Page 3 of Kill the Queens

Open your eyes,the voice repeated.

Air filled her lungs, expanding her chest. Liquid wasn't fighting her every breath any longer. Wind danced over her, blowing the edges of her dress off her leg where it had been torn. Her fingers curled into the mud under her.

"Please no," she whispered, her voice ragged and low. She didn’t even sound like herself.

It's too late now.

"No!" Ace said, more sternly, still keeping her eyes pressed tightly shut. "Take me back. Take me back." Tears were building behind her eyes. A single drop pushed through her lashes and ran down the side of her face, soaking into her dark hair that was sprawled out around her.

A tremble shook her body as everything came rushing back. Every bitter emotion. Fear. Heartbreak. And something more. They hit her like a hurricane hitting shore, plowing through every wall she ever built until she was finally swept up in the storm and washed away. A sob fell from her lips.

Ace sat herself up, finally cracking her eyes open. Sunlight was breaking over the trees, creating stretched shadows that reached down into the valley toward her. She dragged her slippers through the mud to pull her legs to her chest. The material had started to dry and the caked dirt had madethem crunchy.She wrapped her arms around her legs, her skin looking, well, like it always had. Brown. She ran her thumb against her arm. Heat was fading from her in lines of steam that rose from her skin. Yet she wasn't uncomfortable any longer.

Each inhale made her body quake as she tried to force every breath. The ends of her gown smoldered too, looking as if someone had stuck her in...in fire.

Don't be scared,the voice said again.

Ace gasped and looked all around her. No one was there. And all she found was the dark stain of her blood that had been soaked up into the earth all around her. It made the ground look black. Even the brush nearest her looked burnt. She reached out and touched a single blade of grass and hissed as it was still warm to the touch.

She was supposed to be dead. She had died. Now she didn’t know what she was.

Tears were falling freely now. Nothing she could do would hold them in as she tried to absorb what was happening.

"Where are you?" she shouted into the woods.

In your head.

TWO

Queen Farah

Queen Farah hardly ever left her castle unless it was to meet her sisters or to break her own laws. Today she’d left the castle the moment the message had arrived.

A man, breathless and bloody, had shown up at her doors demanding an audience. He’d introduced himself as one of Queen Sienna’s guardsmen and they’d allowed him in for an urgent meeting with Queen Farah. The guard delivered one sentence that knocked the breath right out of Farah’s lungs.

Queen Sienna was dead.

Killed by the Fae, as the man had said, both frantic and fearful. The news had sent Farah’s heart plummeting into her stomach as she rushed to get dressed. She recognized that she should have felt some sort of mourning. Sienna was her sister after all, but she hadn't been the sibling she was closest to and she only seemed to have room to worry about herself.

Though the morning had started off rocky, making her moods feel wholly unstable, Queen Farah was excited to get to the Tower of Divinity. The road curved and up ahead she saw the tower rising over the tops of the trees. This meeting place for the queens was closest to Ambrose’s quadrant by the slightest fraction of a mile. They purposefully had the tower erected to be as close to an equal distance from their castles as it could be. Quite coincidentally, or perhaps it wasn't a coincidence at all, the tower had also been built upon the very sacrifices they’d made for this country. A place where wars were raged, battles won, andwhere they’d defeated King Rome.

Farah wondered every time her sisters came to the tower if they ever thought about what took place here. How could they not? Her mind raced back to events that had unfolded all too often.

Pulling up to the brick building, where the red was muted as if it had been bleached from the sun, Farah tapped her nails against the globe on top of the wooden staff she carried. Water sloshed wildly against the glass. This was her power. This was her gift from the gods.

Sienna’s staff rested in the seat next to her. Farah tried not to give it attention because if she did her mind would spiral and dread would fill her.

The door to her carriage eased open and the driver bowed, keeping his gaze cast down to the rocky drive. Pebbles were crushed under the toes of her high heels as Farah stepped out holding both staffs and passed the driver without a word. She didn’t have to wait for anyone to let her into the tower as the large circular door swung open when it recognized her power. The hinges whined before giving way to the view of the dark stairwell.

A breeze brought with it the smell of bittersweet magic that had been born, killed, and created in this very spot. Even when no one had been to this location in weeks it always still reeked of it.

Stairs twisted around the building to the single room at the top. She began to ascend, soaking in the final moments of silence that were only broken by the tapping of her heels on the stone and the scrape of her wooden staff.

When she reached the top there was another round wooden door with a brass knob. It was locked. It was always locked. Farah touched the tip of her staff to the door knob. It clicked loudly as the lock slid out of place. Letting herself inside,she was met by the four black thrones, each fashioned using the ash that had covered this land at one point, which sat in each corner of the room.

Opposite the door, a single mirror gave Farah a view of her expressionless face. Her brows pulled together. Someone had forgotten to pull the curtain closed. She held her own gaze as she crossed the room to the mirror only stopping to prop Sienna’s staff against her throne.

Farah always felt that she looked different than her siblings. She was the one who looked the least like their mother and the most like their father. While she shared the same golden skin tone and dark brown hair, her eyes were green and her nose was square. Oftentimes she marveled at the way her sister’s cheekbones cut across their faces when you could even hardly tell that shehadcheekbones. Her face was almost ridiculously round. Too round. Farah hated that.

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