Read Fantasyland 02 The Golden Dynasty for Free Online Page B

the tent.
    I relaxed.
    Then I felt a presence seat itself behind me
and another light hand on my hip.
    “ Kah Dahksahna, my dear, you must rise, you
must eat, you must show yourself to The Horde.”
    I blinked and turned to my back, my arm
moving to cover my breasts as I stared up at a very pretty woman
with dark brown hair, hazel eyes and a gentle expression. She was
wearing the clothing of the natives and speaking my language.
    “You speak English?” My voice was scratchy
because I hadn’t used it in three days.
    Her head tipped to the side. “English?”
    Great. She didn’t know what English was. She
wasn’t here from a dream either.
    I stared at her and guessed she was maybe in
her early forties and aging very well. I also knew, in their
desperation, the women who tended me went out and found a woman who
spoke my language.
    Well, interesting to know that there was
another person in that vile place who spoke my language but not
interesting enough for me to care.
    I turned to my side again and resumed my
contemplation of nothing.
    Her hand shook my hip gently. “Kah
Dahksahna, please, you must rise. There are whispers.”
    “I don’t care,” I stated though it was more
that I didn’t understand but I didn’t care enough to understand
either.
    “I see you were sheltered,” she muttered to
herself, her fingers giving me a kindly squeeze.
    No. I wasn’t sheltered. Like Narinda, my Mom
died when I was young. It happened when I was ten. A freak
incident, the kind you never heard of unless it was on TV or in a
movie. Mom going to the bank, a robbery in progress, the robber
flipped out when Mom walked in, he turned and shot her. She died in
the ambulance. She was doing something simple, making a deposit and
then… no more Mom.
    My father owned a moving company and was not
loaded by a long shot. Therefore, he couldn’t afford to pay for
babysitters or childcare but also, with what happened to Mom, I
thought it was about him keeping me close and around people he
trusted. So I grew up in his office around his men who looked after
me, took care of me, were cool about it and I loved them. They did
their best to be appropriate around me but they were guys. Shit
happened. I heard things. It was the way of the world.
    And I grew up in that office until I started
managing that office at fifteen. Now, at thirty-five, I still
managed that office and the guys didn’t do their best to be
appropriate around me. I was older; I’d been around awhile so I was
one of the guys.
    Though one of the guys with tits and ass
that I caught some of them staring at on more than one
occasion.
    But I wasn’t sheltered.
    That said, I’d definitely been sheltered
from this. Then
again, Pop didn’t know this existed. If he did, though, he’d have sheltered me from
it. H e’d take a slash from a warrior’s sword to
protect me from it, as would any one of his boys. I knew
it.
    I wondered what he was thinking, being at
home, me not there. He was probably going out of his mind.
    “I know this is strange for you,” the woman
said.
    Right. Strange. Yeah, she hit that on the head. Strange.
    Though, I might use another word for it.
    Or several.
    “ But, you must care, kah Dahksahna,” she whispered on another
squeeze.
    “My name is Circe,” I told her quietly.
    “Pardon, my dear?”
    I sighed then repeated, “My name is Circe,
not kah Dahksahna.”
    “Circe, lovely,” she murmured. “But
Dahksahna isn’t your name, it is just you. It means ‘queen’ and you
are our queen.”
    I decided not to reply. That had been
working with the other women, no reply, eventually they’d go
away.
    Her fingers gave me another squeeze and I
felt her bend closer.
    “I remember feeling much the same as you.
Seerim, my warrior husband, was different than the Dax, of course,
but I remember this feeling, my dear. I know it is not a good
feeling. But you will come to understand it is their way.”
    “It sucks,” I muttered, forgetting about