When I look up,sheis there.
The False Queen stands five paces away from me, her figure flickering in and out of view. One minute she stands with me in darkness, the next in that field of dust.
“Well,” she whispers, her lips concealed behind the curtain of her hair but a hint of surprise tainting her voice. “Your mind has broken through. But how, I wonder?”
She tips her head, her voice flickering like her form. “Maybe because two of the kings are with you… Or maybe because of the… Well, never mind. We’re due for a chat…”
With another groan of effort, I rise to my feet and step forward, trying to reach her, even though every labored step seems to keep us apart. “What have you done to me?”
She glides forward, her steps bringing her no closer to me, her voice stronger, although her surroundings continue to flicker in and out of darkness. “Are you not enjoying my gifts, Thyra?”
My brow furrows as I fight to remain standing. “Gifts?”
“The gifts I told you to accept when you first tookthe runes into your body.”
I remember the blade vision when the hammer crumbled. I saw the False Queen beneath the branches of a tree whose white flowers were falling around us.
She told me:don’t reject the hammer’s power. Accept the gifts I’m giving you. Take the darkness. You’ll need it.
“What gifts?” I repeat, my jaw tight.
Her hair sways across her face as she whispers, “Their powers.”
At that, black energy sparks across my right arm. I’m aware for the first time that I’m wearing dark clothing as inky as the False Queen’s dress, but my right arm is bare.
The runes along the ivory ribbon begin to glow and move.
Each one rotates as if on an axis, stopping at points to collectively form shapes before rotating into a different image.
First, snowflakes cascade along the ribbon.
Then, flames blaze across the material.
Finally, blood drips down my arm.
I jolt, but the runes don’t stop moving and I expect to see snowflakes again, only for the jagged lines to ripple into a pattern I don’t recognize. Circles? Ovals? The design is too disjointed to identify and the pattern doesn’t fully connect before it stutters and glides once more into snowflakes.
I struggle to breathe. “What is this?”
“A transference of power.” The curtain of the False Queen’s hair parts to reveal her cruel smile. “You’re draining the three kings, Thyra.”
I jolt. “What?”
“You’ve been draining them every night. A little at a time. During blade visions you don’t even know you’re having because—” She laughs. “You sleep through them.”
“No, that’s…Draining them?”
“Oh, come now, Thyra.” Her voice becomes mocking. “Did you think that if you simply worked hard, you could become sostrong so quickly? Did you not question how fast you’re learning to fight and how easily you now survive the cold? How you can sustain your energy with the barest amount of food and water, or how the touch offrostdoesn’t burn you like it used to?
“Did you not wonder why you find yourself overheated at times, too hot, your emotions more volatile, your physical needs…fiery? Or how you might find yourself able to leap into the air, sustaining suspension far longer than any lowborn or, indeed, any highborn ever should? And perhaps…in time…you might start to crave the taste of bloo?—”
“No!” I wrench myself backward, grabbing at my arm as the runes continue to turn and turn and turn…
The queentut-tutsat me as the drape of her hair sways away from her lips again, revealing her smirk. “Don’t fight it. Remember what I told you: kindness will always be crushed. Hope will always die. Except that now…”
She glides forward and this time, she actually comes closer, dusty air storming in the background. “Now, you’ll be the one doing the crushing.”
A deep weight drives me to my knees again, a heaviness in my chest and mind, forcing my head to bow, a posture of submission at her feet.
