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1
SELLISS
“Ihad no other choice,” I murmur as I reach for my sword, the one thing I was allowed to keep after I was caught crossing the border into Yadat and taken to King Kriseri.
Now that I’m no longer a threat in their eyes, I can keep it. That doesn’t mean they won’t kill me the minute they suspect I’m a spy, and Yadat is a suspicious land.
I have been in Yadat for a month now, and I am still growing used to the new landscape, if you can even call it that. Coming from a place, a kingdom, like Lodra, to a place like this shocked me violently.
I crossed into Yadat from Kario, which I entered from one of Lodra’s most desolate regions. Kario was almost as beautiful as Lodra, and I suppose I expected Yadat to be the same.
That is what we – the naga – are famous for after all. The beauty of our kingdoms.
Yadat, however, is anything but beautiful. It is a harsh, rocky land, surrounded by a strip of desert that runs all the way around the kingdom.
I suppose that’s why Kriseri wants to start a war, I think to myself as I pull on my new military uniform.
I am not used to it yet – to the new colors and patterns that signify that I now belong to Kriseri’s army. I examine myself in the long, thin mirror in my new, tiny bedroom in the barracks, and a pang of something – sadness or anger, I do not know – flashes through me.
I did not want to give up my position in Lodra. I loved my kingdom. But I couldn’t do anything else.
I had no other choice.
When I am dressed, I walk out of my room and into the main area of the barracks to get my tasks for the day.
As soon as I walk into the main room, I am hit by a sharp, bright ray of sunlight that comes down into the barracks through the clear glass ceiling that stretches overhead, across meeting rooms, the massive kitchen, and the strategy rooms.
Dransa, the captain of Kriseri’s Royal Guard, walks up to me with the patrol schedule for the day.
“We want you on the border today,” he tells me as he glances down at the sheet in front of him. “But Kriseri wants to see you first.”
“Why?” I ask. I cannot stop my hood from lifting in slight alarm.
Dransa looks at me coolly. He must sense my unease.
“He just wants more intel on Lodra. I’ll be there, too. Not everyone here might trust you yet, but it seems that Kriseri has taken to you quite quickly.”
Dransa's tone is dry. The implication is clear. He is among those who do not trust me yet.
He turns then, and I follow him through a tunnel in the barracks that leads to the throne room in the palace.
At least one of Kriseri’s most loyal soldiers admitted that Kriseri trusts you. That is why we came here in the first place.
In the month after I was ordered to leave the center of Lodra and go to ‘secure the territory’ close to the border with Kario, I made up my mind to abdicate my responsibilities as a soldier in the Lodrian Royal Guard.
I spent the month creating a plan that would allow me to do two things. The first was to start a new life. The second was to get revenge on Prince Zalith, Slyth, and especially Lasta, who had sent me to the back of beyond for no reason. Could anyone really blame me for objecting to him mating with a human? Any true naga would have found fault in his behavior.
Lodra was, and still is, in a tricky position, because apparently the naga of Lodra are becoming more and more accepting of human-naga mating.
Not every other kingdom in Nagaland is happy about that.
Idiots. Willing to start a war over filthy human pussy, I think angrily, and my hands curl into fists as I think about the worst betrayal I have ever experienced.
I considered going to Kario first. After months of working with Lasta, it was clear that Kario was unsatisfied with Zalith’s decision to take a human mate.
But Yadat, while harsh and unforgiving, is the best option.
Because Yadat has Kriseri.
