Savage Saints (Monsters of Saint Mark's)

Even Tarq. Even his two girls.

And maybe for the first time in my very long life, I feel… in control.

Not gonna lie. It feels good.

“Now,” I say, facing one of the guards. He’s in full charge, his pointy sword directed out in front of him like he was planning on being stabby with that thing. His uniform is slightly different from the rest and I interpret this to mean he’s got some kind of rank. “I’m going to unfreeze you and you’re going to answer my questions.” I wave my hand to unfreeze him and he falls forward, hitting the marble floor with a loud grunt.

He’s still for a moment, almost supernaturally still, and I start to wonder if he fell on that sword and killed himself by accident. But no, he rolls over, panic in his eyes.

“We came here to save some fucking wood nymphs,” I tell him. “We’re not leaving until we save the fucking wood nymphs. So you had better tell me where they are!” I roar these words, making the whole room shake. The chandeliers up above swing wildly from the reverberation of my threat and the guard scrambles to his feet, covering his head and looking up, like he’s afraid they might crash to the floor and take him out in the process.

He points to a set of double doors near the far corner of the room and stutters out, “Th-th-they’re in there! In their bedchambers!”

I turn to Tarq and his girls, wave my hand and unfreeze them, then point. “Get them. We’re leaving.”

“But the queen!” the pastry-kitchen girl says. “What happened to the queen?”

I want to grab her by the shoulders, shake the fuck out of her, and yell, “Who cares!” But I don’t. She’s not mine to discipline.

So instead I look at Tarq to see if he’s got this answer. But he shakes his head. “Don’t ask me. Pie took her somewhere. Where did she take her? Will she bring her back?” Then he chuckles a little, shaking his head. “No magic, my ass.”

“Right?” I say, calming down a little now that things are almost in control. “She drives me nuts.”

“If the queen is gone,” Tarq’s assistant girl says, “then who is in charge? Are they going to come after us? Will they start a war?” She grabs the other girl’s hand. “We can’t stay here!”

“You’ll come with us,” I say. “We’ll all go, just like we planned.” I glance at Tarq for confirmation, but he’s got a weird look on his face. “What?”

“I’m just thinking—”

“Not a good time for that, Tarq.”

“Hear me out. If we leave like this—if we run away—then the queen is still the ruler of Vinca. Her guards will hunt us—”

“Tarq, we’ll be in another world. Unless they can make portals, they can’t follow us.”

“Right, but things will go bad here.”

“Who cares?”

“I care,” Tarq says. “I care. Like it or not, this place is my home. And Talina’s. And Mikayla’s. If we leave it like this, we can’t ever come back.”

“So what do you suggest?”

He grins. And I can’t help myself, I grin back. Because this grin of his takes me on a trip through time. When we were kids, and he always had a crazy plan, and I was always his unwilling accomplice. “Tarq?” I say, caution in my voice.

Tarq puts up a hand. “Just hear me out.”

“If I have to hear you out, I already know this is a bad idea.”

“Seriously, it’s not. If the queen is gone, then the line of succession needs to be followed.”

“Ohhh-kay.”

“She doesn’t have any children,” the one called Talina says.

“And she’s practically immortal,” the other girl says. “So there’s never been a need for a successor.”

“Hence her desire for a godling,” Tarq says. “But”—he’s still holding up that hand—“I am a royal beast. I will be the father of her godling, should that day ever come, so it stands to reason—”