Lyra balked at the sheer number of people. Strangers’ faces stretched wall to wall. Even the balconies were packed. The memories she’d absorbed only hours earlier had brought along with them old fears and insecurities. A distrust of crowds and accolades. But all it took was one look at the dais where her wicked relatives—Griselda, Lustacia, Wrathalyne, and Avaricette, hands tied behind their backs and guards stationed beside them—had been forced to kneel before the empty thrones, and the courage and fortitude she’d gained over the past five years while running with a witch, a sylph, and a Pegasus, came flooding back.
Lifting her chin high, Lyra led the way to the thrones. Prime Minister Albous joined the procession, walking alongside Queen Nova. Vesper held Lyra’s hand as they climbed the stairs. He helped her sit, with Selena gathering her robe’s train underneath and around the sides of the throne.
Selena, Prime Minister Albous, and Queen Nova took their respective places, standing next to the new queen or beside the king, their backs to the wall behind them. Lyra met Lustacia’s gaze, and her cousin broke down into tears. Wrathalyne and Avaricette couldn’t even look up, too overwhelmed by fear.
When Lyra met Griselda’s belligerent glare, it didn’t surprise her that her aunt had no remorse. During her memory transference in the Star Turret, Lyra recovered her aunt’s confession: that she’d given away her conscience. As it stood, all of Griselda’s final words were seared into Lyra’s brain; she could still hear them ringing in her head, as clearly as she’d heard them through the closed lid of a coffin:
I suppose I should thank you. By freeing the witch while we still had her staff in custody, you made this entire setup possible. So, I’ll return the favor and tell you how it all ends, since you won’t be here to see for yourself. After you give up your voice, you’ll become drowsy and your breath will slow. You won’t be able to stay awake. And once you sleep, you will slip away. Give no thought to your faithful subjects. Any who become too curious or concerned will be cut down one by one. Mia will be first. Someone will attempt to poison our fare and she’ll die a hero, proving her loyalty to Eldoria once and for all. As for the kingdom, Lustacia and I have it well in hand. You can slumber in eternal peace knowing this, little perfect princess. That is my gift to you.
Desolation had torn through Lyra when she’d relived those final moments. The realization that she had no family had brought her more anguish that fateful day than the horrors she suffered.
Spine pressed into her throne for support, Lyra looked into the audience where Luce’s red hair stood out, then back to the dais from Selena to Cyprian. She caught Vesper’s gaze last and a calm reassurance filled her heart: she had a family now, one that would never betray her; one that accepted her just as she was.
Riding that confidence, she gave Vesper the signal to begin.
He tipped his head, the jewels on his savage crown reflecting glints of candlelight, then raised his hand to get the audience’s attention. The chatter died down as he stepped forward to address their four prisoners.
“To be clear, it was my personal intent to behead each of you, in the same manner I did your Sir Bartley. Due diligence for the heinous acts committed against a sweet, quiet twelve-year-old girl, whose only crime was being born of the same noble blood pumping through your own black hearts.” He had everyone’s attention. Silence reigned, the only sound the blubbering and sniffling of Lyra’s cousins. Vesper’s fierce expression fell on Griselda. “I have seen with my own eyes the horrors you inflicted upon my queen, in the name of hate and envy. I’m also aware of how far your barbarous acts spread, from Eldoria’s honeysuckle-and death-infested castle to the Rigamort and the goblin camp, as well.” He cast a glance at Lyra, then back to the stone-faced Griselda. “Consider yourself blessed your niece can gentle the beast in me. As she’s the only reason you’re still breathing.” He took his throne then, his robe’s hem swirling around his feet as he nodded to Lyra. “My Lady Queen, vengeance is yours. Bring on the spectacle.”
That was the cue. Stunned ooohs and ahhhs rippled through the crowd as Cyprian led in two brumal stags. Behind them, Lyra’s shadows herded in Lustacia’s cursed goblin half-lights, forging their own path through the darkest parts of the room. Dregs came in, bringing up the end. Cyprian took his place among the other guards surrounding the dais at floor level. The stags had no reins or bits to guide them, no ropes upon their necks. All it took was Vesper’s mental persuasions to bring them up the stairs and onto the platform, just as Lyra’s thoughts beckoned to her faithful shadow attendants. Lyra stood upon their arrival, surrounding herself with Griselda’s victims.
Lustacia screamed and shook her silver hair. “It hurts! My head!”
Griselda’s stony mask slipped as agony showed on her face, too. She bit back a groan and struggled to free her blood-tinged fists, shoulders straining against the futility.
The stags bent their graceful necks, touching their antlers to the heads of the two who had maimed their own.
Griselda and Lustacia cried out as the seeds planted within their scalps burst and flourished into full-sized horns. Wrathalyne and Avaricette squeezed their teary eyes shut.
A wave of shocked astonishment stirred the crowd.
Lyra gestured for Griselda to be taken from the room, leaving her three daughters at Lyra’s feet. The moment her aunt was gone, Lyra began signing and Prime Minister Albous stepped forward to translate:
“Are you not my cousins? You should’ve been my playmates, my sisters, my confidantes. Yet you laughed and teased, mocked my plight and my voice. You stood by as your mother fed me poison in a comforting glass of milk, doing nothing to aid me. Will you plead ignorance, being children yourselves when it all began? Will you seek to convince me you were victims, too? I might believe you. I have scars to prove my suffering. Perhaps yours are within . . . visible not by your skin, but by your calloused actions. I might have mercy, should you vow to change . . . to learn empathy and have kinder hearts.”
Wrathalyne and Avaricette nodded and coughed on wet sobs. Avaricette spoke for them both. “Yes, we want to grow! To be kinder. We beg your mercy!”
“Then let it be so,” came Lyra’s answer on Prime Minister Albous’s voice.
The two girls struggled to stand and put distance between themselves and their sister, believing they were pardoned.
“They are to kneel before their queen!” Vesper leaned forward and shouted through clenched teeth from his throne. The guards came forward and forced the girls back to their knees, holding their sword blades flat atop their heads.
The two froze, suppressing their cries.
“Lustacia, these creatures”—the prime minister paused as Lyra gestured to the goblin apparitions—“had families and lives. They made ill choices, serving your mother . . . but so did you. Is their penalty fair, taking this form forever? Being separated from all they know, being indentured to your will?”
Lustacia’s neck bobbed forward, as if she couldn’t bear the weight of the antlers. Her head drooped so low the pronged tips touched the floor. “I would rather be an apparition bound to another,” she sobbed, “than bear this vile mutation. Their pain is nothing compared to mine.”
“If you so believe, I can release you of the antler curse.” The prime minister delayed interpreting as Lyra withdrew three vials from her robe’s inner pocket and handed them to Dregs.
The little goblin shopkeeper stepped forward, face-to-face with Lustacia’s kneeling form, and opened the first vial.
Lyra resumed her speech with Albous’s aid.
“Since you’re convinced the half-lights suffer less, you will share their lesser fate. Drink at Dregs’s hand, and lose your horns. The tradeoff, however, is you’ll be bound to him as a half-life silhouette. You will serve the goblin, as your goblins serve you.” She turned to her other two cousins, drawing them back into the sentencing. “Wearing another’s skin is the most effective way to learn empathy. Share your sister’s penalty. Drink, and prove yourself more human than you ever were in your present form. Demonstrate this desire to grow, and you will live. Refuse, and choose death.”
As Albous delivered Lyra’s ultimatum, the guards shifted their blades to the back of each girls’ head, prepared to lop them off should they refuse.
Lyra’s cousins cried out for their absent mother while gulping from the vials Dregs offered. Wrathalyne hiccupped, Avaricette coughed, and Lustacia gagged. Then, with nothing more dramatic than a poof, the three sisters disintegrated into black, smoky shapes that hovered around the goblin shopkeeper, awaiting his command.
Gasps and stunned cries erupted in the audience.
Lyra flashed a knowing smile to Vesper. She had shared her plan with him, not to tell her cousins that the potion’s effect was only temporary. Her hope was that when each one awoke from their half-life in two years, they would be so grateful to be human once more, they would never take the responsibility of humaneness for granted again. Lyra wanted to allow them a chance to prove themselves above Griselda’s wicked ways when no longer under her thumb, while keeping them out of kingdom business. This had been her solution.