All Chapters of The Queen is Man: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

"Drop the knife, or I’ll open your throat."The steel of Ethan’s broadsword pressed against my windpipe. The edge was notched, caked with drying blood and white stone dust. He looked like a nightmare birthed from the smoke. His armor was dented, his left pauldron hanging by a single leather strap. He didn't recognize me. Not through the thick mask of Graves’ blood and the grime of the sewers."Ethan, it’s—"He shoved me back against the altar. My head hit the stone. Hard. The room spun. "The priest is dead. The boy is gone. You’re just another Southern rat in the walls.""Look at me." I grabbed the flat of his blade. My palms stung as the metal bit in. "Look at my eyes, you idiot."Ethan froze. His chest heaved, the plates of his cuirass grinding together. He leaned in, his face inches from mine. The smell of gunpowder and stale sweat rolled off him. He wiped a smear of blood from my forehead with a shaking thumb."Noah?""I killed him, Ethan." I didn't let go of the sword. I pulled i

The black veins had crawled all the way to the edge of my jaw by the time Ethan dragged me back into the council chamber."Get the Alchemist’s journals from the lower vault."Ethan didn't look at the lords gathering near the shattered windows. He threw me into the heavy oak chair at the head of the table. His hands were shaking, his fingers slick with the black grease oozing from the swollen lump under my collarbone."There are no journals left, Your Grace," Lord Halloway said, his voice cracking as he backed away from the table. "The fires in the lower district consumed everything. The Alchemist's laboratory is nothing but ash.""Then start hanging the prisoners." Ethan didn't yell. His voice was a flat, dead rasp that made the room go completely silent. He leaned over me, his thumb pressing hard against my throat, forcing my head back against the wood. "Every Southern officer we pulled from the sewers. Hang them from the battlements. One every ten minutes until someone tells me how

The ice-blue silk of the gown rustled against the dry grass of the harbor bluffs, the fine fabric catching the salt wind like a standard."You look like a ghost standing out here in his colors."Matthew Collins stepped out from the main pavilion, a silver chalice balanced between his index and middle fingers. He wasn't wearing his armor now. He wore a loose tunic of dark velvet, unbuttoned at the throat, his skin pale and smooth under the flickering orange light of the campfires. He didn't look like a general who had just broken a city. He looked like a man waiting for a lover in a garden."The silk belongs to the West," I said, my voice barely carrying over the sound of the waves crashing against the pier below. I didn't move as he approached. The black veins under my skin were throbbing, a dull, freezing ache that made my jaw tight. "The blood belongs to you. Let's get this over with, Matthew.""Always so hasty." He reached out, his long fingers catching the hem of the ice-blue slee

The heavy silk of the pavilion tent sagged under the weight of the red slush, the dark velvet panels groaning as the wind from the harbor whipped through the ropes."You look beautiful in his colors, Noah."Ethan stood in the entrance of the tent, his broadsword dripping a steady line of black grease onto the carpet. His chest was covered in deep, white scars that were still steaming in the cold air, his silver eyes fixed on the long, scarlet robe Matthew had forced me into after the ice-blue silk had been torn to shreds."It’s not what you think, Ethan." I didn't step back from the cradle. My hands were still locked around the gold-trimmed wrapper of the child, my fingers so numb from the freezing ache in my collarbone that I could barely feel the fabric. "Matthew is gone. He went to the secondary galley to prepare the fire-wagons. He left the baby here.""He left his prize with his new queen." Ethan walked forward, his heavy boots crushing the silver chalice Matthew had dropped earl

The cold ash settled over the black stones of the courtyard, burying the boots of the dead guard in a thick, gray blanket that smelled of burnt bone and wet wool."Put it on."Ethan stood on the cracked marble of the lower dais, the heavy gold crown of the Western line resting between his blackened palms. The metal was warped from the heat, three of the sapphire settings melted into streaks of blue glass that run down the side of the band. He didn't have his tunic on. His bare chest was a mass of white, puckered scars that had stopped leaking the silver fluid, leaving his skin looking dry and dead in the gray morning light."There's nobody left to watch me wear it, Ethan." I didn't step onto the platform. I stayed near the broken pillar where the body of Lord Halloway lay twisted under a pile of plaster. The child was asleep against my chest, wrapped in a scrap of wet canvas I’d taken from the pier. "Look at the gate. The people didn't run to the hills. They stayed under the walls bec