Vesper inclined his head in a show of respect.
She returned her attention to her feet, where Dregs bowed prostrate before her. His three new half-light servants did the same, which forced those five apparitions chained to Lustacia to bow as well. “By avenging my family, you brought honor to our kind,” Dregs said, his bulbous eyes filled with admiration. “From this day forward, fair queen, our loyalties are realigned. Come to us seeking any favor. Our fealty will never waver.”
She touched his brow affectionately, and he kissed the slippers on her feet. He then stood and filed down the stairs with all eight apparitions in tow. He stopped and found a place in the front row where Lyra had asked him to wait within sight of Griselda. Once he and his band of silhouettes were settled, Lyra had her aunt dragged in again.
“What have you done with my daughters?” Griselda snapped as the guards shoved her to her knees.
“They are here,” Lyra answered with her prime minister’s assistance. “They’re watching and waiting. Their fates rest upon you.”
“You lie! I can’t see them!” Griselda jabbed at Lyra’s leg with her antlers but Lyra sidestepped the attack. From his throne, Vesper spoke a command to his stags. One leapt forward, tangling its prongs with Griselda’s. The regent cried out for help. Lyra stroked the creature’s coat, coaxing it to break free and settle at her side once more.
Lyra began signing again.
“It is time for you to answer for yourself, Lady Griselda.” Prime Minister Albous’s deep voice grew more somber with every word he passed on. “Are you not my aunt? You could’ve been a mother to me in the absence of my own. You might’ve been a comfort to your brother who lost his wife. Yet instead, you conspired to see us both dead. What have you to say?”
“I say I’m not to blame.” Griselda spewed her rebuttal and glared at her niece, barely allowing the prime minister to finish. “It was my destiny to have a hand in the prophecy. Not yours. I was told thus and made it so.”
“You were told by the shrouds.”
Griselda’s mouth puckered in disbelief at Lyra’s insight. Lyra had remembered Griselda mentioning the shrouds to Lustacia those last moments in the coffin, as well. And when that memory returned, Lyra’s own interaction with the collective made sense at last. Griselda was the Eldorian princess the shrouds had lost to a sylph—Luce, judging by the wings trapped within Eldoria’s castle courtyard—so many years ago. It was Griselda they waited for, even now.
Lyra’s hands and fingers—growing tired from strain—took up again, to give Griselda’s cruel speech from that fateful day new life by making the sentiments her own.
“Take heart, Aunt, for you have indeed had a hand in the prophecy, as indicated by the blood tainting your skin. I abhor every crime you’ve committed, yet there is something for which I owe gratitude: Thank you for putting me in a box and sending my dying body to the ravine, for there I met a witch whose kindness showed me beauty beyond appearances, and a sylph whose persistence showed me that life could be found in ash and thorns. Because of you, I learned to look past the surface. Thus, when I met the prince in the form of a Pegasus, in a place between bias and kingdoms, outside of traditions and creed, I had no preset expectations of a prophecy or political pressures. We met on the common ground of anonymity, loneliness, and seeking hearts. At your hand, we forged a comradery that grew to unconditional trust and love. Now we’re equals, capable of ruling side by side. Capable of uniting our kingdoms under one sky. So yes, you are responsible for who I am today, and for the queen I’ll be from this day forward. To show my gratitude, I will tell you how it’s going to end, since you won’t be here to see for yourself. After you awaken from the sleeping draught you’ll be given, you will find yourself exiled to the Ashen Ravine, just as you left me, in a box filled with every creeping, flying, and crawling creature you’ve ever crushed beneath your shoe, struck with a book, or fed to a bird. Should you escape your tomb, you will face the guilt of your crimes in the place it all began—among the shrouds. However, first I will allow you one chance to rescue your daughters, who moments ago received the same potion you thrust upon the goblin smugglers.”
Dregs commanded his three half-light attendants to drift forward to the dais’s edge. Griselda’s eyes bulged upon realizing they were her children.
“No!” she screeched. She doubled over, her shoulders sinking as she wailed. Even without a conscience, she had claimed to love her girls. A shame that love was always secondary to her schemes.
“Declare me as your queen,” Lyra continued, the volume of Prime Minister Albous’s voice intensifying to regain the hysterical regent’s attention. “Aloud, here before our Eldorian representatives and all of Nerezeth’s witnesses. Pledge your fealty to me and give me the devotion my lineage warrants. Do this, and though it won’t save you, it will free your daughters from their wretched fate. Perhaps this might make up for the experiences you robbed them of while isolating them from the world.”
Lyra’s chest tightened as Griselda lifted her head and snarled. She struggled against the binds holding her fisted hands at her back, bringing the guards to her side. This was the final part of Lyra’s plan: to take the temporary quality of the half-light potion one step further. The effects would wear off eventually, yet only Luce, Dyadia, Lyra, and Vesper knew this. Griselda didn’t have such knowledge, any more than her daughters did. If her aunt cooperated, Lyra would announce to everyone that her cousins would be freed after a short imprisonment in their cursed forms. Then Wrathalyne, Avaricette, and Lustacia would at last see their mother choose them over her pride. And they would see her accept Lyra as the rightful ruler. Should Griselda refuse, Lyra would send away her cousins with the goblin, ignorant of their short sentence, and they would have the next two years to contemplate their mother’s selfishness and betrayal.
Either way, all three girls needed to witness this moment, to truly be free from Griselda’s evil influence.
Lyra held her breath, hoping her aunt would do the right thing.
Griselda regained her composure. “I will see . . . that no one ever calls you queen!” Her refusal echoed in the great hall and she spun on her knees. Before the guards could gauge her intent, she opened her fisted hands, allowing a small orb—aglow with snaky turquoise light—to drop from her fingers.
Startled gasps broke through the audience. Luce’s bellow from the back drowned them out: “She means to set the queen on fire!”
“Lyra!” Vesper leapt up from his throne and caught her around the waist, dragging her out of the rolling orb’s trajectory and beside the thrones where the prime minister, Serena, and Queen Nova already huddled along the wall.
“It must’ve been up her sleeve!” one of the guards shouted as he forced Griselda closer to the center. In the instant the sphere touched the ribbon draping the dais’s edge—so meticulously arranged for the coronation by Griselda the prior day—the second guard slammed his boot down to stop it from falling into the audience. The orb burst on contact, enveloping him and his armor in flames of turquoise, rose-pink, and white. His sword dropped from his hands as blisters charred his exposed skin. The stench of broiled flesh tainted the air. He screamed and fell to the floor below. In his wake, the flowers and ribbons around the platform ignited. A blaze rose high and swift—cutting off the stairs and sealing everyone upon the dais in a line of enchanted, deadly flame. Heat singed Lyra’s skin, and she coughed at the smoke surrounding her and her companions as they pressed their backs to the wall. Everyone lifted their robes and tucked them tightly around their bodies, putting distance between flames and fabric.
“Guards! Bring water!” Vesper commanded.
Dregs sent his apparitions—Lyra’s half-light cousins and those five that belonged to Lustacia—to retrieve buckets from the kitchen, as they could move faster than any human feet.
“Water? Bring the ocean . . . it won’t matter!” Griselda released a cackling laugh, as if she’d gone mad.
A chord of terror struck in Lyra’s heart, seeing Vesper’s dark eyes reflecting flames—outside of him instead of within—seeing his jaw clench in a vise, having no power over this element he once ruled. She beckoned her shadows. They dipped and swayed around her and the others, dispersing to helpless, sooty streaks and retreating to the corners of the room as the blaze overpowered them.