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No. No, that wasn’t true. Humans had reacted to him too. They’d run, they’d screamed. Even Stelaruna had?—
The world appeared again, bringing the mountains closer, only to vanish into oblivion once more. “See it again, pet.”
Images played out around me, memories but as visceral as if they were happening now. Humans pled with me to spare their lives. My hands grasped them, yanked them closer. Stelaruna stared with horror not at Alaric, but straight into my eyes.
“You lie,” I whispered. “She spoke to us both.”
“Well, yes.” His pitying tone slithered across me. “It was amusing to see her plead for you to overthrow my hold on your body, as if you could do anything of the sort.”
I refused to tremble, even as the memories flashed through my mind. He’d somehow prevented me from speaking when we faced her, closing my throat without even touching me and keeping it that way until he willed my voice to return.
“Now you see. It was always you. Your body. My control.”
“The blood.” I threw the words back at him. “The angelic blood. You held my face. You forced me to ingest it.”
“Another illusion. You were hiding in your mind, trying to keep it from affecting you. I forced you to let it in.”
The memory flickered. My fist held the Voidborn. My hand reached into its throat. My face was the one that twisted in irritation when she—no, when I—fought in vain to hide from the spells I—he, dammit—cast upon my body. The body.
No. Mine.
Panic began to swell, and no amount of willing it to recede would stop the waves from surging. My thoughts were blurry, but the wrong version, the lie version felt more real with every passing second.
And that couldn’t be. It couldn’t. I wouldn’t let it. I was Queen Melisandre…
Fleeing the memories, I retreated in the darkness. Alaric laughed, but the sound was distant, as if I’d withdrawn from him.
Unless that was an illusion too.
“Of course it is.” His voice felt as if it was right beside my ear.
I shrieked as I hadn’t since I was a small girl, when the cruel village children would find my hiding place after chasing me with the intention of throwing me into the pigsty. I thrashed in the midst of oblivion like I was no witch queen but a frightened, pathetic child who knew nothing of fighting, not with magic or even with her fists.
Alaric’s laughter rang in the dark.
I trembled without a body. I wanted to cry even though I could feel no tears. Reality returned in fits and starts, as if he was letting me see the world for the pure joy of torturing me with it. The mountains jumped closer and closer, until they reared like titanic barricades of stone so high, they speared the sky.
And below them, Lumilia gleamed in torchlight and pale stone.
We’d come to my city. The heart of what should be my empire.
But I could only see it from the other end of a dark tunnel, as unable to reach out and touch it as if I stood at the bottom of the sea.
The castle rose from the heart of the city, massive and imposing, while the rest of Lumilia crowded around its base like children seeking shelter from the great wide world beyond. My banners still hung from the towers, and more of my symbols hung on the outer wall surrounding the city itself, as if Lumilia had been waiting this entire time to welcome me back to my throne.
Now they would only welcome him.
I screamed in rage, and the sound echoed uselessly, drowning in oblivion and never reaching the outside world. I strained to escape the dark only to collapse in upon myself like a mountain robbed of its core. Even now, his Voidborn descended upon the city. My city. The monsters they inhabited tore into the populace, slaughtering the ones who should have been my servants if only they’d been turned. With every useless body that hit the ground never to rise again, my future army that was going to roll across the world and bend it to my will became nothing but corpses and smears of blood on the pale stone walls.
And I could do nothing.
“It was always going to end like this,” Alaric chided. “You kidded yourself to believe it would be any different.”
The castle gates reared in front of me… him… us… and in desperation, I strained to stop him from reaching the door. But with a sensation like the back of a hand striking my cheek, Alaric drove me back into the darkness.
“You chose this, pet. You chose it from the moment you offered yourself to us in exchange for the petty thing you call power. It’s only because you’re a coward that you fight me now.”
At the top of the broad castle steps, the door swung open. The old castle steward, Harran, stood there, and he blinked in alarm. “M-my queen.”
