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As if waiting for their queen to come.
With so many ghosts in one place, Warrick’s glow had escaped the confines of the archer to spread over his skin. And Elina…
She truly was the radiant queen.
Every inch of her shone with golden light. No need for paint. This queen’s face was no mask and an utter beauty to behold.
Except for her eyes. Those eyes were terrible to behold. They would have made even Warrick hesitate, had she ever made an enemy of him.
He’d thought she might be stricken with guilt and weeping, as she had been in Galoth. But as she looked upon the dead, he only saw her rage. Mayhap the guilt would come, undeserved though it was. But not yet.
At the gates, the guards let them through after a single glance, bowing to Elina with wonder and joy overspreading their faces.
The guards joined the crowd of the dead moving through the streets. As did many more of the living. At every turn, cries rang out about the Radiant Queen’s return. A squadron of knights rode to meet them, swords and lances at ready—no doubt sent by Soren or in response to a suspected invasion. Elina needed no crown for them to recognize her as their queen. She merely looked to them with her terrible eyes and ordered them to fall in behind.
They did.
Why the guards and knights had not already killed her uncle was something Warrick would find out answers to later. For now his only concern was Soren, and the more warriors at her side, the better.
“What has put that look upon your face, my radiant king?” Elina had turned her gaze to him—her silver eyes not so terrible now with her teasing.
He could not smile. “If I had but sent a message, Bannin would have come with more warriors from Galoth. You would have more swords at your side.”
“We have enough.” She looked ahead. “And Galoth owes me nothing.”
“It was not you who took Anhera’s stars.”
“It was Aleron…and I am Aleron. That I returned the jewels was merely righting a wrong done by mine own. And it is not fully made right, Warrick. You know it can never be.” She glanced at him and smiled. “Best that we do it this way, with the people of Aleron behind me, reclaiming their kingdom.”
With the queen reclaiming her kingdom. Elina rode into the palace courtyard and dismounted, carrying her axe. Warrick had his own—considering the prophecy, he could not have too many.
She strode forward with a shield on her arm. Spells cast at either of them would not likely harm them, but it would not save them from what the spells did to objects around them. Even with the wards, they could still be drowned. Or stabbed by a blade tossed by a whirlwind.
“Uncle!” Elina shouted, turning a slow circle in the center of the courtyard, her radiant glow almost painful in its intensity. “I am too old now to play hide-and-find! Show yourself, Usurper!”
“I had heard you were cursed, little niece of mine.” Soren’s voice echoed from all around them, making it impossible to pinpoint his location. Warrick’s gaze searched the shadows for the man that Elina had described. “It is a rather lovely curse, if that is why you shine so radiantly.”
“It is a gift!” she called out. “To right wrongs.”
“Wrongs?” His laugh rang out from everywhere and was answered by the rattle of the knights’ armor, as they all looked about uneasily. “I already righted many wrongs. Your mother was weak. And your father?”—a sound of disgust was followed by a spitting noise—“Then there is you, cursed and ill. You have been dying for years, Elina. Should you not admit how frail and weak you are? Do not the people of Aleron deserve a strong ruler?”
Elina scoffed. “I had this same conversation with my nurse not so long ago. Cruelty is not strength.”
Again he laughed. “You are still a little girl. Cruelty is necessary to maintain power.” The voice came from one direction now—the north side of the courtyard. Both Warrick and Elina turned to face him. “Yet we will not call what I am about to do to you cruelty. We will call it…mercy.”
Elina’s description would not have helped Warrick find her uncle, after all. Yet the man who emerged onto the steps of the palace in resplendent golden robes, an ornate crown, and a painted face could not have been anyone else.
Her amused laughter pealed through the courtyard. “Do you wear that every day, uncle? Or did you rush to put on a king’s face when you heard I had come?” She made a sad little moue with her lips. “I know that costume is a terrible weight to bear. But fear not, I will take that heavy burden from your head and shoulders.”
“Likely at the same moment that she takes the burden of your head from your shoulders,” Warrick added dryly.
