Maybe if she touches it or puts it upon her head…
There is a silence that lasts so long, I wonder again if she hasn’t left. But no, her profile is still visible.
“I did not think you were real,” she says in a different tone. “After all these years, I thought… surely you were dead.”
I squint up at the mesh, trying to see the face. “Who painted your mural? Who knew I was coming?”
When she doesn’t answer me, I remember Mr. Lewis sitting me down and telling me a tale I did not believe, assigning me a quest I could not complete. And yet here I am, standing before the Queen Who Sees No One, with her crown, having survived so much.
And still I failed.
The Queen speaks up one last time. “You may stay here until morning. Then you will take that cursed crown, get onto your horses, and leave my Kingdom, never to return again. Know this as an exercise of my will and authority—if you or your husband ever set foot upon my lands after tomorrowmorning, you will be shot where you stand and buried where your family shall never find the body.”
“I have no family!” I shout up at the oculus.
I wait for a response. I wait to beg some more, yell some more. I wait… because this was the whole point of it all, and the part of me that hasn’t given up yet will not give up now.
But she walks off, the shadow behind the mesh no more.
And with her departure goes any hope of accomplishing what I came for.
Eighty-FourA New Lodging.
This isnodungeon.
Though I am tired, aching, and still covered with cobwebs, though all I can think about is seeing Merc with my own eyes, though I am stinging with how I’ve let the whole continent of Anathos down, I cannot avoid noticing the grandeur and the luxury I’m being directed through. The ceiling that arches over me is leafed in gold, the carpet under my feet is royal blue, and the walls of this hall are covered in a flowered silk that is as lovely as any meadow I have stood in.
In fact, I recall these flowers. From the fields after the Kingdom’s gate—
“This way, missus.”
Once again, I’m guided by the guard who’s so kind. Our paths keep crossing somehow, and now he’s in front of me, narrating the turns; no more pointing over my shoulder. I suppose I could look at the fact that we keep meeting as some kind of fate. I don’t. I think it’s an indication that the warrior queen doesn’t have much of an army at her disposal anymore—and the further I mull that over, the greater my sense of futility becomes.
Stuck in my head, I float along this fancy corridor, and not in a good way—and the muffled sounds of music and laughter in the distance don’t help with the disorientation. I gather that word has spread throughout the Kingdom about the sacred ruby’s return, and I want to tell them to stop. The future is not bright, the reprieve of strife is only temporary, and it’s all going to get so much worse for everybody.
As I pass by another window that looks out onto a courtyard, there are torches dotting and dashing in the darkness as those holding them spin and gyrate in glee, like fireflies in the summer. I worry this will call the demons to the castle, and see blood spilled all along the colonnade of white marble—
I almost walk into a floor vase full of flowers. As I jump back, I blurt, “How lovely.”
Because… well, they are.
My guard glances back. “The Queen plants them. In memory of her mother.”
“I am sorry for her loss.” Continuing on, I think of the torture racks. “And… what of her father?”
“That I do not know, missus. But those fields of flowers are tended even when our crops fail.”
“How…” Sad. On so many levels. “She must have loved her mother very much.”
A familiar longing pierces my heart—
“Here, missus.” The guard stops in front of a door. “Your husband awaits. Food has been delivered. You will see a bellpull should either of you require aught.”
“Thank you.”
My gratitude for him is real, yet I’m already forgetting his existence as I reach for the golden knob myself and open the door—
“Merc!”
