hotmtlnovel Chapter 227 The Runaway Queen
Chapter 227 The Runaway Queen
News hit Titans Landing early the next morning—of the escape of the Dowager's favorite prisoner.
Lilith entered in from the castle at Darkwake in haste, descending the levels into the dungeons of Eragonn swiftly on her peculiar horned steed; she had managed in a year after the fall of the Capitol to appropriate and acculturate the polis back into a semblance of unity, she did not desire to give the dissenters—those still loyal to the Fae lines a holdfast to bank their revolution on, so for the time being she put her black dragon to the mountains in the east and instead used this [Hel Mutant] stallion as her ride.
After the horrors the capital had witnessed at the emergence of the Titans, even the mere shadow of a dragon patrolling the skies would be inviting trouble for the crown. Especially with the bloody King gone.
"The sorry bastard didn't even know a right time to die, leaving me to govern this mortals." Lilith hissed alone in her riding chariots outside Eragonn.
The Dowager was irritated by everything and every one this morning. Even Giselle offering to eat her out in the shower few minutes ago didn't sit well. And she liked the faerie ex-queen a great deal. So much that she had kept her—even when she'd starved her friend to death in her pits. Lilith remained uneasy in the long colonnades of Eragonn as she strode with a smaller servant of hers to the only Giant's cage in the block.
But then again, Lilith Firstborn was taller than almost everyone in her service.
She met Israfel's dungeon empty.
. . .so the news was true.
The affliction in her belly sank deeply; it acutely reminded her of some distant feeling she had experienced thousands of years ago; called the woman's monthly bleed these days. And Lilith did not menstruate. Not since she'd consumed Adam alive. Lilith nearly crumpled to the floors at the sight of the empty cavern behind the irons.
The forgemetal squeaked as someone she didn't give a fuck about opened the bars grate with a key and two-finger-spelled the rune away.
"Where the fuck is my nephew?"
At the Dowager's question, all in the near mile radius made themselves scarce. The dungeon keepers all but fled Eragonn, and left the poor mercs brought in as bodyguards to face the wrath of the Abyssal goddess. Lilith entered into the great prison. It was a colossally wide and tall space. And it was hollow; the [soul fragment] chains that had kept Israfel's in his [Black Death Behemoth] form bound now rested against the stone walls.
The demonagogue: the shiny black-gold crucifix was on the floors, glowing red, cooling down from the Helflame's heat.
"I SAID, WHERE THE FUCK—"
"He's obviously escaped, darling Lily!" Lucifer materialized out of a thicket of shadows, umbras dancing around his long cape as he walked out wet and tanned and handsome as the devil he was. It was only he whom could utter what the myriad servants and petrified guards didn't dare.
But still, when Lilith cut her purple eyes at him, he stiffened and pocketed his hands in his doublet. A wise choice. He shut his mouth while he was at it. What a day it'd be if Lucifer Morningstar got into one with Lilith, Mother of the Damned?
"Get Nicara and the others; let the Court convene in the Mirror chamber. Start casting, summoning, and whatever else it is you lot do. Magick shit up! I want my boy found. This was not just half-assed prison break. He was helped. I want to know by whom. You have leave to employ the Telchine mages at your disposal. I want Vrak patrols knocking on every door—and the hellhounds with them. Fuck tranquility.
Get the spectres and wyverns flying; I need eyes up too. Break into the temples if you must. Our fugitive must have no refuge; gods know he's got friends in the Empire. In his Behemoth form you may not be able to track his [Soul Fragment]. Try tracing that of the girls with him... the uh... the succubus and that one, the one I resurrected. Shite. I can't believe I brought back that butch bitch from the dead, only to have her fuck up with my plans.
"Go!" She said, when Giselle still stood.
The faerie ex-queen turned heels rapidly. No one in Titans Landing could understand the love of Giselle Van Imperia for the Dowager. Not only did she 'eat pussy' in the eyes of the puritans. But for the wildlings—her tribe who really didn't give an eff if she was lesbian, their annoyance stemmed from trying to understand how a Great [SS Rank] Enchantress—Giselle—could go from the freedom-fighter she was: battling a horde of blue Ice Orcs to shivering at the whims of a dark goddess who had invaded and taken her kingdom, and removed her from the Empire seat. To the puritans, how she could still part that woman's legs and suck her cunt.
No matter how hot Lilith was, popular opinion was she was a bitch! In Giselle's case, it was a severe case of the [Stockholm syndrome].
Lilith thought to herself in the courts beside the Palace's Persian gardens when she was alone.
'These people will hate me more now that I'm hunting their precious Rebel Lord. But fuck if I care. He is mine. He is my Apollyon, before he ever was a damn revolution symbol. Fuck this city.'
She had no idea that someone was watching, and had listened to all of her conversation with Giselle. Someone who above all shouldn't have seen or heard anything. Someone supposedly confined to her room—until such a time when her hothead calmed enough to fulfill her new duties as Queen of the Realms.
And that someone was Ravenna de Vríes.
As Lilith moved away, Ravenna calmly stepped out from under the rosebush she'd been hiding in. She hadn't meant to eavesdrop, only to escape the boredom of her chambers. Like her friends, she too had been imprisoned—only it was in far better quarters. The fuckers said it was her room.
The Queen's room. The Royal chambers.
Since her father had been murdered by Israfel, pounded and torn to pieces – this brought an unkind smile to her face – Ravenna was by legacy, Heiress Apparent. But she refused the throne. Her defeated, murder-machine, god-killer father whom the polis were calling the King-for-a-Year now...
No, thanks.
For all of the seven months her friends had been prisoners of war, Ravenna refused to wear the crown.
"But now, they're free," she said aloud. "And so I shall be."
Ravenna, Crown-queen of the lands as far out as eyes could see, silently picked up her skirts and ran from the gardens. Whilst the Castle was in confusion to find the escaped prisoners, she crept put the long acres of Darkwake and into the city.
She had no bag. And no food. Her only possession was the clothes on her back, her only food the breakfast she had this morning, but with purpose shining in her green eyes, she stepped into the bustle of merchants and townies to find her friends.