Melissa Wright - Queen of Iron and Blood

Aesops Fables: The Kingdom of the Lion

The Lion, as king of the beasts, set up a kingdom where he proclaimed that all animals, friends and enemies alike, should live together in perfect peace and harmony. The Hare said, Ive longed for this day where the weak take their place at the side of the strong without fear.

And then the Hare ran for his life.

Hannah was standing by the window, staring out into a world so changed from anything shed ever known. The sky was there, still and blue, the only constant among the tumult of the last twenty-seven days. It was cerulean, like a painting, bright and promising, all the things she remembered it being as a child. Shed never been one for crayons, but that sky would have made it onto her parents fridge.

Hannahs mother was in the military. Her father. Two of her uncles. Crayon-aged Hannah wouldnt have touched a gun.

A black-winged bird slammed into the glass inches from Hannahs face, the noise making her fingers tighten around the stock of her M4. She wanted to turn away from the window, from the disingenuousness of that promising sky, and cross the darkened room. But Hannah was on watch. She straightened, eyes narrowed against the light of a hidden sun, and another bird smacked into the glass with a dull thud.

Thud. Thud, thud, thud.

Captain, Hannah called over her shoulder. Captain!

She walked backward, pacing slowly, heel-first. There was debris scattered over this floor, over every floor in every standing structure since the monsters had come. The monsters theyd chased to the gateway. The monsters that werent supposed to come back.

Hannah pulled the gun up to her shoulder, leaving a good ten feet between her and that glass.

Shed never wanted to join the army. She never would have.

Now she didnt have a choice. The Breach had made her. That was what theyd called it, as if these creatures had broken a contract, knocked a hole in a wall. Hannah had seen the chaos. Breach was not a strong enough word. When the monsters had fallen from the sky, they had wreaked havoc. Trees had been uprooted, buildings razed, people flayed open in the streets.

Hannah had watched the monsters as theyd toyed with her neighbors; shed seen them up close. Theyd not Marked her, or seized her, or killed her. But theyd taken her choice.

Now, there was nothing to do but this. Nothing but to save herself and the people who were left.

Captain! she yelled a third time, irritation clear in her voice as she pushed her helmet away from her brow. The captain came up behind her, finally, his boots muted against the damp concrete floor.

What is it, Mitchell?

Birds, she told him.

He shifted, coming into her peripheral vision as two more bodies slammed against the glass. He nodded. Its happening at East Creek, too. Nothing to be alarmed about.

Nothing new, he meant. Nothing to add. Nothing to necessitate one of their team trekking across two open lots to report to a higher-ranking officer. He stood beside her for several long moments in the stale air, both of them watching the dark shapes striking the glass. It was reinforced, it wouldnt breakwhich was why they were herebut that didnt make it less disturbing to watch.

They look dazed, she said quietly.

He nodded again. Nodding was the captains thing. Hannah suspected it was because he had no better idea about what was happening than she did.

Hannah, though, did have a better idea than the soldiers at East Creek. She stared at the glass, thinking she might have a better idea than even those fool scientists and high-ranking officials the military had sent to ground zero. Because Hannah had been in close contact with one of them. A creature.

Maybe the only one who mattered.

Weeks after the original invasion, after the Breach and all that followed, Hannah had been in one of the trucks sent to ground zero. She had known the other soldiers for only a matter of days, but they were not easy days. She and a seventeen-year-old redhead named Riley had become close. Shed relied on him, shed realized later, in a way shed never meant to. And when Riley had told her what happened, when it had turned out he needed her, Hannah could not keep herself from promising she would help. She didnt think she regretted it, but it was hard to be sure.

Shed followed Riley across the storm-beaten land, home after home destroyed to the point they were no more than lumber strewn over pads of concrete, and into the one house that had weathered the Breach. It stood, albeit marked by the event and missing half a roof over the upstairs bedrooms, and theyd walked in to search for Rileys sister Mackenzie. Theyd found her. With a creature.

Hunter, shed called him, as if he were merely a man. And he did look more like a man than a beasthed no wings or horns like the others who had attacked. Hed been dressed in jeans and tee shirt, not capes and furs and war paint. But Hannah had seen the marks glowing through his skin. Shed felt the energy radiating from him.

Hannah had shot him.

Her fingers tightened around the M4 at the memory. Shed never shot a man before, but her mother and father had shown her how it was done. She had hit a target enough to know shed aimed correctly. But the bullet had missed. Hunter, that being from a hole in the sky, had curved its trajectory around him. Her gun was useless, she knew it, and yet Hannah stood in this darkened room and gripped it like it was the end of the world. Because it was the end of the world.

Tell me again, her captain said beside her. Hannah relaxed her fingers around the stock of her weapon, chagrined shed let him see her agitated. Talk it through, he told her. Dont let it be fear.

Hannah gritted her teeth, but she knew he was right. It would paralyze her if she let it. The first event, the Breach, Hannah had been too shocked to understand. And shed had her family, a full support system and the safety of their home. But this time, when the monsters had returned, Hannah had been alone. And shed been closer to the Resurgence. Shed been at ground zero. The sky opened, she said, stopping when another bird hit the glass.

She realized shed been waiting for it to happen, holding each breath. She sighed. It was a soundless blast of air, a buzzing over our skin, and then the boom. She hadnt told them all of it. She hadnt told them about the creature, Hunter, who had brought them to safety before hed opened the gate. She hadnt told them about how hed saved Hannah and the others, how hed gotten countless men to run and hide and stay safely out of the way. The creature had brought them here, behind the shelter of this reinforced glass, his eyes glowing with a light so blue that each of them could see it was unnatural, and theyd been so terrified theyd followed him anyway. No one had included it in their report. Hannah didnt know if it was because the creature had saved them, or if it was the stories theyd heard about exposed humans being quarantined and tested, ormore troublingif that strange draw the creature had seemed to have over Riley and his sister had affected the rest of them too.