by Lindsey Duga
Raed looked at me, the stress and worry on his face showing in the creases around his eyes. “The town council is convinced the power that allowed me to turn back into a human and to defeat the dwarf flows through our veins, and that we should produce as many heirs as possible who will allow the power to continue. Myri—” He walked over and cupped my face in his hands. “They believe in us. They want us to protect them. If we have the power, shouldn’t we try? I mean, this power could be heaven-blessed.”
I recoiled at the word “blessed.” I’d heard they had begun to build a chapel in the village to offer me prayers, as if I were a living god. The thought repulsed me. I was just a girl. A new mother. Nothing more.
“I can’t…I can’t do this anymore. Please.” I leaned in to him, yearning for a kiss that would assure me he still loved me, believed in our love, believed in the power of us together.
He turned his head. “I’m sorry, Myriana.”
The scene shifted again, Raed and the bed filled with the blood of a child who would never be, dissipating like smoke from a candle. The colors swirled, and I was briefly allowed my own mind and my own memories again. This was Myriana’s memory. Her real life. Not history transcribed from a Royal archive book or a tale around a Romantica bonfire, but the truth. Her truth.
The revolving colors solidified into a door. I was shocked at the detail of this door. At the knots and grooves of the wood. The door would be forever ingrained in my—Myriana’s—mind.
I threw open the door and saw what I knew I was going to see. Then slammed it shut and started to run.
As I ran, I struggled to become Ivy again, to separate from this horrible, heart-shattering memory.
A strong hand grabbed my wrist. I turned and looked at my husband in disgust. He hadn’t even had the decency to get fully dressed. He was bare-chested and wore only trousers.
“Myri,” he breathed.
“So, this is your solution? To put an heir into my sister?” My voice was taut with emotion. “My sister?”
Raed’s face turned to steel. “It’s the solution the town is looking for. Saevalla has your blood. We can continue to rule if we produce heirs with our power. Myri, this is for—”
“I don’t want to rule,” I screamed, wrenching away from him. “I want to be with only you. I want to raise our daughter. I want to forget what I just saw.”
The memory dripped with shadows. Raed’s face and voice faded, and I curled into a ball on the floor.
Saevalla. My beautiful, tender sister. How could she do this to me? We shared everything. Even our love for Raed, but this…this…no.
No, I am not Myriana. I am Ivy.
I fought to keep my sanity as memories flew by, attacking my soul and heart and eating away at everything good inside me. Saevalla giving birth…Saevalla giving birth a second time…watching them grow.
Then one scene grew into such sharp focus that it felt like needles were pricking every inch of me.
I drew my black cloak around me and stood in a huge cave, purple fire sconces lining the rounded wall. A stone altar stood before me, wet with the blood of animals the dwarves had sacrificed.
“I want you to cut it out.”
The dwarf’s smile stretched. “So you’ve told us, Your Majesty. And you don’t care what we do with it afterward?”
“What concern is it of mine? Just make it stop.”
“Then please.” The dwarf gestured to the altar, and I climbed on top of it and lay down, staring up at the domed ceiling.
The chanting began. Haunting and wild. Dark and twisted. Echoing and terrible.
The dwarven clan surrounded me, and the one I’d made the deal with loomed above me, holding the beautiful dagger that Raed had given me as a wedding gift. Its blade was engulfed in black flames.
He plunged the flaming dagger into my chest.
I screamed, screamed, screamed. The pain was too much. I’d never live. I’d never survive. But that was okay. I wouldn’t have to live with the jealousy and hatred anymore for my own sister and my beloved who betrayed me. It would all stop.
With this last thought, the world was ripped from under my feet. It was like I was floating away. I saw my body—no, Queen Myriana’s body—on the altar.
Again, the memories became amber shades spinning and distorting into a similar scene. Dwarves still circled the stone altar coated in dried blood, chanting, but instead of Myriana, a new girl lay on the table. She was young and beautiful—raven black hair and snowy white skin, just like Myriana—but with different facial features.
My—no, the girl’s—eyes snapped open.
They were the color of a dark amethyst—violet and haunting. And familiar.
The dwarves’ chanting reached a powerful crescendo as they each raised an arm holding a gleaming dagger. Then they drew them across their necks. One by one, the dwarves fell, each one’s blood flowing in steady rivulets to the altar where I—the girl—lay. The blood traveled up the altar, seeping into my clothes, my hair. Their blood was hot, steaming against my skin.
I knew what to do with this blood.
I lifted my hands, and a ball of crackling purple energy formed at my fingertips, convulsing and pulsing with power. Purple flames rolled over my arm. I held out my hand and studied the burn.
It was a mark. My mark. The Mark of Myriana.
I smiled.
This. This would be my legacy. My Hydra Curse.
“Ivy!” A voice was screaming. Screaming a name. My name?
I wrenched my eyes open, although my lids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, and found myself leaning against the mirror as if I’d never left it.
In reality, I knew I hadn’t. Like entering the amulet’s enchantment, time was irrelevant in the world of the mirror. I may have been encased in the amber glow of the mirror for mere seconds while I could experience an entire lifetime in the glass.
But time was now moving again and so was Millennia, her hands closing around my throat and thrusting me against the mirror so hard the glass cracked behind my back, shattering and spider-webbing.
Zach screamed my name, but a wall of purple flames erupted behind Millennia and me, preventing Zach and Brom from getting close.
Her hands squeezed my throat, nails digging into my skin. Gasping for breath, I stared into the familiar deep-violet eyes.
I rasped one word. One name. “Myriana.”
Chapter
Thirty-Two
The Queen’s Heart
It was as if I’d uttered a sacred spell. At the mention of the Holy Queen’s name, Millennia ripped her hands from my throat.
“You…you saw. You know.” She stared at me, her violet eyes wide with horror.
I rubbed at my throat. Zach screamed for me through the wall of purple flames. I wanted to yell at him to run, to leave me. Because I knew that who was standing before me would never let any of us walk away alive.
“You’re Myriana,” I whispered. “You’re the Evil Queen.”
Even though I’d seen it—no, experienced it—I couldn’t believe my own words. It couldn’t be true. The Holy Queen, my beautiful, powerful ancestor, couldn’t be the Evil Queen. It would mean everything, everything was a lie. The Royal’s history was wrong. It hadn’t been the first heir. The Romantica’s tale was wrong, too. It hadn’t been Saevalla, either.
The Evil Queen had been Myriana Holly all along.
Millennia, or Myriana, whoever she was, gripped the sides of her head, pulling at her black hair, her face contorted in both pain and fury.
“I’m not that pathetic weakling,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I’m the part of her that she couldn’t live with.”
My gut twisted with revulsion, remembering the dagger plunge into Myriana’s chest, her begging the dwarves to remove it, then the young girl on the altar with the glowing purple eyes.
And I knew. I knew what she was.
“You’re her Heart.”
At my words, Millennia let out an inhuman shrie
k, and her shoulders and arms burned with purple fire as she threw herself at me. But I was prepared this time. I grasped a shard of the broken mirror she’d slammed me against, and when her fiery arms lunged for me, I stabbed the shard deep into her thigh. She gave another shriek, and the flames separating us from Zach and Brom weakened. Zach took a running jump over the inferno and was by my side, sword drawn, in seconds.
“What are you?” he snarled to Millennia as I fumbled to draw my sword.
She dug her fingers into her temples and drew heaving breaths while blood trickled from the piece of mirror lodged in her thigh. Through a curtain of black hair, she stared at me, this time her eyes a beautiful shade of cerulean.
“I…I can’t… Run. Run,” she moaned.
Millennia was still in there somewhere, fighting to keep the Evil Queen at bay. Like the young girl upon the stone altar in the world of the mirror, Millennia was nothing more than a victim—a host for the Queen’s Heart. She was possessed. But Zach had no idea, so when he darted forward with his blade, he believed he was attacking someone wicked—a witch maybe, but not an innocent girl possessed by the Evil Queen.
Without thinking, I lunged in front of him, parrying his blade with my own, our swords clashing in a resounding metallic echo.
“What’re you doing?” Zach yelled at me.
What was I doing? I should let Zach kill her while she was weak, while the possession didn’t have hold of her. But then…then we’d be killing an innocent. Someone we were sworn to protect. Someone who was willing to do anything for the sake of the person she loved.
Before I could answer, Millennia gave another howl of agony, and the violet flames in the cave flickered out, throwing us all into darkness.
“Brom!” I screamed.
“I’m here!” he yelled, his voice close.
“That blasted mirror.” A haunting voice echoed in the darkness as if the Heart of Myriana was in the very air, rather than the body of an innocent girl. “If my other self hadn’t been so weak, so scared her precious prince would find out what she’d done, she would’ve never removed all her memories of me and trapped them in one of the dwarves’ mirrors.” Her voice was raspy and labored, as if every word was an effort to speak—and maybe it was. I didn’t know how much power it took for a full possession of a soul. Underneath her words, there was shuffling. What was she doing?
“Too late now. It would’ve been so much easier if my last body had survived creating my son’s curse, then I wouldn’t have needed to go traipsing all over these mountains looking for him.”
Horror ripped through my gut, making me nauseated. Her last body. Sacred Sisters, she’s been moving from body to body. She’s possessing innocent girls. Poor Millennia.
“Alas, what’s done is done.” Her voice was farther away now. “I had hoped I’d be able to use your helpful little Sense to reach my son, then kill you both, but it looks like I’ll have to get this stubborn body there on its own.”
Another shot of crippling panic made my limbs lock. She’d been edging around the wall in the darkness so she could get out…
“No matter. You’ll die here anyway.” At her last word a great rumbling shook the cave. Her elemental mage magic. The Evil Queen had been using her control of Millennia’s magic all along, and now she was going to use it to bury us.
An arm pulled me to the cave wall and pushed me flat against the stone, and I knew without a doubt Zach was shielding me with his own body. Rocks rained down and their crash made the earth beneath my feet tremble. But Zach still held me under him, protecting me. I could hear his heart pounding in his chest and feel his breath on top of my head. Terrified that he could once again get hurt from protecting me made me want to throw him off, but I didn’t dare, in case I pushed him into falling rock. This time there was no gold magic to bring him back to me—this was no monster with sharp talons. No matter how much Zach loved me, his sacrifice against nature wouldn’t save him.
Miraculously, once the rocks settled and the mountain stopped shaking, Zach’s chest still rose and fell above me. Cautiously we lifted our heads and blinked through the dust. The rockslide that Millennia—or rather, Myriana—had caused had created an opening in the cave ceiling, allowing sunlight to pour into the cave. Zach moved aside as I scurried out from beneath him, heart racing.
“Brom!” I called. No, no, I can’t lose him again.
“I’m okay.” A pile of rocks shifted to our left, and Brom emerged from the rubble, shield in hand. The clever boy had used his shield against the cascade of rocks.
I stumbled toward him and hugged him tight. “Thank the Sisters,” I breathed into his dusty hair.
“This doesn’t look good.” Zach’s voice came from the direction of the cave entrance, and with a sinking feeling, I guessed what he was going to say.
“We’re trapped.” The entrance of the cave was completely sealed by massive boulders, probably too large and heavy for any of us to move. But that didn’t stop Zach from trying. Placing his shoulder against the wall of rubble, he pushed, his boots slipping and losing grip on the loose rocks under his feet. Brom and I joined him, but after what seemed like an hour of pushing, we backed away, breathing heavily. Zach rubbed a dirty hand across the back of his neck and let out a string of curse words I’d never heard him speak before.
“Well that’s not budging anytime soon,” he said when he’d finally exhausted all his swears.
I gripped my hands to keep them from trembling and took calming breaths, leaning my head against the wall of the cave and closing my eyes. I tried to keep my thoughts at bay, but they came crashing onto me like the rocks had, pummeling me and breaking me. I bit my lip as my eyes filled with tears.
It was all hopeless.
Everything I knew, everything I’d ever been taught had been a lie. Myriana hadn’t been blessed. She hadn’t been a new race of humankind with the ability to defeat the Forces of Darkness. She’d just been a girl. A scared girl with the weight of an entire growing kingdom on her shoulders, and when the person she loved most betrayed her, she’d broken. She’d given in to the darkness festering inside her, and rather than moving on and dealing with the pain in her heart, she had the dwarves…cut it out.
My breaths came in rapid succession as I slid down the wall to my knees. And even though I was breathing, I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I was drowning again, but this time without water. And that thought only made it worse. I’d seen this happen before to a few young Royals before their first battle—a panic attack, the older ones had called it.
My breaths came faster, a new kind of pain squeezing my chest. It was different than my Sense—crushing my whole torso like a troll standing on top of me, and I couldn’t breathe because my lungs were collapsing.
Just when I thought I’d suffocate, I felt hands on either side of my face, and Zach’s forehead pressed against mine, his nose touching mine, his cheeks touching mine, his lips…hovering above mine. My breath stopped—my heart skipped several beats, one right after the other. I didn’t move, didn’t try to breathe, just reveled in the warmth of Zach’s breath on my cheeks, on his rough fingertips burrowing into my hair. Losing my breath completely somehow reset everything. I took one solid gulp of air, then another, and blinked slowly, our lashes so close they almost touched.
“Tell me what you saw, my love,” he whispered gently.
My heart almost jumped into my throat at his words. Please don’t let this be the last time he calls me that.
I told him and Brom everything—of the memories I’d seen in the world of the mirror.
Throughout the whole story, Brom and Zach listened with rapt attention, and when I stopped talking, when my voice felt hoarse from all the words and the rock dust, Zach placed a gentle kiss on my forehead.
“You learned the truth, Ivy.” He said it in a way that felt like praise, and I glowed with warmth.
I lifted my gaze to the blocked cave entrance. “But it’s too late. Millennia—er—Myriana is surely
going to hatch the Sable Dragon.”
“I don’t understand,” Brom said, also staring at the caved-in rocks with a frown, “if she’s really the Evil Queen then how come she hasn’t already made the dragon hatch? Why was she traveling with us? Shouldn’t she know where it is?”
“It’s because the Evil Queen is possessing Millennia’s body,” I explained, quickly recapping what Myriana had said about her last body not surviving the curse that created the Sable Dragon egg and the mirror’s shared memories of Myriana’s first host.
“You mean she didn’t retain the memories of the girl before her?” Brom asked.
I shook my head. “Even if she did retain them, this mountain range is huge. It could’ve taken her forever to find the egg on her own, and it doesn’t seem like she has the same Sense that Royals do.”
Zach snapped his fingers. “Maybe not as Millennia.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, look at how weak she was. Instead of trying to kill us directly, she used her earth magic to try to crush us. What if the reason she was so weak is because it was the first time she had attempted to fully take over her host’s body? What if she didn’t have enough power to control both Millennia’s mage magic and her body the whole time?”
“Which would mean…” I started, my mind racing, “that the Millennia we’ve been traveling with is still the real Millennia.” That thought gave me a surge of strength. Millennia was still there. She’d been there all along—probably fighting the Evil Queen the whole time—battling with an entire other consciousness causing insurmountable pain.
“Right. It would’ve been too difficult to control her and lead her to the Sable Dragon,” Zach said.
“But now that she’s fully possessing Millennia, she’ll be able to locate the egg,” I breathed.
“But it’ll take her forever to get there.” Brom pointed to a dark spot on the rocks that looked like drying blood. “You wounded her, right, Ivy? If she’s weak and injured, it’s going to take her some time.”
Zach inspected the light coming through the crack in the ceiling. “Time is all we need. That opening up there isn’t too high. Brom, do you think you can fit through?”
