The embrace went on for a long time, and then he stirred against me. “I love you, queenie. I couldn’t be happier that I got to see you again…or that you’re the one who will end it for me.”
God, I’d forgotten he called me that. The memory tumbled into my head. I was a princess, wearing a pink dress with a frilly skirt and a play tiara. He used to call me Reenie, and that day it became queenie, because of my princess outfit. After that Halloween, I remembered him spinning me around with raspberry kisses on my stomach, and teasing me with chants of Reenie-my-queenie. My mother had watched us with an indulgent air. How I wished I could have more of these recollections; I needed them, craved them in a way that seemed more vital than air—but there were no more.
I looked at Greydusk, who seemed transfixed by my pain. Queens weren’t supposed to love the men who had given them life. This one did. And I regretted the years I had spent calling him a shiftless bastard in my head. I’d imagined him finding a new family, a better one, and instead he had been here, suffering for me.
“Where do we start?” I asked the Imaron.
He went to examine the apparatus, as the answer wasn’t readily apparent. After giving me a comforting squeeze, Chance joined him. And while they checked out the reaping machine, my father stared at me.
“All I ask,” he said softly, the speaker crackling with his pain and resignation, “is that you make it quick.”
“I won’t touch anything until they tell me how.”
We talked then. Precious, stolen moments. I told him about my pawnshop and my dog, about Chance, who had been my first love and by some miracle was standing beside me still. His eyes grew damp when I told him what I’d done in Kilmer, and he spoke the six words that every child longed to hear:
“I am so proud of you.” Only they came with reverb and distortion.
They had taken everything but his loyalty and devotion. My mother had been lucky to share even ten years with this man. And maybe that’s why she never went looking to replace him. She knew that quantity mattered less than quality and that nobody could ever take Albert Solomon’s place in her heart—and that was why she stared wistfully out from the front porch. Not because she thought he was coming home someday but because she knew he never would.
He gave up everything for you.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Greydusk stepped to my side and murmured, “I found the main connection. If you unplug there, he should feel no pain.”
“Dad, I’m sorry.” Tears sprang up in my eyes, not fitting for a demon queen, but one who hurt this much could not help but weep.
“I’m ready,” my father said.
“Corine, let me.” Chance touched my arm lightly.
For a moment, I wanted him to take the weight. I’d love to give the burden to him to bear, but then when I looked at him, I would see the man who killed my father, not the one I loved. So I shook my head, hair drifting against my cheeks. I felt like one of those screaming women of old with a shriek rising in my throat that I had to swallow down like razor blades. No, better I should be haunted by my own reflection, for I was used to that.
So many dark choices—and this might be the worst. But there was none better. At least I could offer him surcease from pain.
Leaning in, I kissed my father on the cheek, as I had done so many times as a child. He did not smell of Old Spice. He didn’t have a bowling shirt or a Panama hat, but he was still the man who held my dreams in his hands until the day he disappeared. With his blue eyes set in an ascetic face, he smiled, though his lips didn’t move. Then he sang in a tuneless tenor the chorus from “Fire and Rain,” which he’d always belted out in the shower. The speaker crackled with the emotion, and I couldn’t bear another moment. As he finished the last word, I stepped behind the reaping machine, grabbed the cord Greydusk had indicated and tugged.
It popped free with a spurt of fluid, and I kept pulling. The Imaron helped me, knowing I was mad with grief and that I had to get my father down. I would not leave him in this place. Chance worked beside me, his face taut with echoed sorrow. Because he loved me, he mourned with me. I wondered how he would feel if we had found his mother in such a state.
But due to his luck, we’d saved her. And I’d killed my own father.
At last I set Albie Solomon free and he fell into my arms. I held him and rocked, tears streaming down my face. He felt like a child against me, thin and small and wasted. His legs resembled matchsticks, arms like pipe stems, and his face was too young for so much pain, borne in my stead.
Chance and Greydusk let me grieve for a while before the demon dared to intrude. “Your Majesty, we cannot remain here. The mages might return.”
The queen surged forward then, taking over. I bit off the words like chips of ice. “Let them.”
No Way Back
“I’m not leaving him.” My tone brooked no refusal.
In response, Greydusk knelt and collected my father’s body. The Imaron cradled his wasted form with proper reverence, and the pain ebbed enough for me to rise and lead the way out into the corridor.
Now we needed a rathole.
I had an idea. I toyed with it, wondering if the small creature that felt so ambivalent about me could truly help us. But it was worth a try.
“Put the dog down,” I said to Chance.
“Corine…” He trailed off. Then he obeyed, kneeling beside the animal with a worried air. “Don’t hurt him, okay?”
I wrestled a duality of reaction: anger that he’d dare question anything I did commingled with an absurd sense of hurt that he thought I would. With great self-control I put aside both responses to be analyzed later. Eventually I would have to deal with the divergence in my head, resulting from my twin selves—which hadn’t merged, but left me with conflicting impulses—but for now the compound was shaking down around our ears, even if we couldn’t feel it here in the the sanctum sanctorum.
“I won’t,” was all I said before I directed my attention to the animal. Butch, that was his name. “So you’re a clever beast.”
The dog eyed me skeptically and backed up a step. But it wasn’t growling or trying to bite me, which felt like a small victory. Then it yapped. Once.
“That means yes,” Chance put in.
I remembered that after he said it, as if it was a fact I had learned long ago and since forgotten. “Excellent. If I find something that belonged to the mage who worked in this lab, could you follow his scent?”
Butch pondered and then yapped again. He could.
“Brilliant.” Greydusk saw the plan in its entirety, I had no doubt.
In essence, it was simple enough. If the dog could follow the trail, it should lead us to the route that mages had used to escape my wrath. If we found their hiding place along the way, even better. It could end here and now. If not, we left the collapsing Saremon compound and went straight to the palace, where I could issue my first proclamation, hire staff, begin renovations, and organize a proper funeral.
That list daunted even a demon queen—but that had to be weariness and grief talking. I had been born for this role. I had lain dormant in the human’s blood, in her soul, waiting for my moment. Once I set my affairs in order, the pleasure in this would return. I didn’t permit any doubts to take root.
Instead I took action, ransacking the lab for some cast-off piece of clothing. My efforts bore fruit when I slammed open a drawer and found a dirty handkerchief. It was damp with some unidentifiable fluid and I found some pincers to pick it up, then I knelt and offered it to the dog for his perusal. He sniffed and then sneezed. Whined a little too. I couldn’t blame him; it was fiercely revolting.
“Is that strong enough?” Chance asked.
The dog’s look said, Hell, yes. Any stronger and I would die.
I swept my arm out before me in an inviting gesture. “Lead on. We’re right behind you.”
The little dog pranced. Part of me found it adorable; the rest of me wondered how it was possible the creature hadn’t been eaten. Butch lowered his small head, tail up and twitching with excitement. He sniffed around outside the door and then settled confidently on a path that led back the way we’d come, only at the first opportunity, he hung a left. We’d explored this part of the lab complex, but I hadn’t been looking for an exit then. I’d only been thinking of my dad. Later I would replay those moments with him. My heart hurt; it was a caution against love and its shocking weakening, but I did not deny those feelings. Even pain would make me stronger in the end.
The dog led us straight to a hidden passage. This place was probably riddled with them. When I knelt beside him, a breeze swept out from beneath the stone. I felt around for the catch and then a section of wall slid behind the rest.
Though I half wanted resistance, I encountered none. The mages had gone to ground and would strike next from a fortified position. They were smart enough not to want to face me in a dark tunnel with little preparation time. The strongest rituals took time to set in place. That was why I hadn’t dealt instant death in the arena.
The hidden passage led us into a plaza across the way, and when I turned, I saw the utter devastation of what had been the Saremon compound. They had shaken it to rubble rather than let anyone else gain a foothold there. It would take a salvage crew weeks to unearth their library, though the magickal shields should protect the books from harm. A host of curious onlookers had gathered to watch the fall of the house of Saremon. They didn’t see us emerge behind them.
“Summon the carriage,” I told Greydusk. “And take us to the palace.”
After handing my father’s body to Chance, the Imaron did as I ordered. I watched with implacable resolve as the cube unfolded and he sent the black mist of the Klothod into the mechanism. It wasn’t revolting anymore; it was a tool to be used. The demon assisted me into the coach, and we were off before the assembled mob took an interest in our activities.
The city—and the caste checkpoints—flew by in a blur; then the coach stopped outside a massive black gate with barbed points atop the walls. This wasn’t a glamorous fairy castle. It was entirely suitable for a demon queen. Time had been unkind, but with a little effort, the villa would glow once more with a dark luster.
“Home sweet home,” I murmured.
“You need to disembark, Your Majesty. The magickal protections sealed the place up when you vanished. Only your touch can raise the portcullis.”
Nodding, I dropped down to the cobbled street and strode toward the gate, where I wrapped both hands around the bars. “Open in the name of the Once and Future Queen, who is risen.”
A shudder rocked the ground I stood upon. Then the bars scrolled backward with a hideous, rusty shriek. I returned to the carriage.
“It knows me,” I said with satisfaction.
“As do we all,” Greydusk replied. “Even those who oppose you cannot dispute your identity.”
The coach clattered over the stones into the courtyard. Behind us, the portcullis lowered on its own, like enormous jaws slowly swallowing prey—an ominous and efficient magick. I approved.
