A royal bloodline gets divided by rebels' attempted regicide, casting Alvina from her throne and into hiding, as Quinn, the bastard brother, is forced to take her place.
***
Alvina was supposed to be queen, but when her coronation is abruptly stopp...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Our car wasn't fixed. Karla promised this was the last thing we'd do for her this time.
We were both tense, Dy and I, as we trailed behind Karla. Both of us were dressed in soft black wool capes. Kind of. Dy still had her jacket on underneath the cape... thing. It was kind of long cardigans because there were sleeves on them, but they were long and flowy like capes. Tight leather breaches and a dark blue top under the woollen garment. She was dressed like this too. I wondered what was up with the dress code but figured it was better I didn't ask. Karla was obviously completely crazy.
I had also been given a gun. Dy had both of hers stashed under the garment, in the leather holsters she always wore on her back. They were just never visible because of her signature jacket.
I had never held a gun before, so I really wasn't equipped for whatever we were doing. Karla just told me to roll the sleeve on my metal arm up, and that should be intimating enough. I didn't even know my roprothesthic was intimating.
We stopped by one of the many black houses with grass growing on the roof. It had shutters in front of the windows, keeping prying eyes away. Nothing like the last houses we had come to collect money from. It was an entirely different world here, it seemed.
We stepped inside without a word. Didn't even knock. Dy flanked Karla's right, while I made a very useless left.
"Gentlemen," Karla said as she stepped into another room. It was occupied by three men sitting by a solid wooden table.
The entire house was solid wood. Logs with intricate designs were up under the ceiling, and nothing was painted in here. Everything was just left to its original brown colour, making everything very rustic-looking. Furs lined every seat in the room, and there were sheep's skins on the floor too. I kind of liked the interior design.
"I've come to collect what's mine."
The men looked up from their papers on the table and scanned us from top to bottom. I tried not to shrink under the weight of their gaze, but it was hard.
"Ah, and you brought some lovely friends with you," one man said and licked his lips, staring at me.
"Indeed. But they're not very friendly to people who don't pay. In fact, they hate it."
The men snorted, not looking very intimated. Dy tilted her head to the side but didn't even look phased by the men laughing at us. She remained cool, her body relaxed.
And then all hell broke loose. One man pulled a gun, and before I could blink, he had a bullet between his eyes. Dy had a smoking gun in one hand, the other pointed towards guy number two, who was in the middle of getting his own gun.
"As I said, they don't like when people don't pay. They like it even less when you try and pull a gun on them," Karla said with a light tone as if she was just telling a cute anecdote.
