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

table next to me. “Our society valued status and power above all else, but the power my mother received changed her, or maybe she was always that way, and I just never noticed.”

She hopped up on the table and lay back, staring at the stone ceiling above us for a minute. Her eyes held an emotion I couldn’t place, but it wasn’t a happy one.

“I loved my parents, but my family was a fine example of everything that was wrong with my people. My father only cared about advancing his station, and he couldn’t have been happier when my mother became queen, though it was short-lived. My father…he died shortly after my mother became queen.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, absentmindedly placing my hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said, placing her hand on my own. It had grown hotter, but I made no move to remove it. “Though after his death, and as awful as it is to say, some semblance of the mother I knew returned to me. I was so happy to have her back that I ignored what was happening around me.”

Her fingers clutched at my hand, curling around my fingers to wind in between them. She held my hand the way a lover does, and my heart skipped. I pulled back on reflex, and she looked up, a little confused.

“Sorry,” I said, but offered no explanation.

“It’s okay. I just feel comfortable around you.”

“Right.” I coughed. “So, this story is leading to why you lost your name?”

She inclined her head. “ I have to explain what led to it, or it won’t make any sense. Our people kept to themselves for the most part. We stayed secure in our home, the Nymirian Forest, but my mother began to expand, using our army to push well past our borders and toward Aldrust.”

Nymirian Forest? Never heard of it. Only thing next to Aldrust is the Badlands, nothing but sand and nightmares out there. I leaned back on the table, though worn, the sharp scent of brass was evident as I traced my finger over the nicks and scratches in the metal. “I’m guessing Aldrust didn’t take too kindly to that,” I said.

“That they didn’t, even though the majority of their kingdom is underground, they still owned the land above and pushed back hard. A few drops of blood were all it took for our kingdoms to go to war. But the races of the Hive were far stronger than the dwarves.”

“There are other races?” I asked, interrupting her.

She frowned at me. “Yes, there are…were five, including entomancers, but this will go much faster if you’d stop interrupting,” she said, grumbling.

“Sorry, I’m only human.”

Her frown thawed a bit. “It’s okay, I just don’t like remembering all of this. It still hurts.”

I knew that pain only too well, and I felt a twinge of guilt at basically making her tell me. “Look, you don’t have to continue—"

“Its fine, Duran. I’m almost to the end anyway.”

She shifted on the table, drawing her knees to her chest and resting her head on them. “When the war broke out, we had the upper hand, but eventually, we dragged Yllsaria into it as well. The elves and the dwarves banded together to defeat us. And they did.”

“They won the war?”

“Just barely, but yes. We’d exhausted ourselves and lost nearly all our forces. We’d brought the world to the brink of annihilation, and because of that, they demanded the eradication of our entire species.

“We couldn’t stop them from burning our forest to the ground and slaughtering us to the last. My mother took me and fled. We ran to the sacked city of Iryn, thinking it would be safe, but the dwarves quickly found us.”

“What happened after that?”

“We were punished. For instigating the war, my mother received the worst punishment possible: she was erased. Using black magic, everything she was, her entire being, was struck from the annals of time. It’s because of that I can’t remember what she looked like, what she sounded like. I don’t even remember her name.”

“Is that why you can’t remember your own name?”

She nodded, her obsidian eyes downcast as she stared at her bare feet before standing from the table. “My mother named me, and because it came from her, it too was erased. The only reason I still exist at all is that I’m not just a creation of my mother. The only thing my father was ever good for…and you already know my punishment. To be sealed away and bound as a slave to whoever freed me.”

Her eyes held such pain and loneliness as she walked away from me that I couldn’t stand it. Something in me reacted to that ocean of misery, and my body moved on its own. I jumped down from the table, crossed the room, and wrapped my arms around her.

The heat from her body was scalding, but I put it out of mind. She froze at first, going stiff as a board for a full minute, before relaxing and returning my hug. I could tell she was trying to remain strong, but before long, she started to cry softly, fighting her tears.

“It’s okay,” I said, hugging her tighter.

At that, she broke down and started sobbing. Clutching at me, her fingers dug into my back, taking handfuls of my shirt as she cried into my chest. Crying away a millennium worth of terrible memories while I just stood there and let her.

It felt like the most natural thing in the world, and that petrified me. Why am I going so far for this girl? I kept people at arm's length for a reason and never let anyone get this close to me. Even my guildmates, who I loved as family, never really got that close to me. So why? Why her? Why now?

I had