Through Battle and Blades

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, they say. Well, I’m about to learn just how true that aphorism is.
First, I have to meet a queen in hand-to-hand combat and hope I come out as the victor because only one of us will walk away from the training grounds alive.
Second, I have to try and find a way to live with the fact that three of my four mates unwittingly betrayed me.
Then there’s the king, who’s looking me over with a speculative eye and not just as his wife’s challenger.
Most of all, there are the damn Reavers that are slowly gnawing at the edges of Strelae: killing people, burning fields, all while the capital keeps going about its business as if there’s no threat looming on the horizon. Somehow, some way, the five of us have to get the king and the people to admit there’s a problem. If we leave our response too late, we may not even get a chance to fight back.
I dream over and over of a pack of wolves running across the earth, swallowing, tearing, and chewing everything in their path, and I’m terrified that all of us will be next.