“They have wings?” asked Tarness in disbelief.
“Ugh,” Rook replied.
Like a flock of geese, the almost-triangle of monsters glided deeper into the next sinkhole, skimming the darkness below like stones on water. They coasted gracefully for several long seconds, floating away in the air.
“How many of these holes are there in Unsel?” Angst asked.
“Let’s go see,” Hector said with a smile of wild abandon.
They charged forward, doing their best to pace the monsters while keeping a safe distance from the edge. Angst glanced around at his friends. Dallow was mouthing words to himself and appeared very focused. Tarness was so braced for action Angst was surprised his swifen was able to move beneath him. Rook had assumed knight-mode, his eyes keen, his training instinctively kicking in and preparing him to do his job. Jaden was full of cocky, had a smirk on his face Angst itched to remove, and his hands already glowed bright orange. Hector was almost drooling, a crazed smile of bloodlust on his face, his knuckles white on the swifen’s reins.
And Angst? Angst thought cake sounded really nice. A big fat piece of cake and a warm fire to hide behind. Teasing with Victoria, flirting with Alloria, dodging stray smacks from Rose, or avoiding angry wife-glares from Heather. These distractions were much less intimidating than the unknown, and preferable, as he felt the weight of every expectation upon him. A battle of anticipation and waiting warred in Angst’s mind. If faced with a fight, how he would perform without Chryslaenor?
They rode hard for an hour, as fast as Rook’s tired horse could go, until they finally found the last sinkhole. They circled around to the end, where they heard the loud smash of crashing water below. Angst and Jaden were the first to dismount. Angst’s swifen quickly walked into shadow and disappeared. The two men looked over the edge before Angst straightened to pull Jaden back.
“If you don’t mind, please let me,” Angst requested.
“What?” Jaden asked in alarm, looking back at the others.
“It’s a...thing,” Dallow tried to explain. “Just humor him.”
Angst got on his knees, and the ground shuddered beneath him. He crawled forward, took a deep breath, and looked over the edge. Far far below, giant watery hands pounded and ripped out chunks of earth and ground.
“Giant hands,” he said in disbelief. “Made of water!”
Angst looked up at Jaden, who shrugged and nodded before holding out a hand to help Angst up.
“How far are we from Unsel?” asked Hector warily.
“Maybe two days’ ride by horse,” answered Tarness.
“It only took two weeks for the sinkholes to get this far?” asked Jaden in surprise.
Dallow looked down thoughtfully before declaring, “That means we have about a month before they overtake Unsel!”
A blue aura surrounded Angst’s hands as he lifted them high, aiming them at the sinkhole before him.
“What do you think you are doing?” Dallow asked in shock. “You don’t have enough power to do anything here!”
“This is what I do. It’s earth and mineral. Even without Chryslaenor, I should be—”
Without warning, one of the giant greenish beasts swooped in and landed in front of Angst with a bone-jarring thud. Two more quickly followed, landing on each side of the first. Monsters continued to land hard until the entire flock of thirteen towered over them. Like gargoyles on castle ramparts, they stood alarmingly still, guarding the cliff from any potential threat.
The creature in front of Angst quivered in anticipation. When its muscles shivered, its body rippled like a stone dropped in a pond. Its large scaly head had a snub nose and enormous webbed ears. Giant muscular arms reached all the way to its knees, and the folds of thick, leathery skin that allowed them to glide were visible. It seemed to struggle to stand upright, as though it would be more comfortable resting on its haunches like a wolf. The monster stared at Angst with deep black eyes, shuddering with excitement, waiting for a threatening move. It smelled like fish and seaweed.
With Chryslaenor, Angst could have quickly destroyed the lot. Without Chryslaenor, Angst was frustrated and growing angry. He pulled his stunted sword from its scabbard. The creature looked down at the sword and rippled like water, apparently laughing at him. Angst shook with rage and, using air, pushed the monster far into the emptiness of the sinkhole it guarded.
“Here we go,” yelled Tarness.
11
“Don’t you see?” Heather pleaded with Victoria. “How can you be queen without some sort of worldly experience?”
Tori looked down at her large carup of soup to avoid the question. Noodles floated around the edge, circling the one piece of chicken bobbing listlessly in the middle. She had never understood the luncheon tradition of soup in a bowl with two handles. Where a spoon would make more sense to capture the food, one had to hope that the noodles or, more elusively, the chicken, would find its way to one’s mouth.
“Your hair looks very pretty, Your Majesty,” Heather complimented Victoria’s blond curly locks. “I’m surprised the queen agreed to letting you change it.”
“Thank you, Heather. It’s fun having blond hair,” she replied politely while avoiding the other comment entirely. Victoria set her pale white carup on the tile-covered wood table and looked around the room.
The sitting room of Angst and Heather’s new house was charming. In spite of the cold outside, there seemed no need of a fire in the fireplace, which was empty of wood and ash. But the room felt warm and cold all at the same time. Victoria sensed the comforting presence of her friend, and the cool distance of his wife. She tried to disregard Heather’s frosty looks and brittle comments as formality of title, but it was hard to ignore and, without Angst here, she had nowhere else to go.
“Didn’t your mother travel to other kingdoms before she became queen?” Heather asked.
“I honestly don’t know that my mother has ever left the castle,” Victoria said, her thin eyebrows furrowing. “But she is, well...you know.” Victoria waited for polite recognition of her mom’s disposition.
Heather’s eyes were cool, though one eyebrow was raised high.
“Okay, she’s pretty amazing when it comes to politics and ruling,” Victoria said, nodding hard in the hope that Heather would nod with her. “I’m sure she had to learn it somewhere, along with being mean,” she muttered under her breath.
Heather calmly set her soup on the table and placed her hand on Victoria’s knee. “Angst has said many times what a great queen you’ll be,” she said to the princess, who smiled and blushed, hungry for more praise. “The real question is, are you ready to rule?”
Victoria’s shoulders dropped as though all hopes were dashed. It certainly wasn’t the praise she was looking for, and Heather waited for an answer. Victoria could only reply with a doe-eyed shrug.
Heather nodded slowly and reached for her milk and tea. She desperately needed less Victoria in her life. The young princess was almost certainly the reason her husband was so distracted, and separating the two of them would surely give her the time needed to strengthen their relationship. Time away would also help Victoria become a better queen—traveling and meeting other diplomats, other kings and queens, could only bolster her position. So, she pushed.
“Your Majesty...Victoria...we believe in you. Angst believes in you,” Heather said hopefully, and the princess looked at her with hope. “To become a great ruler, a great queen, you need to experience life. Now more than ever.”
Victoria was smiling and nodding, seemingly drawn to what Heather was saying like a moth to a bonfire.
“By going away, by visiting other countries...other leaders...you’ll learn what should, and shouldn’t, be done,” Heather said. She pushed and willed in ways she never had.
Heather’s ability had always, briefly, brought compliance, or agreement to her wishes. Whatever she was feeling, her immediate company experienced with her. Now, however, she wanted more. Heather wanted these fee
lings to last, to be a part of the princess—for a while, anyway. With Victoria gone, and her pregnancy, Angst would want to be home. She was sure of it.
“Would I be safe?” Victoria asked hesitantly, obviously entranced by the moment. Her hand paused in mid-air, stuck in the act of reaching for her carup of soup.
“Does safety matter?” Heather asked with another nudge. It felt different, pushing like this. Heather had only tried it this hard once before, and it had worked with Angst. She wanted the princess to go away, more than anything else in the world, and that was the sum of all her emotions. “It’s for your kingdom. It’s for Unsel.”
There was a long moment where time seemed to halt, and Princess Victoria stared past Heather into the distance, her hand still hanging abandoned in the air. For the briefest slice of time, Heather wondered if pushing like this was wrong but, before she could change her mind, it was done. The princess shivered then focused on Heather.
“You’re absolutely right,” Victoria said with certainty. “I need that experience to be the queen Unsel deserves.”
“Yes,” Heather said with an infectious smile. “I know you can figure out a way to be safe, a way to experience the world and still be safe.”
Victoria stood suddenly, pushing the small tile table with her knees. Heather’s carup of soup fell. The porcelain shattered into many pieces, and the remaining soup splattered.
“Heather, how can I ever thank you?” Victoria gushed, as if completely unaware of the mess she had made. “I always know I can turn to you for advice when Angst isn’t here.”
“I am at your service, Your Majesty...Victoria,” Heather replied, trying hard to will her guilty conscience away.
“You don’t know how he speaks of you. How fond he is of you.” Victoria looked at Heather intently. “I truly admire you, Heather. If you don’t mind me saying so, I look up to you. I want the sort of relationship you have with Angst.”
“I’m sure you do,” Heather replied as warmly as she could, biting back sarcasm with all her strength. “You can have that sort of relationship. You just need to find it.”
With someone else, she thought then immediately shook off the unbecoming bitterness.
“I will!” Victoria said with finality. She stood and gave Heather a sisterly hug. “Thank you so much!”
“It’s my honor,” Heather said with a curtsy as she watched the princess rush from the room.
If she’d been a wolf, Victoria’s hackles would have risen when she received her mother’s summons. All guards had been informed to “advise” Victoria on her return from...wherever...to attend her mother in the study.
The queen’s private study was spacious enough to make the clacking of her hard-soled shoes echo off the marble. Victoria walked across the parlor toward the enormous graymowl desk, suddenly annoyed she hadn’t worn slippers. Isabelle barely lifted an eyebrow at the young princess’s loud entrance. Noisy steps and loud sighs were quickly followed by a huffy flump into a cushy brown leather chair. Victoria squeezed every exaggerated display of impatience and impertinence she could into the two or three minutes she was made to wait for her mother, the queen.
Queen Isabelle ignored the noisy onslaught and palpable impatience of her daughter, the disregard for protocol, and the bitter, resentful gaze she could feel trying to bore through her forehead and directly into her brain. Isabelle held back her deep, hidden desire to sprint around her desk and hold her daughter tight. She wanted to throw her crown aside and tell Tori how proud she was. Instead of doing what any good mother would, what she truly wanted to do, Isabelle took a deep breath and reminded herself she wasn’t raising a teenager, she was raising a queen.
“I knew I was going to make it home safe that night,” Victoria said, as though reminding her mother that people use forks to eat, wake up in the morning, or that magic was mostly forbidden.
“I’m supposed to make that same assumption?” Isabelle said in a tone of haughty frustration.
“Yes, of course you are,” Victoria replied confidently. “You know what I can do. That should be enough.”
“You knew some man was going to be spending the night in your chambers?” Isabelle’s words spat righteously from her bright-lipped mouth.
Victoria leaned her head to one side as she stared at the dark floor. She did a poor job of hiding a smirk. “Angst isn’t some man.” Victoria’s words dripped with defiant emphasis.
“You may be able to see what’s ahead of you,” the queen said, judiciously ignoring Victoria’s reply. “But I don’t believe for a second you use that insight to actually think ahead, Victoria.”
“I don’t understand.” The princess shook her head.
“Did you envision that the castle would be abuzz with rumors about you and Angst?” Isabelle spittled as she forced the embarrassing words from her mouth. “Did you ‘see’ the effect this could have on his pregnant wife? Or were you just that selfish with your own...needs?”
Victoria continued staring hard at the floor. Surely exceptions should be made for the princess? Not everyone in the castle had to understand, as long as she did. As long as Angst did. Angst understood, right?
“I just can’t stand being locked up in this castle any more, mother!” Victoria pleaded, desperate to change the subject. “I know nothing about the world outside! How could I ever lead if I don’t—”
“I’m trying to keep you safe. You’re being irresponsible with the crown you will bear. I don’t even know what you do with your time. You’re always in the library, or sneaking out of the castle, or bringing men to your room. And since young Jaden arrived, you’ve spent hours and hours with him.” Isabelle waved her ringed hand as though shooing away gnats.
“I like Jaden,” Victoria said in a small voice. “He’s cute.”
“You will marry royalty, have no question.”
Victoria looked through the window behind her mother, staring far off into the cloudy winter. She nervously ran her fingers through her hair, which was once again straight and black, waiting for Isabelle to continue.
“Tomorrow, I will be naming a second,” the queen stated, watching Victoria closely.
“A second what?” Victoria replied with great concern.
“Princess, of course,” Isabelle snapped. “If you are unable to bear the responsibility of title, if you end up in a situation where you cannot be whisked away and flown to safety, if you leave and don’t come back... I need someone else that can take on the responsibility.”
It was like a hard cold slap to the face—not only the threat, or the unprecedented solution, but also that Victoria hadn’t seen it coming, and she should have been able to envision the queen’s plan. The distant future was becoming too worn a gossamer thread to be understood.
“Wh...who...” She cleared her throat. “Who did you have in mind?”
Isabelle fought back a smile. She had finally acquired her daughter’s attention. Her daughter’s flurry of brash self-indulgence had finally been set aside. The queen could only hope Victoria could see the prize, and would fight for it.
“Alloria, of course,” Isabelle replied as though reminding Victoria that people use forks to eat, wake up in the morning, or that magic was mostly forbidden.
“Alloria?” she repeated quietly. “Why... Is she the next in line... Would she be?”
“Coincidentally, her family would be next in line to the throne,” Isabelle confirmed. “In spite of their tragedy, the timing of her arrival is ideal. I’ve asked the scholars to confirm her lineage, but if necessary, I will make her my ward.”
Victoria was dumbstruck, absolutely shocked at the possibility that the tramp had even the slightest potential of being absorbed into the family.
“You know, for a short time after the crisis struck Unsel, the kingdom was overwhelmingly supportive of you becoming queen,” Isabelle stated. “Your choices in friends, your gallivanting, your blatant disregard for protocol and responsibility have left me with no other choice. Bringing a known m
agic-wielder to your bed was the final straw.”
“It wasn’t like that, he wasn’t in my bed. I don’t think. He was keeping me safe,” Victoria said quietly. There was a very long pause before she finally said, “I would like Angst to be my champ—”
“Don’t you dare say that!” The queen cut off Victoria’s words. “That title has never been held by a magic-wielder!”
Tears trickled down Victoria’s cheeks as she struggled to control her frustration. She wanted to scream at her mother, kick her in the shins, get through Isabelle’s thick skull that she was making a terrible mistake. Even worse, she had wanted to warn the queen about her growing concerns regarding Alloria, and couldn’t now without sounding as though she had ulterior motives.
“I’ve told the guards you can now come and go as you please. The choice is yours, Victoria. You can leave to become an adventurer, or meet your responsibilities and become queen,” Isabelle declared with a nonchalant wave of her hand. “You now have the comfort of knowing that if you seek adventure, everything here will be...taken care of.”
Victoria stood, staring at her mother in disbelief, but the queen gave her no ounce of comfort. Without a word, Victoria stormed out of the room. She tried slamming the heavy door to the queen’s private study behind her, but it was so large it gathered air, losing its ferocity. Behind the slowly closing door, Victoria was surprised to find a somewhat nervous Alloria.
The beautiful young girl smiled with her full lips and blinked innocently with her large eyes and Victoria stared at her in disbelief. Could this person actually become queen in her stead? Was she as naïve as she appeared, or hiding plans and malevolence behind a pretty face?
They looked at each other for a long time.
“I’ve always wanted an older sister,” Alloria said.
Victoria screamed in frustration and stomped down the hallway.
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