—and she feels a strange heady rush, like… Magic?


    The woman pauses. “You have the blessing.”


    Valerie wills her bruises to heal. “Yeah, I… Who are you?”


    Movement behind them. The woman whips around. It happens so fast: the man ducks into the tent, the woman rushes him, and then her knife is in his throat. He goes down with a strangled whimper.


    The woman wipes the blade on the dead man’s cloak and straightens up. “I’m Shikra.”


    *


    She took his hands, halting them. If there was a tremor in her body, Avon would surely interpret it as excitement or nerves. He didn’t have to know that she was still deceiving him even now, even when the locket at her breast made her unable to lie.


    “Perhaps,” she whispered, “he thinks I should sleep with him out of gratitude. Perhaps I need to remind him that I’m not Drakonian.”


    He straightened, the two of them shifting to face each other. She hadn’t let go of his hands; his fingers intertwined with hers and she met his gaze, searching for that same connection.


    “I know what you are.” His voice was husky, his eyes dark and intense. “I don’t care.”


    “But I do. I can be your prisoner or your partner, Avon. Not both. I already told you that.”


    “You want an end to your repentance,” he said. “But you know that I…”


    He trailed off. It seemed strange, she thought, how well they understood each other. They ought to be so different.


    “I know.” She shook her head. “I guess we’ll have to say good night.”


    She caught the flash of disappointment before he controlled himself. But he knew she was right. She felt certain of that. Whatever this was—and she hadn’t processed it yet herself—she would not get caught up in a romantic entanglement where she played the subordinate. And she couldn’t be an equal partner to Avon here. Quite apart from her repentance, Drakonian society made it impossible.


    He sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of his face. “You drive me mad. Sometimes I think you enjoy tormenting me.”


    “Oh, I do. This was fun.” She smiled. “Next time, let me go before you chase me.”


    She kissed him on the cheek. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Before she could change her mind, before either of them could change her mind, Valerie picked a door at random and slipped into the bedchamber, closing it behind her.


    There she slumped against the door to get her breath back. Part of her listened for Avon outside—part of her hoped that he’d follow her, but he didn’t.


    She found a bathrobe in the wardrobe, washed her face and changed. The locket she rescued carefully from her dress, weighing it up in her palm for a moment before she hid it under her pillow. She stepped away. One pace. Two paces. She estimated a distance of about two yards before the silvertree seed’s magical field disappeared. Not far at all.


    Valerie curled up in the large four poster bed and heaved a sigh of frustration.


    She wanted him. Avon. Why did she still want him? He’d burned down her village, showed zero remorse about it and refused to go back and save her family. Even killing her had failed to extinguish her feelings. If not for the locket, she might have given in tonight.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    These feelings were inconvenient. She didn’t want them. She had been naive before, imagining that she could have everything she wanted. From now on she had to be pragmatic, always. Survival first, ambition later. His presence clouded her judgement.


    The crown, the silvertrees, him. Do I really want it all? What would I give up, if I had to?


    She closed her eyes.


    Shikra?


    I’m here.


    She pictured the lake. The boat. Deep, calm waters. Endless blue sky. A private space to talk.


    Valerie opened her eyes. The boat bobbed gently on the water. She sat by the bow, wrapped up warm in a woollen cloak. The queen sat by the stern, but her cloak shone gold, the only bright thing in a world of mist and cloud. She looked up at an overcast sky.


    “A storm brewing,” Shikra observed. “Something is troubling you.”


    Valerie cursed inwardly. The lake was calm, but little eddies and gusts were already beginning to stir the water, and the sky had turned ominously black. Her emotions had bled into the landscape. She would have to consider that in future—perhaps it would be better to visit the queen’s dream world rather than making her own.


    Perhaps she shouldn’t have summoned the queen at all.


    “Sorry,” she muttered. “This was a stupid idea, I…”


    Nothing but gentle understanding radiated from the queen’s gaze. “What is it?”


    Well, too late to regret it now. She might as well say something.


    “In all the lives I’ve led, did I… Did I ever fall in love?”


    Shikra raised her eyebrows. “You don’t remember?”


    She grimaced. “I don’t want to remember. Most of what I remember is suffering and death.”


    Fat raindrops fell from the sky, soaking through her cloak. She remembered a kind face, a gentle hand. Shikra had been her port in the storm, once. She remembered gratitude. She remembered desperation. She had spent all her lives since the war stuck in survival mode or else dying a gruesome death. They felt both real and unreal, like memories that had happened to someone else.


    Shikra folded her hands in her lap. “Why do you ask?”


    She hesitated. Why was she asking Shikra about this? The queen might be the worst possible person to confide in. But right now, she didn’t have anyone else.


    “I want to avoid it,” she said. “I… don’t think I can survive it.”


    The queen smiled. And though the rain had become heavier and the mist thicker, she drew out a red leather book from inside her cloak and opened it on her lap.


    “Romantic love comes and goes,” she read. “True love is the bond between mother and child. Between sisters. Between friends. When we nourish that love, we build bonds that last for generations.”


    “Maska’s Testimonium,” Valerie whispered.


    She recognised the passage that Shikra was quoting. Maska taught her followers to value community and familial relationships over romantic partners. It was one of the many reasons she had felt adrift in Drakon, cut off from her family, far from home.


    No, she had been adrift long before that. She was an orphan, adopted by distant relatives she had no real kinship with. The resistance had failed. Her relationship with Markus had fizzled out long before the queen had stopped his heart.


    “I don’t have any of that,” she said. “I’m alone.”


    “You’re not alone.” Shikra leaned forward, taking her hands. “I’m here.”


    Lightning crackled overhead, followed by deep rolling thunder. Her insides turned cold. Valerie couldn’t explain the fear that transfixed her. The storm screamed: Danger! In the queen’s soft words, in her gentle visage, she sensed a lurking threat so great that she couldn’t breathe.


    She snatched her hands away. “You still haven’t told me anything. Why did you die? You knew what was going to happen. Why couldn’t you avoid it?”


    There was a pause.


    Her dream-body did not feel the wind’s chill or the rain’s damp, or else she would have been shivering uncontrollably by now. Shikra too seemed unaffected, holding her book loosely in her lap. They were floating in the dark, the night closing around them like the edge of her consciousness. This dream-world was slipping away.


    “Changing the future is not straightforward,” Shikra replied. “The smallest action can trigger unforeseen consequences, and it may not be obvious what caused the change. I should have evaded my pursuers after the attack on the capital. But this time, my shelter became a trap. It made it very difficult to meet you.”


    “You don’t know what went wrong?”


    “This entire timeline is a mistake. These past two years should never have happened. The Empire thinks that Maskamere is not nearly so fearsome as we made out. Look how easily they defeated us. But the truth is, I let them win. My sole purpose in this timeline was to find you.”


    She thought again of their encounter at the goldentree, the terror of witnessing her own body being used as a puppet… Markus dying… All the things she could have avoided, if only she had trusted in the queen’s grand plan.


    “I must have really disappointed you.”


    “The beauty of our gift is that you have the time to make it up to me.” Shikra closed her book. “You did love someone, Valerie. It’s why you’re here now.”


    Her stomach dropped. “Who?”


    The storm faded. Shikra glowed with the light of the goldentree, the last light remaining in this sea of darkness. Her skin looked as untouched as pristine snow, her eyes an endless well of ancient wisdom. She was both young and old, delicate and unyielding, graceful and ruthless.


    The queen smiled. “Me.”