Queen

She had always been queen after her mother's death; a young princess of a dark kingdom risen to power while her cheeks were still flushed with infancy. She grew up standing tall, bright eyes full of authority and command.

He had been entirely fascinated from the first moment, when he saw her deceptively ignorant to the men behind her with those heavy glinting guns and he leapt upon them, feral, with a pair of flailing rubber mallets. He still remembered the way her mouth had set against his audacity and the way that with just a flicker of her wrist she threw a knife straight through the handle of the mallet that balanced on the palm of his hand. They had been ten.

From the beginning, she had seen past all of his protective bullshit, through the fragile and savage creature beneath, and smiled a cool, calculating smile. Distantly, he had always known that she was humoring him, playing along with the grin that had lengthened as he aged, waiting for the moment when she could lash out with her talon grip and savage the psyche within. She was a well-trained killer; it would have only taken a single strike.

The chance was never given. Still young and uncertain, something else ad rattled his cage and he'd fled, exiled, eyes wide and frightened. She hadn't realized how far under her skin he had hidden until he left, and without his quick heat she straightened her back and drew cold. By the time he saw her again, he was stronger and forged anew. She was different to him; a woman who was a child no longer, and while she was filled with a regal distance, the impetuousness that had trapped him was gone.

She had always been a queen.