Eorn thought it was her imagination at first that the temperature had plummeted in the room, but looking around the small Penitent’s Court she saw that there was actual ice forming on the windows, despite the pleasant warmth of the day.

“You’re going to do what?” the Lady Daelynne Akorli asked with a voice as light as a blade that was about to strike.

“We are going to lead the delegation to Senkin and the Green Council personally,” Queen Alari said. “We stand on the brink of a cataclysm greater than the loss of our gods. The world knows what we did to Paxmer and now it watches to see if another realm will fall. We cannot let that happen through warfare, or our world will drown in the blood of the innocent.”

“We can not risk you,” Dae said. “Gallagrin with disintegrate if you fall.”

Eorn wasn’t especially adept at reading social dynamics, but the tension in the room had risen so fast and thick that even she could feel it. The Queen and her Knight weren’t arguing how Eorn’s family would. There were no thundering voices, no creative profanity, just calm words spoken with the greatest of restraint, which was somehow a thousand times more terrifying.

“I’m afraid the Lady Akorli is quite correct,” the nobleman Ren said, bravely entering the conversation. “Without someone holding the Gallagrin Pact Spirit, the noble houses will rip themselves to apart vying for the succession.”

“If you named one of them as your heir, that could be avoided,” Jaan Lafli said.

“Typical,” Vice Commander Jyl said, her contempt for her sister not even thinly veiled.

“I do not offer the Lafli house as a candidate for that title,” Jaan said, dismissing her sister’s anger with an airy wave. “We have been mislead recently and the honor of being the presumptive heir should clearly be bestowed on a House which has remained true to you. House Lafli will look only to support them.”

Eorn thought that sounded reasonable on the surface, but she’d listened to too many tales featuring the corruption of the nobility not to look for the hidden agendas in Jaan Lafli’s words.

Unsurprisingly, she didn’t have to look far. House Lafli had backed all of the attempts to take Queen Alari’s throne. They were lucky she hadn’t executed them all weeks ago. Pledging support for a new House early did nothing to make up for those betrayals, it only served to put the Lafli in a better position if the Queen was killed and the Gallagrin Pact Spirit went up for grabs.

The issue of who would next rule shouldn’t have been in dispute, of course. Gallagrin had, at one time, possessed very clear lines of succession. The Queen’s father had seen to the destruction of that though. Among his first victims were those who held an uncontested claim to the throne should he and Alari be slain. The remaining nobility had to trace their connections to royal blood back a half dozen generations or so, which meant that the specifics of who held priority as the legitimate successor was a murky question at best.

“We have thought of this as well,” Queen Alari said. “As there is only one in this realm who holds our unquestioning trust, the choice of naming our heir is a simple one.”

She turned to her right and Eorn watched the Lady Akorli’s face pale at what was coming.

“You already speak with my voice, and you have given more for this realm than we could ever have asked,” the queen said. “This burden is one we lay on you out of our love and trust, though we fear there is no kindness in our doing so. Lady Daelynne Akorli, Queen’s Knight and Champion of Gallagrin, we name you our successor, to hold in trust the people and spirits of this realm until you pass from this life or find a worthy successor to whom to pass the royal mantle.”

The queen’s words echoed with more than human weight behind them. It didn’t matter that there were human witnesses in the room. The Pact Spirit of Gallagrin had taken notice of Alari’s proclamation and would seek out Dae on its own should Alari fall.

“You can’t be serious,” Dae said, her eyes those of a rabbit discovering itself surrounded on all sides by wolves.

“If the throne would seat two, you would rule beside me already,” Alari said.

“Dammit,” Dae muttered. Then her eyes flew open and she repeated, “Dammit!”

“Yes, we are afraid you are correct,” Alari said, before Dae could speak. “This time you must stay and bide your here while we travel to resolve the crisis at hand.”

“No!” Dae said, jumping to her feet and breaking, from what Eorn was aware of, every kind of protocol in addressing the queen so bluntly. “There is no chance in the Nine Hells you are leaving this castle without me, much less this country.”

Eorn began to sense that being anywhere else, even the Nine Hells, would be preferable to being present for the argument that was to come between the Queen and her Knight. A quick glance around the room told her that everyone else felt the same, but the tempest that was building was broken with only a few quiet words.

“I must and you must,” the Queen said, her voice softer than Eorn imagined ever hearing it. “I need you here to handle so many things.”

Everyone else in the room was sitting silent, listening to the exchange, and it took a moment for Eorn to notice what had caught their attention. It wasn’t just the argument. The Queen had slipped into familiar speech. That was something no one, except apparently the Lady Akorli, had ever heard before.

“Such as?” Dae asked, her eyes glassy with repressed tears.

“We have only received a representative from Senkin,” Alari said. “There must be someone here who can speak with royal authority if and when the Green Council opens an official dialog with us.”

“I’m not the one you want speaking with them,” Dae said, settling back into her chair.

“I believe she does,” Ren said. “And with good reason.”

Dae shot a glance at him that was as hard as a crossbow bolt to the chest.

“And what reason would that be,” she asked, anger grinding the words across her lips.

“The Green Council will listen to you,” Ren said. “And yet your words won’t bind the realm unless the Queen wishes them to be binding.”

“Through you, Gallagrin can address both Senkin and the Green Council without tying our fate to either one,” Alari said. “Together, we can act as arbiters to resolve the underlying dispute which has placed our northern neighbors at war with one another.”

“Is there really a dispute to be resolved though?” the man who spoke was someone Eorn only barely recognized. The Duke’s husband if she remembered correctly. Outside of the Penitent’s Court, he wouldn’t have had the standing to speak directly to the queen. Inside the court, Eorn wasn’t sure he should have either, but Alari recognized his point nonetheless.

“There have been actions which Senkin and the Green Council will point to as the cause and justification for their animosity, but you are correct. As always there will be deeper reasons for the bloodshed,” Alari said.

“Can you, or even all of Gallagrin, address those reasons?” Teo, Duke Ren’s husband, asked.

“Certainly,” Alari said. “Anything we do, even abstaining from the conflict is an answer to the question they raise. If you are asking whether we can create peace between the two realms though, that is not the reason for our conference with the two sides.”

“You want to support the stronger realm in their conquest of the other to limit the damage inflicted?” Jaan asked.

“There’s the Lafli family for you,” Jyl said.

“We’re not going to support either realm are we?” Dae asked.

“It is too soon to say, but most likely not,” Alari said.

“What other option is there?” Jaan asked.

“You crush both of them as a warning to other realms not to try this sort of thing in the future,” Dae said.

“That’s going to be a tall order with Gallagrin in its current state,” Ren said.

“It’s current state can change quickly though, can’t it?” Teo asked.

“Which current state do you mean?” Jaan asked. “At present our realm seems beset by a number of fractures.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Jyl said. “Not with all of the fractures still here for the Grand Convocation.”

“What are you suggesting sister?” Jann’s expression had sharpened like a knife.

“Just that if a pyre needs to be built for our grandfather, I’ll be happy to throw the first logs on the pile,” Jyl said.

Eorn didn’t miss the Vice Commander’s meaning, and from the looks of it, no one else in the room did either. Murdering the nobles who tried to oppose the queen seemed like a brutal step, but under the circumstances Eorn wouldn’t have been opposed to taking a few swings with the axe. There were nobles she’d met who might become much less disagreeable if their mouths were no longer connected to their lungs.

“We will not strengthen our realm by bleeding it out,” Alari said. “Our father proved the failures inherent in following that path.”

“Who are you taking with you?” Dae asked. She didn’t look like she’d given in to the notion of the queen leaving her behind but something had changed in her demeanor.

“Vice Commander Lafli and her sister will escort us,” Alari said.

“That’s not enough,” Dae said. “And don’t tell me you need to travel quickly. Take the rest of the Guard. It’s what we’re here for and we can all travel quickly.”

“We planned to recall Mayleena as well,” Alari said.

“My sister’s not in the palace?” Ren asked. “What is she up to?”

“She’s playing with dragons,” Dae said. “Or terrorizing them. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

Eorn blinked. She’d heard rumors of the missing member of the Queen’s Guard. Some people had claimed she was lost in fighting to take Paxmer, but Lady Akorli had said she was on a special assignment. Working with dragons wasn’t something she could do in Gallagrin which suggested the Queen’s Guardian had never left Paxmer.

“Okay,” Ren said. “That’s not what I had expected, but…ok.”

“We will take Lord Greis with us as well, to make use of his contacts in Senkin,” Alari said.

“I would be delighted to be of service Your Majesty,” Ren said.

“Lord Greis? I thought you were part of the Telli family?” Jaan asked.

“It’s complicated,” Ren said. “I serve the Queen in two capacities, though in one of them I fear my service has been lacking.”

“If you’re going to Senkin then I am going too,” Teo said.

“About that Mr. Greis,” Alari said. “The crown has need of your services as well.”

Teo looked wary at that and replied in a cautious tone, “And what duty can I serve?”

“We need to send a diplomat to Inchesso to speak with our allies there,” Alari said.

“Your forgiveness Your Majesty, but there are forces in Inchesso who will move against my husband if he sets foot back in his homeland,” Ren said.

“We are counting on that,” Alari said. “That is why we will send one of our own Guardians with you as well as a squad of the Royal Army loyal to our person.”

“Stirring the kettle in Inchesso too?” Dae asked. “That’s not going to make this situation any calmer.”

Eorn noticed a dangerous smile spreading across the Dae’s face, but couldn’t spare the time to decipher it as she tried to figure out who the queen was thinking to send with Teo. With dawning horror, she worked out two terrible facts. First the queen had said she was sending only one of her guards with Teo and second the only guards who hadn’t been assigned a task yet were Undine and herself. One of them was going to Inchesso and the other wasn’t, Eorn felt her stomach twist at the idea, but the gravity of the situation kept her in her chair, silently praying that she was missing something.

“It is not our intention to place a lid on this political cauldron,” Alari said. “Allowing hostilities to simmer will only turn today’s problem into ones which will plague all of our tomorrows.”

“Then I take it I have one other task,” Dae said. “If we’re not going to let tomorrow’s problems come down to roost then we’re going to need the Ducal armies unified as well won’t we?”

“Yes,” Alari said. “We leave that particularly thorny problem in your capable hands as well as one other.”

“There’s more?” Dae said, sighing and slumping into herself.

“The matter before us touches on more than Senkin and the Green Council, and more than Gallagrin and Inchesso,” Alari said. “We need to gather all of our allies”

“You want me to contact my mother,” Dae said, without looking up.

“Paxmer and Gallagrin have centuries of blood between them,” Alari said. “If our world is going to flirt with centuries of war to come, let it be those of us who are familiar with its cost who lead the rest away from that precipice.”

Iana squeezed the fingers of her Warbringer into a tight fist. In her years as a pilot, and her months in command, she’d never felt the need to question the Council’s orders. She’d learned what was taught to her, she’d done her duty, and she’d never raised a fuss about it. The rage she felt was a new experience therefor.

“Patience,” Dagmauru said. “This is not the time for the hasty actions of the Quick. This is the time to sink deep and seize the land below us.”

Dagmauru spoke to Iana through the Deep Root Speech. He was an Elder, and she a commander, so their discussions began in the privacy of the speech only accessible to those who were tied into the deepest level of the Green Council’s workings.  

Iana knew that Dagmauru’s orders came from the Green Council itself but every fiber in her burned with the urge to disobey them.

“The Senkins are getting away,” she said, struggling not to scream. If they were listening, the Council could hear her words, but if she gave into the tumult of fear and hate which boiled within her then everyone in the realm would hear her words.

The same as everyone had heard the cries of the ones who burned when Senkin invaded.

“You seek to forestall the battle to come by ending it before it arrives,” Dagmauru said. “The war we fight is not one which can be avoided though.”

“I don’t want to avoid the war,” Iana said. “I want to win it. If we let the Senkin’s go they’re going to tell their troops about us. They’ll know how to hurt us.”

“You are thinking like one of the Quick,” Dagmauru said. She felt him extend vibrations of calm and certainty through the Deep Roots. “They will attack us again. It is what the Quick do. They will come in force and we will meet them. They will hurt us, but we will draw on more strength than they, because, in their haste, they will be only loosely tethered while we will be sunk deep.”

The Deep Roots brought more than just Dagmauru’s words to Iana. She felt the flow of the future that he foresaw. What was to come would be rapid, but one didn’t need to be quick to answer the changes before them. As with the arrival of an early snow, the key to surviving and overcoming was always to grow broader and deeper than that which sought to overwhelm you.

Iana knew this doctrine. She’d been nurtured on it from when she was first given to the Council’s Military Creches. It had long served the Council well in dealing with the monsters which prowled the many Lost Glades of their realm.

Those creatures were cast-offs of the Slumbering Gods though, failed experiments if somewhat deadly ones nonetheless. The Senkin weren’t anything like the monsters of the Lost Glades. The monsters might prey on the people of Iana’s realm, but there was no illusion of peace between them. Senkin was supposed to have been the Green Council’s friend, the realm most closely connected to Iana’s homeland through treaty and trade and centuries of shared history.

That had all been a lie though. The moment someone proved that the gods weren’t waiting to punish those who overthrew another realm, Senkin’s civility had fallen away like dead leaves caught in a fierce storm. In place of friendship, Senkin had shown its greed, raiding the the Green Council’s lands and slaughtering the ones they thought defended the border.

They had been wrong. Terribly wrong. The creche they burned didn’t hold the Green Council’s defenders. Only new growths and the newborn had been secreted there, along the shores of a secluded highland lake.

When the treachery was revealed, Iana’s forces were ranging deep within the Council’s lands, hunting a tribe of Blood Boars who had been driven mad after tasting the flesh of a traveling caravan. They returned triumphant only to discover the ruins of the fledgling creche. Iana world crumbled with that discovery, the embers of the ruined creche sparking a blaze within her heart that she knew would never burn wild or hot enough to subside.

“You will have a chance to answer the villiany of the Senkin soon,” Dagmauru said. “They will respond to our advance with haste and well before they have gathered their full strength.”

“And if they don’t?” Iana asked. She was stepping beyond her bounds, challenging Dagmauru’s advice so directly, but she needed to be right. She needed to do something.

“Then we will spread,” Dagmauru said. “Slowly. Inexorably. We will sink into the land and claim it as our own step by step. They will not win by trying to outlast those for whom the seasons pass as days do for the Quick.”

This argument struck a chord in Iana at last. The idea of taking the Senkin’s land, inch by inch, was appealing. There was no one neck she could wring or trunk she could shatter that would make up for what Senkin had done, but squeezing the life out of the realm and making its bounty into the Council’s own strength had the right sort of merciless ferocity to slake Iana’s need for vengeance.

“They can’t let us do that, but what if they strike across the border again?” she asked. “We’ve never fought a war like this, and their magics are strange.”

“The Senkin have always been dabblers with their arts,” Dagmauru said. “Theirs is a glorious and dazzling power which blinds them as much as it does their enemies.”

“You think we can beat them,” Iana asked. “Even if they all come at us at once?”

“The secrets of every long season are ours to command,” Dagmauru said. “We remember the deep mysteries and the words given to us by the divines who await our arrival in the Wintering Green. In opposing us, their defeat is inevitable.”

“We can’t let them win again,” Iana said. “Not even once.”

“There is no victory that can hold off the winter for all,” Dagmauru said. “You must embrace this and let it fill you. Your strength is not yours alone. You are part of our realm and even should you fall, even should you burn down to ash, the Green Council will remember you and your spirit will find shelter and renewal in the Wintering Green before returning to us.”

“I’m not afraid of the Wintering Green,” Iana said. “I will give my strength and my life for our realm, but I will not give anyone else’s.”

“You speak like a warrior,” Dagmauru said. “But you are no longer just a warrior. You are a commander. You must see your place and the place of those around you. We do not begrudge the falling leaf, but if the trunk is lost or the roots are torn up, then sorrow will follow. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Advisor,” Iana said. She knew what the Green Council needed of her. She had to spend the lives of those she commanded. She could shepherd them, she could refuse to waste their potential but when the need arose, she needed to send those beneath her to perish in her place. She needed to survive and carry out the will of the Council up and until those above her needed to expend her to further the strategy that would save the realm.

“Good, then we must continue this discussion in the High Roots,” Dagmauru said. “We have many plans to make with your company and…”

A scream along the High Roots cut him off.

Iana force her attention upwards, stumbly mentally back towards the light and the high vantage point of their winged sentries.

“The Senkin are back!” Wylika Selmondel, Iana’s second in command, said. She was rousing their forces, dragging the Warbringers back from their restorative slumber.

“Where are they?” Iana asked, scanning the fields where her forces had begun raising bulwarks.

“Above us,” Wylika said.

From the sky, chariots draw by horses of fire and shrouded in golden light descended from the cloud cover.

“They’re heading for the border keep,” Iana said. “Get the troops moving, we can’t let them dig in.”

“Yes commander!” Wylika said, the ground shaking with the departure of her Warbringer.

Iana dove her mind down to the Deep Roots again. She had to report in.

“They’re here. They’ve come back early,” she said, focusing on Dagmauru.

“As we foresaw,” Dagmauru said. “They come on swift wings which carry them only to their deaths.”

“If they take the border keep, they’ll be able to attack us whenever they want,” Iana said. “Our bulwarks won’t mean anything if they can just fly people right over them.”

“Trust the Council young one,” Dagmauru said. “This is all part of a greater design.”

With a vast effort of will, Iana stayed silent. Any design which called for allowing their enemy to attack them from a fortified position seemed like an idiotic design in Iana’s estimation.

“For now, you have the battle which you craved,” Dagmauru said. “Your part in the Council’s design is to slow and contain the Senkins. Assail their battlements. Turn their attention to safety and defense.”

“As you instruct Advisor,” Iana said and brought her attention back to her Warbringer.

Crashing across the landscape left her with conflicted emotions where it should have brought her joy. The battle to come quickened the blood in her veins and focused her mind, while the tangled skein of the Council’s plans left her vexed. She wanted to march to victory. She wanted to expend the immeasurable strength of her Warbringer on making her realm safe once more. Following orders which didn’t seem capable of producing that result was tearing her apart. Disobedience was unthinkable, but in the heat of battle not much thinking happened.

That was a dangerous thought though, and overstepping her boundaries was an ill-advised notion. What power the Green Council gave to her, it could also take away. So she obey. For the moment. She would engage the enemy. She would contain them. If any were foolish enough to expose themselves or try to break through her forces, then she would take advantage of the opportunity to its fullest extent.

“They’re starting to set up devices on the keep’s ramparts,” Wylika said.

“Must be some kind of heavy weaponry,” Iana said. “Tell the troops that we’re going to split and head in from different angles.”

“I’ll take the northern approach if you want?” Wylika asked. Her Warbringer was well ahead of Iana’s, it’s lighter structure making it faster though less powerful too.

“Take a quarter of the our forces,” Iana said. “I’ll take another quarter and approach from the south. I want the rest to stay back until we know what our foes are capable of assaulting us with.”

“Understood commander,” Wylika said.

Iana wasn’t thrilled with the idea of sending Wylika in on a separate attack vector. She liked the younger girl, and valued her as a Second-in-Command. Dagmauru had just warned her about thinking like a warrior rather than the Commander though, so she forced her heart to go still. She didn’t need to worry. She didn’t need to question. She just needed to do what the Council ordered her to.

A blistering bolt of light confirmed her decision. The Senkin felt secure enough in their fort to begin attacking. That was going to cost them.

Iana pushed her Warbringer forward into a thundering advance. Her giant arms absorbed more hits from the Senkin’s solar lances without breaking stride.

Stronger beams followed the solar lances cast by the Senkin defenders though. From the devices they’d setup atop the walls, torrents of concentrated white flame flashed across the battlefield like lightning.

When one hit Iana’s Warbringer, it blasted her left leg completely off and she fell hard into the dirt.

A great cheer went up from the Senkin ranks only to die out an instant later as vines from Iana’s Warbringer’s hip lashed out and reattached the plant giant’s severed leg.

More bolts and flares followed but despite the tremendous damage they inflicted, they couldn’t stop Iana and her forces from reaching the walls.

The border fort had stood for centuries for centuries but not been maintained in decades. Iana was still concerned about the protection it would provide the Senkins, but that was because she wasn’t comfortable with them having any protection at all. Against the might of her assembled Warbringer forces, she knew it wasn’t going to stand for very long.

The Senkins seemed to know that too, and at first she thought they were fleeing when their chariots took the air again.

That impression was dispelled when they wheeled around and began a low diving run on the Warbringers in Iana’s group. She tried to bring down the first that swooped towards her but the fiery shield around it vaporized the vine tendrils she threw at it before they could gain a hold on the chariot.

As it passed, the Senkin onboard dropped a small barrel which burst to pieces as it passed through the chariot’s shield.

White flakes fell from the destroyed barrel and the light wind carried them past Iana’s Warbringer. Her nearest subordinate wasn’t as lucky though. It caught a partial dusting of the white flakes and exploded in flames.

The pilot of the Warbringer sent it to the ground, trying to roll out the flames, but nothing would stop them.

Nothing would ever stop them.

Iana had heard of this weapon. The Senkin called it “Everfire” but that was far too pretty a name for the abomination that Iana saw before her. The flames it conjured never stopped burning, they would destroy the land itself if the magic powering them wasn’t undone. Not destroy as in reduce to ash. Things could grow from ashes. Destroy as in transform into energy that radiated away into nothingness.

Fresh rage kindled in her heart, and Iana lashed out with far more vine tendrils than she should have expended. She felt the knees on her Warbringer freeze up as the life was sucked out of them. It didn’t matter though. She was able to swarm so many vines around the chariot that she burst through its shield and crushed it into a shattered mess. The Senkins onboard it were an indistinguishable part of that mess, but her victory and their deaths brought Iana no joy. The stakes were rising too quickly.

That was when the Council’s Fell Birds arrived.

Magic-woven constructs of a size comparable to the Warbringers, the Fell Birds were only dispatched when a monster tribe had grown so powerful that it was a danger to an entire province. Iana looked up and was pleased with their arrival.

Then she saw they were carrying a new payload. Globes as wide as a man was tall, filled with a yellow-green liquid.

The Fell Birds made only one pass over the Senkin Fort. They weren’t particularly careful where they dropped their globes. Neither precision nor repetition were needed. Where the globes landed, large billowing clouds of fungal vapors blossomed, filling and overflowing the fort.

The yellow-green clouds energized Iana’s Warbringer where they touched it, but against the unprotected Senkins the mists had a different effect. As though being consumed by a billion starving insects, the enemy soldiers melted away as the clouds settled over them.

Her need for vengeance overwhelmed by the sight, Iana understood why Dagmauru had arranged for this scenario, or one like it to occur. There had to be observers watching this battle, and when they saw what became of their forces, there would be no more attempts to land troops behind the Green Council’s lines.

Her people were secure, but that didn’t mean that their advance was going to stop.

Alari sometimes understood her late father’s desire to burn the world to the ground. Not to the extent of breaking out the head chopping axes but enough to indulge in some fairly gruesome daydreams as she waited for her Petitioner’s Court to assemble.

In the early days of Gallagrin, the Court had been setup to allow those with worthy cases to present their plight directly to the monarch of the realm. It was intended to serve as a protection against the noble’s being able to abuse the citizens who lived within their Duchy.

Over time the Court had grown to include Petition Reviewers whose duty was to sort the cases that came before the throne into one’s with legitimate grievances and ones whose issues could be handled by other judges.

Under the reign of King Sathe, the Petitioner’s Court had first devolved into a mechanism for eliminating political rivals and then been abandoned entirely once the nobles discovered that convincing the Butcher King that someone needed to be eliminated was far too easy. There were as many nobles who died from accusing their rivals of disloyalty as there were who died from being on the receiving end of an accusation of treason.

Alari had reinstated the court, over the complaints of a wide number of the noble houses. Even her supporters believed that time spent on minor individual problems was time that was more profitably used sorting out concerns that touched on the whole realm. To Alari though, the Court represented a chance to learn of the wider state of her realm from those who were most affected by the policies her nobles were discussing.

A part of her felt that if she could just find the time to become fully invested in what was happening within her realm that she would be able to see the solutions to the problems it faced. Nothing was impossibly complex, or at least none of the broader problems that Gallagrin had to deal with were. There were relatively simple solutions to its issues, and to the problems faced by the Blessed Realms as a whole. The trick was finding those solutions faster than the peoples of Gallagrin, and the Blessed Realms in general, were able to devise new problems to vex her.

“Jaan Lafli is recovering,” Dae said as she entered the small courtroom and took her position at Alari’s right hand. “The geas she’s under seems to be meant to inflict pain if its restrictions are pushed, rather than doing real damage. It’ll probably take her long enough to recover that you could see a few petitioners in the meantime if you want though?”

“I’m tempted to wait for her,” Alari said. “If the reports I’ve received already are correct, we may have to cancel Court for the immediate future.”

“That bad?” Dae asked.

“Maybe,” Alari said. “Possibly worse.”

They’d known for weeks that the success of their campaign against Paxmer would lead to repercussions that would be felt throughout the realms. By all their projections though, armed conflict shouldn’t have become an issue until mid-summer at the earliest and that was still months away.

Alari watched Dae sag into her seat and pinch the bridge of her nose. It had been customary for past monarchs to make a showy display of the Petitioner’s Court. Alari had chosen an alternate path though. To her, the point of the Court was to allow the petitioner to speak frankly to their queen and explain the problems they were facing. A small courtroom, without unnecessary observers, seemed more conducive to that than forcing the petitioner to present their case in front of a thronging mass of spectators.

The one exception that she’d made to her policy was to allow her Knight to join her. With the Spirit of Gallagrin to back her, Alari had little to fear from anyone in her realm, but the demeanor she wished to project was not one of awe inspiring power. For the Petitioner’s Court to work properly, she needed to be approachable. That left Dae to provide the proper level of menace so that the more quarrelsome petitioners would not make the mistake of assuming they could treat Alari with anything less than the utmost of respect. If she had to correct them, it wasn’t likely to be an experience they would enjoy, or potentially even survive.

“There is another special petitioner who’s waiting to see you,” Dae said, her eyes still closed.

Alari sighed. “More new problems to deal with? I thought the world falling apart would be enough for today.”

“This one’s not a new problem,” Dae said. “It’s the Duke of Tel. He wants to discuss what your plans are for the nobles.”

“His timing is…” Alari started to say and cut herself short as an idea blossomed. “Perhaps fortuitous.” Her smile broadened as the idea took hold further. “Yes, let’s bring him in.”

“You want to speak to him?” Dae asked, confused by the sudden change in Alari’s mood.

“Yes, we’ll bring him in when Lafli gets here,” Alari said. “Having one of my former supporters in the room while speaking with a scion of one of the opposing houses will present the right air to the situation I think. Each side will assume that I’ve nominated those two to act as their voice.”

“Are you ready to talk about what you plan to do with the nobles yet?” Dae asked.

“No,” Alari said, “But we’re going to have much more important things to cover.”

“Something tells me that I should bring the other Queen’s Guard in on this one too,” Dae said.

“I suspect you’re correct,” Alari said. “If things are progressing this quickly I don’t believe we’ll have long to debate our actions.”

***

Alari watched Jaan Lafli enter the room and enjoyed the brief flash of surprise and concern that flashed across the elf’s face when she discovered that more than the Queen of Gallagrin awaited for her.

The courtroom was small as royal chambers went. On the other side of the petitioner’s table there was just enough space for Dae, Jyl, Eorn and Undine to sit comfortably in their chairs. Alari sat on the throne in the center of them, the slight elevation reinforcing the impression that her position was the centerpoint of the room, despite being set back against it’s far wall.

A seat had been left open for Jaan beside Duke Ren Telli but it was the Duke’s husband who drew Jaan’s gaze. Teo was well fed, so there weren’t many tells as to his vampiric nature, but the ones he retained; the slightly washed out complexion, the discoloring of his irises, the preternatural stillness he naturally adopted, these were able to unsettle her enough that even from across the room Alari could see the catch in her step as she walked to take her seat.

“You bear a message,” Alari said, nodding toward Jaan, “and you come with a question,” she added, shifting her gaze to Ren and Teo. “The one will impact the other so let us hear the message House Lafli wishes to send to us.”

“Of course Your Majesty,” Jaan said. “I am instructed to inform you that the Duke of Laf has received reports from our contacts within the Green Council that there has been a breach of their sovereign border which they have responded to with force. The treaties between the Green Council and Senkin have been renounced and the Green Council will be declaring war shortly.”

“We have received other reports of the disturbance on the Council/Senkin border,” Alari said. “What else does House Laf have to report?”

“Our contacts there say that they Green Council is unwilling to send a representative to your court,” Jaan said. “They claim the Council believes any diplomat they send will meet a dire fate and that your court will not support the prosecution of their rights against Senkin.”

“Their judgment relies on the history of this realm without sparing an eye towards the particulars of our reign,” Alari said. “But that is not all you have brought is it Lafli?”

“No Your Majesty,” Jaan said. “My grandfather the Duke also instructed me to offer our services to the crown in this delicate hour. Our family can trace its origins back to the Green Council in the early days of the Realms.  In the last several years, we have reached out and renewed old ties which had lain dormant for centuries.”

“It’s always good to have bolt holes in another realm when you’re planning to betray your ruler,” Jyl said.

Alari had heard of Jyl’s altercation with her sister and wished she’d been there to see it. From the looks of things, one word would be all that was required to trigger a renewal of the brawl, but for the time being Jaan Lafli was more useful intact and cooperating.

“And what would those services entail?” Alari asked, neither chastising Jyl nor allowing Jaan a chance to deny the accusation.

“We can send an emissary to meet with the Green Council and negotiate on behalf of Gallagrin once their demands and motivations are understood,” Jaan said.

“And the surety House Laf would provide as to their intentions on behalf of Gallagrin would be what exactly?” Alari asked. Expecting a disgraced House to be allowed to negotiate on behalf of the throne it tried to usurp was just the sort of insanity Alari had come to expect from her nobles. In that sense Lafli hadn’t let her down, but she also knew that Duke Lafli wasn’t quite the idiot that some of her other opponents were.

“The Duke of Laf will formally cede command of the Laf Army to the crown,” Jaan said.

“So he’s going to give away something he already lost?” Dae asked. Alari hadn’t formally seized control of her noble’s private armies, but the question as to whether she would was on most of their lips.

Jaan scowled at the jibe but had the political acumen to hold back any return barbs. Instead she offered, “We can also vouch for Gallagrin’s intentions with our contacts on the Green Council and provide any hostages against Gallagrin’s good faith which the Council might require.”

Alari knew exactly who the first hostage would be and felt a brief pang of sympathy for Jaan Lafli. The nobility valued their offspring, and cherished them, but all too often that was in the same sense as a merchant valued and cherished their gold.

“The Green Council has long been a peaceful neighbor to us,” Alari said. “As has Senkin. If we are to meet with one, we must meet with the other as well or we shall be taken as having chosen a side in their conflict.”

“The Green Council is the offended party, from the reports we have received,” Jaan said. “House Lafli wishes to suggest that a delegation be dispatched to meet with the Council first, so that they can reveal the details of what has occurred. Our contact on the Council claims that once those are known, siding with their interests will be the only path which Gallagrin would wish to pursue.”

“I suspect a representative from Senkin would say the same thing for themselves,” Ren said, joining the debate in response to Alari’s nod of encouragement.

“Your suspicions are correct Duke Tel,” Alari said. “A representative from Senkin arrived a short while ago. She speaks of personally witnessing the Green Council attack on Senkin and the brutality of their tactics.”

“You must speak with the Council then Your Majesty,” Jaan said. “Their side of the story will surely help the truth emerge.”

“Indeed,” Alari said. “That is why Gallagrin will visit both Senkin and the Green Council.”

“If we can be of service Your Majesty, I do have some friends in Senkin, associates the Tel family has done business with for the last few generations,” Ren said.

“Your offer is accepted Duke Tel, as is the Lafli family’s offer,” Alari said.

“And which of the Houses will lead the delegation Your Majesty?” Jaan asked.

Alari could see the wheels spinning behind Jaan’s eyes as the elf weighed the balance between the prestige of heading the delegation and the ability to dodge the responsibility for the failures it was likely to endure.

“Neither,” Alari said. “When we said Gallagrin would visit Senkin and the Green Council we were not speaking in metaphor. We shall lead this delegation personally as we take our fellow monarchs to task for breaching the peace of the Realms.”

Dae entered the training room for the Queen’s Guard to find a brawl underway. Battles weren’t uncommon in the training room. Hosting them was part of its function. Normally those fights didn’t involve fully manifested Pact Armor and live blades wielded in anger though.

A jolt shot through Dae’s chest with each clang of metal on metal. An old part of her wanted to dash into the fray, she’d trained for battle so long it was practically her homeland, but the part of her that woke her in the night froze her feet to the floor.

In battling the Dragon King Haldraxan, Dae had managed to overcome divinely granted mystical might and the fear it produced, but the lengths she’d pushed herself to had taken their toll. She was still a Pact Knight, still bound to Kirios, but in the weeks since her battle in Paxmer she hadn’t been able to transform into her magical armored form even once.

Only Alari knew of her limitation. Everyone else’s knowledge was limited to the undisguisable fact that she had required weeks of healing following the battle, which no one seemed to begrudge her. Even without his fear aura in effect, her foe Haldraxan had loomed as imposing figure in the Queen’s Gardens. The mere sight of him made the battle against him difficult to believe and impossible to refute. That sentiment started to fade slightly once Estella, Dae’s mother, flew him back to Paxmer to begin the transformation of both that realm and its draconic defenders, but there lingered in the minds of those who had seen the Dragon King that he could be recalled all too easily if the need arose.

For her part Dae was grateful for the wild stories that people were telling about her. The mystique that clung to her following the battle in Paxmer and her return to Gallagrin was useful so long as she didn’t overplay it. The nobility were already half terrified of her from the visceral demonstration she’d provided when she slew the Duke of Tel and lopped off the Consort-King’s head. Arriving, tarnished and battle weary with a dragon the size of a small mountain answering to her beck and call had been sufficient to cow even the worst of Alari’s opponents into meekness for a time. In place of “Kingslayer” they whispered “Dragonslayer” when speaking of her though neither appellation was correct.

Dae wasn’t attached to the titles much. They amused the eight year old that remained within her, but what mattered more was the sentiment they arose from and how much that could help Alari retain her throne. So long as the nobles feared Dae, they wouldn’t move against Alari without first trying to deal with Dae and that suited her perfectly.

The brawl raging in the training room had nothing to do with Alari though, so Dae’s mystique didn’t seem like it would be called into play.

Her comrade Jyl was battling a woman who was matching her blow for blow and parry for parry. There were differences in their styles, but more in the flourishes than the basics of their martial forms. Even without the aid of Pact Magic, Dae could follow their movements and tell that they’d been trained in the same house from a young age. More than that, they could read each other well enough that Dae could see this wasn’t their first battle.

Jyl shifted out of the line of attack from her opponent’s thrust, capturing her foe’s wrist and pulling her forward. The other woman spun into a fluid pommel strike with her other sword aimed at Jyl’s head, which Jyl smoothly blocked with her own blade as she snapped a long kick towards her foe’s knee.

The woman dropped away from the kick, throwing her weight against Jyl to knock her off balance and into a roll. The fighters split apart at as they got up, neither favoring ground techniques against the other.

In the brief moment where they paused and took stock of each other again, Dae spoke up.

“That looks entertaining,” she said. “Anyone want to explain why there’s entertainment being offered in my training room?”

The other woman, Jyl’s twin sister Jaan, was the first to put her blade down and dispel her Pact armor.

The two new recruits, Eorn and Undine relaxed out of their Pact armor as well.  They’d been holding position at the edge of the central battle arena in the room, commanded to stay in place by Jyl when the fight began if Dae’s guess was accurate.

The only one who retained her armor for longer than the next breath was Jyl. She stood unmoving, her glare fixed on her sister and from the tremble in her blade, Dae could see that she wasn’t finished with the fight at all.

“Commander Lafli,” Dae said. “You’re needed at the Petitioner’s Court. Unless there’s something you need to address here first?”

Jyl lowered her blade and released her transformation at last, the armor peeling away into nothingness with a growl of ripping metal.

“That won’t be necessary Lady Akorli,” Jyl said, her gaze remaining on her sister who smirked back at her.

“You can’t leave just yet,” Jaan said.

“Commander Lafli can do as she pleases,” Dae said. No blood had been spilled from what she could see, so whatever argument the sisters had fallen into hadn’t escalated to the level where it was politically necessary to acknowledge or deal with it.

“But if she leaves now then she won’t have the message which the queen needs to hear,” Jaan said.

Dae’s ears perked up. She’d been watching Jyl to see how the young woman was doing. Rage was not the elf’s normal state and her struggle to bring it under control filled Dae with concern. They weren’t old friends, or dear long-term acquaintances but the weeks they’d spent together had been among the most intense in Dae’s life. As a commander, Dae tried to understand and shepherd her troops, but she didn’t readily accept new friends. Trust was simply too precious a resource to offer that freely. If Jyl wasn’t yet her friend though, the young elf was well on the way to becoming one, and so Jaan’s taunting words set Dae’s nerves on edge almost as much as they did for Jyl.

“If you have a message for the Queen, then deliver it,” Dae said. “Now.”

“I cannot,” Jaan said.

Dae’s eyes narrowed. Jaan Lafli was a noble’s daughter. The Lafli family had sided with the Butcher King until late in the war, and had almost certainly backed Halrek’s ill-advised attempt to take the throne. Dae’s patience for nobles who fell into that category was thinner than the edge of her blade.

“I am bound by oath and geas to speak only to Her Majesty,” Jaan added, raising her palms in supplication. “Tell her, sister, it’s how our family works.”

“Your family,” Jyl said.

Dae stepped into the fighting circle to stand beside and a hair’s breadth ahead of Jyl.

“Your family,” she said, echoing Jyl’s declaration, “uses magic to compel their own?”

“Of course,” Jaan said. “It’s common enough to ensure that messengers are required to deliver the messages they are entrusted with. And to the correct people.”

“Also very convenient,” Jyl said, “The Queen’s not speaking with any of you but if she doesn’t make an exception you’ll, what, burst on fire?”

“Trust me sister nothing about this is convenient,” Jaan said. “The geas won’t kill me, which I’m sure you’re delighted to hear, but I must deliver this message, immediately. It involves more than the Lafli clan’s fortunes.”

“And yet you’ll twist it, whatever it is, to make sure that the Laflis are the ones who benefit the most from it,” Jyl said.

“You do your family a disservice sister,” Jaan said. “We are not as wicked as you imagine.”

“Don’t,” Jyl said. “Just don’t. We both know what you’ve done. All of you. Gods-be-damned monsters.”

“You should go back to your family’s quarters,” Dae said, focusing her full attention on Jaan. “Have them remove the geas. Whatever they have to say can wait until the queen is ready to speak with you.”

“No,” Jaan said, clutching her stomach, “No it can’t. I…” she paused, pain shooting across her face as she fought to speak. “I have to speak with her because it involves something that’s happening right now.”

She gasped out the last word before racing into her next breath and spitting out words as fast as she could.

“It’s about the Green Council. There’s been an invasion and I need to speak to the Queen about what happened in response.” She was trembling in pain and only standing through sheer force of will when she finished, but her words had the desired effect. Dae’s expression had shifted from one of angry rejection to worried suspicion.

“What’s happening to her?” Dae asked, already knowing the answer.

“The geas, probably,” Jyl said. “My grandfather is bastard.”

“Is she being damaged?” Dae asked.

“Depends on how merciful he was feeling today,” Jyl said.

“The Queen needs to hear what she has to say,” Dae said.

“Half the things she’ll say are going to be lies,” Jyl said.

“But the…other half are what’s…important,” Jaan said before collapsing to the floor.

Dae sighed and strode over to her, picking up the elf before saying, “The Queen is holding the Petitioner’s Court soon, we’ll make her the first petitioner.”

“The other nobles won’t be happy,” Jyl said.

“Good,” Dae said, a wolf-ish smile breaking across her face. “Let’s hope they try to complain.”

“Lady Akorli,” Eorn said, stepping forward. “I can carry the elf if you’d like?”

Dae looked over at her newest recruit, and then looked up at her newest recruit, taking in the sheer size of the giantess.

“I can manage,” Dae said, smiling again at the thought of getting to wrestle Eorn in training at some point. That was going to be fun.

“I think she’s less worried about you capability and more about how important it will make the messenger appear if you’re seen walking through court carrying her in your arms,” Undine said.

Dae glanced over to the other new recruit. Undine would be an entirely different sort of challenge. Where Eorn had strength and endurance to spare, Undine was like a razor. Thin and sharp and, unless Dae’s early evaluation was wrong, quite deadly. Wrestling would be wasted on Undine, and Dae wasn’t sure she’d be able to lay hands on the man in the first place. Their battle would have to be one of blades and skills and wits. Dae was looking forward to that every bit as much as she was the eventual scraps with Eorn.

For the time being though, political matters held sway and she had to give both of her new recruits credit in that department.

“That’s a good observation,” she said. “Eorn, would take our messenger then?”

“Certainly!” Eorn said and lifted Jaan from Dae’s arms like the elf was as light as a sack of loose leaves.

“Take her through the barracks entrance please,” Dae said. “Commander Lafli and I will go speak with the queen and let her know what to expect.”

“Yes, Lady Akorli!” both Eorn and Undine said.

“This is a mistake,” Jyl said as the two marched off. “I know we have to hear what Jaan has to say, but I’m saying this now because I’ll murder her if I don’t. Listening to her is a mistake. She’s going to wreck everything. She always does.”

“That’s why I wanted you with me,” Dae said.

“So that I wouldn’t kill her?” Jyl asked.

“No, that’s between you and her as far as I’m concerned,” Dae said. “I want you to help make sure Alari is ready for this. Whatever tricks your sister likes to use? Whatever agenda she’s going to be pushing for? You’re our best chance at being prepared for those.”

“So you think I’m right?” Jyl asked.

“Of course I think you’re right. You know her and the Lafli family best,” Dae said.

Jyl gazed over at Dae as they walked the path back to the Royal Tower.

“I could be wrong though,” Jyl said.

“Maybe,” Dae said. “You’re not unbiased, but you know them and I trust your experience here.”

“I…thank you,” Jyl said. “That’s not something I’ve heard very often.”

“If I don’t mention it next time, just kick me,” Dae said.

“I think the queen might string me up if I started assaulting her Knight,” Jyl said.

Dae laughed at that.

“We need to get you to spend more time with her,” she said. “If I give you cause to kick me, she’ll be the first one in line to do it, and she’ll hit the hardest.”

“I have a hard time picturing the queen holding anything like that against you,” Jyl said.

“You definitely need to spend more time with us then,” Dae said. “Alari’s not the soft graceful doll some people mistake her for. She’s got a mean streak in her, and she’s not afraid to use it if I’m being an idiot.”

“No one gets to call my Knight an idiot,” Alari said, meeting them at the door to the tower. “Especially not my Knight herself.”

“Is that Royal Privilege speaking?” Dae asked. “Because I’m pretty sure I can make you regret a command like that.”

“If you ever fall for someone, make sure they’re not impossible,” Alari said, addressing Jyl as she narrowed her eye as Dae. The sternness of her gaze was wrecked by the playful smile that curled up her lips though.

“Speaking of impossible,” Dae said. “We’ve got news for you, Jaan Lafli needs to speak with you immediately.”

“Interesting, this must be about the Green Council,” Alari said.

“Yeah, she said something about an invasion?” Dae said.

“It’s more than an invasion,” Alari said. “It looks like my Conference of the Realms is on hold. If the report I read is correct, we have a war that we’ll have to deal with first.”

Teo paced outside the cell that his husband was sleeping in. Ren could sleep through anything, and was probably going to sleep through his own execution. The thought of that made Teo see red. Specifically the crimson red of a fresh wound as his vampiric eyes filled with blood and rage.

“You’re getting worked up over nothing again,” Ren called from their bed.

Teo peeked in. He’d been moving with the preternatural quiet than only a magic fueled predator could manage and Ren had still managed to hear him.

“I’m not worked up,” Teo said, the words so short and clipped that he wasn’t even able to believe them himself.

“Are you under the impression that I know you less well now that we’re married?” Ren asked his husband. “I mean it’s not like saying our vows made me forget knowing you for the last decade.”

“I’m not worked up,” Teo said after a long, slow breath, sounding more composed than he had the first time.

Ren groaned and rose from their bed. Teo walked away from the door and sat down at the delicately carved table that served as both a work and dinner area. Rather than sitting in the chair opposite Teo though, Ren walked behind him instead.

“I may not be as mystically aware as you, but trust me, I still know when you’re upset,” he said, looping his arms around Teo’s shoulders in a loose hug. “You’ve been getting steadily more worked up for a month now. Jumping at shadows and problems that aren’t going to come to be.”

“I’m not worried about shadows,” Teo said, his fears and irritation mingling into a snap in his words that he wished weren’t there. “I’m worried about you. Queen Alari has held you prisoner here for a month now.”

“I’m not prisoner,” Ren said for what felt like the hundredth time. “The Queen isn’t holding anyone here as a prisoner. She’s just ruled that the Grand Convocation is to remain in session until she is able to address the nobles again.”

“She could have addressed the nobles weeks ago,” Teo said. “She’s holding you and all of the rest of them until she can decide how she wants to get her revenge on you.”

“What revenge?” Ren asked, throwing up his hands. “Queen Alari is not her father, she’s done nothing but good for this realm since she gained the throne, and she’s stood against the kind of mayhem you’re thinking of at every turn.”

“That was before,” Teo said. “She’s different now. The woman who sent me to find you last fall when your father was acting against her hadn’t been through two challenges to her rule in less than a year. She hadn’t been betrayed by her Consort or by her noble court yet. I’m telling you, the Queen Alari who returned from the God’s Hall is not the same person who gave you the Ducal seat of Tel.”

He turned to face Ren so that the fears that he couldn’t voice might at least speak through his gaze. Teo wasn’t a native to Gallagrin, though with his marriage to Ren over the winter he’d become a fully recognized citizen. In Teo’s homeland of Inchesso, those who supported a throne were often the same ones who made plays to claim its power when they felt the time was right. If they were correct then the crown passed to their head, if not then it remained where it was. In either case though, a head would roll away from its shoulders.

Teo had left Inchesso when he was young, but not so young that its values hadn’t settled into him on a level that was difficult to question directly. He’d been perplexed when Queen Alari hadn’t slaughtered her enemies after the Unification War. In time he’d come to understand the necessity of preserving the realm’s strength, especially in light of the threat the neighboring realms of Paxmer, Senkin and the Green Council presented, not to mention the political balance with the Sunlost Isles and the other Blessed Realms, each of whom had ties with one or more of the noble families of Gallagrin.

When Halrek the Consort-King betrayed Queen Alari, Teo had readied himself for the streets of Highcrest to run with noble blood, but with two exceptions none had been spilled. In retrospect, the Queen’s restraint had been understandable there too – the parties who backed Halrek and the Duke of Tel hadn’t done so publicly and the true source of Halrek’s machinations seemed to lie in Paxmer more than Gallagrin.

The latest betrayal though? That had been all too public and it had involved far too many of the noble houses of Gallagrin. The Queen had too many clear targets to ignore this time and too many reasons to abandon from her previous merciful demeanor.

“Queen Alari has been through a lot,” Ren said. “No one with any sense would claim otherwise, but it hasn’t changed her. Look at what she’s done. If her father was still on the throne, everyone in Highcrest Castle would have died the night Sanli’s challenge failed.”

“And then there would have been another civil war,” Teo said. “She’s smarter than her father. She can’t eliminate the nobles until their armies are brought under her control. That’s what she’s waiting for.”

“That’s not possible,” Ren said. “There are Ducal armies that will stay loyal to their families no matter what, and even the ones who would switch allegiance will take longer to do so than the Grand Convocation can be held for. It would be years, if ever, before Queen Alari could be secure in her reign without the nobles.”

“Then perhaps she’s just delaying long enough to be sure she can win the civil war that’s going to erupt,” Teo said. “It’s not like she shied away from causing one the last time the leadership of Gallagrin wasn’t to her liking.”

Ren shook his head and wandered over to the enchanted icebox their room was supplied with. Brunch would be provided in an hour or so, but if he was going to argue, he needed a full stomach to work with.

“There were fewer lives lost in the Unification War than the Butcher King would have killed in the same period of time,” Ren said. “I’m telling you, Queen Alari is not consumed by the madness which lead to her father’s downfall.”

“I want to believe that,” Teo said. “I do. But I look at this room and I know what it was used for under the Butcher King’s rule and I know what it would be used for in Inchesso. Whatever else happens, I cannot let that happen to you.”

“It won’t,” Ren said, placing a tray of food from the night before onto the table and reaching over to hold Teo’s hand.

“You can’t know that,” Teo said, frowning.

“But I can have faith that it’s true, based on the faith I have in the Queen,” Ren said.

“It’s a strange and unsettling thing to hear someone speak of faith in their monarch,” Teo said.

“Not like that in Inchesso?” Ren asked.

“It seems to be a rare thing here too,” Teo said. “Present company excepted, noble’s don’t seem to be worth the respect their given, much less a level of faith that would be worth risking your life over.”

“I’m not sure that I should be excepted from that reckoning,” Ren said. “Allowing Sanli’s challenge to proceed was not my finest hour.”

“There was nothing you could have done about that though,” Teo said.

“At the time I would have agreed with you, but in hindsight I’m not certain I can,” Ren said. “There were stratagems I could have employed, I think, to disrupt the event or at least delay the proceedings until the Queen returned from her meeting in the God’s Hall.”

“And would any of those plans have seen you alive at the end?” Teo asked.

“In theory, some of my ideas might have been survivable,” Ren said.

Teo stood up, and forced himself to breath.

“That’s not good enough,” he said softly. “I know I’m not being rational about this. I can’t be. Not with you. I can’t…you can’t…”

“I know.” Ren’s voice was gentle. “It’s who you are.”

“Because I’m a vampire,” Teo said, feeling the blood magic that bound him to Ren burning brightly in his veins.

Ren laughed at that, and the sound of him chuckling broke the vicious circle of Teo’s thoughts.

“Becoming a vampire just changed your diet,” Ren said and stood to face Teo, grasping his husband’s shoulders. “You’ve been exactly like this since the first moment we admitted we were in love.”

It was Teo’s turn to laugh, though his was more rueful than Ren’s had been.

“That sounds terrible,” he said. “How could you have married a creature like me.”

“Well you are uncommonly handsome,” Ren said. “And you can bend a sword into a pretzel, and you’re close to unkillable. So perhaps I simply married you for your body.”

“Oh, is that all it was?” Teo asked, a playful mood sweeping over him in response to Ren’s teasing. He pulled Ren in close so that they were gazing eye to eye from only a few inches away.

“Yes,” Ren said. “Purely physical,” as he traced his fingers over Teo’s chest.

“Then I suppose I needn’t worry about you at all,” Teo said with a look of mock indignation.

“But you will,” Ren said. “And for that I have an idea.” He pushed away from the embrace and watched a mix of surprise and wariness steal over Teo’s face.

“And am I going to like this idea?” Teo asked.

“You’ll like the outcome of it,” Ren said.

“But not the execution I take it?” Teo said.

“Probably not,” Ren said.

“What do you have in mind?” Teo asked.

“You’re worried about what the Queen is going to do with us,” Ren said. “So we’re going to head to her tower and speak to her.”

Teo looked at his husband blankly for a minute for asking “What?”

“We’re going to talk to Queen Alari,” Ren said. “We’ll see what she has in store for us and the other nobles.”

“I’m sorry, you said some words, but what I heard was ‘we’re going to commit a very elaborate form of suicide wherein we deliver ourselves straight to the one who is looking for an excuse to kill us’,” Teo said.

“That might indeed be what we’re going to do,” Ren said. “But if so, you have to admit that at least we’d be getting all the waiting and worrying done with, yes?”

Teo looked at him for another long moment, taking in the underlying seriousness of Ren’s demeanor.

“I can’t talk you out of this, can I?” he asked.

“No,” Ren said. “I think it’s well past time that we speak with Her Majesty. She’s never questioned me about that night and I don’t know if she’s gotten a full picture of what happened yet.”

“And if she does know everything that went on and doesn’t care?” Teo asked.

Ren shrugged.

“Then we’re probably to be the first to fall victim to a resurgence of Royal Madness,” he said. “If so though, we’ll still be doing Gallagrin a service.”

“How?” Teo asked.

“Like a canary in a mine, our deaths would signal to everyone that something is very wrong at the heart of Gallagrin and that might give our fellow nobles time to escape before the whole thing collapses.”

“Wasn’t this supposed to be an idea that I would like the result of?” Teo asked.

“I suppose it would be more accurate to say that in either case you won’t hate it,” Ren said.

“Not hating something because I’m too dead to feel anything at all isn’t my idea of comfort,” Teo said.

“Life with me is never comfortable is it?” Ren asked.

“Still better than what it’d be without you though.”

Iana gazed at the waving grains of gold, newly sprouted from the warm spring earth and felt hot rage surging through her veins.

The people of the rolling hills that spread out before her army thought that they were entitled to peace and effortless prosperity regardless of how they treated others. They thought Iana’s people were like fruit grown in an orchard the gardener had abandoned. Unprotected, unloved, and waiting to be plucked and consumed by anyone who chose to reach out their hand and take what they wanted.

The Green Council, Inara’s homeland, was the smallest of the Blessed Realms, but it was far from the weakest. Though their gods slumbered with the rest of the divines, the Green Council had delved more deeply into the mysteries of their magics than any other realm.

Senkin, their neighbor to the west had forgotten that. In their greed, they’d violated sacred treaties, and so it fell to Iana forces to remind them of the cost their insults incurred.

Move. Her command flowed through root and branch, spoken in the rustle of leaves and the heavy stomp of the Warbringer’s tread. Words weren’t needed for the army that she commanded.

Each realm has its legends. From the spirit haunted peaks of Gallagrin, to the sun-wielding glory of Light Warriors who guarded Senkin’s throne, those legends reflected the magics the realm had been gifted with by their gods. The tales of the Green Council spoke of the realm as a single, animated forest. The trees were said to possess a mobility and will on par with any of the Mindful Races while being able to grow and regenerate at supernaturally fast rates.

Iana smiled thinking about that. The other realms knew nothing of the miracles those of the Green Council were capable of performing. Let Gallagrin have its bonds to terrible mountain spirits. Let Paxmer have its dragons. The Green Council’s magic was deeper and stronger than any of them. She didn’t work with spirits or dragons but with the magic of life itself.

Life isn’t kind though. It’s rough and voracious and hungry, which fit her mood perfectly.

Senkin had expected the Green Council’s defenses to lie in the trees and brambles which filled the realm and made travel through it almost impossible for invaders. The enchantments which defended Iana’s homeland were far from its only protection though and as one of the prime commanders of the Warbringer squadrons, Iana intended to enlighten them, and the rest of the world to that fact.

That piloting her Warbringer in actual battle at last gave her a deeper thrill than any she’d experienced in her life was nothing more than a pleasant perk.

Flush with an intoxicating flood of excitement, she pushed forward, taking the lead position as was only natural for commanding her army.

The other realms called the Green Council’s magic “Nature Binding” and thought of it as nothing more than the ability to manipulate trees. It was an intentional misunderstanding the Green Council had been wise enough to foster in its neighbors.

Iana’s Warbringer was formed from material that could be mistaken for a tree. At a great distance. On a dark night. As she urged it down the hill into Senkin territory though anyone viewing it would have thought of the Warbringer as some sort of protean giant. It stood as tall as six large men, but hundreds of times more massive. Its gargantuan form was a composed of constantly rearranging vines and bark and exposed wood, with the only discernible features being the emerald bright fires that burned where its eyes and mouth should have been. For all of the wildness that lashed out from it though, the whole creation was under her complete control, which was the eeriest aspect the giant possessed. It didn’t move like a behemoth should move, and it was faster and more aware than anything its size had the right to be.

For as terrifying as Iana’s Warbringer was though wasn’t how it moved, but rather that it didn’t march alone.

Behind her came the warriors under her command, a dozen of them, each driving their own enormous engine of living destruction. Under their feet, the land trembled and through the air a sickly yellow mist spread.

There were border guards who stood before them. Loyal Senkin troops, who’d been exiled to the least glorious assignment in the realm. Purposeless for generations as they protected Senkin from a neighbor who had no interest in the world outside its borders. The last thing any of them could have imagined was being called to arms by a horn that hadn’t sounded in centuries.

Iana wanted to sweep over them like a tempest and grind them into loam for her Warbringer to feed upon.

She crashed forward towards them, hungry mouths with bramble spears for teeth opening on each finger of her Warbringer’s massive hands. Confronted with the onrushing horror of her approach, the Senkin troops lashed out with the solar fires they were gifted with.

Lances of light three times the width of a soldier’s arm punched through Iana’s Warbringer’s legs in four places. Two more beams crashed into her chest at the same time. All six attacks sparked fires and blasted through her form, burning into the Warbringers behind her.

Iana didn’t slow in the slightest. The damage to her legs was regenerated as fast as the solar fire could burn her. The chest of the mighty construct shrank slightly as material from it was consumed in fire but the hungry twisting of the vines pulled the flaming bits inside the main body and the emerald fire of its eyes and mouth flared briefly brighter.

Chaos erupted in the Senkin ranks as their attacks failed to damage the charging horde of tree-man-monsters. Some fled immediately, crashing into others who were racing to join the hastily assembled front lines. Others continued their futile attacks while one had the presence of mind to erect a wide shield of glittering golden light.

Iana was the first to reach the radiant shield and she met it with the fury that had been kindled inside her. Senkin had violated the peace between them. They were the enemy. The Green Council wasn’t weak, but Iana knew that on this field, on this day, she and those she commanded were the only ones who could stand against the Council’s enemies. Without her to protect her realm, years of sacrifice and the hopes of those who came before her would be lost.

Not today. Her heart’s vow was echoed by the other Warbringer pilots under her command.

She hammered on the shield and watched it flicker and fade where she hit it, only to be renewed as other Senkin guards took up defensive casting as well.

“Flank them,” Iana said, speaking aloud and knowing that no matter how far the Warbringers were from each other, their pilots would hear her without issue. “Make them spread their shields out.”

In the distance behind the shield, Iana saw people rousing and starting to flee the border town. She cursed as they escaped. They were enemies, even in flight, and to fail to stop them immediately meant that they would be back later with reinforcements.

The thought provoked her to a greater flurry of rage and, with the Warbringer’s spiked hands, she tore a hole in the projected shield and belched forth green fire.

The primary caster of the shield let the spell down at the last instant and summoned a smaller, personal shield. The two other casters who joined her were not as reactive though. Iana’s fire washed over those two, searing them to dust while the primary caster’s personal shield struggled to weather the storm that assailed it.

As the shield collapsed, Iana lunged forward, racing to catch the clever caster in her grip before the soldier could mount any new defenses. For as fast as the Warbringer was though, the Senkin caster was quicker. Fire shot from her hands and feet, blasting into Iana’s legs and slowing the Warbringer down while the caster flew backwards into the air, buying space and time.

Iana lashed out with long vines from the Warbringer, catching the Senkin caster by surprise. Another caster seared the vines away with another lance of light.

More vines poured from the Warbringer, which the flying caster evaded by soaring higher and the second caster destroyed with her solar lance.

Despite failing to capture the Senkin soldiers though, the vines accomplished their purpose. Both of the soldiers were too distracted evading or destroying the vines to observe how far Iana’s Warbringer moved.

The clever caster tried to conjure another shield the moment she noticed how much Iana had closed the distance between them, but Iana landed a solid smash from the Warbringers spiked hand on the flying soldier. The blow drove the Senkin from the air, sending her in a straight line to crash into one of the buildings in the border town.

Iana stomped on the other soldier, driving her into the ground and extinguishing the solar lance that the woman held.

A massive ram of blinding light smashed into the Warbringers chest, driving it backwards a few paces. With eyes of fire, Iana didn’t need to wait for her vision to clear and she saw the flying soldier struggling to rise, her hand dropping after the release of the incredible attack.

Iana stepped forward again, intent on finishing the job she started and ridding the world of an enemy of the Green Council. She couldn’t let these soldiers become someone else’s problem to deal with. She had to end each and every one of them so that those she was charged with protecting would never be endangered or lost.

Another massive blast of light knocked Iana backwards, though this time she was braced for it and wasn’t driven off as far.

The clever caster, flashed forward in a burst of golden light, stopped beside the other soldier that Iana had crushed into the earth. Iana saw blood pouring from a gash on the clever caster’s head, but the soldier looked at the Warbringer with an anger that matched Iana’s own. The other soldier looked broken but was still breathing.

For a moment it looked like Iana might eradicate both of the Senkins who were preventing her from pursuing the fleeing soldiers but then two other Warbringers caught up with her and the Senkin soldier cursed. Before Iana could strike, both soldiers disappeared in another burst golden light.

The Senkins had suffered casualties but far too few.  Iana knew that regardless of the days outcome there would be a reckoning. Senkins counterattack was inevitable. She didn’t fear that either for herself or for her troops. They would be victorious in every battle they fought, or they would fall and be replaced and join their gods in the slumber of the Wintering Green. It was the promise made to all of the warriors of the Green Council.

More flashes of golden light caught Iana’s attention, as the Senkin casters who were still able to move fled the town. They would be back, but Iana was determined that they would never reclaim their town.

Turning her Warbringer to face the building beside her, she sent roots and tendrils crashing through it, tearing the structure apart with an irresistible strength. Around her the other Warbringers commenced similar efforts of destruction and a town that had stood for centuries was torn down and consumed by the hungry forest in minutes.

Iana looked around at the work of her army when they were done and smiled. The yellow mist that was spreading over the hills was seeding the land with furious new growth and shrouding it, just as the Green Council was shrouded, from the hostile spells and scryings of any foreign power.

Gallagrin had shown the world that the gods no longer protected the lands of the Blessed Realms. The Green Council would show the world why it had never needed divine protection.

Jyl Lafli envied the dragons of Paxmer. When a young dragon was ready to leave its creche and be properly trained, the adult dragon responsible for them was allowed, required even, to bath them in searing flame until the last traces of adolescent stupidity were burned away.

“This drill makes no sense,” Eorn Bromli said, dropping the sacks that she was holding out at arm’s length before collapsing to sit on the stone floor of the training room.

Beside her, the other newest candidate for the Queen’s Guard, Undine Kebrom, dropped the sacks he was holding and put his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. He looked over at Eorn and then at Jyl before offering a small, silent shrug.

Neither of them understood the point of the training, which was fine, since Jyl wasn’t primarily focused on teaching them. Instead, she was testing them, like Dae had tested her. The only problem was that neither of the new recruits seemed to be capable of passing the test.

“This next bit will make even less sense then,” Jyl said. “Pick the sacks back up, we’re going to start doing laps with them.”

She lifted her own sandbags and waited for the two Guard candidates to follow suit. Eorn scowled but forced herself to her feet without voicing her displeasure further. She didn’t exactly follow Jyl’s instructions though. Before picking up the sacks, she helped Undine get back on his feet and picked up his sacks for him.

Jyl refrained from commenting on the delay. In stopping to help Undine, Eorn was demonstrating how a member of the Queen’s Guard should think. For his part, Undine didn’t seem overly joyous for the help, but he accepted it with a begrudging smile nonetheless.

Without waiting for the new recruits to declare themselves ready, Jyl took off, setting a pace her trainees could have easily matched at the start of the work out.

The training room was large, but even so it only took two circuits around it before Jyl lapped Undine. Eorn was a few steps ahead of him, urging him on with glances and words of encouragement.

“You look like you’re reaching the end of your endurance,” Jyl said as she jogged easily past Undine.

“He’s fine,” Eorn said. “Just leave him alone.”

“Is that right?” Jyl asked. “Are you fine Kebrom?”

“Yes,” Undine said through gritted teeth. The word wheezed out of him, forcing a path through breathless exhaustion.

“Good, then we should be able to chat,” Jyl said, matching her speed to Undine’s.

“Ok,” Undine said and started walking.

“I said chat, not rest,” Jyl said. “Keep going. We’ve got eighty more laps to do.”

Undine stumbled but caught himself before he could drop.

“Ok.” he said again, cutting off the violent words that had gathered behind Eorn’s teeth.

“What are we doing here?” Jyl asked.

“Wasting time with stupid exercises,” Eorn said.

Jyl smirked and then turned around, running backwards to face Undine as they continued.

“And what do you think the point of this is?” she asked.

“You’re testing us,” Undine said. “You need to weed out the weak.”

“Good,” Jyl said. “Look at what we’re doing, both of you. Tell me what’s wrong with it.”

“You’re torturing us,” Eorn said.

“Am I?” Jyl asked. “You’re holding up.”

Jyl shifted her gaze from Eorn to watch a flicker of fear pass across Undine’s face. She knew the doubt that was eating away at him, and hoped he’d figure out how overcome it and pass her test.

“That’s not fair,” Eorn said. “I’m a stone giant, we don’t get tired.”

Jyl smiled, Eorn had a different set of issues than Undine did, and while correcting some of her misconceptions wasn’t going to be easy, the end result looked like it might be worth it. Burning the stupid out of both of them was still an option that Jyl wished was on the table, but the longer she worked with the two, the more she could glimpse of what Queen Alari saw in them.

“I’m going to remind you of that at lap fifty,” Jyl said. “What else is wrong though?”

“We’re hurting, but it’s doing us no good,” Undine said. “This is too much exertion for a training session.”

“That’s right,” Jyl said. “Even with accelerated healing you’re going to feel this tomorrow morning.”

“So you are torturing us?” Eorn said. “Does the Queen know about this?”

“This isn’t torture,” Jyl said. “It’s training.”

“You just said it was too much exercise for a training session,” Eorn said.

“I did,” Jyl said. “So what does that mean?”

“That you’re an…” Eorn didn’t get to finish her sentence though. Undine interrupted her.

“That this isn’t about training our bodies,” Undine said. “You’re testing us, or training us to think, or both.”

“So what’s the test then?” Jyl asked.

“We need to figure out something,” Undine said. “Something that’s wrong.”

Jyl could see his arms trembling with fatigue. Thinking through that kind of pain was no fun, but after her experiences in Paxmer, Jyl felt like the ability to focus and evaluate things even under the worst of circumstances was an invaluable tool that the Queen’s Guard had to possess.

Undine didn’t have the skill yet, but he was managing to buy time with his rambling thoughts and his words served another purpose; they inspired Eorn.

“Wait,” Eorn said. “There is something wrong here. How in the Nine Hells are you running along with sacks just as big as the ones we’re carrying? And you’re not even breaking a sweat yet.”

Jyl let a wide smile beam out from her face. The wheels were starting to turn in their heads and Jyl was starting to think that maybe these two did have a chance at working out.

Eorn was a stone giant, or mostly so. Her family had mixed heritage between humans and giants. Eorn favored the giant side of her ancestry, with the rock grey skin and close to seven feet of height that came with it. While it wasn’t true that she didn’t get tired, she was blessed with the sort of strength and stamina that was unmatched outside of Pact Spirit bonds.

Undine, by contrast, was human, and almost painfully thin. His whiplike body was quick and nimble and stronger than most gave him credit for being, but in terms of raw physical power he’d never come close to matching Eorn.

Neither of them were running the laps as effortlessly as Jyl though, despite the fact that as an elf, she was the shortest of three by a wide margin, and easily the weakest as well.

“That’s a good question,” Undine said. “Are you carrying feathers there?”

“I’ll trade you,” Jyl said, offering her bags to Undine.

He quickly passed his own to Jyl and took hers quickly, only to frown when he discovered that the bags she’d given him were heavier than the ones he gave away.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “How is this possible?”

“She’s cheating,” a new voice said.

Jyl felt a chill run down her spine as she whipped around to confirm her fears.

In the next door along the training room wall they were running beside, stood a woman who was Jyl’s mirror image.

“That’s the first rule with my sister,” Jaan Lafli said. “She always cheats.”

“Ignore her,” Jyl said, her lips freezing into a hard line as they ran past. Jaan was lounging propped against the side of the doorframe and watched them go by with a sardonic smile on her lips and a fixed gleam in her eye.

“But I’m right!” Jaan said. “Ask her!”

“Who is that woman?” Eorn asked.

“Someone who shouldn’t be here,” Jyl said, as their pace took them away from her sister.

“Are you cheating?” Undine asked.

“No,” Jyl said. “But think of what I told you.”

“You said no magic,” Eorn said. “We had to do this the hard way.”

“No,” Undine said. “She didn’t say no magic, she said no transformation.”

“It’s the same thing,” Eorn said.

Undine picked up her pace and let a weary smile lift his lips.

“No,” he said. “It’s not. Am I right?”

“I don’t know,” Jyl said, pride starting to kindle behind her eyes. “Show me.”

She watched as Undine’s eyes darted left and right, seeking knowledge and looking to his imagination for how to pull off the feat Jyl could see that he was contemplating.

Confusion and planning gave way to resolve and a fierce, joyful focus replaced the fatigue that had weighed his face into a mask of pain a moment before.

There was just the slightest crackle of magic that rippled along Undine’s body as he stood up straight and jogged easily past Jyl and Eorn both.

“What the?” Eorn asked, struggling to process the sudden change in her friend.

“The rules are that we can’t transform,” Undine said. “So just call for a little bit of magic whenever you feel tired.”

“We can do that?” Eorn asked.

“It’s not against the rules,” Jyl said. “Just don’t call so much that you go Berserker on us.”

“So you were cheating!” Eorn said as she called on her Pact Spirit for a burst of magic.

Jyl watched a pair of gauntlets form around Eorn’s wrist and shook her head.

“Cheating is manifesting any armor,” she said. “You’re back to a lap count of one.”

Eorn scowled and released her magic, dispelling the gauntlets.

“How are we supposed to pull off subtle casting while we’re running?” Eorn said.

“I thought stone giants didn’t get tired?” Jyl asked.

Eorn scowled and kept running without reaching for her magic.

They ran another fifty laps, with Jaan watching them the whole time. Jyl was happy that for once her evil twin was willing to stay silent, but with each lap, her dread of talking to Jaan rose. Jaan was their family’s favorite of the twins. Jyl had made the mistake of following her mother’s path and divorcing herself from her family’s politics, where Jyl had been a model grand daughter to their Duke. For Jaan to turn up uninvited meant that the family’s current political crisis was trying to land on Jyl’s shoulders and she wanted no part of that nest of vipers, and most especially no part of her sister.

“Is there another test here?” Undine asked, still keeping pace with Jyl but showing a level of fatigue that had little to do with the demands placed on his body.

“There is,” Jyl said. “But we haven’t reached it yet.”

“You’re not going to wear us out,” Eorn said through gritted teeth. The stone giant was breathing heavily but her shoulders were unbowed. Even without the ability to call on pact magic to refresh her strength, Eorn was keeping up with Jyl and Undine, though the cost of doing so was written on her face in clear lines.

“What happens if one of us doesn’t make it that far?” Undine asked, casting a worried glance at Eorn.

“We have to,” Jyl said. “There’s no option for failure here.”

“And do we have to run the laps?” Undine asked.

“We need travel around this room a hundred times, each of us,” Jyl said. “And the sacks we’re carrying be any closer to the ground than waist height or be left behind at any point.”

“Can we do more than a hundred laps?” Undine asked.

“We can do as many as we need too,” Jyl said.

“Perfect,” Undine said and added, “Eorn, catch me.”

With that, Undine, hopped up onto Eorn’s shoulders. The giant woman stumbled but didn’t fall down as the weight she was carrying tripled.

“What are you doing?” Eorn asked, gasping at the added exertion.

“This,” Undine said and placed his hands on Eorn’s arms. Jyl wanted to jump for joy when she saw a sparkle of magic pass from the human man to the giant woman. In response to the charge, Eorn straightened and breathed her first easy breath in minutes.

“Oh, that’s a lot better,” she said. “Why didn’t you do that sooner?”

“Just thought of it,” Undine said.

“Let’s finish this up then,” Jyl said, mischief lighting up her eyes. A moment later she vanished and was halfway around the training room.

“Oh, it’s on!” Eorn said, and with Undine feeding her magic the race began in earnest.

Dae woke to the feeling of Alari’s arms wrapped around her and the soreness in her throat that told her she’d been screaming in her sleep again.

For a long moment the Queen’s Champion did nothing but force herself into a pattern of long, steady breaths while her heart quieted from its nightmare induced pounding. The image she woke from was always the same. One step. Just one backwards step. That was all it took. Her dreams rarely showed her what came next, but they were so clear on the moments leading up to it, perfectly capturing the memories of the pain and terror she’d suffered and mixing them with the fears that she’d never survive an encounter like that again.

“You woke faster this time,” Alari said, the words warm on Dae’s neck.

“And woke you again,” Dae said, trying to force levity into her voice. It was a hollow effort though and she added in a softer voice, “I’m sorry. It shouldn’t be like this.”

Alari squeezed Dae into a tight hug for a long moment before releasing the embrace and trailing her hand down Dae’s back. They were together in Alari’s personal chambers, in the tallest tower of Highcrest Castle. The room’s previous resident, the Butcher King, had ensured that the room was completely soundproofed. Most people assumed King Sathe’s motives for doing that were diabolic, but in the years since taking the throne, Alari had come to see that being able to block out the world was, at times, a priceless gift beyond anything else in her treasury could offer.

“You’re wounded,” Alari said. “And it was my plan that put you in harm’s way.”

The Royal bedroom wasn’t large as chambers went in Castle Highcrest, but there had always been an emptiness to it despite the personal touches that Alari added to make it feel like a proper refuge. In the early years of her marriage to Prince Halrek of Paxmer, they’d shared a bed in the room, and even conceived a child in it. There may not have been love filling that bower, but, at the time, Alari imagined that there was at least respect and camaraderie.

She and Halrek had weathered days of strife together and had tasted the fruits of victory after becoming the Queen and Consort-King of Gallagrin. With their unborn child, Alari had imagined that the emptiness in her world would at last be filled, but in place of filial devotion, Halrek had filled the room with poison. Literal poison. Administered so carefully and with such devastating precision that she’d nearly died and their child had been lost.

After that, the royal bedroom had been empty. Halrek had fled to other quarters “to allow her time to heal” and Alari had greeted each night as little more than an empty void of darkness where her dead spirit could lay unmoving until the time eventually came to go to her final rest beneath Gallagrin’s soil.

Dae had changed that. Even beyond slaying the abomination that Halrek Paxmer had become, she’s breathed new life in Alari’s world. With Dae’s bright fire burning beside her, Alari woke each morning to discover that she was far from dead. There was too much left in life for her to let the past steal away her future.

“You shouldn’t have to care for me like this,” Dae said, sounding more tired than even the lateness of the hour could explain.

Alari drew her back into an embrace and kissed her. Dae was cold for a moment, returning neither embrace, nor kiss, but by degrees she melted in Alari’s arms and carefully lifted her arm to drawn Alari in as tightly as Alari held her.

When they finally parted, it was Alari who spoke first.

“You’ve cared for me since the first time we met,” she said. “For all of my powers as princess and queen, I’ve never been able to return half of the love you’ve given to me, so, please, let me help you, don’t push me away.”

“Never,” Dae said, allowing a small smile to break across her lips. “But I’m not much of a knight for you if I’m so broken that even a little dream wrecks your slumber like this.”

Alari leaned her forehead to press against Dae’s.

“You will always be my knight,” she said. “What you are not, is giving yourself enough credit. You stood against the Divine Dragon of Paxmer. Your bravery is something no one is allowed to question.”

“It wasn’t really bravery,” Dae said, and dropped her gaze to the billowing white blankets that covered the bed they shared like an expanse of clouds.

“Whatever it was, whatever you want to name it, you came back to me,” Alari said. “And that’s all that matters.”

“I don’t like being like this,” Dae said.

“With me?” Alari said, asked in a lightly teasing tone. “In my bed?”

Dae looked up, and smiled, just in time for Alari to kiss her again.

“Ok, it’s not all bad,” Dae said twining her fingers in Alari’s hair, after Alari broke the kiss and let her breath.

“No,” Alari said. “Not all bad at all. But not all right either. You’ve been through a lot. No one’s ever done what you did. It’s not surprising that it came with a cost, and the need to heal afterwards.”

“Yeah, part of me knows that you’re right,” Dae said. “But that doesn’t make it any easier to feel so weak. Not when I’m supposed to be the strong one.”

“I don’t think this kind of thing can be easy,” Alari said. “And you don’t have to the strong one, I just need you to be mine, and you just need time.”

“Time sucks,” Dae said. “Not that I mind this particular time, or any time we get that’s like this, but I can’t feel myself getting any better. What if this is just how I am from now on?”

“Then we adapt,” Alari said. “I want you to feel whole and well, but in this case what I want doesn’t matter. What matters is what you need, and if you need me to hold you every night? Well I I’ll never get tired of doing that.”

“Thank you,” Dae said. “I know this can’t be fun for you either, but, thank you.”

“You really did wake up sooner this time,” Alari said. “It may not feel like you’re getting better, but I think you’re healing little by little.”

“That’s good,” Dae said. “I just wish Kirios was recovering at the same time.”

“He’s a spirit,” Alari said. “I’m sure he’ll be back to full strength soon.”

“Maybe,” Dae said. “But he shouldn’t be able to get injured in the first place.”

“Maybe he isn’t?” Alari said. “You did something incredible with your Pact Bond when you faced Haldraxan. Anyone else would have lost themselves to the magic and become a Berserker, but together you and Kirios held on. Maybe he’s not hurt, maybe he’s just drained. That had to be more magic that you would have normally channeled in a year. The poor guy might just be tired still, or whatever the spiritual equivalent of that is.”

“I’ve let him rest for a month now,” Dae said. “No transformations, no summoning, no magic at all, and it still feels like we’re tapped out.”

“Yet another reason to not push yourself,” Alari said.

“It doesn’t feel like the rest of the world agrees with that idea,” Dae said. “How much longer can you hold the noble’s here?”

“Till the last of the Nine Hells freezes over,” Alari said. “And, if they’re wise, not one of them will complain about it.”

“When was the last time one of your nobles was wise?” Dae asked.

“I’m not sure,” Alari said. “I’m also not sure I care.”

“I agree,” Dae said. “None of them are worth a moment of your concern, but I know you. As mad as you are at them, you can’t escape from thinking about the filthy bunch of traitors. Or feeling responsible for them.”

Alari closed her eyes and sighed.

“I’m not concerned about my responsibility towards them,” she said. “I’m worried at how much I want to throw that responsibility away.”

Dae leaned back and allowed herself to take in the tension that curled Alari’s hands into fists within the blanket.

“After we toppled my father, I forgave those who sided with him,” she said. “I lost allies by trying to treat my former enemies fairly. I wasn’t being weak or merciful. I wanted Gallagrin united so that what few resources we had could be used to build back the strength that my war took from the realm.”

“I saw what looked like for the common folks,” Dae said. “There was some confusion, but your people were with you,” Dae said. “No one wanted pockets of fighting to break out again.”

“No one except my allies who thought they’d grow rich on the plunder of the losing duchies,” Alari said.

“That would have been costly plunder,” Dae said.

“Yes,” Alari said. “Every life lost would have been another Gallagrin citizen I failed to protect. So I spent six years carefully juggling all of their competing interests, only for Halrek to build up enough backing to feel secure in trying to overthrow me.”

“And you forgave them again,” Dae said.

“Because I couldn’t prove who his backers were,” Alari said.

“Well, we knew Duke Telli was backing him,” Dae said.

“And you cut his head off,” Alari said. “Which I am still grateful for.”

“That suggests an obvious solution to the current problem,” Dae said. “I don’t need to transform to wield a sword. Or a headsman’s axe.”

Alari offer her a weak and conflicted smile.

“And that’s the problem,” she said. “I am tired of them. My allies and my enemies. All of my nobles. They all sided with Sanli. She tricked them with the simplest of ploys, not because she was a genius at deception but because they wanted to be tricked.”

“Some of them abstained from calling for the contest against you,” Dae said.

“So some of them were brave enough to admit that they hate me, and the rest are cowards,” she said, clutching the covers tight enough to her chest to turn her knuckles white.

“Most of them came to power under your father’s rule,” Dae said. “That doesn’t excuse them, but it does explain why we have such a rotten bunch to work with now.”

“And there’s the heart of my problem,” Alari said. “I know what to do with them. I even know where the headman’s axe that I should be putting into your hand is.”

“My blade’s already tasted royal blood,” Dae said. “Clearing the current slate of traitors off the board won’t dirty it any further.”

“The blood on your blade shows nothing more than your honor and your prowess,” Alari said. “If I slay my nobles, I will need to slay their families too. And their supporters. And those who would stand in their defense. Or who might take revenge for their loss. That was the road my father walked down, and more and more it seems that it’s the only one that’s open to me.”

“That’s not true. You’re better than he was,” Dae said. “You’ve always been better than him.”

“Am I?” Alari asked. “His madness waits in my blood too. I feel like with just the right push I’d slide down into the same abyss that he did.”

Dae reached out and took Alari’s hands in her own.

“That’s not true. You have been pushed farther than anyone I have ever known or heard of. You’re never going to be swallowed by your father’s madness.”

“Maybe,” Alari said. “But I still don’t trust myself to deal with my nobles yet.”

“What about the other monarchs?” Dae asked, changing the subject to a less fraught topic. “Are you sure that the council you’ve called is going to work?”

“Sure? No, not at all,” Alari said. “On the positive side though, the only other Realm monarch I’ve ever wanted to murder is locked up in my garden, and has become surprisingly charming.”

“Haldri’s plotting to escape then I take it?” Dae asked.

“Of course,” Alari said. “It’s one of the things we talk about.”

“I still find that amazing in a very disturbing sense,” Dae said. “But I think it also speaks to your fears too. You’re not going to become your father, and you’re not going to drown in the blood of Gallagrin’s nobles. Not if you could hold yourself back from killing Haldri Paxmer, and especially not if you could hold me back from killing her.”

“Well, tomorrow the formal invitations to the Council of the Realms go out,” Alari said. “So I suppose the Grand Convocation I’ve held our nobles under will have to start drawing to a close.”

“Whatever you choose to do, I’ll be there with you,” Dae said.

“That’s what makes it all bearable,” Alari said and snuggled deeper into Dae’s embrace as they watched the night slowly give way to the first light of a new dawn.