Page 37 of The Faceless Queen

“Put your boots on, and you’ll understand.”

Catching a glance of myself in the dancing mirror, I quickly made a mental note to smooth and brush out my hair. It hadn’t been washed since the lake, and days had passed.

But nothing happened when I had the thought. No energy moved through me. Nothing changed in my appearance. I was still empty. Completely depleted. My stomach rumbled with a twinge of pain. I needed food, and the Azete needed to feed. Soon.

With no other choice, I used my fingers to gently slide through the knots and tangles I’d accrued. Then I pulled the long strands behind my shoulders, and slipped into my boots, carefully tightening the buckles at the top.

The Hermit jerked his chin for me to follow as he strolled into the stone corridor, his cape flowing elegantly behind him. Sunrays streaming through the open windows caught on his long black hair, the way it always had. The way it had when I’d first seen him burst into my mother’s court.

We wove down a long hall, one that I’d never really used before. It led to a stairwell only accessed in the past by my mother’s guards. I’d never been in it before, so it seemed right it was unfamiliar to me. But when we reached the final landing, entering one of the castle’s main halls, I didn’t see a single room I knew. Not even the decor on the walls felt recognizable. I was so disoriented when we arrived in a sitting room, I couldn’t tell if it was new or just a room I’d never been in before.

There were no windows built into the grey stone walls surrounding me. Crackling torches were our only source of light. On either side of a red carpet were two black leather chairs. One small and simple. The other stood twice as tall, with two armrests. A makeshift throne.

The Hermit went to the smaller chair and pulled it back to sit, elegantly sweeping one leg across his knee. He watched me watching him and smirked. “Oh. Did you think you were going to get to sit?” He pointed at me, then the rug. “Prisoner, remember? If I were you, I’d kneel.”

I resisted the urge to shoot him a dirty gesture, but again, by Batrir, he was right. I moved to the center of the red carpet and knelt before the leather throne, trying to breathe, trying to keep from panicking. I fixated on the details of the chair, and then on the two golden statues that stood behind it. Two Gods.

Batrir and Kavrir. Just like the deities in my bedroom, but far larger in scale.

But there was no Orsete. Strange. Had my aunt banished her image? Or simply not favor her? She was still the patron Goddess of the witches—unless more had changed than I knew since I’d left. It felt like another erasure of my mother. And I suddenly had such a powerful longing to see Orsete’s likeness—no, not her likeness, but the actual statue my mother had kept—I felt like it would knock me over.

But it wasn’t about Orsete. It was about seeing reminders of my mother. Reminders she’d been mine, reminders that before the end, before what had happened at the end—that she had loved me.

Even the stones in this room felt odd and unfamiliar to me. My mother had loved amethyst and rose quartz crystals. She had a collection of moonstones that she kept by her bed.

But circling the throne were a series of black stones—onyx, I thought. But not quite—each one had a blue flash of light within—almost like a dark moonstone. I’d never seen anything like it before. I reached forward, wanting suddenly to touch one.

“Stop.” The Hermit clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “No touching.”

“What are they?”

“Not for you,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “She comes.”

The door opened, and with it, I finally did see a reminder of my mother. Only it was the very last one I wanted, the one I feared most. The one that, seven long years of grief later, I was still wholly unprepared for.

Because there was one thing about my aunt and my mother I’d tried to forget the last few years. One detail that was still too painful to think of.

They weren’t just sisters. They were twins. Identical. Down to every last freckle on their cheeks and shoulders. So when my aunt told me I was a monster, when she cursed me and screamed and railed, all I could see was my mother, my mother’s face, my mother’s disappointment. I saw her blaming me and condemning me for her own death. When my aunt looked at me with hatred and disdain, I saw my mother looking back at me. And nothing had changed. It was exactly the look she was giving me now. I’d felt like a monster so many times in my life, but never more so than under the gaze of my aunt.

The golden crown of the Witch Queen gleamed in the torchlight. Immediately, I lowered my head before the tears fell. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t handle it, couldn’t do this. I’d seen that crown on my mother’s head a thousand times. A seven-pointed star made of rubies, styled like the symbol on Kavrir’s shield, lay in the center of the gold. It used to gleam in the sunlight and sparkle in the firelight. I’d spent hours staring at it. Staring at her. But it wasn’t my mother’s honey-blonde hair beneath it, or her head carrying the crown’s weight.

“Her Majesty,” the Hermit announced, “Queen Perseyus Zakros of the Witches of Azeal.”

My chest tightened, my heart feeling like it was being squeezed to death.

The last time I’d seen my aunt, she’d screamed at me, her face tear-streaked, calling me a murderer, telling me I’d killed her sister. She raged at me, yelling that she’d always known I would, that she’d told my mother years ago to get rid of me before I did. Because Azete could not be reformed, because they were, at their core, insatiable predators, and one day I would be the death of her.

And I was.

“Niece,” she said, her voice cool and formal. “I thank you for returning.”

I remained in position, kneeling on the ground, my head lowered, my eyes screwed shut.

“Seven years,” she said. “Seven long years, and finally we are reunited.”

My breath came in sharp, hard gasps that I tried desperately to control as I stared at the strange black stones around her throne, the small bursts of blue flashes within each one. I needed a focus, a way to ground myself. I couldn’t look at her yet; I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to see my mother’s likeness. I didn’t want to see her aged by seven years she’d been denied. See what would have been if her bones hadn’t grown cold.

“Nothing to say for yourself? You won’t even look at your queen?”