Prince Halius Sapphire's leer resurrected ancient fears from Alexia's childhood. Fears of being pursued, pinched, and preached to. She made herself small, stepping behind Leoquo and Azi, recognizing the same boy that tormented her for years looking out from behind that handsome face contorting into something ugly.

Halius's voice cut like a blade. "Back off my betrothed, Mahagan."

"You misinterpret, brother," Azi interceded, her usually unstoppable voice shaken. "Emir Leoquo had just shared that his people are in grave danger and Alexia was offering consolation."

Halius studied Azi with a wrinkled nose, as if the sight and sound of her were equivalent to a huge pile of dung.

"You must not know the ways of the Mahagan, Your Grace," Leoquo said, voice steady. "We are not like Leverians. The Mahagan have one lover their whole life and we never go astray. I have already descended to the bottom of the Endless Blue and offered my pearl to my love." The Lion Prince gripped the pearl on his necklace. "Though my Ulani is gone, I cannot replace her."

Heart aching as if hammered in the chest, Alexia turned toward her best friend. She read her sorrow, the way her eyes and lips shot downward. Hands on her waist, Azi tried to project strength but she looked on the verge of tears.

"I know the ways of your people," Halius snapped, ripping Alexia's glance back toward him. His hand touched the hilt of his blade as he took another step into the room. Sir Gyan loomed behind him, having failed to fulfill his purpose, he at least looked repentant toward the princess he protected.

"Halius," a sweetened voice said from behind him.

Not even honey could sweeten Halius's foul mood. "What!"

"My son," Queen Hellena said from the hallway, "this is a foreign dignitary. The war room is not the place to converse about what has brought them here. It is the choice of one who lacks sophistication."

Alexia watched Azi's shoulders slump further at the thinly veiled attack. Alexia didn't hate easily, but hate Queen Hellena she did. She couldn't forgive someone who was persistently venomous to her own daughter. Especially when that daughter was as wonderful as Azurianna.

"Very well," Halius, assented, annoyed as can be. "You will attend me in the throne room in five degrees. We shall discuss whatever has delivered you to my doorstep." Halius stepped deeper into the room, keeping his hand on his hilt. "You will never touch her again."

"I understand," Leoquo answered.

"Good." Halius removed his hand from his hilt. "Attend me, Alexia."

Alexia stood rooted, terrified of what he might do to her, not wanting to leave the relative safety of Azi's presence. This was Halius-as-Monster, not the softened prince that had given her the ring on her finger.

"Come now," Halius commanded, his voice an attempt at being gentle, but arriving nowhere close. Like a toddler who was told to ask nicely for what they coveted.

Alexia's feet moved but her mind stayed frozen. Her vision narrowed and she could barely attend to any of her five senses. She whimpered when Halius kissed her in the doorway, in view of Leoquo and Azi. The look of rage on his face made her flinch and pull back from him. He seized her hand and yanked her out into the hallway. His brutishness was enough to make her shoulder sore, but that was numbed as the fear made her mind fade and her body grow distant. He led her through the halls of Saphirhold toward the throne room, but her eyes looked inward toward Zander and daydreams of him rescuing her from this predator.

"Where are Maleon Stonebreaker and Sir Timmeck Eckhard?" Hellena queried.

Alexia inhaled, held, and slowly exhaled. She repeated several times but couldn't stop trembling. Nor could she make herself talk. If King Gideon intimidated her, Queen Hellena was far worse. Nothing she said would ever satisfy the queen and the less time she spent with her, the better.

"I cannot figure out what you see in this ninny," Hellena told her son.

Halius glared at his mother with the same viciousness he did at Leoquo, like a rabid dog eying the cat that would get between him and his bone.

The queen held her hands together, her shoulders high, her chest up, and her head straight, wearing the title of queen as thoroughly as Alexia had ever worn the mask of the Second Great Wizard. She was a beautiful woman, Hellena Sapphire nee Roswell, with long blonde hair, a smooth, attractive face, eyes as green as fresh grass, and a full figure on a trim body. She perpetually wore heeled slippers to appear taller than her average height and covered her body in the most elegant garments and lavishly applied cosmetics to fight back her aging or any perceived imperfection.

As Azi looked like Gideon-made-woman, Hellena's son looked like Hellena-made-male. The prince sent his sworn shield, Sir Ryam, to retrieve Sir Garrond the Dust to the throne room.

"What is there not to see?" Halius said, dotingly, running his hand through Alexia's hair. "She is the most beautiful, the most compassionate, and the most powerful." Facing her, Halius gripped both of Alexia's hands. "You will be the worthiest of the name queen since Alexia Leveria."

Alexia zoned out at a point between Halius's eyes. She gave him as much as she was able to appease his wrath. A little nod. Her mouth couldn't do more than that. Even that felt like a challenge when all she wanted to do was vomit and hide.

Halius leaned in, kissing her on the lips. Alexia kept her eyes closed, not moving her lips, her hands balling into fists stiffly at her side. He pulled on her wrist. Alexia didn't need eyes to sense his anger. A pair of tears escaped from her sealed lids. She dammed the flow, wiping them away with her free hand.

I am not free, she thought to herself. Nor do I deserve to be.

She thought of the doll in her robe pocket, of the loving girl she'd turned into a hopeless shadow, of all of the people who died in her plans. This was the price she paid. What was her happiness beside the death and suffering of the Mahogany Isles or the many who'd lost their lives and happiness in the Gemstone War? Let it be her, at last, to pay if this coin could purchase peace and wholeness for others. Letting go of her own dreams of love, Alexia tried to carry herself with renewed resolve.

They arrived in Celegana's Hall where the rush of servants setting up dinner quelled the conversation. Halius took her arm, giving off the appearance of a graceful escort as they covered the ground to the throne room. The expansive rectangular room was empty save for the statues of previous Sapphire kings and queens and the thirteen-stepped dais bearing three chairs at the far end of the throne room. Stained glass depicting the Divine Thirteen lined the side walls above two rows of statues.

Alexia's eyes were first drawn to the jagged stone seat where the royal steward sat in service to the Sapphire. The Sapphire Throne sat empty atop the thirteenth stair. The massive throne was thirteen feet high and outlined by thirteen brilliant sapphires. The Throne of the Heir, a smaller version of the Sapphire Throne, waited for Halius on the twelfth step.

Halius surprised Alexia by seating himself in the Sapphire Throne while Queen Hellena took Halius's place in the Throne of the Heir. Halius gestured for Alexia to sit beside him. The throne was wide enough for two but Alexia had no place in that seat. She tilted her head toward the Steward's Seat, where her father traditionally sat through audiences.

"Someday you will be my queen," Halius said in his softest voice. "You will sit beside me as an equal, my rose."

"Someday," Alexia emphasized. "I am no queen today. Until I am, I have no right to that seat." Alexia found the courage to take her father's seat. Halius grunted, but he didn't fight her on this.

Alexia failed to find a comfortable way to sit with the jagged edges on both the back and seat of the chair. She channeled Leverith, easing the pain the seat was causing. She was amazed her father could sit in this seat for angles and understood why he had bought such an expensive chair for his study.

Sir Ryam entered with the most dangerous swordsman in Leveria. Commander of the Azureknights, Sir Garrond the Dust was a well-built man in his forties with blue eyes that were as cold as steel and a masculine face that never smiled. The Dust was famed for his killing of King Roni Ruby in the Marshes of Madness. As far as she knew, the only swordsman in the entire kingdom that could match him in sparring was King Gideon himself. Dust, his Qoryxa-enchanted meladonite longsword, was sheathed, but flecks of ice still escaped the steel. Alexia felt the cold in more ways than one as he approached the dais with the same apathetic expression he always wore.

Halius's greeting carried a surprising level of deference. "Sir Garrond!"

The swordsman bowed his head but no words left his lips. Alexia rarely heard him speak and when he did it was far blunter than his sword though it was just as straight to the point.

"Our future queen needs an Azureknight sworn shield," Halius declared.

"Sir Branor would serve her well," Garrond said in his typical monotone.

Halius laughed. "I would think not. My betrothed deserves the best."

Garrond shook his head. No words. No emotion on that carved face.

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Bidding farewell to deference, Halius returned to petulance. "Do you see where I sit, Dust?"

Sir Garrond answered as if he were bored. "Your father's chair."

"I hold the power in this city!"

Hellena leaned into the conversation. "Sir Garrond, your actions venture into insubordination, an offense in an Azureknight that could be punished with execution."

The great warrior was silent and still. The threat did nothing to rouse his cold exterior toward heat.

"You will be her sworn shield, Dust," Halius declared.

Sir Garrond's cold stare made Alexia more uncomfortable than the jagged chair. Was that bitterness she saw in the narrowing of his eyes, in the flare of his nostrils? As far as she knew, Sir Garrond didn't like anyone. He offered everyone the same disdain, except perhaps his liege.

"I command the Azure," he said, turning his blue gaze upon Halius. "To do that, I must be able to go where I am needed, when I am needed, not committed to any one charge. Sir Branor is better suited for the task."

"My queen will have the bloody best!" Halius shrieked, his voice going high and making it even easier to see him as a child throwing a tantrum.

The Azureknight remained unchanged. Glacial. He kept his blue eyes on the petulant prince.

"Stand beside her!" Halius screamed. Alexia flinched, knowing that she would inevitably be the victim of that wrath.

Garrond stared ahead with dead eyes that never wandered toward Alexia as he climbed to the twelfth step and took a place near the Steward's Seat.

"Now where is my stupid, ugly sister and the bloody Mahagan?" Halius demanded.

"I had them wait outside," Sir Ryam disclosed, his voice much more cautious and subservient than Garrond's had been.

"Bring them in!"

Halius's sworn shield rushed to obey. Azi entered with Leoquo a few steps behind her. The three bondpairs stood vigil at the entryway as Ryam closed the doors. Alexia couldn't comprehend the world through Halius's eyes, watching Azi stride toward the throne, her statuesque form in the silver and blue dress glimmering with sapphires and pearls. She looked regal and magnificent, a queen born for this moment of solidarity with the Mahagan people.

For all that, she was invisible to her brother. Halius tried to sound threatening, but like an undersized pup sitting in an oversized chair, his petulance rang through the throne room. "Why are you here?"

Leoquo spoke with dignity and poise. "The Celegan Empire invaded the Mahogany Isles last span. We have lost the Everrain and the isle of Caleel."

Halius grinned, his lack of heart disgusting Alexia perhaps more than anything else he'd done. So far, she thought, pessimism reigning in her mind. "And what do you want me to do about it?"

Leoquo slowly unclenched his fists. Alexia admired how he neither bowed his head in submission nor let aggravation demean him to Halius's level. Here was a worthy prince, not a child wearing his daddy's oversized clothes and playing pretend in his seat. "We face our extinction, Halius Sapphire. And, when we fall, your people will be next."

"Since our inception, the Sapphire Kingdom has taken no part in conflicts beyond our continent," Queen Hellena said in her patronizing, honeyed tone. "These have been your rules too, Emir Leoquo. When have the Mahagans ever supported us against the Ruby Kingdom? Not a single time in seven hundred years of conflict. Why is that?"

It was Azi who stepped forward, encroaching on the bottom step of the dais. "You cannot compare the Gemstone War to what is happening in the Mahogany Isles! Mahagan civilians are being torn apart by lions and the Celegans will not stop until every one of them is dead! This is nothing like the Gemstone War! This is genocide!"

"Keep your outbursts to yourself, sister," Halius spat, "or I will have Sir Ryam carry you away."

"This has nothing to do with you," Hellena added, true acid leaking through her honey facade.

Azi closed her mouth, and her lips quivered as she fought away the pain. Once again, her mother had stripped down her spirit and whipped her soul. Alexia felt her blood boil as she drew on Seraxa. The air around her and Sir Garrond grew even colder. Alexia tried to love all people. But every rule has an exception and Queen Hellena was the exception to that one. Alexia tried to exhale the homicidal thoughts that coursed through her. If anyone noticed her staff glowing orange or the ruby gem on it burning brighter, they didn't show it.

Leoquo's friendly expression evaporated. But he didn't let the queen's manipulative questions lead him astray of his purpose. The emir speared at the fish he needed to, not the bait she set out for him. "Do you know how many people call the Mahogany Isles home, Queen Hellena Sapphire?"

Hellena scowled. Halius held his hateful grin.

"Two hundred thousand," Leoquo said calmly. "TWO. HUNDRED. THOUSAND!" he roared, as if he were a true lion.

Everyone in the grand chamber recoiled. Except Sir Garrond, of course.

Leoquo shook with passion. His voice undulated with fury. "Two hundred thousand hearts. Two hundred thousand souls. Two hundred thousand people who would fight the Chimaera with you!"

His words of anguish sending waves of emotion through the chamber, Alexia felt like she was on the beaches, in the jungles, watching lions tear into flesh, reaching out her hand for help as the beasts came crashing toward her. The sadness of two hundred thousand people, and the one brave man in front of her, became hers. She didn't try to mask it, not when it was this heavy, not when the people on the dais beside her looked down on all that suffering with apathy.

The Dust stared at her tears, his face a mask of emptiness. When she looked his way, he averted his gaze.

When neither Halius nor Hellena offered a rebuttal, Azi ventured forth with her well-thought out plan. "At this time, reclaiming the Isles may be impossible, but we can extract tens of thousands of Mahagans and settle them on Cherin's Point. Many of the Islanders would be empowered bondpairs, mighty warriors capable of jumping great heights and moving as fluidly as water. In exchange, Emir Leoquo has agreed to deploy his bondpairs to help us forge an armistice with the Ruby Kingdom so that we can survive the Chimaera together. Helping them is not only what Leverith or the Love Queen would do, it is the wisdom of Yadeen and the strength of Gidi. It is the only way the Sapphire survives what is coming."

Hellena looked aside to her son. "Did you hear something?"

Halius shrugged. "I saw the Thing's manly jaw moving, but I can't say I heard anything."

Azi lowered her eyes, taking a step back, clutching at her heart that was once more broken. Her mother and brother would never listen to something that came from her. Beside her, Leoquo stared wide-eyed, appalled. His hand went to Azi's back, and bit his lip to silence whatever angry words he harbored.

Azi and Leoquo looked into each other's eyes, sharing that moment of helplessness. The boy who needed to save his kingdom and the girl who couldn't ever be respected. When they lifted their gaze from each other, it was Alexia they looked to. They had done everything they could, trying both passion and logic. Neither Halius nor Hellena heard a single word.

"We have a longstanding trade partnership, Emir Leoquo," Queen Hellena said. "Perhaps we can offer you some weapons or ships at a reasonable discount and you can attempt to save your own people."

No amount of lip biting could rein in the lion now. Alexia doubted there had ever been such intensity, such a roaring voice heard in these halls. Leoquo shook and everyone trembled at his words. "The nightmare is coming for you, Halius Sapphire! You will watch, powerless, as the lightning crackles and turns your soldiers and friends into bones and ash! As the mighty lion tears through your walls and destroys everything your family ever built! As the serpent thrashes all around you, spewing venom at the people you love! As your father falls to his knees and begs for your life! You will hold your love, powerless, as her eyes go hollow! This nightmare is your future, Halius Sapphire! You can choose whether you want to be me or whether you will help me and my people fight these monsters so that they never reach your halls!"

Queen Hellena gasped during his speech, covering her mouth. Her eyes were aghast, her face gone pale. Her capture and her father's execution in front of her was no court secret. The only reason she lived was because Gideon Sapphire had taken the Spider's Head and exchanged it for Zafirton. Halius had even glanced at Alexia when Leoquo spoke of holding his love as she died.

The prince leaned forward on his father's throne. His sneering grin foretold that it would be the monster and not the man who spoke. "I would worry more about yourself and less about the Sapphire Kingdom. The beasts know better than to strike the home of the Second Great Wizard. Like all beasts they only prey on the weak." He leaned back. "We cannot answer your plea for salvation, Emir Leoquo Mahagan."

Alexia's heart pounded. Nervously, she stood, trembling as she faced her childhood predator. She inhaled, held, and slowly exhaled. This prey had a voice, and she wouldn't spend her whole life in silence. Two hundred thousand hearts, she reminded herself. She thought of how many of those hearts had stopped beating already and how many more would end if she did nothing. She thought of how many of those hearts had been broken, as Leoquo's had. Everyone in the room watched her. I will not hide!

"What is it, my beloved rose?" Halius asked.

"You say that I am your equal? That we will share the chair of rule?"

Halius nodded.

"Then please listen to me. You are making a mistake, Halius." Queen Hellena scoffed but Alexia would not let her predator force her back into hiding. "You have the opportunity to be the hero prince who saved an entire nation with his valiance. Future generations of Mahagan would honor you. Your offer to help may save the entire world from Celegan conquest because each Mahagan we save is a Leverian saved in the war to come."

Alexia took his hand in hers. His scoff was gone, the chivalrous courter returned. "Trust me, Halius. They are the wolves and we are the sheep. The Celegans pull our own wool over our eyes and lead us to slaughter. They will come for us and they will devour us if we let them. I have already fought them twice and know that Daichin ezen Celegan hunts me. He would take me away from you and you can choose right now to make that harder for him."

Halius contemplated while Hellena interjected with her soft, honeyed tones. Alas, Hellena couldn't hide her pernicious nature from Alexia. You can put honey in the bitterest tea, but the bitterness is always there just beneath the surface. "My husband is away now, forging an army to conquer the Ruby Kingdom. He plans for you to be the army's head. Halius and his queen will rule from the Dawn to the Dusk. He is not interested in helping the Mahagans against a bogeyman that has never harmed us."

"I sit this chair today," Halius snapped at his mother. He set his eyes back on Alexia's and she didn't run from him. "How do you know this Daichin hunts you?"

"You've heard of the battle in the ogre cave?"

Halius nodded. "Of course. All of your exploits mark you as the queen that you already are, my love."

"I should've died there," she said. "An ogre with silver eyes bested me, bound me in gold. The tamed beast used lightseer magic to defeat Maleon Stonebreaker, but he refused to kill me even when it would've saved his life. Daichin ezen Celegan wants to capture me, and he wants to destroy Leveria."

Leoquo added, "I overheard one of the Chimaera's agents say that he intends to make the Second Great Wizard his empress."

"Hearsay," Hellena protested.

"Silence!" Halius roared at his mother. Alexia stifled her grin, knowing that each time Hellena spoke she pushed Halius toward Alexia.

Halius shifted to the side and tilted his head toward the opening he created on the Sapphire Throne.

Alexia sat beside him, keeping a loose hold on Halius's hand. Her thoughts went to Zander, but she knew she had to pay this price. Her free hand went into her pocket, squeezing the doll, rather than to her sternum, where the locket would never be again.

Halius cleared his throat. "The Sapphire Kingdom has heard your plea for aid, Emir Leoquo Mahagan." He looked to his future queen, gave Alexia's hand a gentle squeeze, his gaze soft, loving. "We answer your call. The Sapphire will do what it can to free your people."

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