—she moves purely by instinct, Avon her shadow.

Hours pass. They stop to drink at a shallow brook. There's no sign of the raiders, only leaves rustling and the lengthening shadows of the sun.

Finally, they emerge at the edge of the woods and spot a village nestled in the valley.

Avon looks at her. "They won't welcome me."

"Probably not," she says, heart thumping.

"Will you…?"

"Help you?" She nods. "We'll go—"

*

"All right, all right, I'll go!"

Mithras dragged her several feet up the aisle before he let go, shoving her in the back for good measure. Behind the black stone wall blocking the altar, Valerie heard muffled yells—Avon calling for her. Without the crown jewels, she couldn't get to him.

Play along, she thought. Mithras had to hand over the crown jewels in order for her to open the chamber beneath the temple. He needed her alive until then. Which meant…

"Out!" Mithras snapped.

He followed her through the open door of the chapel and out to the palace grounds. Sunlight shone down on the grass and the rose gardens, bright and steady. A fresh breeze wafted away the lingering stench of blood. She saw no guards, nor any wedding guests, the only sign of their hasty departure a single missing shoe on the velvet carpet leading away from the chapel.

It felt surreal.

They'd marched a good twenty feet away from the chapel when Mithras grabbed her shoulder, stopping her. She turned and faced him. Thorne's face stared down at her, thin-lipped and pasty. But even ignoring his magical presence, she recognised the languid way Mithras moved, the pitiless eyes, the cold smile.

"See that your actions have consequences."

He pointed back at the chapel with the Golden Sceptre in his left hand. The Masked Crown he'd hooked around his wrist. She couldn't see the Kestrel's Eye, but she sensed its power hanging around his neck. Much as she longed to wrest back these treasures, she knew she wouldn't succeed. Instead, reluctantly, with trepidation in her heart, Valerie followed his gaze.

The Golden Sceptre loosed its crackling power. Light flared out like a great blade that could cleave mountains, and the chapel cracked in two. As she watched, horrified, the entire building collapsed. Plumes of dust billowed into the air. Stone crumbled on stone, wooden beams snapped, and the dark barrier that Mithras had conjured dissipated into smoke.

She couldn't speak. She couldn't even move. Her heart clenched so painfully tight, she couldn't breathe.

Avon was in there.

"There's no end to the suffering I can put you through." Mithras spoke in a dreamy tone, a detached observer. "Ask your queen."

Avon.

She started to shake. Her village, burning. The acolytes trapped in the convent, screaming. Her mother begging for mercy. So much death and destruction and pain wrapped up tight inside her, and this man, this parasite, had engineered it all.

Dust settled on the collapsed ruins. She breathed it in, thick and cloying. Nothing else moved. Nothing could have survived it.

She wanted to run in there anyway, to search the rubble and scream his name until she either heard an answer or found his body. But even as she tried to jerk free, Mithras wrenched her back.

"Why?" She glared at him, eyes blazing. "I'm doing what you want! You already won, Mithras, you didn't have to do that."

"Ah, but I'm a generous soul." Mithras bent close to her ear. "Be a good little girl, and I'll bring him back. Your Chancellor for my Mae. What do you say?"

So he meant to dangle this hope in front of her as a means of control. She remembered the Patriarch's poisonous words to Avon, how he had offered to bring back Ophelia too. Never had this poisoned chalice looked so tempting.

Valerie shuddered. "I said I'd go, didn't I?"

He shoved her again and she started walking, unable to bear the sight of the ruined chapel for a moment longer. All this death, and for what? They'd let Ophelia die, Rufus, Lord Rutherford, all those innocent wedding guests, and she'd told herself it didn't matter. Those pieces could be sacrificed for the sake of winning the game.

But not Avon.

Not Avon. She needed him. She wanted him. Avon, with his blade that could cut through curses and strike down any magical foe. Avon, who had loved her twice, who had a vision that could change the world and the ambition to make it happen. Avon, her most worthy opponent, ruthless and exacting and strategic. He would kill for her. He would die for her. She desired him as a flower desired the sun.

Without him, she was left despairing in the dark.

She understood now why he had been mourning his sister. The Avon she knew was gone. The Ophelia she knew was gone. The next time she encountered them, they would be strangers, and they wouldn't even know what she had lost. No one would.

How strangely empty she felt in this strange and empty world. Like all the others, Avon was both dead and not-dead. They were all fragments, the people she'd lost, they existed in both memory and possibility, and she didn't cry for them, or him, because she couldn't move on.

She would have to start again with a new Avon. Maybe someday she'd find time to mourn the old one. These thoughts flitted through her head, jumbled, messy, in lieu of whatever emotion she ought to feel.

What emotion should one feel, in this world where death took the form of suspended animation?

"It's her!"

Valerie's head snapped up. She had been dragging her feet, staring at the ground. But that voice…

Lady Melody stood at the forefront of a gaggle of palace ladies milling about the lawn outside the palace entrance. They weren't alone. A long line of carriages had come to a standstill on the road to the palace gates, surrounded by panicky wedding guests eager to depart. Guards attempted to restore order. Servants had spilled out of the palace too, some of them carrying luggage, others getting in the way.

"It's the queen!"

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Melody's voice rang out over the crowd, clear as a bell. One by one, people spotted her. She felt their eyes on her, their recognition.

Mithras stopped short. "What?"

"The queen!"

Whispers, then shouts. Then something even stranger. Flavia threw herself on the ground in tears. The Maskamery servants cried out for their queen, some of them kneeling, others prostrating themselves. The panic amongst the Drakonian contingent instantly became worse: people ran, threw themselves into the carriages or fled back to the palace, or simply froze in shock. When one of the Drakonian guards raised his musket, the Maskamery guard beside him knocked it out of his hand.

This wave of emotion—she didn't know how else to describe it—hit her with magical force. She felt it at the same time Mithras did. Fear, awe, love and hope blended together in a potent mix of magical power.

"What is this?"

Mithras tried to grab her, his pale fingers pinching her skin, but the magic around them was rapidly leeching away from him and into her, and it only took the barest effort to slip from his grasp.

In the emptiness of her heart, power rushed to fill the void.

It belonged to her, and Valerie took it, let it fill her, lift her up like the queen they believed her to be. Her skin glowed. Her dress shone brilliant white. Her feet left the ground, air rushing around her, and her heart soared. The queen ruled Maskamere. This was her land, and they were her people. And right now, Valerie was the queen.

Mithras raised the Golden Sceptre.

"I don't think so," said Valerie.

She snapped her fingers and the Golden Sceptre flew out of his hands and to her, its master. Another flick of her hand and the Masked Crown did the same.

"Kill her!" Mithras bellowed. "Kill her now!"

Guards aimed their muskets. She conjured a barrier of twisted tree roots, blocking their gunshots. Then from the shadow cast by the tree roots, a great shade unfurled, a long, spindly creature with no eyes and many branch-like hands. It rushed over the barrier towards the wedding guests, and Valerie would be lying if she claimed not to enjoy their screams.

Still, it wouldn't kill anyone. Her curse prevented that. She could not harm any Drakonian without falling into an enchanted sleep, and so she urgently needed to get to the temple before they saw through her tricks.

Before that, she had to deal with Mithras. The palace guards, those that remained, were fighting each other, and Valerie picked out the first Maskamery soldier who had turned on his comrades.

"You. Seize him!"

Mithras was making a beeline for the palace entrance, no doubt hoping to beat her to it, but he did not escape the crowd in his way. To her delight, the Maskamery soldier wasn't the only one eager to leap at her command. Dinah, the palace matron, tackled the bishop with considerable force, and even Flavia got in on the act, giving her old master a well-deserved slap in the face.

Well, he wasn't Thorne anymore. But he deserved it anyway.

"Got him, Your Majesty!" Dinah called. "What do you want us to do with him?"

She felt the easy rush of power, a steady fuel to her fire. They love me. They'll do anything I ask.

She felt too the murderous force of Mithras' glare as she descended to the ground and took the last crown jewel from him, the Kestrel's Eye floating its way into her hands. A sorcerer in a cage has no power at all.

"Lock him up for now," she said. "I want every Drakonian taken hostage, but keep him apart."

"The girl's a fake!" Mithras sneered. "She's not the queen."

"And gag him," Valerie added. "Those of you who can fight, my shadow will protect you. Clear out the grounds. I'll search the palace."

"Wait!"

She looked over at Melody, one of the few Drakonians standing her ground. As Avon had predicted, Melody had sang like a bird. The entire palace believed that Shikra had returned. She wielded this power now, the power of a queen, because Melody had given it to her.

"What are you going to do?" Melody asked.

"You were kind to me, sometimes." Valerie addressed her and the other palace ladies huddling behind her: Amilia, Rose, Mona. "I told you, you don't have to serve them. In Maskamere, women are free. I'm going to set you free."

The ladies stared at her. Not a word, not a squeak. Valerie retreated towards the palace entrance, conjuring a maze of gorse to block the way so no one could follow her. Behind her, the Maskamery soldiers gathered, handing out muskets to the more able-bodied servants, the shade hovering over them. Before her, the halls of the palace were silent.

She knew the way.

Valerie broke into a run, a burst of magic enhancing her fleetness of foot. She dashed through the entrance hall, the lower gallery, into the temple and down the steps into the chamber beneath. The magic around her became more vibrant with every step. She could feel the goldentree calling to her. The Kestrel's Eye glowed at her neck. The Golden Sceptre vibrated in her hand. The Masked Crown fit snug on her head, and her every sense amplified.

The great stone blocking the entrance to the goldentree beckoned her. She saw every swirl, every pattern. Felt every grain of sand beneath her feet. Tasted the dry air. Heard her own breathing, smelled her own sweat. All of this she experienced with perfect clarity. She had never before realised how incomplete her own experience truly was.

Her hands touched the boulder. The crown jewels reacted, the boulder rolling away. Valerie once more gazed into the inky blackness of the tunnel that led to the goldentree. The last time she had entered this place, Avon and Bakra had been locked in battle, and she had put her own ambition before all else, stepping inside to claim the chamber's secrets for herself.

But now, standing here alone, she became painfully aware of two things.

First, that she had never meant to come here alone. She felt Avon's loss like a gap in her own heart, an empty place at her shoulder where he should have stood. Their enemies were divided; they were supposed to be united. Could she really step through into this new world without at least checking on him first? She hadn't seen his body. Even with all the protections she'd given him, it was hard to imagine him surviving a collapsing building, but still the fact remained: she hadn't seen the body.

She couldn't be sure that he was dead.

The uncertainty and longing burned at her, while at the same time, a different thought intruded. Right here, right now, she had never been closer to the Maskamery crown. She had all three of the crown jewels. She had defeated Mithras. Maska was helpless, trapped with the goldentree. Everyone believed she was the queen.

What if she didn't return to the past? What if she chose this world, this future? What if she claimed her throne?

With the Patriarch dead, they'd left Drakon in disarray. She could drive the Drakonians out of the capital and rally her people under the queen's banner. She could become the monarch she had dreamed of becoming and save Maskamere herself. She had all this power, all this giddy, exultant adoration. How could she possibly give it up?

I promised Avon that he would see his sister again.

But Avon was dead. She owed no promises to a dead man.

You don't know he's dead.

He's dead, she told herself. He has to be dead, there's no way he could have…

He couldn't have survived. But if she chose to stay, she wouldn't only be sacrificing Avon. She would be sacrificing every single person she had vowed to save. Even her own family.

How far was she willing to go for the sake of her ambition? Was there any line she wouldn't cross? Anyone she wouldn't let die? The same questions loomed over her, testing her like the point of a blade. She imagined taking her throne, standing against the Empire, the years of bloody war to come. A hollow crown for a hollow queen. If only the power didn't feel so good.

Choosing yourself only means you'll end up alone.

She wondered which she'd find more unbearable: being alone or being with people she loved who treated her like a stranger.

"Val?"

Her heart stopped.

She turned back to the chamber's entrance.

A man limped towards her, bruised, ragged, leaning on his sword like a walking stick. He smelled of dust and ash and blood. His clothes were torn, except for his silver-trimmed jacket, strangely intact. He stopped in the middle of the chamber, breathing heavily, then fell to his knees.

"Avon!"

She ran to him, flung her arms around him and made an incoherent noise, somewhere between a laugh and a cry.

He coughed, sagging against her. "Val…"

"You're hurt!" She fixed that, the Kestrel's Eye working its magic through every inch of his body, healing him inside and out. "How did you…?"

He smiled crookedly. "Did you forget? You put a protective spell in my jacket. It worked rather well."

"I thought you were gone."

"Don't let me keep you. I only wanted to say goodbye."

He said that when she wanted nothing more than to hold him forever, to feel his warmth, hear his cool voice, and never let him go again.

The goldentree entrance yawned behind them. She remembered her mission. How she'd almost faltered without him.

"Oh, Maska. I nearly…"

I nearly did a terrible thing.

She buried her head in his shoulder. "Don't ever leave me again."

He held her close. "What do you mean?"

"I'm a terrible person," she babbled. "I let everyone die, Avon, everyone, as long as I get what I want. You know that, right? How selfish I am, deep down?"

"I know." His fingers brushed her cheek. "I won't ever leave you all the same."

"Is it worse that we're going to erase everyone or worse if we don't? I can't tell anymore."

"It doesn't matter. I want my sister back, and I want you and Edrick safe. Everyone else can burn for all I care. What do you want?"

"You."

"And your family?"

She nodded tearfully.

"Then you know what to do."

Yes, she did. Again, his certainty reassured her. With Avon's help, Valerie got to her feet. She cleared her throat, took a deep breath. She still felt shaky, like a strong gust might blow her one way or another.

But Avon was alive. Their plan, miraculously, had worked. The goldentree awaited.

Valerie held out her hand. "Come with me."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.