Page 14 of Kill the Queens

“What?” Ace straightened.

“Warlocks and witches are nothuman. We do not have souls like humans do. When he died he was released from his fleshy prison.” She reached out and pinched Shelby’s arm as he tried to squirm away. “If he says that he was coming back then he could have healed himself.” His grandma pointed a finger at Ace. “You made a fool’s bargain.” She turned her attention back on Shelby, her voice laced with anger. “And you. You betrayed your people. You know it’s forbidden to refuse your death date.”

“I don’t understand.” Ace could feel her heart beating inside of her ears.

“You gave Shelby part of your soul which would have pulled him through the holy fire to bring him back instead of how he would have returned on his own, if he wished. I don’t know why he would want to come back and hang around trouble like you...but it sounds like he did.” She rubbed at her chin. “Did you go through holy fire?” she asked her grandson.

Shelby gave a single short nod.

Oh, no. No…Ace had….oh, gods. Ace folded her arms on the table and dropped her face into them. She’d forced Shelby through holy fire and there hadn’t even been a reason for him to feel that pain.

“You were coming back?” Ace half said, half sobbed intoher arms, her voice muffled against the table.

“What?” Shelby asked.

“She’s asking if you were really coming back. Clean out your ears, boy,” his grandma tutted.

Shelby was quiet as Ace tried to keep herself from melting into a puddle. Gods, she wished she could just disappear altogether. Being selfish might have felt like the right thing then and there but it was proving to be just as sinful as she’d always been told.

The table shook slightly. Chair legs squeaked as they were pushed against the floor. Shelby stood and gave his signature dry laugh. “I was coming back for you.” His heavy steps told Ace that he was walking away, toward the couch. That was confirmed as the old piece of furniture groaned at his weight.

“And what of the man like you?” His grandma walked the space between her and Shelby. “Do you know him?”

“No,” Ace tried to blink away the tears that made her vision blurry as she sat herself back up. How was she supposed to live with herself? She sniffled. “I’ve never seen him but he had orange eyes like me so I assumed he too had been raised from the dead.”

His grandma stopped walking and planted her hands on her hips. “Well, you know what you have to do now don’t you?”

Ace shook her head.

“You have to go and find him. Perhaps he can give you all the answers you seek as well as assistance in thismissionof yours.”

How could she find someone she didn’t even know? How was she supposed to find a ghost?

FIVE

Queen Farah

Anger had started like a storm, dark clouds in the distance that grew closer and closer until it was a downpour in Queen Farah’s backyard. From the moment she heard the news about Sienna to the second Idalia had disappeared down the steps of the Tower of Divinity her frustration had only grown stronger.

Her sister wasn’t supposed to die. Fae shouldn’t be back in Pasia. Farah could already see herself stumbling back to the days when she was weak and defenseless, but she wasn’t anymore and the feeling was suffocating. Fury was building inside of her head, a headache that pulsed against her skull.

She needed to show herself that she wasn’t that girl anymore. She needed release. She knew she needed it on the way back to her castle when she’d nearly ripped the carriage door off its hinges as she’d opened it. She’d fixed it quickly with a wave of her staff, but the driver had looked ghostly pale as he hurried after her to gently close it.His eyes had lingered on Queen Sienna’s staff that Farah still had with her,withIdalia’s blessing. Even through the small carriage window, he stared as if in a trance for almost a minute before he scampered back to his seat and the carriage was bouncing down the uneven path.

It was a peculiar thing about the staffs that Farah noticed the longer she stewed on all the things she couldn’t control. Sienna’s cloud that had looked more like a light fog moments ago was quickly turning pitch black and pressing against the glass globe. Farah held it carefully away from her with the fear that itmight suddenly burst and magic would consume her. Her staff, with her normally calm waters, sloshed about, sending droplets clinging to the glass to drip back down, most being washed away quicker than they could complete their course.

Both staffs still looked like that when they finally made it back to the castle. No one had said anything as Farah escorted herself to her room. The sound of her steps, loud in the barren hallways, was muffled as she walked over the rugs that stretched across her floor.

Gripping her staff, her dress was immediately changed to something less showy with the help of magic, something more common—an utterly atrocious brown dress that reminded her too much of her childhood. The globes chimed together and then against metal as she shoved the staffs into a tall metal safe, that she’d worked with both a blacksmith and locksmith to create, and closed the doors.

What she would be doing tonight had nothing to do with her magic. No this would all be physical.She needed to remember that she was still greater than she once was even without the aid of the staffs.

The safe closed, followed by a series of clicks and ticks of the locks. Her brown cloak with minimal embroidery on the hood and edges met her fingertips and was clasped around her neck in less than a minute. Its soft worn material triggered her body into recognizing this routine she’d built within the last year. Excitement became a tingle that traversed over her skin and settled in the steady beating of her heart. This was her addiction.

Her castle halls were empty with the exception of one servant who was meticulously dusting. The girl was smart enough to look away and pay no mind as the queen rounded the halls and disappeared outside. Not a soul followed her. No one questioned her. They’d learned their lesson the first time when she’d hung the last person to do that in the banquet hall. Abroken shard of wood in each palm and foot from the chair legs the queen had snapped off did the trick.

Farah let her hood cover her features, she left the castle so rarely she often wondered if she should even bother. Did the people even know what she looked like? She let her attention linger on shadows and any suspicious noise that felt even remotely threatening.

She knew the path from the castle to the tavern fairly well considering she hadn’t grown up in Saylor. She could count on her fingers how many times in the past year she’d slipped behind the castle walls to come out here. Always here. Never anywhere else. The queen wasn’t sure if it was that the old tavern gave her a feeling of security or if it was just her weariness of new places that kept her coming back.

---