The Queen's Host Episode Three

By Odette C. Bell

She can’t go back. Lillian chose to be indentured this time – chose to tether herself to Anders and everything he stands for. Even if he now intends to stand much closer.
But the Queen can’t slow down. Her hunt for Lillian speeds up, and soon she threatens the land with her foul desires.
Will Lillian and Anders hold her back, or will Anders’s newfound courage crumble? Old habits die hard, but young witches like Lillian will slip away if you don’t hold them hard enough.
...
The Queen’s Host follows a dour wizard and his indentured witch battling to bring down a tyrannical queen to save their kingdom. If you love your historical fantasy with magic, heart, wit, and a smattering of romance, grab The Queen’s Host Episode Three today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Feb 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005689032

Book preview

Chapter 1

Lillian

I… I’d put my hand up for indenturing this time, and this time, there would be no coming back. Not from the tender look in his eyes, not from the remnant magic that tingled down my hand, and not from the sudden scream that split the air from behind him. There was a solid stone wall there, but that was irrelevant. The scream was dire enough that both he and I heard it.

He jolted forward, but I was gladdened when he didn’t step in front of me but beside me. So he believed in my skills, then? That said, he was a little ahead, and he rounded his hand into a fist, knuckles tight, skin bloodless, and tension wrapping around his jaw. Come on.

I wanted to grasp his hand, despite the severity of the situation, and point out how enamored I was of the fact he’d changed. This was the Anders Atticus almost all of the kingdom thought they knew. A man whose bravery should be unmatched.

He might’ve had a sputtering start, like one of those newfangled cars struggling to get going. But now he was here, and now I was beside him.

He jolted forward to place his hands flat on the stones, to use magic to open them up like a tin can, but I got there first. I locked my hands down, too, and with a quick sideways glance to try to figure out what he was doing, I soon copied him.

His gaze became level with mine, and his left eyebrow twitched up. Since when did you learn how to open walls? A very dangerous gift for someone like you. You ought to know how to follow orders first.

I’m not very good at following orders, I said with a slight curl to my lips. But I’m awfully good at copying people. And I’ve had a curiously good teacher.

That smile reached further across his lips, dancing and pulling them up until they curled toward his cheeks. I see. I will have to meet him sometime. You’re my indentured now, and I don’t want anyone else stirring my pot.

I ought to have requested a slightly more equitable employment, I muttered as I couldn’t stop my cheeks from warming. But it was too late on two accounts. I had already become indentured to him, and well… we were through. Our combined magic soon surged across the stones and opened the wall easily. The stones fell away beside us, and they revealed a great open chasm of a room. The ceiling above was carved as if it led to some great large cave. It did not belong in this section. I had attempted to keep a very good understanding of where I was in reference to the rest of the palace, and we should roughly be in the middle of it. There were no large mountains – no huge sections of stone that the ceiling could be carved into.

It was here, nonetheless.

As was something else.

The room was dimly lit with fire torches interspersed at even intervals, clinging to the walls with iron-clawed frames. The flames flickered wildly in a wind I could not see but one I could smell. For it delivered fell scents right up my nostrils, a gift of utter fear. It was sweat, and it was blood.

Yet it was nothing compared to the creatures that were being created in these strange cocoon-like silvery webs suspended from the ceiling.

The ceiling being so far above, it meant a great number of the creatures could be grown in here at once. They hung down like sticky light fittings.

Anders might’ve been satisfied to let me go ahead previously, but now he rushed forward, shoulders becoming rigid with a tension that climbed toward his jaw and made it look as if he would soon spit his teeth out. He would need more of a weapon against these things. For even if most of the cocoons looked as if they were still in their early stages, one or two had just cracked open in front of us. It was a terrible thing to hear and a worse thing to witness. For the cracks ran right up the sides of the cocoons, and there was this squelch as if someone had gotten a gumboot stuck in particularly silty mud. Out fell one of the glass assassins. He was a male, and he was naked, though he only had his facial features. And that was a rather polite way to point out that the rest of him wasn’t necessarily formed.

Anders had turned around to look at me. He suddenly arched an eyebrow. He said nothing, however. I was reminded of one of the facts I had run from only yesterday. Anders was meant to be one of the greatest cads in the land. But that wasn’t something to mutter about yet – for no jokes could be made. The glass assassin, despite having been born only half a second earlier, saw us and recognized one thing. Blood beat in our veins and his only purpose was to snatch it back for the Queen.

He spread his lips over his teeth. They were gummy, coated in saliva, and stringy with strands of flesh that had not formed correctly.

Horrid. But not something I had to look at for particularly long, because he thrust forward, and soon two long swords protruded out of his arm sockets.

I had seen these assassins create swords from their wrists before, but never blades quite as large and impressive as this. They caught the flickering torchlight. It made him look even more devastating.

Behind me, Anders spat.

I had no intention of dodging behind Anders. This wasn’t the first glass assassin I’d fought, regardless of the fact this chap seemed to be slightly stronger than the last one. I might’ve had a little interlude between glass assassins – a small defeat I would no longer refer to – but I was back. A fact I proved as I whirled to the side, dress slicing around my legs.

The same dress that the princess had lovingly put me in. I wondered if Anders had noticed. Because from the look of those pointy blades, this attire was about to be carved up. Anders would never see exactly how the silk hung to my form.

I thought of that – something entirely inappropriate to the situation – while I should’ve been paying attention to the act of gathering my magic instead. But the fact I was distracted was indeed the point.

It allowed me to bring up my leg, electrify my foot with charges of force, and kick it right into the left hand of the glass assassin just as he went to slice my throat.

Anders’s lips expanded wide as he no doubt got ready to scream my name, but it was irrelevant. My blow was good. It was more than a glance. I put my full force into it, and I allowed my true magic to be channeled down into the tips of my toes. It jolted up into the glass assassin’s blade, and there was a satisfying crack I imagined you could hear from across the city.

The thing screamed.

Hold still. Keep it distracted, Anders added as he sliced in from the side. He had a tall, gangly form, and while he usually stood proud unless before the Queen, I hadn’t known he could move like this. Like a loaded spring, like some Peregrine falcon. He twisted, so light on his feet, I wondered if he’d grown wings. Then he snapped one magic-covered fist forward and punched the glass assassin’s right wrist. It cracked. I might’ve delivered a significant blow – but Anders managed to down the beast entirely.

It didn’t have the time to scream. It’d only been alive – if you could call it that – for all of a few minutes. And now it was ash – ash that broke against us as Anders twisted. Two more glass assassins had been born. We must make very quick work of this, he muttered.

Why? Because the Queen will be on her way? You—

You will not worry about me. But, if she does indeed come, you will run, Lillian, and you will—

Head to the factories in Mulgavia Lane. I will destroy the blood – don’t you worry, sir. We are on the same page.

He spluttered, but he didn’t stop fighting. Rounding his shoulders and proving just how strong he was, he came up beside me, and for a fraction of a moment, we stood back-to-back. With my petite form and his rather elongated body, it might look amusing, but it was more than made up for by the fact that we both resembled candles of force. My magic was a little softer, the reds and blues and greens not quite as vibrant. They might’ve paled in comparison to Anders’s display, but they were there, and he was there, just a few centimeters away, enough that when he let out a blast of a grunt, I felt it shake into me.

Lillian, stop being suicidal. Head to the factory, and you’ll die—

Don’t you worry, sir – we're on the same page, I repeated again, borrowing a phrase of my rather worldly coven mistress.

I have no clue what that means, but you will not act without me.

Which I suppose means you must survive this mess then, sir. Come and catch me if you can, I managed to smile around my words as they slipped from my lips.

I caught just a glimpse of him, and it was enough that his face contracted with anger, but it was nowhere near as deep as it had been yesterday.

It seemed my dear master had turned a corner, and I’d turned it with him.

And speaking of turning.

Three glass assassins, all with their hands turned into blades, came at us at once.

Anders got a certain look in his eye. There was no time to communicate his plan, just to reach for me. And my body? Why, it knew precisely what to do around him. I automatically grasped his hands then grunted in surprise as he flung me up into the air. He did not let go of me. He secured his fingers even harder around mine and pumped more magic into me, using me as a fabulous conduit – or a candle, if you will. For I certainly acted as one, illuminating this cavernous expanse in a great blast. My feet also struck all three of the glass assassins as they whirled toward Anders in a dangerous dance of blades and bile.

My foot swept around, struck one evenly on the jaw and struck the others on their chests. It thrust them back. The first one cracked. He could not survive my blow and Anders’s magic. The other two fell harshly enough that they broke blades, one apiece.

I landed. Anders still had my hand, and I came to a stop just in front of him, chest puffed out as I struggled for breath, hair a mess around my cheeks, and eyes so locked on Anders, I didn’t think the world existed anymore. But it did. A moment later, after he broke his gaze off mine. For apparently he was just as flustered and amazed that had worked, too. Or there was something else about the sight of me that distracted him.

He brushed past my shoulder, rammed into one of the glass assassins, picked it up, and threw it back down. He looked like a wrestler, not that I had ever stopped and witnessed one in the past.

It was the way he moved his body. It was very apparent that he knew how to fight. And I had a thing or two to learn from him.

Other glass assassins were born on fast forward. I could tell that they were not ready. I didn’t have strong scanning magic like Anders, but my senses, if I got out of their way, seemed to be incomparable. As they