The Sage princess began to draw herself up from her own crouch, until she stood at her full towering height. She rasped her wings down her back so the sound filled the air, then she slowly swayed her long pointed face from side to side, her eyes sending sparks of hate at the wall of Teasel supporters. As she began to hiss, the Teasel princess gathered herself to spring.

With a lightning motion, the Sage princess leaped to the ceiling and crumbs of wax fell down where her sharp, powerful claws dug in. The startled Teasel princess looked up, her poise broken. The Sage princess picked her way across the ceiling, her venom spraying down.

The Teasel princess moved faster, and watched as the wax sizzled where she had stood. She drew her huge claws.

“She flees!” Her voice was hoarse and loud. Then she drew her dagger, longer and thicker than any Flora had ever seen, with four lines of barbs instead of two. “A coward may not be Queen,” she called up to her rival.

“Nor may a fool—” The Sage princess dropped from the ceiling onto the Teasel’s back, biting at her wings. The Teasel twisted around and threw her off, but the Sage princess’s claw had caught, and the bees heard the ripping wound. Too fast to give her rival a chance to leap for the ceiling again, the Teasel princess clamped her wings tight to her back and attacked so hard the bees heard their shells clash and smelled their poisons mingling as they hissed and struggled against each other on the comb floor. Their abdomens hard and curved as their daggers stabbed for the other’s body, the two princesses thrashed in a blur of rage—and then there was a harsh scream—and the struggle slowed.

The bees stared as the two princesses lay still. Then there was the sound of cracking limbs, as the Sage princess broke free of the dying embrace of her foe. Her dagger dripped venom, and the Teasel convulsed on the ground before her, stung through the belly.

Even now the Sage supporters did not move or make a sound, but the Teasels gasped as their mortally wounded princess struggled to rise. The Sage princess bent low and ripped the wings from her challenger’s back. She held them up, then threw them on the ground.

“Behold the fate of pretenders.” She turned back to her foe. The Teasel princess tried to pull herself along the comb toward her stricken supporters. The Sage princess walked in front of her. She climbed upon her rival’s twitching body and held her fast, before flexing her abdomen high so all the bees could see her shining dagger. Then she slid it between the Teasel princess’s head and thorax and stung her again.

Only now did the Sage raise their voices, in a strange humming ululation that pierced the bees’ brains and made their stings pulse in terror.

“Behold the Queen!” The Sage priestesses surrounded their champion.

“The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!”

Flora stood transfixed. All around her she felt the gathering tension in her sisters, as if they would spring or scream or turn on each other.

“The Queen is dead!” repeated the Sage, in their choral voice. “Long live the Queen!”

At these words the Sage princess raised her wings and spread them, and her face was beautiful and terrible. At her gaze, many bees sank to their knees, shaking in fear.

“We have others—” A weeping Teasel crouched by the body of her dead princess. “We have more princesses, we will bring them out as fast as they are born—”

The Sage princess hissed and drew her sting again. “And I will kill them as I killed my own royal sisters, cowering unready in their queen cells. Divine Right to the firstborn—death to the rest. I am your Queen and you will worship—”

A single piercing note tore the air. The Sage princess and every other bee spun around to face the source of the sound. Then the Sage princess piped back in outrage and lashed her antennae, but there was no answering sound. The bees froze in fear and listened. The sound had come from the long corridor that led to the worker dormitories and the Queen’s Chambers, but now there was complete silence.

“Come out!” screamed the Sage princess. “You foul Teasel pretender, come out and die like your sister here!” She piped again and again, until the lobby echoed and the bees shrank together in terror. “You are a coward! Come out!”

“I am here.”

Then every bee’s glands flared in fright, for from the dark dormitory corridor walked a huge black princess with russet fur, long, quivering antennae, a tiny waist, and the strong hooks and limbs of her mother, Flora 717.

“I am the last princess,” her low voice carried. “And I have already wet my dagger with the blood of all others. But one.”

The Sage princess slowly twisted her head from side to side, and began to hiss again. “What foul thing are you?”

“She is my daughter.” Flora stepped forward, her heart thundering in her body. “And I raised her and fed her Flow, so she is as much a princess as you are.”

The Sage princess stared, then she laughed in great hisses. “Kneel,” she said. “Bare your neck for a merciful death.”

When Flora’s daughter did not answer, the Sage princess piped her rage. “Answer your Queen!”

“Not Queen until mated!” Flora called it loudly. Behind her, the floras gathered together, and their dark faces gleamed bronze as they let their scent rise up.

“How dare you—” As the Sage turned to Flora the dark princess ran at her. Fleet and vicious the Sage princess spun round with a slicing claw, but Flora’s daughter parried with her own massive hooks. Lacking the strength to fend off the blows, the Sage princess ran up the lobby wall again to attack from above—but Flora’s daughter followed her, her massive hooks tearing tendrils of wax from the walls, dagger gleaming. With a shriek of rage the Sage princess flew down into the midst of the watching bees, making them scream in terror and crush each other as they struggled to get out of her way—and then she ran through their midst into the empty Category Two ward.

The fertility police beat the sanitation workers to the ground in front of their champion so that she would have to trample them to reach her foe—but the dark princess leaped at the wall and ran sideways above them, so that her great wing brushed across their faces and made them cry out in fear.

When she ran into the big dark Category Two ward there was no sight or sound of the Sage princess, but the air was misted with her venom. For a moment there was silence—and then with a terrible shriek she dropped from the ceiling above and stabbed at the dark princess with the full length of her sting, so that the two huge princesses hurled their joined bodies in rage against the cribs and the wax cracked and split around them.

Terrified by the combat but desperate to see its end, the bees followed, climbing over each other to escape the two roiling princesses as they slashed and bit and half flew, half staggered between the rows of cribs, neither one willing to release her hold. As the dark princess reached out to swing a great shield of wax against her rival’s head, the Sage princess let herself fall, so that her heavier foe lost her balance. With lightning speed the Sage princess twisted and leaped on top of Flora’s daughter, seizing her antennae and piping her screaming war note directly into them to destroy her brain. The high harsh sound paralyzed every bee but the Sage, and thousands screamed out in pain. The dark princess jerked her head in agony but could not release herself.

“Submit and save them—” The Sage princess piped louder, and bees screamed for mercy. “You make them suffer—”

A huge roar tore the air—its force blocking out the piping agony and beating waves of power through the air. It came from the engine of the dark princess as she beat her wings against her rival and threw her back. Before the stunned Sage princess could rise, Flora’s daughter was upon her, crushing her under her greater weight. Then she reared up, her dagger poised for the coup de grace—but did not strike. Instead, her antennae pointed high.