The Dragonfly Necklace

Reykr fiddled with his necklace while he watched the Queen speak to her subjects. She sat on a gilded throne, wreathed in white cotton and blue silk, her expression carefully polite and still, but he knew her well enough by now to see the thrum of annoyance behind her eyes. He frowned, his fingers tracing over the dragonfly wing, feeling his skin catch at the metal and slide on the broken stone at its base, where a real dragonfly’s body might attach. He never liked it when she was irritated. Bored was fine, even angry was fine, but irritated was the worst. She always snapped at him when she was annoyed, her mouth turning into an ugly scowl and revealing the tips of her canines.

His hand left the wing to clutch suddenly at his dagger as a man stepped forward with an odd, sly look on his stubbly face. Reykr moved closer to the Queen and gave him a warning glance, but the stranger only smiled.

“What a lovely necklace,” He murmured, eyes flashing toward the dragonfly wing. “Do you know what it does?”

Reykr, unaccustomed to the attention, started and glanced towards his lady, who looked just as surprised. The stillness had shifted into attentiveness and curiosity. “Is this what you have come here to discuss? A necklace belonging to one of my guards?” She asked, but her voice held no venom.

The stranger didn’t look at her, but instead addressed Reykr directly. “You have no idea, do you?” He tipped his head to the side and looked at Reykr as a curious puppy might. “It means so much more than you know. That thing would go for a pretty penny on the black market, Reykr kind.” Reykr moved forward without thinking, head swimming with the nickname his grandmother used to call him, and gripped the front of the stranger’s shirt.

“What do you know?” He said sharply, but his words seemed to have no impact on the odd man. Instead, he reached out and caught the necklace in between two fingers. Before Reykr could yank himself back, the stranger whispered something and the necklace started to glow, laced with yellow light that shone out from beneath the twisted metal. He gasped and tried to pull away, but he seemed frozen in time, struggling with an invisible force that kept him rooted to the floor. The light shone brighter and brighter, blinding him, but he couldn’t look away. He heard the Queen calling his name, but he couldn’t move, or speak to reassure her. The last thing he saw before everything dark was the stranger’s mouth stretched wide in a wolfish grin.