“I’m lost! I’m lost!”
A young man’s voice. Her son’s? No, she had no son. Her nephew? No, she had dreamed him too. A ghost, then. A ghost of a wish for a life less lonely. But her life had always been lonely. This was the truth of it. Always she had shielded herself away and now she lived the life she had built with her own two hands. Alone in the darkness, in this place where the Dragon was King.
A tall man stood behind her, meeting her gaze in the mirror’s reflection. His eyes were black, and red fire gleamed in their pupils.
“Breathe deep,” he whispered. “Breathe in the death of dreams.”
She obeyed. Poison filled her heart.
“All must come to me in the end,” he said.
A hand at the door latch. The Dragon turned and bared his teeth in what might have been a snarl, but just as easily could have been a smile. Then he vanished, and Queen Starflower saw nothing but empty space reflected above her. She was alone. She had always been—
“Your Majesty!”
A strange person filled her vision; strange but no more terrible than the rest of this nightmarish reality. Starflower was unafraid. She gazed with eyes made calm with despair at the wraithlike figure covered in veils that appeared behind her in the glass.
“Your Majesty,” said the little person, “please get up. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“I know you, don’t I?” said the queen slowly, as though the words must travel across many leagues before they fell, exhausted, from her lips. “I’ve seen you somewhere before. In a dream, perhaps.”
“I’m your son’s chambermaid.”
“I have no son.”
“Of course you do. Don’t talk such hogwash, beggin’ Your Majesty’s pardon.” Gloved hands plucked at the queen’s sleeve in the mirror, but Starflower felt nothing. She drew another long breath of dragon smoke.
“I have no son. I only dreamed him, and now the dream is dead. I must have dreamed you too, which means you too must die. Dreams cannot live here.”
“Fiddle. Your son ain’t no dream, and he ain’t dead neither,” the strange little person snapped, placing her hands on her hips. “He’s alive and well, gone off to find some way to rid us of this monster. He sent me to care for you, and by Iubdan’s beard, that’s what I’m goin’ to do! Get up, Your Majesty.”
This time the phantom tugged so hard that the seam of her garment bit into Starflower’s arm. She rose then, obediently. Why not? What did it matter one way or another in this ageless reality? Might as well humor this veiled illusion. It wouldn’t make a difference.
Rose Red led the queen out of her chambers and into the hall beyond, where the baron’s daughter waited. Daylily’s face was as carefully expressionless as ever, but her eyes darted this way and that, up and down the long hall. A darkness like dusk had settled on the household, a gloom that was too light for candles but too dim for comfort. The rich furnishings of the household wore their shadows like mourning clothes, as though the House itself had died.
Which perhaps it had.
“Is she the last one?” Daylily asked when Rose Red emerged from the queen’s chambers with Starflower in tow. They had now spent several hours combing the desolate rooms, searching for those held imprisoned. All were in a similar state to that of the queen, stunned with despair, barely living. One by one, Rose Red and Daylily had gathered them from the various rooms in which they wandered like lost spirits and led them to the kitchens, which, due to their very simplicity, seemed the least horrible of all the poison-haunted chambers. Most had come willingly enough. The Eldest, taken from his throne room, went like a lamb to the slaughter, silent tears coursing down his withered face. But some had fought, feebly, like frightened children. One man, a lesser noble, Rose Red thought, of no particular name, had fended her off with a poker and, when it became clear that she would not leave him, had tried to tear his own face with his hands. The effect of the Dragon’s poison was bitter indeed.
But Rose Red, with Daylily’s help, had prevailed in the end and led him to join the small cluster of prisoners sitting in the kitchen together, staring at the walls in silence.
“I think,” said Rose Red, keeping her voice soft and low so as not to startle the queen, “that Sir Foxbrush is here too.”