The Siege Of Drakkon: Book Three Of The Drakkon Series

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Alessandra Drakkon

Queen of the Drakkon Empire

"How much longer will she be unconscious?" The old woman had spoken to me before, maybe there was a chance I could get through to the real person underneath the virus, convince her to help us, to figure all this out so that I could save her.

"Oh, we haven't been unconscious for quite sometime." The old woman lifts her head up, her voice echoing strangely around the room and making the guard stumble away from her in surprise. She stares at me, but it isn't like a normal person staring back at me, no there was something else in her eyes, if I didn't know better, I would say she was looking at me with madness, insanity, that she was crazy. "Do you know how much you can learn from someone if you just sit quietly and listen? Really, people will tell you all sorts of things if they think you'll listen, strangers about their life problems, debt, cheating on their spouses, if they want to kill someone. Why search for the information if just sitting there and pretending to care means they will tell you it themselves. But you know all about that don't you, your majesty?" She bares her teeth in a feral grin as she throws her head back and laughs, but its full of madness, there would be no saving this woman, she was already long gone and replaced with whatever this thing was the Gorguts had infected her with.

"Who are you? Why have you come to my Empire?" She stops laughing abruptly the joy wiped from her face like it was never there, she tilts her head as she stares at me, like she found me intriguing.

"Who am I? Well right now I am this old woman, tomorrow I might be one of your guards, only time will tell. As to why I've come here, isn't it obvious? I thought a Solveig would understand this better than most, though I suppose you are not a true Solveig, are you? We've come to do what we've always done, thousands of years of war and the extermination of our soldiers will not change that, we'll just make more, we've come to conquer. You will not outlast us, your weapons are toys given to children, your soldiers become so easily manipulated, their minds fracture so easily, we are many, while the ones who can resist us are so few." She pulls her hand out of the hand cuffs, uncaring to the cracking of the bones in her hand breaking, seemingly not feeling any pain. "Your mighty empire is but a small ripple in an endless ocean, soon it will be swallowed whole, never to reach the surface again." I snarled at her, my anger getting the best of me for a moment.

"You will not be getting out of here alive, you will never become anyone else, you will die here alone, without anyone else." She laughs again, seeming to find great amusement in my words.

"You think that you have me captured in this tiny cell? I am right where I want to be, speaking to you. You've caught his attention you know, we thought your mother would be a suitable choice, but she was shown not to be when you were born, we knew that you were perfect, born of the two strongest royal bloodlines your claimed systems have ever seen, one in physical strength, and the other in political, heir to both. It's unfortunate that she tried to get in our way of you, though we soon took her out of our way, though your stubborn father got away with you. We thought you were lost to us, but here you are, back again, fully grown, and more perfect than ever." I blink at her slowly, was she saying what I thought she was?

"Whose attention? Are you trying to say that your leader wants to marry me? How would that even work?" I was confused, it made me let my guard down, she lunged from her chair, taking my own dagger from my waist, and putting it against my throat before any of my guards could move.

"Ah, ah, ah, I wouldn't try that if I were you, one more step and I slice her throat. Step out of the shadows!" Her voice was a snarl, layered with a deeper voice, it was strange to hear, but Talon followed her command, though I have no idea how she even knew she was there. "Fear not, I won't kill her, but I do want to talk to her in private, all of you out, now! Or I stab this blade into her stomach!" Even with the promise of not killing me, my guards followed her words, not wanting me to be injured either. Stepping back and out of the room, they watched her warily, ready to move if she tried to harm me further. "Now that we've got some space, let's chat, shall we? What was it you wanted to ask again?" She dragged her nose up the side of my face, causing me to stiffen up.