Unexpected Warrior: Keyona Morgan

By Natasha D. Lane

This lady is touched in the head. Like deeply touched.

 

I mean, don't get me wrong. I love a good underdog story, and this Queen Nzingha fits the narrative, but how the hell does she expect to fight the Portuguese? They outnumber us, and they're teaming up with some d-bag king from the Congo who hates Nzingha for whatever reason.

 

My guess? Probably because she's a woman. That's usually how that goes.

 

And now Nzingha is recruiting me for her army. All because I had to drop one of her guards after he got too touchy. I'm not a soldier, but she's a queen and extremely stubborn.

 

Well, me too, lady, so game on. I'm not going to be someone's pawn, not when that green-haired witch could appear at any moment. I know she's not going to stop chasing me. No matter when I am.

 

Ughhhhhhhh.

 

Fml.

 

First France, then somewhere in Africa. What a trip. Now, when can I go home?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Natasha D. Lane
• Release date: Feb 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201939724

Natasha D. Lane

Natasha D. Lane is a friend of most things caffeinated, a lover of books, and a writing warrior to her core. As a believer that "the pen is mightier than the sword," she graduated from Juniata College in 2015 with hopes to become a journalist. Instead, life took her on a different path and Natasha found herself digging up a manuscript from her childhood. This dusty stack of papers would become her first novel "The Pariah Child & the Ever-Giving Stone." With one book under her belt, Natasha has gone on to write several other fantasy and sci-fi pieces including "The Woman in the Tree: The True Story of Camelot" and "Plugged In."

Book preview

Unexpected Warrior

Keyona Morgan Book II

By Natasha D. Lane

Text copyright 2022 by Natasha D. Lane

All Rights Reserved

Unexpected Warrior

Cover design by Elizabeth Mackey

Edited by Stephanie Diaz

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

The information in this book is distributed on an as is basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Other Books In this Series

Involuntary Time Traveler (Keyona Morgan Book 1)

Hunted Survivor (Keyona Morgan Book 3)

Other Books by Author

The Pariah Child & the Ever-Giving Stone

The Pariah Child: Sarafina’s Return

The Pariah Child: Serwa’s Descendants

The Woman in the Tree: The True Story of Camelot

www.natashadlanewrites.com

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Chapter One

The confusion spell was gone. It had already started to fade away before the green tunnel swallowed me whole, and now I was lying on the ground in some random place in some random time.

The ground under me was getting hotter and hotter. Flexing my fingers, I considered getting up, examining the land around me to try to determine when the hell I was. But I didn’t really want to move. My mind was on a loop, replaying my last few hours in France. Thanks to the confusion spell, parts of my memory were fuzzy, and other parts were, well, blank.

But I remembered arguing with Lafayette, escaping the building, stumbling into the crowd, and the woman with green hair. Yeah, I wouldn’t forget her. Her bobbing head of green had been like a lighthouse in the crowd. And I knew she was the one who had cast on me. She and her partner were no doubt also the ones who’d chased me through the halls of Versailles, and tossed the runies into my room.

I clenched my fists. My skin was getting hot from the sun.

What was I supposed to do now?

My phone beeped. Glancing at the screen, I saw that it read eighteen percent at the top right corner.

Fuck. I needed to save my battery.

Sitting up, I rested my elbows on my knees and held down the On/Off button until my screen went black. I realized my nightgown was torn and singed. There were stains all over it, probably from being pushed along in the crowd. It hung loosely from my left shoulder, and there was a big tear along the collar. Unless I planned on walking around butterball naked, I’d need to find new clothing sooner than later.

Come on, Keyona, I whispered, running my hands along my face. We have to get up. It doesn’t matter if we don’t know what to do next. It doesn’t matter if we don’t know what happened to Lafayette...and Marie...and...and...

I smashed my lips together, even though the sloppy tears were already falling. They were warm down my face and salty on my lips, but I wouldn’t cry. Not out loud. I couldn’t.

I couldn’t.

My hands shook as I raised them to my face to wipe my tears. The salty water burned the cuts along my palm, and the bruised skin. That’s when I remembered I had leapt from a building, and crashed through a window like I was that dude from A Good Day to Fly Tough.

I looked down at my feet. They were covered in mud. That’s right. I had left my shoes behind in the hotel because I had been sleeping. That was why I had cut my right foot on glass after falling through to the next floor.

I shook my head, my tears slowing down. What am I going to do?

I felt split in half. Part of me was still in France with Lafayette and Marie, wondering if they had made it out alive. Hoping.

The other part of me was wherever I was, still unable to stand up.

Gazing around me, I tried thinking of a place the landscape best matched. Nothing immediate was coming to mind. What I did know is it wasn’t France. Maybe a French colony? That would at least mean that Lafayette and Marie—

No, I whispered.

I couldn’t be in two places at once.

I wouldn’t know what happened to Lafayette or Marie until I returned to my time and opened a book.

And I couldn’t return to the French Revolution to save them. That was that.

If I wanted to find out if they’d survived, I had to get back home. Except I didn’t know how. I was just as lost as I had been since my sister accidentally sent me back in time in the first place.

By this point, the tears had stopped falling. I could feel the salty, dried streaks across my skin. Rubbing my eyes, I slowly got to my feet. Leaning forward first, placing both hands on the ground, and pushing up from my toes. Holy fuck, my body hurt. It wasn’t only the bruises and cuts, though those definitely were putting their all in. Some of my muscles felt like they had been stretched too far, maybe even torn.

Shit, I hissed, finally on my feet and leaning to the left because I couldn’t put my right foot down completely. The shard of glass from my not-so-graceful escape had taken care of that.

I grabbed the singed edges of my nightgown, and tugged until a long piece tore off. Wrapping it around my feet, I thought of my first aid training. Considering I wasn’t too hurt and I had little energy, it was best not to use my magic. I’d save that in case I came across someone who decided to not be friendly. My body definitely wasn’t going to be of much use, so I had to work with what I had.

Once I had wrapped the cloth around my cut, I started hobbling toward the bit of green I saw in the distance. At least if I passed out on the grass, there’d be some cushion instead of hot, cracked earth under me. It’s the little things that really make a difference, ya know?

The grass was cool beneath my feet. It was a nice contrast to what I had been previously walking on. As I moved, I kept looking around. I couldn’t see anything too far in the distance besides stretches of green with the occasional rock and tree. Behind me, the ground was just dirt.

While walking, I tried keeping my breath steady. The sun was really beating down on me, and no matter how many times I licked my lips, saliva was no match for lip balm. The sharp pieces of dried skin were rough against my tongue and sticking out at the corners of my mouth.

I mentally swore, thinking about how many times I’d passed up the opportunity to take a survival class at HTU. Not the bare minimum basics everyone in my major got at the university, but the specialty course. It was required for students hoping to go into the military, but some students took it for the extra credits. Usually, students studying Explorative Anthropology.

Or people who were into woodsy shit. My mom said in the eighties, survival courses were in high demand because of the Back to Our Origins movement. Apparently, there had been a lot of dancing naked in the woods...

Focus, Keyona. Focus.

I kept moving, making sure to put most of the pressure on my left foot. The farther I walked, the more trees and grass appeared. Looking up, I saw birds soaring through the sky. They were pretty big but not big enough to be vultures. Or, at least I didn’t think so. Based on my current state, I couldn’t blame them for keeping an eye on me. I felt like I was going to keel over at any moment.

My mouth was starting to feel like someone had shoved a spoonful of paste in it, and my eyes stung. Maybe from the dust or something. I stopped walking for a moment to rub my eyes, except everything on me was dirty. Sighing, I decided the cleanest spot had to be the collar of my nightgown. I was cocking my head to the side and lifting my collar when I saw someone in the distance. And based on the way they were standing, they saw me, too.

I froze. From where I stood, I couldn’t make out all of their details. I did see what looked to be a pointy silver helmet and a very colorful...vest? A vest thing. The person was wearing a colorful vest thing, a pointy silver helmet, and...they were walking toward me. Oh, no. They weren’t walking.

They were running.

Great.

I bolted, running perpendicular to the stranger chasing me. The only problem was my body was pretty much damaged goods. As soon as I slammed on my right foot, I knew I had widened the wound, my blood soaking the cracked skin of my feet. But the sound of crunching grass behind me pushed me forward. I just needed to keep running, to keep forcing my body through the pain until the right amount of adrenaline kicked in. Then I’d feel nothing.

The sound of crunching grass grew louder. I peeked behind me, turned forward again, and silently cursed. He wasn’t alone. Two more men were chasing me now.

I needed to think of a spell. Something that wouldn’t be too obvious.

I smiled, placed my hands together, and performed the gestures. On the last move, as my fingertips touched each other, a jolt shot through both hands. I looked down at my palms, confused, and saw small tendrils of smoke rising from my fingertips.

That had never happened before. Like, something had short-circuited.

Wh—

The ground under me was gone. I was stumbling downward, my vision moving between the sun and a dry patch of grass. I closed my eyes and waited for the impact. When I landed on my back, the force knocked my breath out of me. I arched my spine as the air left my body, but as I came back down, an immobilizing ache wrapped around me.

I heard the footsteps of the men chasing me. I could even see a bit of sunlight, too, and a slither of grass leaning forward from the edge of land. That was where I had fallen. The men who were chasing me just needed to look down and I’d be in plain sight.

Fuck, was all I could manage to whisper.

And then someone grabbed my shoulders and dragged me into the shadows. Before I could move to give a pitiful swing, both my arms were pinned and a hand slipped over my mouth. I was caught. Someone had captured me, and I wasn’t sure if they were better or worse than my previous pursuers.

A long shadow appeared across the patch of sunlight, right where I had fallen. Now I could see I had slipped down a slope of land. If I hadn’t been as hurt, I probably would have been able to land on my feet instead of my back, and wouldn’t have had the air knocked out of me. I wouldn’t have been captured by whoever had me and pulled into...

Where had they dragged me? Did it even matter? Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Wherever I was had to be some sort of cave or tunnel or—

Calm down.

Despite the cave being pitch black, I closed my eyes, and breathed in deeply through my nose. The line of tension that had been building in my shoulders eased. Only a little bit. I noticed the grip my captors had on me loosened, too. That was good. If I remained calm, they would, too. Or, at least I hoped. What I did know was I couldn’t panic.

Never panic. Not if you want to survive.

I had learned that at HTU.

I could do this. I could survive whatever was happening.

Right. Because I was Keyona.

There was stomping above me, and I felt dirt tumbling through my hair, then down my back. At that moment, the hold on my arms loosened, only to be replaced by a grip on my wrists. I watched with hands behind my back as two of whoever had me snuck forward from the shadows we hid in toward the entrance. They stopped a few feet short, and squatted close to the ground.

The vest-thingy wearing dudes were chatting with one another above us. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it sounded kind of like...Russian? No, Spanish. It wasn’t, though. I had spent enough time around Gilly and his family to know Spanish.

Some more crunching noises followed as the three vesty-men made their way down. Their shadows moved across where I had fallen. And as they appeared a few feet outside of the cave, the squatted men leapt forward.

Then there was shouting, and gurgling. The person who held my wrists released me and moved forward to kill the third pursuer. I heard grunts as the three vest wearing dudes who had been chasing me descended to the ground, and splashes of dark red fell across the light outside.

Blood.

The silhouette of a small axe appeared