VIOLENT DELIGHTS¹ ━━ John Murphy

𝖔𝖔.

𝖍𝖔𝖜 𝖆 𝖌𝖔𝖉𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖘 𝖙𝖔 𝖍𝖆𝖙𝖊 𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌
(𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞𝖔𝖓𝖊)

QUEEN NIA once was nothing more than the daughter of a king who forgot her name.

Born drenched in the vivid blood of her mother, the umbilical chord was sliced by a healer and she was bound in the cloak of a dead woman. She hadn't met her father for many years and when he finally laid eyes on his five year old daughter, he commented that she howled louder than the Trikru warriors he cut down on the battlefield. His hands were stained with their blood.

Then again, they always were.

King Theo had not been a good man. Exulting in bloodshed. Bred for war. Carving Azgeda out of the North, honing it into a region of war.

When he had the nerve to look at his daughter, there was no hatred in his eyes, but Nia had always wished there were. Anything would have been better than the way he seemed to stare right through her.

Like she didn't even exist. As if she were nothing. A phantom. A blurred shadow.

Nia had thought of that many times over his life, of how terrible he was. She was so angry with him, so absolutely furious that he tried so hard to turn her into dust beneath his feet.

Well. She'd shown him, hadn't she?

She'd bested the man who never recognised her and stolen the crown from right under his nose, all the while doing a far better job of it than he ever could have imagined. He was an old fool and she was the true ruler of Azgeda.

She had been in power the whole time, the most lucrative of smiles quirking her lips as she delivered orders ostensibly from the crackpot old fool that withered away beneath the crown. Let him look down upon her as he waged his ridiculous wars. It would all be over soon, and Nia had always had the patience to play the waiting game.

Like a phantom, a ghost, she'd lurked in the shadows, waiting to strike. And then the King's hands were covered in blood as they always were, but this time it was his own.

Tell me father, she'd leered over his writhing body as the poison oozed through his blistering veins. Which do you regret more - turning me into what I am or what I am not?

Through all the gore, glory was hers.

She'd conquered Azgeda.

But it was not enough. No, no. It was never enough.

There are still eleven more clans.

The coalition - komgeda. Twelve warring clans only to be united beneath a single ruler; a natblida. And no amount of killing or grovelling to the spirits would turn Nia into what she needed to be. Try as she might, every time she cut herself, she bled red as a common peasant. Her own blood would never get her to the Flame.

So she had turned to the little wolf.

Holly. Daughter of Rhaegar and Sabé. Twin sister to Holden. Nasty, common little family. Belonging to no clans, living on the outskirts of Azgeda as Rhaegar forged weapons for any clan. The cretin had no loyalties. Worst of all, their blood ran red, crimson as the dawn.

All save for little Holly.

Sabé had tried to save her daughter from the fate of becoming the Queen's Osleya and faked her death when she was not but a few months, just after the Queen had discovered the natblida gem that could lead her to victory. But the Queen would have the last laugh as she always did.