Home > Queen Heir (NYC Mecca #1)(12)

Queen Heir (NYC Mecca #1)(12)
Author: Jaymin Eve, Leia Stone

Don’t panic. I had thirty warriors left in the castle and the Manhattan vortex was safe – the queen was safe. Then I got an idea. Schooling my expression, I sent instruction for the remaining thirty of my warriors to go on foot to the border of Manhattan and face off with the thirty Brooklyn bear warriors. Now each of our warriors were facing one another. In order to make them engage in a fight, it would take another turn.

Just as I expected, Lucille used her turn to engage war. The game would simulate fighting for the duration and predict losses based on statistics. Thirty against thirty was even. Both sides would suffer heavy bloodshed.

My turn. I took my Red Queen from her safe castle and placed her on the Manhattan vortex. Lucille was trying to hide her look of pride, but I saw it. Sometimes if you wanted a task done right, you had to do it yourself. The game knew the strength of each player. One warrior would kill one warrior, but it would take thirty warriors to stop the powerful Red Queen. With only ten bears at the Staten Island vortex, I could easily send my queen through and kill them. Any time you moved your queen, you got two turns. I used one to move her to the vortex and my next to send her through to the Staten Island vortex right in front of the bear king’s palace.

Lucille could send her remaining ten warriors from inside the palace to the vortex to fight my queen, or use her turn to engage the fight with the guards who were already there. She surprised me by doing neither. She instead pulled her king from the castle and placed him at the vortex facing my queen. Smart. He would be better protected with his measly ten guards there. I knew that if my queen could kill the bear king, the war would be over, because the bear king’s power would begin to drain just as ours had the moment the queen fell.

Because Lucille moved her king, she got two moves, and she used her next one to engage war. I sat back calmly, watching it play out as my Red Queen began to pulverize the ten warriors protecting the bear king. The mecca board knew that the Red Queen was more powerful than the bear king because she had three boroughs in her power – more power running through her veins.

It was my turn but I had no more moves to play out. This would end soon; I had faith in my queen’s power. Just as I thought it, the game opened a panel at the Staten Island vortex and ten dead bear warriors fell down. I smiled. Now the bear king and my Red Queen were locked in a vicious battle. My queen did have some depleted energy from killing the ten warriors, but nothing that would compromise this battle.

A player could sit idle for two minutes before being forced to choose their next move. I had one minute left. I wanted to give my queen all of that time, because if Lucille was allowed to play again she would bring her final ten warriors out of the castle to protect the king, and then I might really be in trouble, forced to retreat back to Manhattan – a coward. With ten seconds left, I held my breath as my queen raised her mighty arms and took off the king’s head with her sword. This weakened the remaining bears on the board, and the battle at the bridge began to turn in the wolves’ favor. I smiled. The game board opened up and swallowed the bear king and that was it.

I had won.

The two councilmen stood and bowed to me. “Well played. Not many people move their queen from the safety of her castle.”

I returned the bow. “Sometimes you have to make a bold but calculated move for the bigger picture.”

I’d never lost faith in the strength of my queen.

The council exchanged glances, and while it was hard to read anything on their faces, I could sense approval. I was then dismissed, but not before passing my Bronx warriors and getting a cheer. I gave them a half smile and left the room feeling a lot better than when I walked in.

Chapter Three

Never trust a bear.

Over the next twenty-five minutes we waited outside the large great hall doors. At the moment I was standing with Calista, Finn, and Selene. The overconfident purple heir had already had her turn at the challenge and said she did brilliantly – her words, not the council’s. Now we were awaiting Breanna’s results. Calista stood erect as an alert pinged on her tablet.

Her head tilted to the side as she read through the notice. I could see the slight surprise on her face.

“What is it?” I asked, wondering if something else had happened. Was there another attack?

She lifted her face, and thankfully there was no anger or stress upon it. “Normally one of the heirs would be sent home after the first trial, but it seems they are letting all of you stay because the Summit trials are designed for four heirs.” Her fingers flew across her tablet and I knew she was calculating odds and inputting information for me to read over later. “There will be at least two more trials, and then the final battle.”

Selene shrugged like she couldn’t care less. Her advisor, a non-descript male whose name I couldn’t recall, stepped in and whispered to her. Still the heir’s expression was unchanging. I don’t think she thought for one second she wouldn’t be in the final battle. Just then the doors opened. I could already tell from the red-ringed eyes and the way her head hung in misery that Breanna had not done very well at the war strategy. I didn’t want Breanna to be queen, but I understood her agony. Going back to your pack as a failed heir was the worst thing any of us could do. And if she’d just come last in the first trial, she was already way behind and would have to work extra hard to even have a hope of making it into the final battle. If she failed out of the Summit, when she went back to Queens she would no doubt be challenged for her alpha status from another dominant female. Once she was stripped of her borough and heir title, there’d be nothing worthy about her except her blood.

   
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