Meanmna: Book One of the Daearen Realms (23 page)

“What? I’m fine. See?
” I asked the group. There wasn’t a response from the peanut gallery. There was complete silence. “Could somebody say something please?” All I heard were crickets. “Did I just do something wrong? I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m totally screwing this up, aren’t I?”

There was
a collective “No.”

“Okay
, then.” I waited for somebody to say something.

Thank the goddess for
Elwin. He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Didn’t I tell you she was amazing? She did not lose her magic or her health in accomplishing that feat.” My stomach chose that moment to growl loudly. “Or her appetite!”

There were mostly smiles and
I only heard a couple of chuckles until I elbowed Elwin playfully in the stomach then there was all out laughter.

“
Seriously though, I’m starving. Anyone else hungry?” Can we order pizza? I really liked those pink and purple stripped thingies we had on it last time. Can we get that again?”

“Sweetheart, you’re the queen of Daearen,” my dad said.

“So?”

“You can get whatever you want, whenever you want it,” Elwin said.

“Pizza.” I nodded, turned, and started walking to the ballroom entrance.

“We have cake too, as long as the kitchen wa
sn’t ransacked,” my father said.

“Cake?”
I turned around.

“It’s your birthday,” Dad said.

“Does there happen to be skee ball, a claw machine, or Time Cop in the castle?” I looked around at confused faces. “What? I always wanted a princess pizza birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. A couple of arcade-type games in a castle doesn’t seem like a far stretch. I don’t expect a seven-foot-tall cartoon mouse to be walking around or anything but—” A horrible thought came to me. “There isn’t, right?”

“Isn’t what?” Elwin asked.

“A seven-foot-tall cartoonish mouse-like creature in Daearen?”

Everyone chuckled.

“No, there isn’t. And you’re too late,” Lilly said.

“Too late for what?” Exasperated, I threw up my hands.
“What else? Seriously.”

“You’re not a princess anymore; you’re a queen.” Lilly did the
heart-fist-bow, then smiled and said, “No Time Cop or claw machine. There was Ms. Pacman though when I was a kid, it might still be here.”

“
It is,” my father said and everyone looked at him. “I can have that and the skee ball machine moved out of my room into the arcade. Your mother taught me to play. I love those damn games.” Everyone laughed.

“Queen
Birthday pizza party at the palace arcade it is. And there’s the added bonus of a wedding reception. Let’s go.” I turned and strode across the courtyard.

Elwin caught up to me and said, “We’ll have time before the pizza
is done to go over some intelligence.”

I stopped, turned sharply, and looked at him. “N
o, none of
that
tonight. Tonight is our wedding night and I want to celebrate
that
with friends. Today is my eighteenth birthday and I want to celebrate
that
with friends. I just became a queen . . . not totally settled on how I feel about it but, regardless, I want to celebrate
that
with friends, too. We didn’t fix anything tonight. We have not solved any of the real problems of Daearen. We stopped one turned fey from taking the throne, but it was not a problem-solving night. It was a distraction from the real war that has been raging here. Tonight, I want to celebrate the
good
things. I don’t want to discuss how we won one small fight in a life-and-death battle with the fate of the world at stake—at least not for the next two or three hours.” Elwin gave me a confused look. I stood on my tiptoes, he leaned down, and I whispered in his ear, “That’s the plan until we go to bed. There, we should act like it’s the last night on the planet. I think that could be fun, don’t you?” I gave Elwin’s earlobe a small bite and blew in his ear.

Elwin shivered, let out a throaty groan, and picked me up so we were eye to eye. “We could always have pizza sent to the room. Are you positive you want to celebrate tonight?”

I nodded and gave him a soft kiss. Elwin had fire in his eyes as he tangled his hand in my hair and pulled me into a hard, wanting, “holy crap” kind of kiss. He set me on my feet when the kiss ended. He looked into my dazed eyes and gave me a sly smile.

I shook my head to refocus. We were alone in the courtyard
, everyone else had gone inside. “I can’t not show up to my own party that I just threw for myself five minutes ago, but I’m sure nobody will mind if we leave early. Let’s go.” I tugged Elwin’s arm to get him moving. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave.”

Elwin pulled me back to him and cradled my face in his hands, “I love you, Sarette.”

“Love you too, Elwin.”

He kissed me again. This one was filled with a promise of our future together.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

First, let me thank you readers for taking a chance on a first time author. I hope you enjoyed reading Meanmna as much as I loved writing it. As a first time author, I’m definitely interested in your feedback as I continue the story.  If you have something you want to share, feel free to send me an email:
[email protected]
.

Or you could leave a review.   Amazon and other retailers give indie authors a chance to gain visibility and access to people of similar interests, which is often done by way of reviews.  So if you could kindly leave a review, good, bad or ambivalent, I’d appreciate it.

This
whole experience has been humbling and rewarding. It wouldn’t have been possible without some special folks.

THANKS TO:

My kids, for putting up with too many delivery pizzas and frozen dinners during the writing of the book.

Yvon
ne Perry (
yvonneperry.blogspot.com
)
at Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services (
www.writersinthesky.com
)
; I am walking away a better writer and will be forever grateful.

Craig Davis
: Thanks for the first read and I look forward to kicking your butt in Words with Friends, at least sometimes.

Norm
an Wong, WOW! The cover is so beautiful. It’s even better than I imagined.

Dana Micheli (
www.linkedin.com/in/danamicheli/
) f
or taking the time and persistence to get the extra edits.

Sarah,
if you’re reading this it means we have made it to the final copy edit.

My pa
rents, sisters, and friends, y’all are awesome and I love you.

Jon,
yeah. You know. Bunches.