SUMMARY: Until this moment, he'd never met the Queen he was meant to serve.
NOTES: This is a crossover between the Avengers (movie) and the Black Jewels series by Anne Bishop. It's what happens when you blurt an idea out to your f-list and they promptly encourage you to run with it. It's completed, and in thirteen parts, with characters from all through the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and others besides) turning up. There's a sequel planned, but we'll see how much time I have this holiday season. I hope you enjoy the story!
Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court
Chapter 1: Meant To Serve
Standing at the edge of the thriving kitchen garden, Nick felt his instincts – the instincts of a Sapphire-Jewelled, warrior-trained Warlord Prince of the Blood – prick to sharp awareness.
He didn't need to kneel down and press his hand against the soil to sense the vibrancy in the cleared patch of land here. It had been years since he'd felt it, but he knew the feel of ground that had been fed by a Queen.
Many others wouldn't.
In the decades after the Scarlet Purges, too many Queens had gone into hiding. A few had stood up to protect the land and form courts, only to be swept away in another Purge, another slaughter. Those left had been too weak, too old, or too dispirited to bond to the land or to the Blood males left seeking the anchoring connection to a Queen. And in their absence, the land had suffered, and the Blood – male and female alike – with it.
Yet in this cottage, a Queen survived, giving her strength to the land, following the traditions of the Blood.
Deep within his soul, Nick felt a stirring of something he'd thought long dead – hope.
It explained why Phil had sounded almost giddy when he'd spoken with Nick the previous day. The Tiger Eye-Jewelled Prince had given Nick instructions on how to reach the simple cottage in the woods and told him to come as soon as he could get away, but said nothing more.
A Queen – an unbroken Queen with the will and strength to have survived this long...
Nick stood and cast a sending on a Tiger Eye psychic thread, delicately attuned to a familiar mind. *Phil?*
*Nick!* Phil's response was instant and relief sang in his voice. *Thank the Darkness. We're under attack at the landen village in the valley! She's holding them off – Mother Night but someone taught her to shield – but she's draining fast, and she won't let me take over. Hurry!*
Nick leaped for the Sapphire Wind almost before Phil finished talking.
He'd seen the village when he dropped from the Sapphire Wind at the edge of the forest. A little hamlet down in the valley, with sheep dotting the hills and simple fields spreading across the plain, he'd thought nothing of it then. Landen villages were found everywhere, scattered throughout the Territory among the Blood villages, towns, and cities that existed all through the realm.
It wasn't unknown for landens to attack Blood – the history between the two races was hardly an easy one. And she was a Queen living without a court, without males to serve and defend her, too close to a landen village...
He dropped from the Winds a little way out from the village. He'd slid a Sapphire skin-tight shield over one created of his Birthright Purple Dusk Jewel, but skipped the sight-shield. His blade gleamed with the punch of Jewelled power, while his temper rose with the dangerous lethality of a Warlord Prince.
And then he saw what he faced.
He'd expected to face landens – angry and embittered, using the force of numbers to press against a lone Queen and the Prince she stubbornly refused to let defend her. Instead Nick stared at the army spread out across the fields and paddocks around the village, a uniform sea of males: dark-haired, sallow-skinned, their faces with the same blank cast to them.
Hydra.
Hundreds of them around the village – perhaps even a thousand. The clear Jewels in their collars gleamed like the battle-light in their blue eyes as they sent shot after shot of power into the Summer-sky barrier that encircled the landen village like a mother's arm around her child.
Phil was right; someone had taught her how to shield.
They just hadn't taught her how to accept a male's help.
Even as Nick watched, he felt the shield falter – a patchy flicker before she bolstered it – although some Hydra still broke through into the empty streets of the village and were fought by the landens of the village.
He grimaced as he reached out with a Summer-sky psychic thread.
*Lady!*
He felt her surprise – and her caution. *Prince?*
*Let Phil take over!*
*He wears the Rose. I wear Summer-sky.*
*And your strength is running out. Let Phil shield you.* He dropped to the Rose psychic thread so Phil could hear them. *Coulson, take over!*
*I'm behind your shields, Lady,* Phil's voice was calm, the steady calm of a Prince, able to reassure as a Warlord Prince couldn't while riding the killing edge. *You can let go.*
She held on, the stubborn little chit. Nick's sight hazed scarlet, his protective instincts stung to the quick. He didn't have time for this – the Queen didn't have time for this. *I'll leave you to argue it,* he told Phil on a spear thread, male to male. *I'm going in.*
He felt rather than heard Phil's assent as he strode down towards the beleaguered village and the morass of Hydra that stood between him and the sheltering Queen.
The Hydra had noticed him, a small detachment breaking off to take him on directly.
The first of them died as Nick lashed out the instant they were in range. The crosswise cut slid through flesh and bone, and the second Hydra to reach him died as he swept his blade back. Eight more Hydra followed the first before one even got a hit in. The blow bounced off Nick's shields and he gutted the man with his next blow.
He lost track of time in the pulse of his blood and the punch of his Jewelled strength; a Warlord Prince of the Blood leaving a swathe of death and destruction behind him as he made his way step by steady step towards the village.
And still the Hydra came at him.
Their numbers were endless and their willingness to die unparalleled. Nick wasn't about to quarrel with that; he was more than willing to kill them by the thousand if needed.
But not until he was sure the Queen was safe.
He slammed through the shield surrounding the village – no longer Summer-sky, but Phil's familiar Rose – and turned, intending to find this Queen who hadn't had the sense to run when faced with an army of Hydra. Instead he found himself facing wary, armed landen males, from the old and grizzled greybeard who stood front and centre, to the beardless youths who handled their scythes with the same kind of familiarity with which Nick handled his weapons.
"Where is she?"
"That depends on what your business is with her."
"My business with the Queen is my business." Nick managed to keep from snarling at the males who stood in his way. If they'd been Blood they'd have had more sense than to stand between a Warlord Prince and the Queen he was seeking. "Where. Is. She?"
"Right here," said a cool, husky voice, and a slim, long-fingered hand came up to ease the leader of the landens aside.
Nick's first thought was that there was no way this slip of a girl could be the Queen he was seeking. Adolescent and skinny, dressed in old trousers and a shapeless shirt as though she was some kind of labourer? Mother Night, was she even old enough to wear Jewels?
Then a pair of wary grey eyes fixed on him, and Nick felt something squeeze his soul.
He'd heard about males finding the Queen they were meant to serve – about witches who tugged at something in a Blood male. It wasn't necessarily a sexual attraction but a psychic one: the connection between a Queen and the males that belonged to her in spirit.
He'd served in several Queens' courts through the years – both officially and unofficially. He knew what it meant to serve a Queen. But until this moment, he'd never met the Queen he was meant to serve.
It threw him for a loop – the certainty of it – and he took refuge in temper. "What do you think you're doing?"
He instantly regretted it as the landens' weapons came up in wary protectiveness. Even Phil, familiar with Nick's temper, winced. But she didn't flinch although her eyes narrowed. "I'm protecting the land, Prince. As are you."
It punched him in the gut, although he probably shouldn't have been surprised. A Queen who would care for the land would care for the people on the land, too – and would recognise a Warlord Prince who did the same.
"And did you happen to have an exit strategy, or were you planning to die in here when Phil's shields failed and the Hydra overran the village?"
*Easy, Nick,* Phil said on a spear thread as one of the landen men made a motion like he was considering running Nick through with the pitchfork he held.
*I'll be easy when she's no longer threatened by an army of Hydra trying to kill her!*
"Coulson said that help was on the way." Her head tilted in challenge. "Did you manage to call for help before you got yourself stuck in here with the rest of us?"
He snorted. "Lady, I am your help." Sword arm and shield.
"Lady—" One of the landens stepped forward, touching her arm – a man old enough to be her grandfather. "Just because we're stuck here doesn't mean you need be. Now that Prince Coulson's friend is here, you should leave with them."
"No." Sharp and cold, her rejection of that idea was absolute. "You don't have the defences to deal with the Hydra."
"You need to get away."
"I'm not leaving you to die by the Hydra!"
"Lady, we mayn't be Blood," the old man said to her, although his gaze rested on Nick, "but we know the value of a Queen."
She frowned, and Nick sensed the uneasiness that crawled through her at the old man's words. "I'm not a Queen. I don't have a court."
Not yet you don't, Nick thought. She was too young for a court yet, but when she was old enough to set one up, she would have the pick of the land in males.
Now, if Nick could just keep her alive long enough.
*Phil? How're your shields?*
*Holding. We have at least a couple of hours to persuade her to leave.* A pause. *Unless you have a better plan.*
Nick didn't quite smile. *Oddly enough, I do.*
"Lady," he interrupted the growing argument. More males had begun chiming in, trying to persuade her to leave, and of course the stubborn chit wasn't budging. Even if the landens knew the value of a Queen, they still didn't know how to handle one.
"Prince."
"I can deal with the Hydra here." It would drain him down to breaking point, but he could do it. He would do it. "But I want something in exchange."
Grey eyes stared at him, disbelieving. "You'd bargain with these people's lives?"
"If that's what it takes to get you to safety, yes."
His words hung in the air between them. Then her lips pressed together. "What do you want?"
"When the Hydra around this village are dealt with, we have a conversation, you and me."
"A conversation?"
"You know. Lips moving, words spoken – conversation. In public with witnesses if you prefer."
"Why?"
"That," he said with careful deliberation, "is what we need to have the conversation about."
She struggled with it for a moment – between her reluctance to give way to the males who wanted her safely gone, and Nick's alternative, which she distrusted. But she was a true Queen of the Blood; her protective instincts won out over her pride and although her mouth pinched tight, she nodded. "Deal with the Hydra, Prince."
*I'm guessing you're not going to go out and fight every last one of them,* Phil said dryly as Nick turned and strode towards the shield.
*I was thinking of using Stark's Expanding Circle.* He felt Phil's surprise.
*I thought it was Stark's Expanding Half-Circle.*
*I'm modifying it.* Nick paused. *If anything happens to me, you get her out of here, you get her back to the residence, and you get Stark on-side.*
He felt Phil's grimace. *You know Stark's been unstable since he was taken. Unpredictable – even more than he used to be. And with a Queen in the mix... I was thinking Natasha.*
*Risky or not, Stark still has the connections and the strength. And he's a Warlord Prince.*
Stark would instinctively understand the value of a good Queen, even if he was damaged, even if he and Nick didn't see eye to eye on anything anymore.
*Of course, I won't need to, because nothing is going to happen to you, right?*
Staring at the Hydra battering themselves against the shield an arm's length away, Nick nearly grinned. *We'll see. Will you open your inner shields to me?*
He felt the careful lowering of the shields around Phil's inner barriers – a gesture of trust between two men of very disparate strengths. With Phil's shields open to Nick, he was utterly vulnerable to an attack from the darker-Jewelled male, which was why this was rarely done, and only with someone utterly trusted.
Once inside Phil's personal shields, Nick could sense Phil's Rose shield – could feel the attacks of the Hydra trying to break through as though they were battering against him. If they got through, Phil and the landens and Nick's Queen would die.
And all this would happen over Nick's dead body.
He lifted his hands to the barrier between him and the Hydra, fingertips brushing the edge of the shield as he mentally plunged into the abyss, down to the inner web of Sapphire that represented his Jewelled strength.
As he turned just above the web of his core, Nick looked up at the Rose circle that was Phil's shield around the village. Within that circle gleamed a Rose star and a Summer-sky star, surrounded by the flitting shadows that were the landens of the village.
Beyond the edges of the circle, a thousand clear stars glimmered – the Hydra minds, neither Jewelled Blood, nor quite unJewelled, either. He used Phil's shield as the boundary line, grounding his power just outside that Rose-coloured line; then he punched his strength up, up, up, past the Summer-sky, Rose, and Tiger Eye; past the Yellow and the White, up, up, up into the Clear-Jewelled minds of the Hydra.
Minds shattered like little glass cups – too much untrammelled power pouring through them – and they died. One, ten, a hundred, ten hundred... Nick felt the rush of their deaths – their brief clutch at life before they were snuffed out like candles in a gale force wind, leaving only smoking ruins behind.
Nick opened his eyes, knowing what he would see.
A psychic attack manifested in the physical world, too – and a battlefield of corpses lay before him, the grass coated with their blood, lying where they'd fallen, bleeding from their mouths and nostrils, their eyes and ears.
Behind Nick someone – several someones – began vomiting.
He knew what he'd see when he turned. Fear in the eyes of the landen males. Fear in the eyes of his Queen.
It was an common reaction. Nick was a Warlord Prince of the Blood – a caste known for violence as much as for loyalty and fierce protectiveness. He was a Blood male who'd spent over half his life fighting the Hydra. This kind of death and destruction was one side of what he was.
To a light-Jewelled Queen, it would be a terrifying display of the power of a Sapphire-Jewelled Warlord Prince of the Blood. Not a male she would want anywhere near her, let alone serving in her court.
Everything has a price.
It was an age-old saying among the Blood – particularly among males who served. But would his Queen's rejection be the price Nick paid for protecting her?
He swayed on his feet and nearly jerked away as an arm came around his back and a head ducked beneath his arm. For a moment his mind spun. Then she tilted her head up at him. "For a Warlord Prince who's supposed to be a warrior," she said, her voice brisk with temper, "what you really seem to need is a keeper."
Relief eased the pressure beneath his breastbone, made his knees weak and his tongue reckless. "Willing to take on the job, Lady?"
She paused at that. Behind him, he heard Phil turn a laugh into a cough and ignored it, focusing on her. She looked up at him with narrowed eyes as though only just realising what he was, what he was offering her.
Deciding.
"If I have to," she said at last.
Good enough. Nick allowed himself a smile. "You got a name?"
Her lips pressed together for a moment. "Maria," she said. "Maria Hill."
"Nick Fury." And the words hovered on his lips. My life is in your service.
But now wasn't the time and here wasn't the place – not with the landens eyeing him warily, and her shoulders so slim and tense beneath his arm.
Still, as she turned her head to ask for water and somewhere for him to sit, Nick turned his head a little – just enough so he could inhale the rich psychic scent of a Queen who wasn't afraid of him or what he was.
His Queen.
tbc
