would you know?” I asked. “You weren’t around the last five years to raise him.”

  “That,” he said, “is on you.”

  “I didn’t make you leave.”

  “Is that what you want to bring this down to?”

  “And if they say he isn't yours? What do you intend to do then?”

  “I will do what I should have done a long time ago,” he said. “I'll kill him myself.”

  And with those words, he walked out, just like he did before.

  I heard Khine say something to me, heard someone calling for Rai—Agos’ voice, the damned man in whose arms I sought comfort from my husband’s own betrayal. Did Rai think I enjoyed it, the way he enjoyed his Baraji whore? I heard the sound of squawking seagulls and crows, and the marching of Zheshan’s soldiers as they came to fetch him. Nothing stuck. I found myself rising from the chair and drawing my sword, and racing to the doorway like my feet were on fire. Rayyel was three, four paces away. One leap could do it. I could knock him to the ground, slide the blade in his throat before his guards could get me.

  The thought of killing Rayyel filled me with more grief than I had ever dreamed possible. But a part of me screamed that I had to do it for my son. If this secret dies with us, there was a chance the warlords would ride in his defense against those who sought the throne for themselves, even if—especially if—they were men who claimed to work for my dead father. They had done more for Rayyel as an infant. Thanh as the Ikessar heir could still be Dragonlord.

  I felt a heavy hand descend on my shoulder, and I lost my courage. I turned. It was Agos. “Let me go!” I screamed, striking him on the chin with my fist. He seemed unaffected by the blow.

  The opportunity passed. Rayyel was gone, a dozen of Zheshan's guards at his flank.

  “He is going to get Thanh killed,” I breathed. “He doesn’t understand what he’s walking into, what he’s dragging all of us into. We have to stop him.”

  “We will,” Agos promised. “But not as we are now.”

  I felt my breath bubble in my throat. “I want to go home,” I whispered.

  ~~~

  A century ago, Warlord Tal was the last to die on that battlefield.

  The history books speak of how bravely the Oren-yaro fought until the Ikessar lord came to take back Shirrokaru. They speak of the immeasurable courage of this lord, who would choose to ride against the enemy with only a hundred men at his behest, and somehow—against all odds—win.

  We Oren-yaro know better. But we do not speak of the wrongs that were done to us. We do not count the ways we have done more, the battles we were forced to fight, or the sacrifices we had to make. It was why I found the knowledge Yuebek and Zheshan had offered about my father and his last wishes difficult to swallow. Loyalists who want both my husband and my son dead so I could be sold off to another, a foreigner who would claim the Dragonthrone?

  Yeshin would do no s
uch thing. My father did everything for the good of the land—he had told me himself that he had been winning the war, but when they offered him a chance for peace, he took it. After years of trying to kill them, he welcomed Rayyel and his mother into Oka Shto with open arms, and with the hope that he was doing what was best for us all, placed the boy's closed fist on my infant chest.

  No matter the truth, that promise was long gone. But I am a wolf of Oren-yaro, and my tenet dictates that I swim against the tide if I must. So as we buried Warlord Tal in silence while the rest of the nation celebrated the Dragonlord's ascent, let them bury me in scandal; let them carry the sound of my name with distaste. Let them speak ill of the bitch queen who brought ruin to the land with the same gilded tongue they praised the uncrowned king who was just as responsible.

  None of it mattered. My duties were far from over. A wolf of Oren-yaro fights to make it right, down to the last breath. A wolf of Oren-yaro does not beg. A wolf of Oren-yaro suffers in silence.

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  The Ikessar Falcon, Annals of The Bitch Queen Book 2

  Coming soon…

  I remember the rain, the lightning across the sky and the thunder that followed, pounding against the glass windows of the inn. The smell of mint and beeswax candles, the ringing of wind chimes spinning with the storm. The hollow sensation of loneliness, of broken illusions and dreams disappearing rapidly, like a bucket of water upturned into the sea.

  ~~~

  “He’s convinced my father had betrothed his unborn daughter—if she should be a daughter—to him during The War of the Wolves. My father wanted his mother’s help to get rid of yours. He says that Warlord Yeshin made this elaborate plan to get rid of you before we could even marry so that I could marry him instead. But that somehow, it didn’t work, and so…” I lifted my eyes to meet my husband’s. “He infiltrated our plans to meet up in Anzhao City and orchestrated this farce that resulted in my men betraying me. In me being left all alone in this country, vulnerable, so that he could swoop in and play the hero. He wanted me to be grateful for it, too.”

  ~~~

  “I am the Esteemed Emperor’s Yunan’s trueborn son, with the blood of a long line of emperors running through me. You, on the other hand…didn’t your father peg your mother in the back of the stables during the war?”

  ~~~

  “But there is also what people think you are and how the world bends itself around it. You turn your head and people follow your gaze. Who is she looking at? Why is she looking at them? And if you explain it, they will tear the words apart looking for a hidden meaning, and if you don’t, they will dig into the silence for something that may not be there.”

  “It’s silly.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t. But that is the tune the whole world dances to. Some are born with the power to turn the tide even before they realize what they are doing. Others…aren’t. Some of us have to fight to make a difference from the moment we are born. We try to crest along calm waters because we are helpless against the tide, and even then, a single wave might be enough to sweep us away.”

  ~~~

  “Yesterday, you were laughing with them like every other simpering royal I’ve met. But I suppose I’m as wrong about you as I was with your husband. As we were with your father. You are all alike—Ikessar hens and Oren-yaro dogs with your empty words and your empty smiles and your meaningless tenets, dragging this land down, bringing us all to ruin.”

  ~~~

  Two things: hunger and a scree, gathered right outside the ledge where we could see it.

  The hunger was the primary thing. The longer we stayed there, the weaker I was going to get, the more scattered my judgement. If the dragon decided to attack us in a day or so, I didn’t think I would be able to survive the onslaught, let alone find a way to defend ourselves.

  The scree consisted of large boulders that spilled out from one side of the mountain above us. I had noticed the whole entire evening, and for much of the morning, that the dragon avoided it. When it flew past us with a roar, one of the boulders tumbled from the top, causing a small rockslide to occur.

  There was another ledge at the bottom of all of this, a large lip of overhanging rock. I thought that I could attract the dragon’s attention, enraging it to the same sort of stupor it had attacked us at the tower with. Another roar or two would cause a rockslide. If I could time it correctly, I could slide down and hide there while the boulders tumbled over the dragon. The path from where I was to the overhang seemed clear enough, and well-protected from the worst once the rocks come tumbling. I didn’t need the rockslide to kill the dragon—if I could just knock it back enough, if I could weaken it somehow, then I could get in and finish it with my sword.

  It was as good a plan as any. I had nothing else.

  I could hear my father screaming at me as I crossed the ledge towards the rock field, grabbing on tree roots to maintain my balance as I dug my toes as deep as I could get them into the small footholds. Sword re-strapped to my back, hands shaking, wind on my hair while the shadow of the dragon crossed over me—I felt like a fool. Forget this, my father’s voice said. Return to the city, to Oren-yaro. I already took care of everything. Did you not hear what the Lord Anyu said about the mages, how easily I took care of the west? Taming the dragons, the tower, the Anyus’ loyalty…it was all me. They will bend their knees to you and your prince—your actual prince, not the ragged Ikessar. Return and it will all be forgiven. You don’t have to die like this.

  “Fuck you, old man,” I grumbled. Maybe I had spent too much time in Shang Azi. But the words made me feel better. I found even footing at last and made my way across the boulders. I heard a roar and felt the air dry up as a lick of fire streamed past my shoulder. The dragon had seen me.

  Heart pounding, I kept my eye on the ledge and drew my sword. There was no time for hesitation. When I reached the steepest part of the scree, I turned to stand my ground. The dragon was right behind me. It opened its mouth.

  The Oren-yaro do not lack for courage, it is true. We know how to face battles when the odds are stacked against us. We know how to give our lives for our lords and believe we know sacrifice like no other. But I did not face that dragon as an Oren-yaro. Our tenets may run deep, but they do not make us. I decided that if I ever get out of this alive, I would tell Rayyel that. We are flesh and blood, not words; we bend, we break, but our failings need not be etched in stone. I faced the dragon as someone willing to give her life for another not because of some deep-seated arrogance that I was better but because it was the right thing to do.

  The Ikessar Falcon is set for release in mid 2018.

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