Page 68 of Down from the Tower

With a sigh he stops walking, scratching the back of his head. He looks resigned and uncomfortable, like he knew it was inevitable but didn’t want to go down this path. “The four of us - myself, Raymundo, Ban and Lucius - made the grave mistake of trying to steal from the Queen’s gardens in the Red Woods long ago. Legs spotted us and tried to send us back, but guards caught us and brought us before the Queen.”

I surf through my memory, trying to remember the name. “Legs… the gardener?”

“You wouldn’t think she’s one of the good guys would you?” he asks, shooting me a half smirk. “She used to be loyal to the Queen before she stole her legs. The nickname stuck.”

I blink. “She… the Mad Queen stole her legs?”

“Well, ripped them off, if you want to get technical.”

Ripped them off.

To think this is the woman who once abandoned a cat in Tressa is surreal. The Queen was a lot to handle, but not some beast of a ruler back then. Or at least she wasn't during her time in my kingdom.

Zarev looks off into the distance before speaking again. “We were young. It was an ignorant idea, but we were struggling. Across The Barrens in the Red Woods there were different things to eat, drink, trade. I was an orphan, Raymundo a child of many, Lucius was banished, and Ban a murderer. People didn't like us hanging around. Going that far north was an insane attempt to try and bring some money in so we all didn’t struggle as much.”

He pauses, and I have to physically bite my lip to keep from jumping in with questions. He rarely speaks of the other two Reapers, and I’m bursting to ask about them. “Ray’s mom had just started the tavern and it didn’t flourish in the beginning. The rest of us didn’t have anyone to rely on but ourselves. Lucius is a prince, but at the time he was banished from his home. I knew how to hunt only small animals back then, and Ban and Raymundo could hunt bigger game but it’s hard to find some along the paths. You have to go off-road. Lucius is absolutely hopeless. I’m still not sure if he can kill to survive.”

For a moment he goes quiet, as though thinking things through. “I lost my family a few months before and I had my shifting to contend with. I didn’t learn much about being a wolf, not when I was thrust into the life of a Reaper not long after.” He blows out a breath. “The guards caught us and dragged us back to the Queen’s court all the way from the gardens. You’ve seen the distance. It was a three-day ride where we were beaten on the journey with a handful of other prisoners. This was in between moons, so my shift didn’t take over. Ban’s ice magic couldn’t do much in the humidity of the gardens in summer, and Ray is best with a bow. We were at the guards mercy until we stopped.”

Mentioning his wolf side makes my questions bubble up again, but I try not to talk about it much. He doesn’t seem to like remembering, which is sad if it’s part of who he is now. Even if he doesn’t like it, even if he is Death, this is something he can never truly escape. Unless he wants to acknowledge that, he’ll continue to struggle with it.

Zarev starts walking, and I jog to keep up. He’s agitated as he speaks, flexing his hands as he glares ahead of us. “We were so young then. We knew the Mad Queen killed her prisoners by that point and we were just awaiting death. One of the prisoners died en route, and the other two must’ve been in transport for some time. When we reached her court, they were dead within the day.”

My eyes widen in horror. Midas would torture people in the throne room, turning them to gold or twisting the element to his whim to cut from the inside. It was horrific, but all the torture took place inside the lands. No one had to travel for days to receive their torture, which seemed like a special kind of torture all it’s own. It happened the same day in Tressa if not the next, and Midas preferred a speedy trial before death.

To be dragged for days just to suffer more… my stomach rolls. I don’t know if I could handle that.

“Usually she beheaded trespassers,” Zarev goes on, and I follow him mindlessly further into Sherwood. The pretty lights disappear, but walking in the dark with a Reaper makes me feel secure. “I guess she was in a mood that day. The others died too quickly, and she only had four victims left to play with. She had the guards drag us one by one to her throne so she could cut us apart.”

He holds up his hands, the scarred spade and slashes making me see real red. She took what should be something symbolic and turned it to torture.

The Court of Cards. That’s what the entry from Omari said. Before she was the Mad Queen, she was the Queen of Hearts. If she carved the symbol for a house of cards into each of them, they should all bear the scars of her torture in the form of a symbol.

Zarev’s is spades. I’ve seen Ray’s, where clovers are scarred into his palms. I have no idea which one decorates Ban or Lucius and I don’t want to ask. Zarev starts speaking again, and the thoughts fade away.

“Once she was through marking and making us bleed, she instructed us to run through the courtyard so there would be something fun to hunt. We would play the prey, and she and her court would chase and torture us some more until we died. It’s a sick game, but we were already bleeding, and with the skeletons hanging on the walls, we knew she was serious. I had my wolf side and Ban had his ice, but we were too weak for any of that to matter. All the men and women sitting in her court agreed to whatever she said, so there was no one who stood up for us.”

“She made a sport out of hunting you?” I ask, the horror clear in my voice.

“You could say that. The Mad Queen is impatient when she wants to be. She directed everyone in court that afternoon to participate and dragged us outside for her game. The only thing we really had going was we each knew how to hunt, and the people in the Mad Court hadn’t ever had live bait to practice on. She typically killed the prisoners too quickly.”

“That’s horrible.”

“That’s how things go in the Mad Court. The Queen you met in Tressa is a lie. This is who the Mad Queen is.” He purses his lips, his steps slowing. “There was a man stuffed into a white rabbit costume who blew the horn and the hunt began. I’m pretty sure the Queen cut off his head as she passed. I don’t remember ever seeing him again.”

Zarev clears his throat before continuing and I can see his shoulders growing tense the longer he talks. I thought watching him talk about his parents and his wolf was a struggle but this is so much worse. “We ran for the trees, splitting up so it would be harder to kill us. The court opened into fields and cliffs, but if you know what direction to run it’s easy to find your way back to the edges of the Red Woods. Hunting was something each of us did, so we knew how to tell what direction we were going. We collectively took off that way, scattered apart on instinct to hopefully survive the hunt.”

“But you didn’t escape,” I say quietly, terror building in my mind's eye.

“No. We ran and ran until everything hurt and then we ran even more. The court grew angry behind us because we were difficult to catch, but eventually we grew weary. Torture is exhausting, and as the adrenaline wore off, the pain returned. We managed to find a section of rock and stone and tried to sneak in and hide in the smallest caves. As we ran, the Queen kept zapping us with magic anytime she could reach one of us, but for a brief time we lost her. Unfortunately, one of the players saw us and climbed to the rocks above, jumping down. The unbalanced stones caved in and crushed us.”

I blink, surprise rocking through me. “You were crushed by stones?”

“To death,” he agrees. “I don’t remember what happened initially, I think the moments after death take a bit of time to register. But I do remember coming around again, looking down at the blood oozing from the rocks, and knowing I was trapped in there someplace. I couldn’t see my body, but I didn’t feel anything either.”

My breath catches. Death sounds so empty and… terrifying.

We crest a short hill, and Zarev pivots to the left where I’m surprised to see two stumps to sit upon. He takes one, gesturing for me to follow, and it takes several moments before he speaks again. “When I looked back at the Queen, a man of shadows stood beside her. She was laughing with her court, but he simply stood there and watched. I was certain I was supposed to go with him, but I couldn’t move. No one could see him but me, and he watched the Queen with an unreadable expression for a long time.”

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