Queen interrupting settles protests (7)
I believe the answer is:
squeals
'protests' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both to do with communicating as well as being verbs in their -s form.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'queen interrupting settles' is the wordplay.
'queen' becomes 'qu' (abbreviation for queen).
'interrupting' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'settles' becomes 'seals' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'qu' put inside 'seals' is 'SQUEALS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for squeals that I've seen before include "Spills the beans" , "Complains" , "Turns informer" , "producing shrieks of delight > from pigsty" .)