I am a queen in name, but it’s really the Shadow Court who delivers my orders: a circle of our wisest politicians and fiercest generals, deferent only to me, enacting my will upon my people. And my will is absolute, in the eyes of those people. Yet I fear I have become an animated corpse. I fear Azarii and his rebels are right—that a creature such as I should never have been allowed to exist. But what was the alternative? A religion wholesale slaughtered? A sunlit society invaded? A planet overtaken by unfeeling strength above all else?
I carry impossible amounts of muscle in every limb now, but I feel like a clattering collection of confused bones, staggering from moment to moment, eye sockets hollow, jaw working without language, wondering why I’m still alive at all. The first time I see my own reflection in my chamber’s many mirrors, I howl like an animal and shatter them all.
One of Russ’s heads bites at my cheeks, the second ruffling my hair, the third licking at my eyes and mouth to bring me back to myself, but I hardly even know who that is. My attendants feed him, bathe him, fill his water dishes, brush his thick obsidian fur. I don’t even care for myself. My hair is greasy, longer than I’ve allowed in ages, brushing the tops of my ears; my skin is caked in sweat and what dried blood has refused to fully fade. All my words become sobs become screams become strangled shudders of air. Only to eat and drink does the dogleave me. I kiss every single one of his heads and hold them close to my chest when the night terrors always, always come back.
What arrives when I wake is all the worse.
I’m kneeling beside my father’s grave, my horns pressed to the cold metal tablet, when the shooting starts.
It’s a low rumble at first, standard Earthside weapons, just common bullets rattling against my fortress’s impenetrable stone walls. Then the noise becomes punctuated with punches of hissing power—the advanced freezeshot blasters of the nightfolk—and I know I can’t stay.
I trace each letter of my parents’ engraved names with a single claw.Father. Mother.The words are trapped in my throat. Every open wound on my body pulses like a heartbeat. My rolling rage is so fierce that if I could find my voice, it would only rise into a roar.
Another freezeshot sounds, ricocheting off the fortress’s stone gate.
I will bring honor back to our line, I silently swear, standing, eyes steady on the graves. I spread my wings, their span even greater than my eight feet of height. They block the blue torch that blazes behind me, casting my immediate path into absolute dark. It’s all right; my eyes are used to it. I blink hard, and the fortress’s harsh lines come back into view.
The flight back to my fortress is brief. After leaping into the black sky, wings and claws splayed, I alight on the central parapet, just above the entry gate, and look down to behold the madness below. This band of rebels is surprisingly well equipped. Freezeshot blasters. Radiation-forged armor plating. Only one thing is consistent among the clambering chaos of bodies: These resistance fighters don’t display a single set of wings, a rogue claw, or even a scale-plated section of flesh. They’ve molded armor around themselves like the shells of sun serpents’ eggs, hiding any evidence of nightfolk mutations. Not one of them calls upon the planet’s gifts to our people. They might as well be dayfolk.
They might as well throw their bodies upon a pyre now and beg the Daylands’ forgiveness for having evolved into nightfolk at all.
Already, my loyal soldiers are locked in combat with the assailants. Shouts of “For Azarii!” fly between blows and shots, in case there was any doubt of his involvement. Freezeshot and Earthside-style bullets ricochet off the fortress’s walls, punctuated by radioactive blasts. As my observation draws me closer, I weave and dodge, varying my flight path, lest I find holes blown clean through my flapping wings. Eventually I reach a strong vantage point, directly above the fortress’s main gate. The battle unfolds before me like a general’s map of miniatures.
Every nightfolk citizen has their own gift from the Diakópsei—or curse, I suppose, if you ask the insurgents—and here, they are on full display. Blasts of energy, among the most common abilities. Violent spikes that lurch from the earth to impale opponents. Wounds knitting back into whole, unbroken flesh almost as soon as bleeding starts. Telekinetic redirection of shots, either toward their enemies or simply away from their own.
I briefly glimpse a lanky, long-armed youth, with his perpetually furrowed brow, storm cloud–gray eyes ever alert. It’s Thaane—my friend since childhood, now among the most promising young leaders of my new militia—and he is, as always, seven steps ahead of all the others.
Aloft on his twin pairs of wings, Thaane waves a three-clawed hand, turning the stone floor beneath his opponent to perfect glass. The opponent staggers, the ground too slippery for her to stand, and as she flails, a shot from another of our own soldiers strikes her dead between the eyes, where even her makeshift armor failed to cover. She collapses, as if weightless, her being severed clean from her body, in a bedlam of shattered glass and blood.
Furious power floods my body all at once, like a void when a lantern goes out. I raise one hand, energy sparking into being like rogue flame between my claws, and launch it toward the scrambling militia at the gate.
Black light explodes, atomic. Bodies scatter, but their armor hasn’t fractured. That’s the strength of metal and stone forged together by nightfolk power. The same power these rebels deny with their attire. The same power they fear.
“It’s the usurper!” one of them shouts, blue eyes glinting with terror as they meet mine from below.
“No,” I say, even knowing they can’t hear me from the ground. “It’s your queen.”
I raise both hands this time, bring them together with a crash like a thunderclap, and energy spears from my open hands to the screaming rebel’s chest. This time his armor shatters like glass of the Earthside era, shards of it digging into his now-exposed chest. It’s ringed with scales like my own, alternating with stripes of clotted blood where he clearly tried to peel them away.
Azarii has convinced these people that they’re monsters, through and through. But what makes them think they’re the only ones, that their horror is special, that their grief is worthy of anything more than a passing note? I swoop down and finish this rebel with my teeth, his blood slick and salty in my mouth, because I am a monster, too. The worst of them all. At least I admit it.
Monsters are needed when the alternatives are nightmares.
The other insurgents go stock-still at the sight of me. I know what they see; I know what I’ve become, transformed more dramatically now than any other nightfolk ever has been. Eight feet of bulging muscle, growing so thickly out of me that it looks more like fungus. Arms more like legs, or perhaps legs more like arms, all equipped with ruthlessly sharp claws. Broad wings, thick enough to be used as insulation by a smaller creature, if ever they dared to sever them from my spine. Skin bluish white as a bruise, pockmarked as a moon, like any nightfolk, but drawn impossibly tight over tired bones. Eyes that gleam purple in the half-light of the eternal night. The proud arc of obsidian horns that crowns my head.
I’m in my element in combat, raised to new heights of destructive potential by the Diakópsei that I’ve embraced, so my lips lift into a bloodstained smile. It probably looks more like a snarl to the insurgents.
Chaos. Now that they’ve seen their so-called usurper, they know better than to fight me. They try to run. Of course they do. But one woman hesitates, scaly knuckles tense around her freezeshot rifle. Target locked right between my eyes.
“My lord.” Thaane is at my back now, just behind my shoulder. One hand raised to summon more glass from stone.
I raise my own hand for silence, keeping my gaze fixed on the insurgent. “A bold one.” I spit blood on the ice-coated stone. “Go ahead. Pull the trigger. I’m more tired than you know, and a little blast of proper cold might just wake me up.”
The woman’s arms rattle like dead tree branches in a gale. One finger shivers, twitches, against the trigger. Pulls hard and fast.
When I open my mouth again, it’s not to fling another retort. More radiation blasts from my throat, swallows the freezeshot in midair. Slivers of ice rain down between me and the insurgent. A few pierce my feet, stinging. I’m more than awake now. I’m an open flame. All else is merely tinder.
Thaane laughs. A harsh, cold noise. “Well done, little princess.”
