The Great Queens Era

Ch. 1: Because That Would Be Too Easy

The retired Queen was wiping vomit stains from her shoulder when there was a knock her door. Strange, Kalina thought, considering how rarely visitors came to her shabby residence on 47th Island.

White morning light painted a pale tint over the home’s living room. Barefoot on the shag rug, Kalina rocked her baby in one arm while stretching her legs, tense veins of pain shooting from her knees to her stomach. Naomi was fussing, throwing a silent fit and swiping at her mother’s hair. At the sound of the knock, Kalina stiffened and eyed the door suspiciously; Naomi took this as a sign to sharpen her screeching.

Wincing at each movement, she managed onto her feet and stepped over the explosion of papers she’d slung across the floor. She had been studying the anatomy of local snakes. She crossed the sun-filled, undecorated den and reached for the door with her free hand when the visitor knocked again, with greater force and speed.

Naomi wailed.

She flung the door open and demanded of the woman ahead of her, “What?”

The woman blinked. She was a few inches taller than Kalina with pin straight blonde hair that hung almost to her hips. The woman didn’t look much different from most native Islanders, Kalina thought, only with fairer skin like her own and hair that was almost brown at its roots and whitish at its ends. The visitor wore oversized sweatpants and a thin jacket over nothing but a lacy bra.

The woman—looking every bit as surprised as Kalina—stared at the baby for a moment before her eyes landed back on Kalina, in shorts and a loose shirt with vomit stains.

“You?” she asked skeptically, almost stating it. “You’re Kalina? Serpent’s wife? The former, once-great Queen of the Shadows?”

Kalina’s physical appearance must have come as a shock to the woman. Kalina was not a native Islander, and fairer in comparison. Her black hair hung only to her shoulders, which was considered obscene in the Islands, and her dark eyes were almost unheard of. Besides the dozens of tattoos jotted along her body, there was not much about the new mommy to suggest that she had any fighting skills at all.

Kalina considered a myriad of snarky remarks, but decided against them. There was something elusively familiar about the woman standing before her, mingling with an honest confidence.

“I am Kalina, though I fancy myself the still-great retired Queen of the Shadows. Shh,” she hissed at the baby. “Who are you?”

But the woman paused before answering. She examined Kalina, narrowing her eyes at her for seconds as a tiny smile crept across her face. She laughed an inelegant laugh. “Just a pirate. I came here to fight,” she said, and Kalina perked up in a way she realized she hadn’t in nearly a year. “Although I didn’t expect to be challenging a housewife.”

Housewife, Kalina had begun to notice, was rapidly becoming an insult. As she glared back at her unnamed blonde visitor, she noticed her eyebrows, nose, and bellybutton were pierced—everything but her ears. Her attire gave her an immature appearance, but Kalina could tell in the way she was standing, the way she spoke that this woman—this stranger—was serious in her proposal to fight. And in that second, Kalina rediscovered the bloodlust in an assassin’s hands.

Fight her! Kill her! they screamed. Her palms itched suddenly, and she thought she’d revise the terms of her retirement.

After a long silence, Kalina glanced down at Naomi, who was still wriggling. “If you give me a second to put the baby down,” she stated, having to slow her words in her excitement. “We can fight in just a moment. Should I arm myself?”

“You’re unarmed?” The woman’s eyes went wide, and another smile erupted as she laughed. “Sure, grab what you want.” She made a dismissive gesture and skipped across the dirt walkway into the shrubbery-covered heart of the small island.