Alwin spun around as his whole party paused in fear, some of his guards drawing their swords.
There, emerging from the ruins like the sacralized ruler of a kingdom long dead, was Queen Schön. Her hands were held in front of her heavy burgundy skirts, her golden hair laid perfectly atop her head in intricate braids. She hardly made a whisper on the ground.
Alwin had to blink to make sure she was no figment, seeing a flicker of a shadow at the corner of his eye.
“Your Majesty?”
“I’m glad I ran across you, Prince Adalwin,” she said conversationally, taking a winding path toward him like she was strolling through the palace gardens and had happened upon him by chance. “I was thinking about our last exchange, and it left me quite…unsettled.”
Alwin felt immediately uncomfortable, remembering the queen’s private chambers, her silky robe that had left nothing to the imagination against the burning orange glow of the fire. Her hungry gaze and the words that had dripped like honey from her lips as her hands roamed over his body.
Her salacious proposal.
“How did you come to be here?” he asked in shock, taking a step forward before stopping, his instincts screaming at him.
She curled her lip. “I believe the better question is, how didyoucome to be here?”
The words sent a shiver up his spine. The long hours of winding through the forest flashed through his mind; the countless detours and wrong turns.
“Did you lure me here?” he asked, and she tilted her head with a smile that didn’t touch anything else on her face but the corners of her lips.
She ran the tips of her fingers over the rim of the well, never breaking eye contact with him. “Do you happen to remember the last words you said to me?”
He had bid Her Majesty farewell upon receiving his brother’s letter the morning after their awkward encounter, as courtesy demanded, but Alwin was of a sharper mind than to reply with that. Her intentions were already beginning to take shape in the empty spaces where she said nothing at all.
“I refused you.”
She laughed lightly, the sound echoing around the well and ringing in Alwin’s ears.
“Refused,” she repeated, like the word was a foreign thing placed between her perfect lips and highly disfavored. “Do you know how many people have refused me, Prince?”
Alwin had heard of none.
Or at least…none who had lived to tell of it.
“I’m sure there aren’t many who would dare, Your Majesty.”
Her blue eyes narrowed. “Why is that, do you think?”
It was in this moment that Alwin realized it had grown eerily quiet.
He snapped his head around and saw no one, nothing but another passing shadow, until he looked down. Littering the ground like fallen leaves were his people, their bodies lying at awkward, unnatural angles, eyes staring unseeing into the distance.
He hadn’t heard a single sound.
His heart began to beat heavily in his chest, sickness climbing to burn his esophagus. It couldn’t be…
“Jurgen?” he called uselessly, dropping to the dirty ground at his oldest friend’s side to shake him desperately. “Farwin? Get up.”
They lay unmoving, heedless of their prince’s command in death.
Alwin couldn’t comprehend it.
Not a moment ago Farwin had been smiling proudly, his whole life stretching ahead of him. Jurgen, who had stood over him hiswhole life like an immovable mountain, had crumbled without a whisper.
Youth was supposed to linger. Mountains were supposed to hold.
He’d led them all so foolishly into a well-planned trap.
