Queen For A Day

A Chantaran Legend

One day. One crown. One choice remembered as treason.

About

Queen For A Day is a literary dark fantasy court tragedy of succession, secrecy, and divine debt.

In the water-hewn realm of Chantara, Cobeah commits the unthinkable: she kills Queen Disaya before the gathered court and claims the crown by law. The rites name her queen. The realm names her traitor.

Bound by a truth she cannot reveal, Cobeah must survive one day beneath a crown made lawful through blood while her family fractures, her court turns restless, and old divine debts rise with the tide.

A sorrow-forward fantasy for readers drawn to myth, doomed queens, sacred law, political ruin, and stories history could not bury.

Where To Read

Serialization begins in January 2027 on Ko-fi, with Patreon maintained as a mirror for readers who prefer it.

The opening installments will be free. The chapters should be read in order, including the Requiems, which are part of the novel’s main structure rather than optional interludes.

• Ko-Fi
• Patreon

The Shape of the story

Queen For A Day unfolds across a single day in Chantara. The chapters move forward through the consequences of Cobeah’s coronation, while the Requiems look back to the vows, losses, faith, and hidden bargains that made the wound inevitable.

The Requiems are not side stories. They are the other half of the tragedy.

Before you enter chantara
reader fit

This is not a comfort fantasy. Queen For A Day is a sorrow-forward court tragedy about grief, succession, secrecy, sacred law, queer devotion, political fracture, and divine debt.

It is for readers drawn to mythic prose, doomed queens, family wounds, religious pressure, moral consequence, and beautiful ruins.

It may not be for readers looking for a fast quest, cozy fantasy, clean victory, or grief that resolves neatly.

The realm of chantara

Chantara was carved by water before it was ever ruled by queens.

Before the rites and courts, before the water-hewn throne, before the capital city of Pelagica, there were only the old corsair quays: salt-rotted docks, moonless bargains, ships that returned with foreign blood on their oars, and captains who answered to no crown but hunger.

Then came the woman the stories would not agree upon.

Some called her thief. Some called her liberator. Some swore she rose from the quays wearing Mother Altalune’s silver crown, with crescent moons above her brow and the Ninad itself parting beneath her feet. Whether goddess-touched or merely bold enough to let history mistake her for holy, she lifted Chantara from the corsair dark and taught its people to call survival a kingdom.

Now its throne sits where the Ninad runs beneath stone, where moonlight enters through the mouths of caves, where the old rites still name crown and blood as if either could be clean. Its people count the hours by the drops from their water clocks, pray beneath silver crescents in the nighttime sky, and trust the tides to carry away what history refuses to bury.

No queen before Disaya wore that inheritance with cleaner hands.

She ruled a realm that had taught itself refinement. Children learned their letters beneath temple eaves while water clocks filled and emptied above them. The hungry were fed from public stores. The sick were carried to river-houses where the Clepsydra washed fever from their brows. Widows kept their homes. Orphans kept their names. No one knelt before the throne without first being offered water.

Chantara is a realm of clean water and full markets. Of moonlit courts and open harbors. Of old rites kept with reverence, old wounds believed healed, old blood believed washed from the stone.

A realm beloved enough that no one could imagine it breaking.

Dramatis Personae

Admiral Cobeah
Royal Admiral • The woman history calls a traitor

Steel, salt, and sea were Cobeah’s path. She commanded Chantara’s Royal Navy, broke corsair fleets across her bow, and stood for decades at Queen Disaya’s side. Then a lawful duel leaves the lunar crown in her bloodied hand and an entire realm demanding answers she cannot give. Cobeah would rather face a storm than a court. Before the next Moonrise, she must become the queen Chantara needs while everyone she loves decides what kind of monster she has become.

Queen Disaya
Beloved Queen • The dead woman at the center of every unanswered question

Disaya ruled Chantara for more than twenty years and made peace feel permanent. Gifted with magicks that could command the waters themselves, she should have been impossible to defeat. Yet she dies without wielding them. Though Queen For A Day opens with her death, Disaya never leaves its pages. Her Requiems return to the choices, bargains, and quiet compromises that shaped her reign, revealing how a woman remembered for clean hands left the people she loved to carry their bloodiest consequences.

The Water Thief
Highest Cleric of the Clepsydra • Keeper of the realm’s hours • Anointer of heirs

Chantara records every monarch's name. The Water Thief gave up his own when he accepted the mantle. Wrapped in sailcloth, kelp, fishnet, and ropes from a vessel long vanished beneath the waves, he looks like a relic of older seas. He alone may anoint the realm’s successors, and he alone refuses to kneel when Cobeah takes the throne. The Water Thief is not the hero of her story. He is the current beneath it, present whenever Chantara must decide what survives.

Aulay
Father of Chantara’s royal children • Professional charmer • Reluctant statesman

In a palace built on vows, Aulay has spent his life avoiding most of them. He hates fighting, distrusts titles, loves an audience, and has never met a rigid custom he could not lean against. Beneath the swagger is a father whose devotion to Taliah and Brishon outweighs every other loyalty. When Cobeah’s crown tears their family apart, the realm turns to the last man who ever wanted responsibility. Aulay must decide whether protecting his children means standing beside Cobeah or helping pull her from the throne.

Ambassador Radella
Groomed for the premiership • Collector of favors • Patient until it stops paying

Radella has spent a decade making herself indispensable to the crown. Every favor, humiliation, secret, and buried mistake has been an investment in the office she believes she has earned. Then Cobeah kills a queen, claims her throne, and calls the bloodshed service to Chantara. Radella is appalled. She is also liberated. If Cobeah can kill for the good of the realm, why should Radella remain patient when someone stands between her and the office she deserves? She has always insisted ambition and service can follow the same current. Cobeah merely teaches her how much blood that current can carry.

Brishon
The Shoal • Protector of Chantara • Husband to Lembit

The Shoal’s mantle took Brishon’s name, freedom, and right to leave Chantaran soil. In return, it made him the realm’s living weapon: a beacon against invasion and a warning to anyone who would threaten its shores. He holds the land while Admiral Cobeah commands the sea. Then he returns from the border to find Disaya dead and Cobeah on the throne. Grief demands vengeance. Duty demands restraint. Brishon must decide whether the realm's greatest admiral is still part of Chantara, or the most significant threat it faces.

Taliah
Anointed Queen-to-Be • Mother-to-be • Chantara’s promised future.

Taliah was raised to inherit Chantara in time. Instead, she labors through giving birth behind a bolted door while Cobeah takes the crown meant to pass to her. The realm speaks of Taliah as its safest future: beloved, capable, and anointed by the Water Thief according to every rite. Her family speaks of her as someone who must be protected. They forget Taliah has never tolerated being managed. Everyone is deciding what should happen around her, but the future of Chantara has a will of her own.

Leola
Head of the Royal Guard • The Lionfish • Life-sworn to the crown • Undefeated

Silent, unassuming, and lethal in the way deep water is lethal, Leola guards whoever sits upon Chantara’s throne. Their enchanted armor carries old magicks. Their scimitar was forged by a former queen. Their vows bind tighter than either. Leola loved Disaya, yet when Cobeah rises with Disaya’s blood upon her hands, duty places them between the new queen and every blade drawn against her. To Leola, loyalty is not affection or approval. It is the only current they are permitted to follow.

The pantheon of chantara

Chantaran Fragments

The Rites Name Her Queen · Ko-fi · Patreon

A Vacant Throne · Ko-fi · Patreon

Behind The Book

Queen For A Day began in fragments: stray vignettes, cinematic score music, and character explorations that were not yet attached to any larger story.

On a plane in January 2022, during a work trip, I found myself writing disconnected scenes while listening to one of my ScoreCore playlists. Two scenes stood out from the rest. They seemed to share an invisible line I could only feel at the time. They were the visible ends of a much larger wound, and I wanted to know what could have happened to those characters, and to that realm, to make those scenes inevitable.

As I followed that question backward and forward, those fragments became the opening and closing movements of what would become Queen For A Day.

By January 2023, the manuscript was complete. That speed was unusual for me. It was the fastest full-length book project I had ever written to completion, and it became the piece that held most of my attention. After beta readers, editing, and more rounds of revision than I can remember, I queried agents with it and learned a great deal about the traditional publishing process, the market, and myself as a writer.

I always suspected a book like Queen For A Day might need a different path. It is a sorrow-forward court tragedy: mythic, dense, grief-haunted, queer, political, and more interested in consequence than comfort. So I am bringing it to readers directly, through serialization, self-publication, and a record of the journey along the way.

content notes

Queen For A Day contains violence, blood, death, grief, political coercion, religious pressure, assassination attempts, childbirth and bodily danger, self harm, paranoia, hallucination, and family tragedy.

• Queen For A Day Opening

Queen For A Day

A Chantaran Legend

By C.J. Mann IIIOne day. One crown. One choice remembered as treason.

“Mother Altalune will judge my soul. Chantara only judged the blood spilled by my hands.”

- from Cobeah’s restored personal writings, once banned throughout Chantara as seditious

Chapter 1
Twenty-Second Ring
(Two hours before Moonrise)

Blood sprayed from the slice across the queen’s throat as Cobeah’s round-bladed quoit completed its arc. The circular weapons were common throughout the Chantaran realm, but Cobeah’s were ancient, honed through generations of warfare at sea.Queen Disaya staggered. Her knees folded. Liquid crimson drenched the pale silk of her combat raiment, ceremonial garb that mirrored, with bitter cruelty, the gown she had once worn to her wedding. The distant memories refused to sink. Neither did the emotions rising with them.The queen’s body fell to the water-covered stone floor with a splash that sounded far too loud in the throne room’s hush. She betrayed Disaya. By rite and law, the act was just, but Cobeah couldn’t shake how wrong it felt. To the watching realm, to the Goddesses above, it could only look like high treason.With her magickal abilities, Queen Disaya held an absolute advantage over her. She could have boiled Cobeah’s blood before the fight ever started or used the very waters in her body to drown her while standing in place. Offensive magicks were punishable crimes but Cobeah had expected Disaya to break those laws to preserve her life.She hadn’t. In the face of death, she kept her hands clean of forbidden magicks. For reasons lost with her death the queen had refused to turn them against Cobeah. The trial by combat had ended with an outcome no one in Chantara could have predicted.Cobeah’s chest still heaved. Her muscles strained from the exertion of combat. The metal torques about her arms bit until her bones ached. They felt tighter than ever before. Warm blood dripped from a vicious slice along her left forearm, and a shallow gouge in her side still burned with pain.She surveyed the mortified audience. Hundreds stared in stunned silence. Some wept. Others clung to those beside them as if the room itself might collapse around them. Only The Water Thief looked composed. His eyes tracked her not with grief, but with calculating measure, tallying a cost only he understood.Within this holy place, beneath the eyes of their patron Goddesses, Cobeah felt certain she had damned herself. Mother Altalune might never welcome her soul to the Lunar Realm in her safe embrace. Nor would She guide her back for rebirth upon the mortal plane. Only Leviathan’s black deep awaited her, an eternity of pressure and icy silence at the bottom of the saltiest seas.As careful as her trembling arms allowed, she straightened Disaya’s body upon the soaked stone floor. Golden braids, loosened in their struggle, spread across the finger-deep water like kelp caught in a tidal surge. Even in bloodied death, she was the most beautiful woman Cobeah had ever seen. Her snow-pale face still seemed to hold its own light.Half-submerged, and with the striking cerulean cast of her skin, Disaya appeared more a Nereid or Naiad than mortal. The blood of those watery beings still marked Chantaran flesh in faint, indelible blue, blooming across skin and gathering at the tips of fingers and ears like remnants of distant tidewater. Long ago, they had guided Chantarans from the abyss left in the wake of the primordials and into the moonlit grace of the Goddesses above.Cobeah slid her dark-umber fingers, still blood-soaked from their fight, across Disaya’s blue eyes. She closed them forevermore. The holy water rippled out from around the queen’s body and encircled her in royal arcs, much like the shape of Cobeah’s ancient quoits. Still kneeling, she kissed Disaya’s still warm forehead, then lifted her fallen lunar crown from the shallows. Its polished silver caught the thin moonlight.Forged from interlocking crescents to honor Luna and Menae in the nighttime sky, the circlet hid two curved blades in plain sight; weapons of last resort should the queen ever need them. Legends whispered the crown was no mere replica, but The Mother’s very own from when she first graced the living realm. It was later used by the very first anointed monarch, risen from the ashes of the corsair life that had once plagued the coasts.“May Mother Altalune guide your soul.”The first stanza of the Requiem for the Fallen trembled from Cobeah’s lips. No one answered. No one continued the dirge. Hundreds of witnesses stood as stone, their silence filled the hall, vast and unbearable. None had dreamt of seeing their queen fall, least of all by Cobeah’s own hand.The lunar crown trembled in her bloodied grasp and for one mortal breath, something inside her gave way. She inhaled to scream at the audience to turn away and leave this place. To yell the truth, ugly and whole, throughout the stone palace halls. To let every soul know that although much of her life had belonged to Disaya, she had killed her and would take the reasons to her watery grave.Nothing left her mouth. Not even air. Cobeah forced the scream below decks, into the dark hold where sailors stored what could not be allowed to shift during a storm. She gritted her teeth as her fingers gripped tight to the crown. Its sharpened points dug into her flesh. Blood dripped from her hand and arm, from her quoit, and from the crown in her grasp. She lifted her gaze to the gathered realm and let the woman who wanted to weep sink beyond reach.
---Cobeah rose. Numbed. Duty turned her toward the throne. Her footsteps splashed through the shallow waters covering the throne room. For millennia, the holy order of the Clepsydra claimed the babbling current mimicked the sound of Mother Altalune’s Lunar Realm.The natural stone throne waited ahead, water-hewn by centuries of rushing rivers and bubbling streams. Its surface glistened with a perpetual dampness any monarch could feel: a cold, continuous reminder of all the ages that came before. Cobeah sat where Disaya had ruled for decades as the most cherished monarch in their long history: her old place, at the queen’s side as admiral of the Royal Navy, was now empty.Stillness held the chamber. Premier Derya stood nearby, rigid upon the steps leading up to the throne. Their face remained tight, expression carved into something unyielding. They withheld words as their jawline set into a language of contempt. Derya’s loyalty would be hard-won in the days to come. Only The Water Thief, highest member of the Clepsydra, dared move. He circled the chamber’s edge, weaving his broad body through the press like a lone fish slipping the school to avoid the net. His face held no grief; only disappointment.Murmurs rose. Little eddies in the silence: grief, fear, and anger. Many remained kneeling and sobbing, but others elbowed their neighbors, whispering their doubts.Nearby, the great water clock dripped on. Indifferent. As if it, too, had witnessed events like this before. Its steady rhythm marked the twenty-second ring. In two rings’ time, Luna would crest the horizon and the Clepsydra would fill the realm’s clocks anew. Night would fall, as it always had, but already a different darkness had spread across Chantara, wrought by Cobeah’s own hand.She raised the lunar crown, peering through its delicate crescent moons at the Premier below, and glimpsed The Water Thief slipping along the crowd’s edge. He moved without haste, but with the quiet certainty of a man convinced the Goddesses themselves favored his cause. The realm couldn’t afford a single second more than necessary without a ruler. She forced him from her thoughts and nodded to Derya.The Premier climbed toward the throne in measured steps, each one echoing judgment. They took the crown from her, fingers steady despite the rage in their eyes, and cleared their throat to speak words not voiced since Disaya’s coronation twenty years prior.“The vacant throne remains empty no more.”From the crowd, a few voices answered, cracked with fear and uncertainty. “May the river waters protect us and the Naiads guide our souls.”“After Luna and Menae, it remains the brightest light within the nighttime sky.”“May the tide waters protect us and the Nereids guide our souls,” said several more from the audience, following Derya’s lead.“Long live Queen Cobeah.”“Long live Mother Altalune and The Sisters Twain, Esmeray and Zira.”Most of the crowd mumbled the words, but the natural amphitheater of the throne room caught each whisper, carrying it to every ear.“May they continue granting us the waters of life and rebirth,” Derya said, finishing the ages-old ritual, spoken since before Chantaran peoples ever left behind written histories.The Royal Premier rose above Cobeah, the only time they could, and placed the lunar crown upon her head. Derya’s lapis-tipped fingers slid across her head, out from under the crown, before it nestled in place. The sharp crescents along the circlet pressed just enough to threaten blood; a private threat hidden beneath the metal. The crown was light as a feather and yet uncomfortable. For over twenty years, Disaya wore it without complaint or falter. The people of Chantara had loved her for it.Cobeah had loved her for it.“Queen Cobeah,” Derya said, calling out to the soaked and shaken masses, unable to mask a slight edge in their voice. “We kneel before thee and drink of The Mother’s waters of life.”As one, Derya and the crowd knelt in the shallow current covering the chamber. Holy waters soaked their garments from the knee down. Cobeah lowered herself, cupped her cerulean-tinted hand, and drank the realm’s most precious waters. The people followed, mouths full of silence and ritual.All save one: The Water Thief.With his birth-given name long sequestered to service within the clerical order of the Clepsydra, he was tasked with navigating the currents swirling about Chantara. Over the several decades he wore that consecrated mantle, The Water Thief walked in perfect unison with Mother Altalune’s edicts. Only he could anoint heirs to sit the throne, thus ensuring succession remained true. Within all of Chantara, he held the greatest authority to question her unanointed claim.While the audience still knelt in silent fealty, he pushed through them. His stout body parted the quiet supplicants like water. The sailcloth robes, stained by sea brine, hung heavy upon his body; the ancient ropes binding them once belonged to a vessel long vanished beneath the waves. His cloak of fishnet and kelp trailed in the shallows, a relic of older seas. Yet, for all his weight and ritual, he raked his fingers through his salt-crusted hair before locking eyes with her.“I don’t deny the path you chose for that seat,” The Water Thief said at last, not addressing her as queen. “Yet we Chantarans have long struggled with our tumultuous past. Your ill deeds return us to times of despair. To our corsair days when we were nothing but disparate groups who raped and pillaged, stripping the coastlines of anything of worth, always taking what we wanted and leaving nothing behind that our victims needed to survive. Other nations will smell our weakness, sense our lacking unity, and see ripe opportunities to sow dissent among our ranks. Cymbeline will encroach even more upon our lands, further spreading their faith like sparks on dry wood. Raaz and their Nightkillers will grow bolder in every shadow. Do you not see it?”“I was aware of the consequences before I made my decisions,” Cobeah said, her gaze unwavering. “Neither avarice nor shortsightedness taint my actions.”“Then lay before us your motives, oh queen.”“I cannot,” she replied, and no one in the audience dared to breathe in response.“Cannot?” he pressed. “Or will not?”“The distinction changes nothing,” she replied, and flinched at the acid in her own voice. Disaya had always kept hers clean.“You leave us only one conclusion; that your act was borne of greed and jealousy. Even worse, it was reginacide. You murdered the sitting queen.”“Those are your words and assumptions, Water Thief,” Cobeah said, delivering her words with an unexpected sharpness. “I stood by Queen Disaya’s side for as long as she sat upon this throne, longer even. You’ve no choice but to trust me or commit treason yourself.”“You will not remain unpunished,” he said, and even she felt shivers down her spine as surprised gasps forced their way from many tight throats in the surrounding throne room.“I will punish myself every day until The Mother denies me entry, turning me from her gates. My soul will not return to the Lunar Realm. It will sink into Leviathan’s eternal abyss. Isn’t that punishment enough? If you plan to act against me, do so now. I won’t resist, but know that your soul will follow mine into the depths.”“Self-punishment isn’t justice.”“No, it is not, but for now it’ll have to satisfy your lust for retribution. My daughter Taliah, anointed queen-to-be years ago, has yet to return from her arduous labor—”“Then what would you ask of us?” The Water Thief asked, interrupting her and even Derya didn’t seem to balk at the breach in proper decorum.“I’m not the queen you deserve,” she replied, her hard gaze then dropped to Disaya’s body on the wet stone floor, suppressing the resulting emotions as deep as she could. “The one who could claim that mantle is alive no more. I am the queen you now have, and while not ideal, it must suffice.”“Will you step down once Taliah has recovered enough to rule?” he asked, a thread of hope lingered in his voice. “I myself, in full view of Mother Altalune’s Lunar Realm, anointed her to rule after Disaya’s reign. Do you vow before us all that you will permit the rightful heir to sit upon the throne?”“Vow? Do you think you’re Mother Altalune herself? I vow to no man. My word will have to suffice, as did the word of every queen before me.”“My apologies, my queen,” The Water Thief said, defeated, failure now weighing upon his posture.“You’re forgiven, Water Thief. Now, spare us this fishshit and help me lift Disaya’s body. We owe her a ceremony of the highest honor to remember her twenty years upon the throne. It’s the least we can do for the best ruler in Chantara’s long history.”
---Cobeah walked the stone halls, her grief locked below deck. Each hollow step pressed her closer to losing control, but promises bound her. So she held strong. Ready to retire to the royal chambers for the night, she turned her gaze to the walls at her side and let their welcome distractions take her. The stone was older than any throne, its first shapes carved not by human hand, but by water’s patience. Settlers had later squared the halls and hewn their mark into what had once been wild, yet the bones of those ancient water-flows remained, if one knew where to look.Countless monarchs had roamed these halls. Queens, kings, and rulers unbound by gender. Before them all, Chantara had been corsair water, lawless and greedy, until one woman rose from plunder and bent the realm toward order. From her fleet came Pelagica. From Pelagica then came empire. The Naiads and Nereids guided her sail and Mother Altalune sanctified her course.Now Cobeah, in her own turn, threatened to bring it all toppling down. Her foul actions would be written in the same water-hewn stone as the monarchs of old. She had no choice, not that anyone would care. Their belief in her wasn’t necessary. She only needed the crown long enough to finish what Disaya’s death had begun. Long enough to protect her bloodline, her grandchild, and the future of the throne.The wound Cobeah had carved into Chantara would bleed through every household in the nation. She had slain the realm’s most beloved figure, second only to young Lembit, whose marriage to Disaya’s son had bound him to the royal line as Brishon’s consort. Brishon, better known as The Shoal, was Chantara’s protector and beacon of light upon the proverbial bluffs. Even though he and Cobeah had conflicted with one another on how to best serve the realm, it pained her to know her actions put every Chantaran family in danger, not just her own. Her thoughts then strayed, as they always did, to her daughter, now wracked by long labor in her fight to birth a second child. She turned toward the members of the palace staff following her and prepared to speak after such a long period of silence.“Any word of Princess Taliah?”

“Nothing new, my queen,” one woman said, her hesitation brief before the title settled into place. “The labor is long, and the child is stubborn. Princess Taliah holds strong. The Clepsydra chose well when they anointed her.”“It’s the weight of that very anointment upon her shoulders that concerns me.”“She asked after you twice, my liege,” the woman said. “We told her to rest without worry. She replied that queens-to-be aren’t granted such mercy.”“That sounds like her,” Cobeah tried to smile, but it came apart before it formed. “Thank you.”From the fatigue in the woman’s eyes, Cobeah realized she had come straight to attend her after caring for her daughter. “Please retire for the night. You’ve done more than enough. Rest now.”The woman bowed. “Thank you, my queen.”“I already miss being called Cobeah. Even my old title of admiral sounds kinder to my ears than queen.”“It will grow familiar, Your Highness.”“Disaya never grew into it either,” Cobeah said, uncertain why she remained in the hallway reminiscing about the former queen with the palace staff. “Not that it matters anymore.”“I do not pity you, Your Highness. Disaya was a rare river gem, yes. So are you. The days ahead will test you. This much is true.”“I value your candor.” Cobeah said, and managed a grim smile. “As difficult as it is to hear.”“Of course, my queen,” the woman said, then bowed again, and turned to leave.“One last thing,” Cobeah said. The woman paused, faced her once more, and bowed in acquiescence. “Protect my daughter. Guard my grandchild. Whatever you must do, do it. Anything you need to help Taliah is at your disposal.”“You have my word, Your Highness. Our most loyal guards already stand watch.”“Then I thank you. It will not be forgotten, nor will your deeds go unnoticed.”“My liege,” the woman said, bowed once again, and retreated down the darkened hall.Now alone before the doors of the royal suite, Cobeah laid her umber hands, cerulean-hued at the edges, upon the silver handles. Her body resisted, as though her own limbs remembered The Water Thief’s defiance an hour past. Many others in the audience had not wished to kneel either, yet they had. Only The Water Thief had delayed, yet even he had bent, in the end. Together, they had borne Disaya’s corpse to the inner Royal Sanctum beneath the throne. Come the morrow, the Clepsydra would consecrate her in glory, even if they hated Cobeah for forcing the rite before moonrise. Disaya had known the cost of that too.I have laid my dark deeds bare. Storms without end will come of it, but we must keep rowing onward, and I can only continue forward.Her dour thoughts circled like sharks sniffing for blood in the shallows. She pushed the doors wide and stepped inside. The palace staff had already scoured the chamber clean since the last time she had seen it. The massive four-post bed, built piece by piece inside the suite, loomed like a throne of rest, and pulled her forward toward sleep.Never had a day stretched so long, nor seemed so dark. Not even her years at sea chasing Shione Lahiri aboard her infamous Tanim, nor the bloody eradication of corsairs from the Chantaran coast, had felt as long or as dark as this one. Her mind craved respite, and her body ached for a hot bath, but she sacrificed it all and fell upon the bed still in her light seafaring armor. The miniature water clock beside the bed dripped on. Each drop represented a precious second of rest she needed, but sleep would not come easy, not tonight. For tomorrow would decide Chantara’s fate.Tomorrow will show me if Disaya’s last request, her final wish, was ever within reach.
---The sound of steel tearing through flesh and fiber dragged her from a drowning haze. Not the agony, though it roared hot and jagged through her gut, but the intrusion itself, the violation of her armor; the sundering of her body.Lodged square through a minor gap in her armor, a long dagger punctured her side. With an implacable grip, a hand grasped the hilt of that blade. In a panic, Cobeah tried to push back against the hand. Her gaze blurred but found familiar eyes. Anger sharpened her vision into obsidian shards, as recognition arrived like a flood.Brishon.The drowning haze could not hide The Shoal from her. Protector of Chantara. Son of Disaya. He loomed above her, his breath ragged, his glare ablaze. He tried to pull the blade free from her gut, but she couldn’t let him. Her wound would bleed out, and then she wouldn’t succeed in defending herself against another blow.“Brishon,” she said and gasped as pain wracked her voice. His true name, seldom spoken, burned her tongue. “I’m… so sorry.”“Fuck you,” said another sudden voice, emerging from nowhere.Her head jerked to the side, and vision swam as Aulay, the father of both Brishon and her own daughter Taliah, lunged at her with a dagger of his own. Cobeah’s scream split her vision as she stretched out her arm in futile defense. The dagger punched through her palm, pushed back her hand, and lodged into her shoulder with force. Brishon wrenched his own blade free then, and drove it anew, sliding beneath her guard, plunging into her stomach. Delivered by the hands of two men she loved with all her heart, the betrayal hurt worse than any wound she ever suffered before.“You cold-hearted bitch,” Brishon said, spittle flying from his dark lips. “You murdered her.”“I’ve always fucking hated you. I hate that I’m the father of your child,” Aulay said, hissing words that cut deeper than any blade ever could, even while sounding more melodramatic than he ever had before.Her reply was a whisper, thin and fading. “I know. I… I’m sorry. For what I had to do.”“What you had to do?” Aulay’s blade slipped free of her hand and shoulder. “No. The only thing you had to do was not to kill her.”“You greedy wretch,” Brishon said, then spat upon her.Over the years, she and Brishon had often conflicted with one another but always came together on what was best for Chantara in the end. They were so similar in many ways, but he would have said nothing like that to her before.
Already the world was changing around her. It left her unmoored and anchorless. The pain would have to wait for later as she tried to bring her mind back to the room and the fight for her life.“It’s not that simple,” Cobeah said. Her own voice sounded thin and hollow in her ears.“Fucking lies,” Aulay said, hissing his words as he lowered his blade once again toward her. “Our daughter would be so disgusted with you.”His intense and uncharacteristic words battered against her resolve. He was right. Her precious daughter, anointed queen-to-be, would be disgusted with her. The thought of her daughter’s revulsion scoured her soul deeper than any wound could. Her vision bled red. Pain and love and guilt fused into a single blade within her chest. She wanted to give in, but couldn’t. There was still too much for her to accomplish; too much that Disaya had asked her to do.Cobeah had always assumed assassins would move against her in response to her acts of reginacide, but she figured they would come from someone like Raaz. Their Nightkillers continued to wreak havoc in the darkest of corners within the realm throughout recent decades, maybe even longer. She never imagined the fatal blows would ever come at the hands of those she loved most.She was dying, but even half-dead, she remained one of the greatest mundane fighters in all of Chantara. They were forcing her to fight for her life, forcing her to use everything she had within herself to survive, and even against her own desires, it would cost them their lives.Her ruined hand lashed out and knocked aside Aulay’s oncoming thrust. The blade scored Brishon’s taupe-hued forearm, and he pulled it back with a yelp. Any minute now, blood-loss would render her unconscious, so she borrowed Brishon’s blade from her stomach and screamed in raw pain as she ripped it free before slicing it up Aulay’s torso in a backhanded grip.Brishon lunged back into the fray, but she met his crooked nose with the heel of her boot, shattering it to pieces. The crunch echoed like a ship’s mast snapping in a storm, sending blood in a splatter across his face.There was no time for guilt. No room for love. Instinct stripped her bare, remade her into an animal with no guiding horizon besides death. All that now mattered was rending flesh, severing arteries, and making sure there were two other dead bodies alongside her own once this ended.“My fucking nose,” Brishon said, his voice warped already.“It was ugly before, son,” Aulay said, then stumbled to the young man’s side and helped him to his feet. “Let’s kill this bitch.”Cobeah wasted no breath on words nor witty remarks. She struck back. Steel and fury, momentum unchecked, and sent Brishon staggering back. His hand lifted in vain defense, and eyes widened with fear as he watched his fingers fall away, sliced clean by the blade in her hand. It then plunged into his chest. Deep into his sternum. Like an anchor dropping onto the tide-weakened sand. Blood shot out from his nostrils as gusts of sharp breath evacuated his lungs, unable to get past his clenched jaws.
His gasp was a drowned man’s last.Agony seared her spine as Aulay’s dagger drove into her from behind. With his arm around her throat, he hauled her to the ground. His blade ripped free and dragged viscera with it. They fell beside Brishon, who twitched like a fish on the dry shore. Aulay straddled her, drove his steel down into the gap between collarbone and neck. One more fatal wound to accompany the many others. The damage was done. Darkness encroached and narrowed her vision to pinpoints.“Not even queen for a fucking day,” Aulay said, hissing his words as he lowered his obsidian face to hers.Her reign ended here. She would die with Disaya’s promise shattered, yet she would not let her attackers succeed either. Aulay and Brishon may have completed their immediate task, but neither man would leave this room alive.With her eyes already closed, she reached up with a gaping maw and sank her jaws into whatever flesh she could find. She gouged her way through what felt like soft fleshy cheeks as her teeth grated across cheekbones. Aulay’s screams sounded muffled and shallow in her death-dampened ears, and then his body fell away from her.With the last scraps of will in her body, Cobeah cracked open her eyes, rolled onto her side, and dragged herself to Brishon. Somehow he still lived, or at least still spasmed in the throes of death. She yanked the blade free of his chest, ran its honed edge across his throat and lunged toward Aulay. Half his handsome face still hung in her jowls, still clenched between her teeth. All of his attention was on his bloodied, cobalt-blue hands trying to staunch the flow of blood from his gaping wound. Her animalistic attack had damaged one of his eyes.He never saw her coming.“Goddesses, forgive me,” she said and slammed the dagger through his remaining eye all the way to the hilt, sundering brain and punching through bone on the other side.Their bodies collapsed together. Entwined, not unlike the night they had conceived Taliah. An image of her daughter, crowned in sorrow, seeped into her mind before she welcomed the resolute darkness of sleep she earlier had found so elusive.
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