The Queen's Court WATTPAD VERSION [Inter-Universal Protectors: Prelude 2]

1

Leonidas Inu lay on his bed, his bejewelled hands resting behind his head. He could not stop glancing towards the entrance of his apartments. He had been told that someone would come to get him the moment the warrior arrived. He had been waiting for quite some time, the only thing keeping him awake his adrenaline. He could not shake his excitement at the thought of a warrior staying at his house. Well, his father's house. 

Leonidas stood with a groan, beginning to pace his room. From where Helios' sun chariot was - slightly below the horizon - he knew that the warrior should have arrived by now. Just as the thought crossed his mind, there was a delicate knock on the entrance to his rooms. He turned, finding his favourite attendant. "Decima," he murmured. 

The woman seemed to blush, tugging on a strand of her blonde hair nervously. "Lord Inu has requested you to his study," she said quietly with a small bow. 

Finally. "Lead the way."

Decima led Leonidas to the hallway where his father's office was. She bowed once again before leaving. Leonidas found himself straightening his tunic and running a hand through his obsidian hair to neaten it before entering his father's office. Upon entering, he saw something he had not been expecting. Instead of a strong warrior sitting at his father's desk, there was a woman who  looked like she could hardly take himself on. She did not look like a threat in any way.

He sat beside her, taking a moment to look over her. She did the same to him, allowing for Leonidas to get a good look at her. He could not deny that she was attractive. She had auburn hair with gold streaks running through it. From the way her hair was styled - in a high corset bun with what looked like diamonds embedded in it - and the midnight blue stola she was wearing, it was clear that she was of a high status like himself. Her dark blue eyes were hard and her skin was quite dark. There seemed to be black markings running down the left side of her face. He dismissed it as shadows from the torches. Sure, the woman seemed strong personality wise, but there was no way she was a warrior. 

She tilted her head to the side slightly having finished assessing him. "You are the son?" She bowed her head ever so slightly, enough to be polite only barely. "A pleasure."

Leonidas was taken back slightly by her voice. It was smooth as silk and rough as granite at the same time. She had a hint of an accent he had never heard before. "I am Leonidas. What is your name?" She did not answer, instead looking at him for a few moments longer before turning back to his father. He could not tell if the woman was being rude or did not want to answer. Perhaps both.

The woman stood suddenly, pulling a shawl off her chair and around her shoulders. She shook his father's hand before inclining her head slightly at Leonidas. Decima led her away, presumably to her rooms for the time she would be staying. Being dismissed by his father moments later, Leonidas let curiosity get the better of him and followed the two women. 

He watched from around a dark corner as the stranger thanked Decima and wandered into her apartments. He dashed forwards, stopping in the hallway just outside the entrance, and stuck his head around the corner. The woman was walking around her rooms, seeming to explore, before going into one in particular. With a final check around him, Leonidas ducked in and watched from outside what turned out to be the bedroom. 

She paced in the darkness. It was long enough for Leonidas to feel his eyes drooping for boredom. That was when he saw something he had not been expecting. The woman snapped her fingers and the burnt-out torches flared to life. He almost fell forwards into her room from shock. Who is she? 

Now able to see her properly in the torchlight, he guessed that she was slightly younger than himself. Twenty, perhaps? He could also see that dark mark down the left side of the face was not a trick of the light. It was a harsh onyx marking that disappeared down her stola. 

"Are you going to stand there all day?" the woman asked, removing her shawl and throwing it over her chair. Leonidas wondered if she was talking to someone else. That was when she looked straight at him from over her shoulder. Knowing he had been discovered, Leonidas entered cautiously. She came up to him, allowing for him to realise that her eyes were purple, not blue. Are those golden flecks? Her lip twitched slightly, as though she were preventing a smile. He was about to speak, to make up some sort of story to explain why he was following her, when she spoke first. "You wonder who I am?"

"Yes." That was all he could get out. He did not know why he was at a sudden loss for words.

The woman circled him, looking up and down over his body as she did. She stopped in front of him, prodding his chest with a finger. He heard her let out a breath before turning away and sitting on the bed. "It does not matter who I am," she murmured, resting her head on her arms as she moved to lay on her stomach. "It is not like the people on this world remember me." A small dark laugh. "If you do know my name, the stories are probably all wrong. It has been a thousand years, after all."

She fingered a pendent around her neck. Deciding that he had nothing to worry about, Leonidas took a step forward. Another. Another. He was now standing over the woman. She looked towards him, her head following him down as he moved to his knees. They were face-to-face. He looked into her strange hollow eyes. She did not break the gaze. 

"Tell me your name." Command not question. 

The woman did not break the gaze as a dark smile appeared on her lips. "Anmerankh-Karareia." She was silent for a moment, as though deciding whether or not to keep going. "If you do know me," she eventually said, "You know me as Amneris." 

He knew that name. Had heard it before. He knew he had heard it so many times. Where have I heard it? He broke his gaze with the woman, looking to the painted ceiling as he searched through his memories, the name like a stone in water. Of course, he thought, his eyes widening with realisation. "You have the same name was the woman in the stories I was told as a child," he murmured, not realising he had said it aloud until the woman stood, brushing past him.

"You know my name, not who I am."