The Dark Queens, Tome 2: The Passionate Queen

Chapter 1

Ragoth

I'd stolen two golden apples from Zeus' favoured orchard. If father learned of my theft, he'd skin me alone and hang my hide out to dry.

For that reason, I'd snuck through the keyhole separating my realm from this one. An odd place I'd heard of in my lesson books called Kingdom. Where magic and monsters, like me, rammed freely, without the threat of tutors hauling me back by the scruff to teach me just how vaunted my family line was, what an honour it was to merely be me, to have the blood of my foremothers running through my veins... blah blah blah. If I'd not run, I'd have eaten one of them in a fit of temper.

I lay here, in a field full of flowers that bore faces. I'd heard of this wonderland before. That is was dangerous and not a place for one to go tromping through alone, lest the jabberwocky come and get you.

I snorted, taking a gluttonous bite of an apple, masticating like a cow would, just because I knew how much it offended my mother when I did it and she was not here to stop me.

I was a man.

Very nearly pledge into manhood now, only there more years left to go.

How dare they tell me how to eat!

Why, I'd seen the face of that fearsome beast. Rocky, as I now thought of him. He'd had a sensuously long neck, like that of a snake, with a massive head that looked like a very distant relation to my bearded cousins. It'd been a deep, heavy red in color, and could, I suppose, be viewed as something fearful to a weak human.

The beast had taken on look at me, sniffed the air with its rather broad nostrils, and let out a shriek that'd nearly made my ears bleed. It'd then turned tail and trotted off like a chicken with its neck lopped off.

Chuckling, I swallowed the first apple, core and all. The fruit was meant to feed the immortal bellies of the gods. One bite of it was said to be sufficient to sate your hunger for at least a week.

I was still hungry.