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I sprint down the hallway back into the living room. A set of stairs are to my right. My mother said we were underneath the castle, so going up seems like a logical choice. I take the stairs two at a time until I reach the top where a door blocks my way. A hand panel has been installed to the right of the door. I place my hand on it, but nothing happens. The door remains shut, locking me inside and sealing my fate.
“Oh, sweetheart,” my mother croons from the bottom of the stairs, “there’s no reason to get so upset. I promise I’ll make your death painless and quick. In fact, the sooner I bring you back to life the more memories you’ll retain. I think that’s where I went wrong with Mark. He’s been in stasis for so long all of his memories deteriorated over time.”
I bang on the door. “Help! Let me out! Help!”
“No one can hear you, dear.” My mother’s tone is sweetly condescending. “There’s another room on the other side of that door and an elevator that takes you to the top. It would be better for you if you just let things happen like they’re supposed to.”
“I willnotjust let things happen. I want to live!”
“You will live, Emily. You will live forever with Mark. Isn’t that what you always wanted? You’ve been pining for him for years, and now you finally get what you’ve always dreamed of. Quite frankly, I thought you would be happier about this. Do you know how long it took me to heal him for you? Then, I had to wait for you to finally stand up to your father and take the throne for yourself. We can have everything we ever wanted. We can cheat death and rule our people the way we see fit.”
Slowly, I make my way downstairs. Hope for rescue is useless. No one knows where I am. Even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to come down here without my mother’s handprint. I can only leave if she lets me. I have to convince her that her plan is flawed.
“Why did you wait until I was queen?” I ask. “You already had the power of a queen.”
“Not really,” she scoffs. “I was just an ornament your father held by his side like a trophy. Over the years, I learned how to bend him to my way of thinking on certain matters, but he’s a stubborn man. I could never fully control him. Besides, you have always been perceived by our people as the one who would lead them one day. With you holding all the power, no one will try to take it away from you.”
“If you make me an undead creature, no one will want to follow me,” I say. “Whether I have the crown or not, they won’t want an undead queen.”
“Nonsense,” my mother waves my worry away, “they won’t have any choice.”
“Do you honestly think Father will stand idly by and let me rule? He’ll challenge me for the crown just like Oberon challenged him. If I’m undead, I’ll be lucky to get one vote much less the majority.”
I can see the wheels of my mother’s mind turning as she considers this slight hiccup in her plans.
“We can find a way to change the color of your eyes. I know a fae who does that for her customers when they want to coordinate their eye color with what their wearing. See. Problem solved.”
I study undead Mark, or the cheap facsimile of the man I once loved with every fiber of my being. After his death, it took me a long time to learn how to find happiness in anything or anyone, even our child.
“Do you have any memories of me at all?” My heart hurts. I can’t stand seeing the man I loved be turned into my mother’s pawn.
He frowns. “Sometimes I get flashes of our life together, but they’re brief, like a dream. Here one moment, gone the next.”
“My Mark wouldn’t let my mother do this to me.” I lift my head a notch. “MyMark would fight to save me from the same fate as you. If there’s still an ounce of the man I loved inside you, please, help me get out of here. Save me.”
I see a flicker of light enter his eyes, raising my hopes that my Mark is still inside him somewhere, but that light fades and he looks to my mother for instructions like a slave to her will. Is that what I will become? A puppet she commands.
I would rather die.
Attached to the living room area is a kitchen. I make a mad dash to it, pulling open drawers until I find a long silver knife.
“Emily,” my mother says angrily. “Stop acting the fool. What good will that knife do you now? Take it away from her,” she orders Mark.
Mark snatches the knife out of my grip with ease. He stares into my eyes and again, I see a flicker of recognition. This time it lasts a little bit longer, but like before, it fades.
“Grab her and bring her to my laboratory,” my mother orders him. “I don’t care if you have to do it with her kicking and screaming the whole way. Just get her in there.”
My mother’s temper, or is it her madness, is freely showing itself now.
Mark sets the knife on the counter of the kitchen before walking behind me and grabbing my upper arms. With a hard shove, he makes me walk past Gertrude, who is still holding Kiah in his nursery, and follow my mother all the way down the long hallway. When she comes to the end, she touches a panel on the wall and a hidden door slides open.
A chair with straps sits in the middle of the laboratory. Mark roughly shoves me into it and begins to buckle the straps around each wrist.
“Mark, please,” I beg, on the verge of tears. “Help me. Don’t let our love story end like this. Be the man I remember.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, tightening the straps around my wrists before kneeling to strap me to the chair by my ankles too. “I’m not your Mark anymore. I’m hers.”
When I lost Mark the first time, I thought nothing would ever outweigh that pain. Now, seeing the man I once loved obey my mother’s every command makes me fully realize my Mark is lost to me forever. It was cruel of my mother to bring him back to only be a ghost of the man he once was.
