QUEEN OF RUIN

The boy had never been good at hiding his emotions.

His shoulders dropped with releasing tension as she swallowed. The wine burned in her throat and settled like a smoldering coal in her stomach.

He was not looking at her. Bright amber eyes like his father's stared into her reflection in the silver wall mirror. In the right light and at the right angle, they might have resembled the eyes of a wolf. Sharp and searching. Now, they were as a frightened pup's, warily tracking her shadow as it flickered from reflection to reflection. She scraped her knife across her plate and smiled at how the discordant rasp made him flinch in his chair.

The seat at the head of the table was empty. Her son refused to sit in it. It still had an empty plate and cutlery on embroidered serviette, as if at any moment his father would walk in with his usual apologies. She still had those moments, when she forgot. She had been there when he had breathed his last, and yet his presence clung. The boy had been more attached to the man than she had been.

She should have pushed. His place was at the head of the table. As the Emperor, it was his only place. She should have insisted.

"Posture," she said instead.

Her son straightened out of his sullen slouch, murmuring a soft apology. His broad shoulders under golden epaulets spoke of the man he was growing into. He was at that age when clothes that fit him a week ago were now too small, but she did like how the blue sash across the white uniform complimented his light hair.

She adjusted the white fur cloak around her shoulders as she sampled the soup. Over spiced, almost perfect. One of these days, she would ask Minister Pietr exactly what his special ingredient had been. It was just not the same without it.

He had been so disappointed when she had not fallen over dead, of course, but the soup had been divine.

She took a second, pondering sip of her wine. It burned, perhaps more than it should.

She leaned back in her chair as she contemplated her goblet. Across from her, her son tensed. Her shadow stopped in the silver mirror behind her. In the reflection, a small woman with dark eyes and dark gently curling hair leaned around his chair.

"Poison, is it, Edmund?" Her shadow asked as it gently caressed her son's tawny hair. "I hope you chose well?"

"I - yes." His voice was nearly a whisper. "Spores of a venatus ignos fungi."

Venatus. Hunters? Or combat, battle. Ignos. That she did not know. With a slight grimace of distaste, she glanced down at the sleeve of gold chain studded with rubies gilding her right arm. She raised her hand just far enough above the table to signal. Right, down, right.

An oil slick slid against her mind.

Mageiaphage. Magic eaters. She pressed her lips together. She did not feel any different, which meant it was slow acting. There was a risk that it would be too slow and allow her to slip the noose, but she taught him. He knew better. So it must be one that accelerated under certain conditions, conditions guaranteed to make the poison fatal.

Magic eaters. If she were to remove her Arcanum - a large part of her balked. Not helpless, never helpless, but a sorceress without a foci was lesser. She could pry out the ruby plugging the wound over her heart. She could misplace her crown, but she could not not use magic.

It was in her blood.

He would give her secondary toxins while she was delirious and weak under the guise of medicine. Physicians could easily become murderers, at the right price. And then the coroner to examine the body, thoroughly. The ruby over her heart would be removed, perhaps her heart as well. Locked away in a lead case blessed with sacred oils and holy words, buried in a shallow grave just within the threshold of Alexander's Cathedral.

Just to be sure.

Regicide was a complicated crime, after all. She should know. The devil was quite literally in the details.

"Inconvenient," she muttered. Her son had poisoned her. "Is this really the time for petty rebellion?"

He dropped his eyes to his plate and began to saw into his meat with more force than necessary.

"Had to be one you didn't recognize. New. Had to be effective, but unexpected. Took seven months to arrive, prepared carefully."

The hand of cold dread scraped a fingernail down the back of her neck. She traced the hard, stubborn lines of her son's face. He shoved a spoonful of quail eggs with truffle into his mouth, pausing just long enough to fastidiously pick a flake of gold off the egg. Their eyes locked within the silver mirror.

"Your nose," he said, the smile flickering around the corners of his mouth betrayed his pleasure.

She saw it: the tiny crimson bead forming on the tip. She brought her hand up in time to catch the droplet as it fell. It stained the pale palm of her hand. Her blood. She stared at it. She was bleeding.

She knew her son. She imagined him deliberating. Over the effects. How it would be delivered. He was meticulous and patient. He had always been a reserved, taciturn boy, but expressive in his own way. Poetic, even.

He'd had his pick of poisons, but this choice held a certain meaning. He wanted one that made her bleed.

Ah.

"This is for the three hundred peasants?" She rolled her eyes. "Give or take a few dozen."

Perhaps this was his version of justice. Bless his soft heart.

Edmund's smile withered as he shrunk in his chair. "You - not even the children were spared."

"Where men and steel fail, might we not consider other options, my lords?" She dabbed her nose with serviette. "My exact words. You remember." The cloth crumpled in her hand. "We are winning this war, stupid boy."

Edmund's lips thinned.

"What would you have me do?" She pointed her fork at him even as her shadow in the mirror changed. Her dark ringlets turned straight and light as straw. The fine white silk and fur gown roughened to a dark common petticoat over a faded blue dress. Her pearls were gone. Her gold and rubies missing. Instead of a golden crown, there was just a plain gray ribbon. A low class woman with her face in the mirror struggled to breathe around a bleeding hole in her neck.

Stop it.

Her shadow smiled, showing bloodstained teeth. She set her fork down and held up her hand in warning. In a blue of movement, her shadow flickered to another mirror in the large dinner hall. She did not like the way Edmund looked at her afterwards.

"The lives of three hundred and two score common folk was worth the lives of three thousand men at the pass." She did not have to convince herself of this. The calculus was sound. "It was cheap."

"Cheap," he echoed.

"What else?" She was beginning to feel pleasantly warm, like those times when she had a bit too much to drink. Two sips of poisoned wine were two sips too many, she supposed. A feeling not unlike a muscle cramp seized her right arm. Out of the corner of her eye, her shadow dissipated into the aether like thick fog burnt away beneath sudden, fierce sunlight. She crushed the bubble of fear welling in her throat.

She was not going to beg him for the antidote.

"Consider the strategy on the field, a company of three hundred that is poorly supported." She resisted the urge to use the food and cutlery to demonstrate tactics. He was no longer that little boy. "A weakness on the flank. The line shatters easily, trampled beneath the force of a single confident charge." She searched her son's face, but it remained blank. Perhaps, she hoped, a bit pensive? "A trap, of course. Few survivors, perhaps none, bit it made the rebels commit to a turnaround into a complete rout. Except this way, my way, is better."

"I lose no knights instead."

"Precisely." Renia's hand fluttered to her goblet, and then shied away when she remembered what lurked in it. Another bead of blood fell against her lip. "Merely the elderly. Unlikely to survive the winter and unable to meaningfully contribute. Craven men."

"Women and children." His voice was tight.

"Would an occupying army be any kinder to them?" They wouldn't. She knew that. "Their homes would be raided. Their crops and grain taken. Any pretty enough girl over thirteen - "

Her son cut her off. "I understand."

"Do you?" She scoffed. "Your father used to say the same thing." Her eyes drifted to the empty chair at the head of the table. The empty plate and untouched cutlery. "He never understood." She dragged her eyes away. "What have we really lost? In exchange, we still hold the mountain pass before the first snows. Three thousand and more knights are battle ready and the rebellion lost twice and more the number. We won time."

She kept her voice even and controlled. She would not seem desperate, or worried. No footholds. Weakness was death. "Was it not worth it?"

Seven months to arrive, her mind whispered. Her son was not impulsive. He must have ordered it by courier, discretely enough to escape her notice. It could not have been sudden, not some visceral response to unpleasantness. Impulse and haste were hard to conceal. She would have noticed. She must have.

Her son poisoned her.

"Consider a strategy in politics," Edmund ventured. "A rebellion into its second year threatens my crown. I would know why. Not conjecture. Not speculation. No propaganda. The truth."

What he was alluding to escaped her for several moments. The truth?

His eyes dropped to his lap. With guilt?

"You snuck away," she whispered as realization dawned. "You let me believe a traitor had leaked your convoy route. You let me believe you were being held hostage, tormented, dead for weeks just to -"

She reigned herself in.

"I suppose I should be pleased to know how much you value your...curiosity." She smiled thinly. "And how little you value my concern."

Edmund smiled his father's smile. A little too wide and vapid, even as bright wolf eyes narrowed behind wrinkling eyelids.

"It was an adventure," he said quietly, twisting the golden rings on his fingers. "I heard their grievances personally."

"They had much to say, I am sure," she replied. "Did you meet him? The bastard they would have as king?"

A farmer's son turned soldier who couldn't even read a newspaper from the Capital over her son, taught and trained to rule from birth. A peasant with nothing to his name but a marked sword and gold hair.

Hypocrite, a voice in her mind whispered.

Her son nodded miserably. "He looks like father, from the pictures."

Yes, he did.

Absently, her left hand rose to trace the slightest raised surface of the scar beneath her dress. Over her heart, the rough tissue ended where the smooth, faceted contours of a large ruby began.

She hoped he was still suffering.

Poison. Steel. The hangman's noose and the burning stake. It was all the same.

"Tell me, did they offer any proof of their claims?" She let her gaze lazily drift around the room, as if she was only asking to be thorough. She was not concerned. She was not worried. She had to look as if she was prepared to dismiss the rebels, because they had nothing worth paying attention to.

The wine burned in her stomach.

"Was not interested in their proof." Her son grabbed his own goblet, slouching in his chair as he gently rolled the cup in his hand. "More interested in our proof. Finding it, on this end."

"Posture." It came out automatically.

Careless. Somewhere, some when, she had become careless. Maybe she had always been careless, ever since she had first held the tiny babe in her arms. She trusted too easily. Hoped for too much.

But it was her son.

Her son poisoned her.

Careless.

Sorceresses can never afford to be.

"Gradon or Eddins can be blamed for a strike within the palace. Regardless of motive, they did rebel." Edmund shrugged his shoulders, as if suggesting helplessness. "Wasn't just Pietr, was it? Not just Rurin. Gorbechov. Engel. Vieterin. They all saw something. They all knew something."

His eyes searched her face. The poison had taken seven months to arrive, she remembered. Her son was never hasty, but meticulous. Patient. Deliberate. Nothing stemmed the tide of horror welling within her.

Her son poisoned her.

"You have been very lucky, haven't you, Mother?"

"Lucky," she repeated dully. A tremor ran down her right arm with the tiny clinking of gold chain. Beneath her fork, the succulent venison rotted. Another droplet of blood fell from her nose.

His yellow eyes darted towards her cup of poisoned wine. He said nothing.

"Lord Maxwell," she forced herself to speak. "Was that you?"

He gestured with his hands, palms facing up as if in supplication. "He seemed a good man."

"A loyal one," she murmured. She had wondered. At times her thoughts had kept her awake at night, drinking spirits and broken promises. A tragic accident, she had thought. Medicine was not yet an exact science. Allergic reactions were mysteries to her. He had been...kind to her. He had not wanted to be involved, and she had tried to indulge him.

It made things more difficult. It slowed some things down. A few extra steps to plans for no other purpose than giving her 'uncle' plausible deniability. She had tried.

She looked up into her son's calm visage.

Oh, you stupid girl.

"It was a shame what happened to him." He leaned forward in his chair. "I am sorry."

"Edmund." She felt tired. The flowers on the table wilted. "What do you want?"

"No more deals. No more bargains." He frowned. "One more murder in my name." He looked up at her through his eyelashes, as he tended to do when seeking approval. "And we all get what we want. Peace. Would it not be worth it?"

She could see it.

For the royalists, the death of the Queen Regent would mean they would get their boy king. On the heels of a royal death, they could keep him separated and secure. The Council of Lords re-established and a monarch to control and manipulate. It mattered not whether it would be as simple as they hoped.

For the rebels, the death of the heathen sorceress. They say she murdered the Crown Prince Eldbert. She was sure some accounts embellished their deaths with how the vile witch fed her demons with the blood of his wife and children.

If only she had.

Instead, the child she missed was leading the angry mob that wanted her head.

And for Edmund himself?

"Short term, the assassination of a high ranking official would provide revitalization of morale and purpose," he answered easily. "People understand vengeance."

He placed an odd emphasis on that word. Vengeance.

The empty chair at the head of the table mocked her.

Regicide was a complicated crime.

She would know.

Not enough friends. Too many enemies. It was how all monarchs fell.

"Vengeance, for aught as ephemeral and unsure as peace?" She asked slowly. Some insanity, some hysterical panic was bubbling in her throat. She could laugh, she thought. She could laugh, but as soon as she did, she would start screaming.

"An unset goal cannot be reached," Edmund admonished her gently. "Peace is a goal like any other. It can be worked towards through smaller, simple goals." His eyes flickered to her poisoned goblet of wine once more. "One more murder in my name."

The moment of silence seemed to stretch into infinity.

She could kill him, she realized. She blinked, slowly, as she considered it.

Edmund cut a proud figure in his white military uniform. His black boots had shined with polish when he walked into the dining room with his white and black officer's cap tucked under an arm. The pale blue sash across his chest highlighted the medals gleaming on his chest. The silver hilt of Andale sheathed at his hip like it had adorned the belt of his father before him.

It would not take much. She had to only move her right arm, gilded in the golden chain and rubies of her Arcanum, and a shadow would punch through his chest or crush his head.

She would be free.

Free to walk away from this wretched empire until Eldbert's whelp died of age or sickness. She could leave the palace, exchange her silks and pearls for rough spun cotton. Bury the magic and become no one. In time, no one would remember the sorceress.

The rebellion had served to gorge her demons on blood and suffering, so there should be no complaints on that front. It would only be another generation or two. She could wait. She had been patient before, she could be again. She had the time.

It would solve everything. It would be easy.

Edmund saw it in her eyes. His own widened as he shot to his feet, knocking over his chair as the silver chime of Andale's edge being drawn rang loud.

She smiled at him. "You've gotten faster."

"Mother," he whispered. His arms trembled as he leveled the blade and she knew he saw her. He thought he knew what he was dealing with. He thought he understood. His mind knew what his heart did not. For all that she was the same woman that nursed him at her breast, who read him stories as a child and soothed his hurts, who taught him strategy and how to hear the words unsaid, who stood beside him as his father was entombed and hid his tears from the harsh glares of the court, for all that she was his mother.

She was a sorceress.

For the first time in his life, he saw his mother for what she was. He finally feared her. "Without me, you have nothing."

Her laugh startled both of them. "Without you, I have the world."

It would be so easy and it was only right. Any other, man, woman or child, would have already died.

It hurt to breathe.

In the silver reflection on the wall behind her, a shimmering tear in the world snapped open. Her right arm spasmed, shattering her chair to wooden fragments as she threw herself backwards. Andale sung as it slashed through the air. He had gotten faster, she thought idly, as a shadow stepped within her son's guard and - her heart skipped a beat and froze, she couldn't - backhanded him across the face with just enough strength to snap his head left.

She turned slightly, just enough to see green in the corner of her vision as her reflection examined the tear. It glowed emerald, small ripples shivering over its surface giving it the illusion of substance as it hung suspended in the air behind her, to the right.

Edmund raised a hand to his face as he shook his head, wiping the blood from his lip. Another crimson bead fell from her nose. When no crawling mass squirmed free of the green, she took a shallow, tense breath and raised her right hand.

"I could have killed you," she told herself as her gaze swept over her son's granite expression.

"Do it," he hissed. A blackened leaf fell into his soup as the flowers turned to dust. A hot feeling writhed in her stomach. Her throat burned as she swallowed and another droplet of blood stained her white dress. "Do it!"

"So eager to die?" she drawled. For a moment, she saw his uncle. The same tawny hair and amber eyes with a sword stained red with her blood. She forced the vision away.

"There were other ways," she continued as the fingers of her right hand curled into claws, and bloody lines opened up on Edmund's cheek. The boy let out a pained breath. "You could have confined me to my rooms, perhaps. A prison room, gilded or bare." A dull pain was beginning to pulse at her temples.

"I would have allowed it," she lied. "Had you but informed me of your…"

She was at a loss for words trying to describe this, but Edmund wasn't.

"My soft heart," her son murmured bitterly. His eyes flickered to the empty seat at the head of the table.

"Quite so."

He shook his head. "If we were reversed, would you have just sent me to my rooms?"

"Yes," she said, but after a moment she relented. "After I had you crippled. Mangled your hands and crushed the bones in your arms." His father would have turned pale, coughing as he changed the subject. Her boy had never batted an eyelash, and he didn't start now. She eyed him, considering. "Perhaps I would have had your eyes burned out as a precaution."

Pain was an important part of the process.

"You would have removed my Arcanum, buried it in a vault after you had it melted down," he offered, reminding her of the nights where she could couch scenarios to him under the night sky, challenging him to solve them.

She scoffed. "That goes without saying. A sorcerer without a foci is much more manageable."

It was his turn to eye her, sweeping her right arm from the ruby in her palm to the golden clasp at her shoulder.

"My mistake," he admitted easily.

Something was smothering her heart and a lead ball had nestled at the base of her throat. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Her vision blurred as she turned away from him.

Without him, she had nothing.

The tear was silent and still, behind her and to the right. Demons were not patient creatures, as a rule. It it were not for something to come out, then perhaps it was for something, or someone, to go in.

Руин?

She lowered her right arm. Her nose began to run freely as the white tablecloth turned to ash, coating the table with grey. Control, she insisted. Control. Control.

A painful spasm twitched her right arm. The dining hall decorations came to life, and then died. Porcelain birds with jeweled eyes bled shadows from opened throats. Stained glass insects fluttered and shattered as golden vines strangled rotting ebony trees. White marble deer pitted as jade frogs on silver lily pads bloated over brackish water.

Muted horror flashed over her son's face. His grip on Andale's hilt tightened.

"He told me," Edmund said. "He told me there was nothing to you but misery."

Behind her, and to the right.

"He was wrong," she replied quietly. "There was you."

Her shadows leapt eagerly to her command as she flung herself backwards. Back, and to the right.

She was prepared for it to hurt. Passing through an edge in reality had always scraped. The horizon would scratch and claw at her skin until it was rubbed raw and bloody. The stench of that crimson flow would then attract predators from in between who would gash, rend and claw their way under her skin.

She was prepared, and felt nothing.

She passed through the boundary too easily. The realm was quiet. Still. There were no demons. No whispers, no choking shadows or thick, clotted blood filled her mouth. No horrors attempted to crawl into her head through her eyes, mouth or ears.

Руин!

Her cry echoed out into an abyss. There was no response. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

She fell.

A jolt. An impact of nothing to something jarred her skeleton and in that moment, she gagged and tasted blood. There was cool air. It smelled like wet grass and tasted of rain. A slight chill too warm for late autumn seeped through the layers of her dress. She could feel the sun that should have been long set above. How far — ?

The world exploded.

The ground beneath her feet instantly cratered, dropping her into a hole of pulverized mud. A flash of pain from her left ankle. Miss? Warning shot that shouldn't have been anywhere close.

Sniper's bullet, a whisper hissed. Crossbow man's bolt.

Projectiles, she snapped back. She reached with her right hand, to the left and above, into the thick smoke billowing up from the ground. Arrows. Cannon shot. Rocks. Weapons launched or thrown. She tightened her grip.That was our deal.

The whisper keened an ear-splitting peel. Not magic!

Magi—

Reach! She swept her right hand forward and down. She twisted the smoke in her grasp and gripped the ruby in the center of her palm. Find the mage.

The loyal ones, the familiar ones – no, they wouldn't do. It was the quick ones that exploded out from the rubies of her Arcanum into the smoke around her. She could see the dust and air coalesce into a twisted amalgam of a creature with a hundred searching arms, solid as a shadow. They coiled first, like a snake in the grass as she slowly stood in the crater, testing her ankle.

It was a poorly executed ambush, part of her noted. No following salvos. And how could they? The first one had completely obscured her from sight with smoke. They lost sight of a sorceress.

It took an impressive amount of incompetence to launch an ambush and make things worse for yourself.

The snake of smoke struck. In a flash of movement, it lunged through the haze. A female screeched in utter surprise and —

Surprise. There was no fear.

And she sounded young.

Addendum. She moved her hand from the right to the left. Bring the mage to me.

She felt her demons test the geas. Pull. Tug. The corner of her lips tugged with it as she wrenched her grip tight. A squeal of pain erupted from the smoke, a discordant clang unfit for human throats.

Please. She implored them. Test me again.

A shape smaller than it should have been rocketed through the smoke on the heels of an unnaturally strong wind and an alarmed bark. Adult male voice. Another mage, left unmolested of course. Find the mage had been her order. Mage, singular.

She thought she had broken these ones of that.

She reached forward, again, left. She had to incapacitate the second quickly, before the first recovered fro —

Mages.

As the last of the smoke dissipated, she saw at least thirty standing all about her in matching uniforms. Young men and women with wooden foci stared at her with varying expressions of shock on their faces. Beasts of all kinds stood at their sides.

She categorized them, skipping over the weaker ones not suited to combat. She would need to distract them. Break them. The demon that looked like an eye first. Kill the master, let it rampage in its new found freedom —

"S'il vous plaît!"

She bit the inside of her cheek as the adult mage kept speaking. The words were alien, but she recognized the tone.

Pleading.

Begging for his comrade's life? At a thirty to one advantage? She dropped her eyes, quickly to the first mage. She cursed herself for a fool as soon as she took her eyes of him.

Stupid girl, it's a trap —

A prepubescent girl with salmon hair gawked up at her in white-faced shock. She snapped her eyes up even as she swung her Arcanum down and left, halting as the balding male mage before her tensed.

The mages behind him, one and all. They were children.

And each and every one of them had nothing but shock, awe and surprise on their faces.

She schooled her own expression, slowly softening from naked aggression, to confused wariness. The castle in the background. She didn't recognize it. She couldn't see the mountains.

She flicked her wrist. Right, down, right. The oily presence pressed in against her mind and slithered through her thoughts.

There was no accompanying burst of insight, not even a glimmer of recognition. She was hyper-aware of the bead of blood gathering on the tip of her nose as the air seemed to get colder, oppressive.

How can you not know?

She felt her demon take hold of her mind.

What is it?

The girl.

Of course.

She returned her eyes to the man. She let her body relax as she slowly lowered herself to crouch. She knelt in the mud by the child. The hair color went straight to the roots and was shared by the eyebrows. Natural. The child's eyes were still large, unshed tears gathering at the corners.

She gently wiped her nose free of blood and flashed the girl a warm smile. "Can you understand me?"

What came out of the child's mouth was a panicked stream of gibbering that sounded vaguely Verdun. Vaguely. She could only guess at the meaning of one word out of ten, as if she spoke with some bastardized dialect. By the tone, it was an apology. Many apologies. She cut off the flow by raising her left hand.

The oil slick reached out from her and slithered into the child's ear. There were no cries of alarm from the others. No one attacked. They could not see. They could not perceive living nightmares. For all their magic, not a single one was Awake?

How was that possible?

With a thought, the demon seized hold of the girl's mind. She met those strangely colored eyes, silently conveying sympathy.

This will hurt.

And it did hurt. Like liquid lightning crackling through her head, searing all that was in its path and leaving behind impressions. Burning sights. Booming sounds. Strange words.

She grasped them greedily, desperate to keep the knowledge, to remember. She could not allow herself to forget anything. She could not let anything slip. It might be important. It could be crucial. It would be just like it to hide something vital in the deluge of —

Pain.

She grit her teeth. Focus. Control. Control.

The contract only went as far as providing her with it. The demon was under no obligation to make sure she kept it.

Pain shared is pain halved, was that not the saying? It was not true. Knowing the abnormally young mage was in just as much agony was just a constant itch and reminder that she would have to deal with the aftermath once she had the information she needed.

Do not think about it, she told herself. She could not afford distractions.

The memory she was digesting vanished in a crack of strange acidic magic that numbed her to her very fingertips. It welled up from underneath, burying the flood of information like brackish water surging past its bed. Interference. Was the girl resisting the mind delve? Successfully?

In response she held onto the child's mind tighter.

Not much longer, she offered. She could not expect the girl to understand what was happening, or why, but it could not hurt to reassure her. I do not need much more.

It did not matter. The next memory snapped at her and the numbness became burning. She was forced to remember the ill-fated attempt with Eldbert's whelp. No, no there was nothing more for her here.

The oily presence swelled indignantly, jealous. More knowledge. More. There was still more to be had.

Be my guest.

She released it, completely. The tenuous thread between them snapped with a tingle resonating from her Arcanum. She was only marginally aware of the demon pausing as it realized the connection between them had been severed as she pulled out of the child's mind. Defensive action, now. She was reaching —left and down!

The world exploded.

This time, and so close, it did not miss.

Ninety-nine voices wailed in unison, disbelieving, dripping with agony as something like heat and something like force crashed into her mercilessly. The air was crushed out of her lungs as that acidic magic passed through her, cruel barbs invisibly penetrating her skin, latching onto whatever it could. Almost as if it were trying to —

The barbs found no footholds. They tore through instead, leaving her aching and breathless. Her vision swam as her head pounded. She looked down at herself.

Unmarked.

Unscathed?

Heat. Shape.

"Miss Vallière!" the adult mage barked harshly. The noise went off in her head like a gunshot. She recoiled from his presence — when did he move? — and felt her gorge rise in protest. Her body betrayed her as she turned aside and vomited. It tasted of iron and copper. She tried to spit out the blood and only ended up coughing up more. Her fingers curled into the mud as the food in her stomach turned into glass shards. Her left hand came up to cover her mouth, futilely trying to hold back the red stream as it leaked through her lips.

Magic eaters. She had forgotten.

Get up. Get up!

Two sips too many. The thought was blurry and slow. She felt incredulous. Two sips. And he had given her an entire goblet of the poison...was that really necessary?

Get. Up!

Weakness was death.

The first of them twisted free of her grip even as she reached for it. Her arm split open into a sanguine stream that quickly stained the white of her sleeve red. No! It — another rent her side and burrowed. She struggled to keep her breath even as her back tore open with a lancing pain. Her Arcanum burned cold against her skin, even as they seeped beneath it, crawling like worms into her veins.

They were greedy. Impatient.

You are killing me —

Seventy-three voices answered. Pain. Pain! They were panicked, scared. Seventy-three? She could not feel the rest. Gone? Gone.

How!

She made to rise.

Deal with the child first. What had she done — her leg gave way the moment she put weight on it, sending her tumbling back into the mud. Weakness was death. She could feel the mud against her face, getting into her hair, clinging to the white fur of her cloak unevenly.

That morning, she sat on the throne. Now she laid in a grassy courtyard, surrounded by gawking whelps who had been born with their damned magic, magic common enough to be taught. And they could see her struggle in the dirt and see her fall. In a blind moment, she hated them.

Do not look at me!

If she could only —

The darkness at the corners of her vision swiftly closed in.

/0/0/0/0/0/0

The beautiful golden crown set with pearls and a single ruby jostled free from dark ringlets of hair when the woman hit the ground. It rolled. Down a slight incline, picking up traces of mud and shredded grass along the way until it finally tipped. It landed with a slight 'plop' because why wouldn't crowns plop? It laid there innocently, as if it were just a shiny band of metal set with pretty stones.

As if everything hadn't gone horribly wrong.

With shaking fingers, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière reached out and picked it up.

It was bitterly cold to the touch.