In close to five years as queen, no one had dared to challenge Daramethe openly.

Well, besides the occasional prophet or wizard who believed that Dara was True Evil and that Jason was the Prophesized One who was going to end her for good.

Jason thought that they were pretty stupid for Wise Men and mostly ignored them. Dara killed them when they annoyed her enough, but generally didn’t care enough to do much about them besides that.

He was starting to think that might have been a mistake.

Daramethe was in her favorite rich purple today, with a crown of live lightning bolts on her hair and more creeping slowly over her dress and leaving black figures burnt into the silk. Everyone besides Jason kept their distance.

That was probably a good idea. No one else could really hope for the same immunity to his beloved wife that he enjoyed, and she was definitely in the mood for a fight.

“Well, there’s plenty of them,” he noted, and leaned over the wall for a better look. Dara made a noise of protest and broke her statuesque pose to pull him back to her side. “What do you think?”

“I think we’re in range of their better archers and you should stay inside of my shields,” she told him flatly with a glare she only half-meant. He kissed her and let her pull him wherever she liked. “I’m going to have to deal with them in a moment. You may not wish to stay.”

She always tried to keep the worst of her violence away from him, which Jadon appreciated but generally didn’t allow. He knew his Dara, and she had yet to kill anyone who hadn’t tried to harm her, or kidnap him.

“Not sure what they’re all mad about,” Jason considered out loud. It really was an impressive army. Thousands of men, and plenty of banners. Some he recognized as their own nobles, which explained all the grumbling at court lately, and some were foreign. Nobles come to claim their little kingdom, he supposed. “The common folk have never been happier, even with the tax to rebuild the roads last winter.”

“I imagine it is because I made the nobles pay their share of their own pocket, and sent spies among the people to make sure they were not being taxed into starvation,” Dara said dryly and not without irritation. “They have castles and silks and spices. They could afford it perfectly well, but we’re terribly offended nonetheless.”

“That would do it,” Jadon agreed, and shifted the heavy, ruby-studded hammer over his shoulder. It was warm to the touch and glowed with sunlight even when the worst of Dara’s storms darkened the skies. “Going to talk with them first?”

“I sent Kellen. He should be back by now.”

As if summoned by her words, the old duke stumped up the stairs to their own arch of wall.

“They’re being unreasonable,” he reported grimly without ceremony. He had known them both far too long to have much reverence left for Dara. Probably because he remembered her as an apprentice who once turned her own hair vivid blue for a whole month. “Nothing but the Lightning Witch’s head on a spike will do them.”

“I like it where it is,” Dara said mildly, and sighed. “Point put the leaders to me please.”

“That isn’t how war usually works, Dara,” Kellen said uncomfortably, and moved to her side nonetheless. “There are rules to warfare.”

“I am an uncultured peasant, and they are frightening my people.”

Jason tended to agree with her, and shrugged when Kellen looked to him. It was his job to hold back Dara’s darkness after all, but that was best done with her head on her shoulders where it belonged.

The world wouldn’t miss a few overstuffed nobles who didn’t like that their queen was making them pay their fair share.

Dara wasn’t looking at either of them. She raised her hands to the sky, Lightning crackling up her arms and over her hair like webs of silk in the wind.

Black clouds began over their citadel and grew quickly, ballooning out, slow at first and then faster.

Shouts from below told Jason that the magic had been noticed by the army, and that they knew something bad was coming.

“Aim for the banners,” Kellen yelled from a safe distance a few steps away. “The ones in the showy armor!”

Dara’s eyes flowed when she looked down, and she nodded. “I see them.”

Thunder boomed overhead as lightning crept across the clouds in long snakes of purple-white. Horses shrieked and panicked, and the army scrambled to stay together despite the show of power.

With pinpoint accuracy, bolts streaked down out of the sky, inevitably drawn to the leaders of each faction.

From his place up on the wall, Jason could just barely see as first there was a man, and then there was a smoking smudge of melted armor.

After a dozen bolts, each with a devestating effect on the men around them, the army began to retreat, horns and shouts drifting through the air.

Daramethe summoned one last chain of strikes and laid them down in a straight line between the castle walls, and the retreating army.

The message was clear.

The Lightning Witch was perfectly able to hold her castle, and would rain death on anyone who thought to take it from her.

Jason almost didn’t see the fireball as it plummeted out of the blackened sky, red-glowing and terrible.

“Dara!” He roared and dove for his wife, who looked up to see their incoming doom too late to do anything about it. In a vain attempt to take the blow surely meant to end her, Jason shielded her with his body and raised his hammer upwards, hoping that the magical steel would somehow absorb the blow before it could kill them both.

Fire engulfed them and Jason felt his hammer began to heat like he left it too long next to the forge. Strangely though, it never got hotter than that, for all that the spell should have incinerated them both on the spot.

When the fire faded away, Jason opened his eyes and looked around, both baffled and surprised.

“Well, alright,” He said, and looked down at his hammer. It glowed red-hot, but the leather wrappings never so much as smoked. Far below them, a small, robed body took off after the army at a run. “That was rude. Think you can get him from here?”

“Let them try and stop me,” Dara hissed, always at her most murderous after someone took a shot at her beloved husband. Lightning crackled over her hands as she laced her fingers together.

The fleeing mage vanished in a thundering bolt of black.

Thunder flattened everyone brave enough to stand the wall with their furious witch-queen.

Daramethe glared down at the army like she might want to fire off a few more devastating bolts just to vent her spleen.

Jason wrapped his arm around her shoulders and considered his hammer and his wife.

“Well, they probably won’t be back any time soon.”