Hive Knight: A Dark Fantasy LitRPG (Trinity of the Hive Book 1) Grayson Sinclair (book recommendations website .TXT) 📖

I turned around to find Eris’s father directly behind me. We lined up almost perfectly. I realized, with a wave of sweeping relief that she hadn’t been staring at me at all. She’d been staring through me at her husband, who was looking a little worse for wear since the previous time I had seen him.

His light brown hair was much longer than in the previous scene; it fell past his shoulders, looking lank and greasy, and his face was sunken as if he’d been starved. The look in his dulled blue eyes was vacant, and his once-beautiful clothes were little more than shredded and soiled rags.

He looked nothing short of a dead man walking. Empty and void of life or hope.

As Eris’s mother reached the throne, she sat upon it in a dramatic, flowing fashion. Exaggerated motions portrayed not a self-assured monarch, but a pretender playing at being queen.

I’d met true monarchs; I knew what a ruler should look like, and this woman did not measure up. Her beauty was her weapon, and I could tell she was a master in her form of combat, but beauty alone wouldn’t make her a ruler.

Once she had so elegantly arranged herself on the throne, she barked an order, and immediately, everyone knelt and bowed their heads. All except for her husband, the walking corpse, and for just a moment, some fire returned to his eyes.

He hefted his chin proudly and stared down his wife, whose face held cold and righteous fury toward her defiant husband. She barked out another command, and everyone raised their heads. She then motioned for one of her aides, a spindly man with long features. He approached her nervously and bowed his head as she spoke.

When she had finished saying whatever it was to the man, he turned and called out. He was looking at the two intimidating entomancers in the heavy armor. They nodded their heads and moved to open the door.

Eris walked in, wearing a lovely flowing dress. Black with golden accents that matched her hair perfectly. Her hair was done up around her head, and she looked adorable. Judging by her appearance, I put her age around fourteen or so. Not quite out of adolescence just yet.

She walked calmly down the carpeted room toward her mother, holding a neutral expression, but I knew that face was a mask. If she was hiding behind a mask, she knew what was about to happen and steeled herself for it.

As she approached her mother, she bowed and moved to stand by her mother’s side. With her so close to her mother, you could see even more the resemblances the two shared. You could also see, so sharply contrasted, how utterly different they were to each other. When Eris had settled in a small chair by the side of the throne, the festivities continued.

The queen bellowed out more commands, and one of the two knights moved away from the door, while the other stayed in place. The knight who moved lumbered over to Eris’s father and grasped him by the neck, dragging him in front of the queen.

The rest of the patrons were shocked, with bewildered looks across their faces as her husband was unceremoniously dumped in on the white rug. He stayed huddled on the ground until the queen barked once more. The decision weighed heavily in the man’s cerulean eyes. He was torn between obeying the queen and accepting his fate with grace or to defy her one last time and disobey her orders and continue staying on the floor.

Finally, the man seemed unwilling to lie down and die like a dog. He rose to his feet, and a bit of honor breathed some life back into him. My respect for the man grew, if only by a sliver.

I’d have gladly killed the man myself and done it with a smile, but it has to be said that anyone who would stare down the face of their executioner with dignity is worthy of respect, regardless of the heinous crimes committed while alive.

Death is the great equalizer. To face it boldly and without fear is to be commended.

Eris’s father looked at the queen with no hesitation or remorse for his actions, whatever they had been, that had led him to this moment. He stared down the woman he had once been bonded to. She rose from the throne in a single fluid motion and sauntered over to stand before the man with nothing short of victory in her eyes.

The queen raised her hand, and for a moment, nothing happened. Then, strands of black chitin exploded out of every pore of her arm and hand, coating every inch in under a second, reshaping itself to form a wicked black sword. The queen raised the sword aloft, before swiftly bringing the blade down into her once-mate’s neck.

Thick blood rained from the severed artery, coating the room and the queen in the hot and sticky mess; bright red painted her gown and face. As soon as it splashed across her mouth, she lost herself in the frenzy of the kill. She pounced on the dying man and proceeded to stab him over and over again.

She kept going until he was nothing more than scraps of shredded meat and blood. Only once she was satiated with her kill did she cease her maddened assault on the dead man.

She stood back up, back to the regal posture as before, though still spattered in crimson gore. Without a word, the chitin that was her weapon melted back through the pores in her skin, as if it had never been there at all. She motioned her hand as she turned to walk back to her throne, immediately there was bustling about by several of her aides to clean up the mess that was now cooling on the once-white rug.

Before she sat down on her