Queen of the Crimson Court

"Get me another."

My assistant, Chloe, scrambled from her leather seat, her hands trembling as she picked up the broken glass from the carpet. "Victoria, please. It is a fourteen-hour flight to Tokyo. The director will have a stroke if you show up to the set looking exhausted."

"Let him." I leaned back against the plush white leather of my private jet. "I am the only reason his pathetic movie has funding. If I want champagne at thirty thousand feet, I get champagne."

Chloe swallowed her retort. She moved to the cabin bar and poured another drink.

I turned my head to look out the circular window. Beneath us, the lights of Paris were long gone, replaced by the endless dark of the Atlantic. My reflection stared back at me in the glass. Sharp cheekbones, full lips painted a bruised red, and dark chestnut waves styled to perfection. It was the face that sold millions of magazines. The face that won awards, destroyed rival careers, and commanded empires.

It was also a face I was growing sick of looking at.

Fame was a golden cage, and I had built the bars myself. The world demanded Victoria de Lamarre to be a ruthless, glamorous icon. I played the part. I wore the custom black silk gowns. I smiled for the cameras. I crushed anyone who tried to step over me. Yet, sitting in a multi-million-dollar metal tube miles above the earth, the silence felt heavy. The loneliness was a physical ache in my chest, a dull throb I ignored with expensive wine and sharp words.

Chloe handed me the fresh glass. She did not meet my eyes.

"Go to sleep, Chloe," I told her, my tone softening just a fraction. "I will not throw this one."

She nodded and returned to her seat at the front of the cabin, buckling herself in. I took a sip of the cold liquid, closed my eyes, and waited for the sleeping pills to kick in.

I never got to finish the glass.

An explosion tore through the left side of the aircraft.

The impact threw me out of my seat. I slammed into the ceiling, the champagne turning into a spray of gold and foam. The jet banked hard. Alarms screamed through the cabin. The pressure dropped in an instant, sucking the air from my lungs.

Oxygen masks dropped from the compartments, dangling like dead snakes.

"Victoria!" Chloe shrieked, clawing at her armrests.

I grabbed the edge of a bolted table, dragging myself up against the unnatural gravity. The plane was falling. The metal groaned, a horrifying screech of a machine tearing itself apart. I looked out the window.

We were no longer flying over the dark ocean.

The sky outside was wrong. It was a bruised, bleeding crimson, ripped open by jagged streaks of purple lightning. There were no stars. The clouds spiraled in a massive funnel, glowing with a sickening, heavy light.

A sharp, searing pain struck my collarbone. I gasped, pressing a hand to my chest. The crescent-shaped birthmark on my skin burned. It felt like someone had pressed a white-hot iron to my flesh.

"Brace!" the pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom, masked by panic. "We lost the left wing! Mayday, Mayday, we are being pulled into—"

A second explosion shattered the cockpit door.

The nose of the jet ripped away. The wind rushed in, a roaring, deafening hurricane that deafened me. I saw the sky swallow the front of the plane. I saw Chloe ripped from her seat, her scream lost in the vacuum.

I shut my eyes, wrapped my arms around my head, and waited to die.

Pain.

It started as a dull hum in my teeth and bloomed into a roaring fire across my ribs. My ears rang with a high, relentless pitch. Smoke filled my throat. I coughed, tasting copper and ash.

I opened my eyes.

Everything was sideways. The emergency lights flickered, casting a sickly red glow over the twisted metal. The plush white seats were shredded, stained with soot and debris. Wires hung from the ceiling, sparking in the dark. The rear half of my luxury jet was a mangled, burning tomb.

I tried to move. A heavy weight pinned my lower half.

Panic flared in my chest. I pushed my hands against the collapsed bulkhead trapping my legs. The metal was hot. My French-manicured nails snapped against the steel, tearing into the quick. I gritted my teeth, ignoring the sting of my ruined fingers, and pushed with all the strength I had.

The metal groaned and shifted just enough. I pulled my legs free, dragging myself across the ruined floor.

"Chloe?" I croaked. My voice was a broken rasp.

No answer. Just the crackle of flames and the hiss of severed hydraulic lines.

I crawled forward, my hands slipping on wet surfaces. I did not want to look at what made the floor wet. I kept my eyes focused on the gaping hole where the front of the plane used to be.