There was something she had that they didn’t though. She needed to win this. There was no other way.
Oh, she knew Rhey would marry her regardless, but then what? A Kingdom with its King and Queen unbonded, divided, butting heads? He’d chosen her. Now was the time for her to claim him back. So she pushed. She pushed. She pushed with all she had, all she was.
Suddenly a deep roar come out of her chest - a inhuman sound she’d never heard - and her steps became longer, faster. She’d never felt this - but she recognized the source of it all.
They had dragon strength. She didn’t. But she did have a bond with a tiger; never had she thought she’d be able to tap into it. Right now, her steps proved it. She was Claws.
She cleared the distance, effortlessly making it to the finish line in moments after this.
One certain traitor didn’t like that one bit.
“Oh for the sake of everything holy on this land! Won’t you just fucking give up yet? You should never have been allowed to partake in The Claiming,” Janive practically yelled.
“You poisoned me.”
She didn’t know how she’d deduced it; deep down, she just felt it.
“You would have done us all a favor if you’d just died from it, you filthy human skank.”
Well, that was quite enough of that.
She turned toward the royal tribune and asked, loud and clear, “Can I kill this piece of shit?”
Everyone gave her a thumb up.
Janive probably expected her to start a sword fight she hoped to win. But Xandrie had no intention to honor her that way - not when the woman had attempted to murder her with poison, the most cowardly way she could have picked. She didn’t deserve it.
Xandrie smiled as she felt the bond with her closest friend still firmly in place; in the blink of an eye, Claws was on Janive, teeth bared, mouth wide, jumping right for her throat, and ripping it from her body. Janive’s body lay, crooked and bloody, in the sawdust.
Xandrie raised her gaze to the stands and let the Elders see the tiger in her eyes. Best they know she’d been controlling Claws, so none of them get any ideas.
She turned just in time to see Saskia pass the line before Althara.
“Err-if that’s what you do with your contenders, you won,” the dragoness joked, pointing to the other woman.
Xandrie smiled back awkwardly.
“I need to apologize. I thought you’d poisoned me.”
Saskia looked like the very idea offended her.
“No way. If I wanted you dead, I would just challenge you in combat. Or, you know, fry you up. Only if you really pissed me off, though.”
That seemed fair enough.
More or less.
“By the way,” Saskia cried loud, also turning to the Elders and the King, “I renounced my claim.”
Althara echoed the same pledge, which didn’t make sense to Xandrie until everyone in the stands fell silent, and then dropped to their knees.
Shit.
Epilogue
Saskia believed in strength; she knew, in the first round of The Claiming, that Xandrie had only won against her thanks to a fair bit of luck. She’d gone easy on her. She hadn’t respected her because she hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
“Nothing personal,” the woman explained indifferently with a shrug. “Everyone says I’m a bitch. They aren’t wrong.”
She also didn’t mind being seen that way; bitches got things done.
After hearing that she’d fought for them, and risked her life to get their shield back up? Things had changed. But she knew how tales could be spun, and she hadn’t seen it for herself.
“I see you now. You’re strong enough for this - for us. You’ll be a fair Queen. I might have the strength, but I lack…”
“Tolerance?” Nathos offered.
“Patience?” Rhey tried.
“Diplomacy?” Xandrie guessed.
“The inclination,” Saskia said with a sigh. “I mean, no offense but it sounds like a fucking boring job. If someone else can do it better, so be it.”
Althara’s answer had been simpler.
“I don’t want her tiger to eat my face.”
Regardless of the reason, she’d won The Claiming by default.
“You know, being Queen of a Kingdom I’ve been part of for about five minutes might not be all that easy. Rhey said I could have Advisors - Demelza will be one of mine, but I could use you, too.”
Saskia was so frank, she was exactly her kind of person. For example, her reply was, “Dragon’s scales, I said I didn’t want a boring job! No. I won’t do it. No way. I’ll be like Nathos in fifty years, tops.”
But she caved because right now, everything in her life was perfect. Xandrie could scarcely believe her luck.
By tomorrow, she was to be wed to a man she loved - a man she already belonged to - and on the same day, she’d be Queen of people who - mostly - loved her.
Not bad, for a magicless runt.
Through the throng of well-wishers, Xandrie watched Demelza race back to the castle, a medic at her side. Demelza knew what this moment meant to her, how deeply she’d fallen for Rhey, so she’d have been right at her side, squeezing her and smothering her with kisses, if everything had been right with the world. That she’d left without a backward glance meant she was needed immediately. Xandrie felt the triumph drain out of her, only to be replaced by a leaden knot. When the medics came for Demelza it usually meant yet another expectant mother in the birthing room was in trouble.
Nathos was nattering in her ear, trying to cram a lifetime of protocol into a single hour. Xandrie was to be crowned that very afternoon and needed to know which hand held the scepter and which the orb, what to say when she was under the canopy, how the oil on her forehead signified a covenant with the spirit of all Dragons and bound her to her Queenly duties for life.
She held up her hand. “Sorry, Nathos. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’ve somewhere I need to be.”
By the time Xandrie reached the birthing room, Demelza was already spattered in blood. Xandrie recognized the mother on the table. Galdia had waited on her on the first day of The Claiming, coiling her hair into an impossibly elegant chignon, which she secured with a clasp of golden grasshoppers, in the Grecian style. She had chattered away about the dragonling in her belly, telling Xandrie all about the names she and her man had picked out for their dragonling. The women of this kingdom were nothing short of heroic. Not once had she seen a pregnant woman give herself over to her fears, though they must have all been terrified. “As it will be, so shall it be,” wasn’t just an ancient dragon saying, it was their mantra.
Xandrie tugged at the ties that held her breastplate in place. She needed to shed her armor and get in there and help Demelza. She had no Vincent to help her and she had no time for untying fancy knots, so she grabbed a scalpel and cut her way out of her gear.
Demelza looked up from between the stirrups. Galdia’s screams were enough to curdle the blood, yet a thick, red river of the damned stuff continued to pour out of her.