Never had the Queen asked anything of anyone, Fable thought. In all the stories she'd heard, the Queen only demanded, ordered, and wished.
This wasn't good.
Loki signaled for the huntsmen to approach the throne. The other rows made room. The huntsmen began nearing the throne.
"What's going on?" Ladle whispered. It was kind of puzzling to see her worried as she was. Fable wondered why Death didn't just hurl her scythe at the Queen's neck. But she remembered how the Reaper was only allowed to kill the one she had been told to.
"We're being tested," Marmalade whispered. "I just don't know how."
"She clearly knows we're here," Fable said, wondering if Bloody Mary had picked up on her being an intruder from another world. "But she can't ask us to remove our cloaks or show our faces because of the rule of the huntsmen."
The Lost Seven stepped forward as the Queen watched them carefully with her chin up. Shew had been sedated and tied to the table by now.
Fable's heart pounded. She began to have trouble breathing properly. She may be a Lost Seven, maybe a witch, but she still felt like the innocent, pigtailed Fable who'd lived all her life with her brother in Candy House. This was beginning to turn into a bigger challenge than she could handle.
In her weakness, Fable raised her head slightly, her eyes accidentally meeting the Queen's. A slant of gold shone in the Queen of Sorrow's eyes as she stared at her. From that far away, Fable believed the Queen had recognized her for who she really was.
33
The Queen's Diary
The day after, hovering clouds blocked all sun from reaching the Pequod. They were thick clouds, shaping and reforming and hunting our ship in the sky. We stood at the ship's edge watching the sunrays reach the rest of Seven Seas, all but wherever the Pequod sailed. "Him" was definitely coming for us.
I stayed calm while the misfits either cursed their luck or prayed they would live past today. The sailors worked the ship and looked for any unusual activities in the sea. The tides were already raging, and our ship danced the dance of death, threatening to give in to the misery of the seas.
I held my sack tighter as I looked at the madness around me.
Angel hadn't appeared yet, and he wasn't going to. A note at my bed this morning had confirmed that:
Love of my life, Carmilla Karnstein.
I am not the man for you. Whenever I hold you in my arms, I only hold you down. I can't live with that. I had to escape, or a day will come and the beast inside me will hurt you. Nothing in the world would torment me more. I shouldn't have come back to you in Styria. Why would the universe bless the son of Sorrow with the love of a girl who brought apples to the world with her birth?
Will love you until I die—if I die.
Angel Von Sorrow.
I had sliced the letter into a thousand pieces this morning. Although Angel wanted my safety, I hated him for it. I considered him a coward, leaving me behind in the middle of the sea. Hadn't he known that I would have welcomed him biting me and turning me into a vampire if we had no other choice to be together? But Angel seemed to have not understood Shakespeare's story. He hadn't understood what love can overcome in this world.
In all cases, I stood there, the only girl on the ship, awaiting the doom that promised to visit us today. I wasn't going to give in, though. I realized that I was going to find the Tower of Tales and Lady Shallot no matter what. I was going to build my own kingdom away from all the madness in the world.
Whoever we were waiting for, I was determined to survive.
Captain Ahab didn't come out as usual. Who knew what his story was? It didn't matter. I had his piece of paper in my hand. I had read it too this morning. It had a black spot on one side. I had no idea what it meant.
I didn't trust Captain Ahab, Long John Silver, whatever his name was, enough to pass the paper to Him. I decided I would use it as a last resort.
The raging tides began to calm, and the ship settled in a temporary peace. Silence suddenly hovered like a mysterious fog upon the water.
***
"He is coming," the puffing boy said enthusiastically. He was the only one who desired his coming, supposedly to sell him his soul. The rest of us realized that, whoever it was we waited for, he wasn't one to sell your soul to, no matter what.
"Why the calmness?" I asked one of the sailors.
"I don't know." He shrugged. "Something is wrong. I looked deeper into the water, and there isn't a single fish around us. I assume he is sending his mermaids again."
"Do you know anything else about him?" I asked.
"Only the stories I heard since I was a kid," he said. "They say he thinks he is Fate itself at sea. They say he sinks the ships he wants to sink and forgives the passing of those he chooses. He says who lives and who dies, who becomes a pirate and who stays doomed and lost at sea. All I know is that I wish he wouldn't visit us like Captain Ahab said."