In Line

If royal guards took Louis, there would only be three places to find him. The castle dungeons, the torture pit, or if I was lucky, his bedroom. Unfortunately, he was not held in his quarters.

The castle dungeons were a murky place. The smell of mildew and blood was ever-present in the long corridor of metal and brick cells. With only one way in or out, and no windows, prisoners knew they stood little chance of escaping. I walked the corridor, passing open cells of dead rotting corpses, chamber pots filled to the brim with entrails and blood. There was no step taken that allowed the absence of muck under my boots.

I found my brother.

He was stripped of his royal robes and stood before me in rags that looked to be handed down by the deceased.

"Par?" He called out as he approached the bars between us.

"Louis, I'm going to get you out of here," I declared.

"What have you done," he said with vitriol.

"I've done nothing, I told you to wait to leave the castle," I argued.

"You sentenced our sister to death," he said.

"You don't understand."

"She was here. They took her."

"Took her where?"

"To be tortured and interrogated. They want to know who she conspired with," my brother informed me.

"I didn't mean for this to happen I swear to you."

"What did you think would happen? She told me you searched her room and found her secret. You said love was a good thing, why would you doom her to death for loving a castle guard?"

"What?!" I exclaimed, dumbfounded by such a revelation.

"Her secret! Hidden behind the wall was a sword given to her by a castle guard, the castle guard she confided in when father was poisoned, the castle guard that almost died protecting her when we were almost murdered in the night," Louis continued.

Was my sister in love? Sky was in Love?

"I didn't know, how could I have known?"

"Are you the only one allowed to have secrets? Because of your unwillingness to leave hers out of the light, she will pay with her life itself."

"I'll stop this."

I called out for a guard, but they stayed at their post.

"It's too late, the only person who can free us is Mother," Louis told me before leaving the bars to take a seat on the ground.

"I'll find her. I'll make this nightmare end," I promised.

He wouldn't look at me. He sank to the floor, and not even the drip of murky water on his head made him alert. As I left the hole that was the dungeons, I could hear the screams of what could only be Sky in agony.

I ran through the castle, calling for Mother. I searched everywhere to no avail. But I knew where to find her, in the castle gardens. It seemed darker than usual on that night. Perhaps the pain in my heart was seeping out into the air. I used my light given to me by Santo as I tired of stumbling over rose bushes in the dark.

"Mother!" I called out again and again, seemingly to no avail.

I called out again, and the wind gave chill.

There was nowhere else in the castle for her to be. I felt she was around me, avoiding me, staying out of my strange light. That's when I saw it. Her blue roses, they glowed bright green. It was the same color as the poison Teco extracted from the cake. Could it be a coincidence? It couldn't be. It all began to make sense.

She worked with the cook to make the perfect cake that turned out to be poisoned. While Father was unable to rule, she sat on the throne. When the assassins came for us, she and Father were never attacked. She told Louise she was done hunting his people, but it seemed the second that he was outside of the castle she cracked down on the investigation, an investigation she knew was pointless. And she let me hammer the final nail by giving her a reason to take away Sky.

But why?

"I see you've put it together."

Her voice echoed behind my ears, and as I turned around, the green glow of the roses and poison radiated from her hands as she stepped out of the shadows.

"It was you?" I said.

"Of course it was me, Par," she said with no denial remorse or guilt.

"But why, how could you?"

"How could I not," she said, laughing at my insinuating that she cared.

"We were your family," I said.

"You were never my family; none of you were born of my skin and done."

She knew.

"You know?"

"Yes, I know. I know what King Teco told you, but I knew long before then. I knew that he was your father, and I knew Sky was not my daughter."

"That's what this is about," I questioned with open eyes and strong disbelief.

"Your King, my husband, he thought I would never know, but a mother knows when something is wrong with her children. How could I not know I gave birth to the dead? They wanted me to love not one but three children born not of my flesh but the wombs of mothers unknown," she raved.

"Why would you stay, why would you pretend to love us for so long?"

"I had no choice; as a queen, I could never leave, marriage to the throne only ends with death."

She came closer and stood under the shadow of a tree as if to hide her face.

"I won't let you get away with this," I declared.

"How can you stop me? What army do you have at your back? What crown do you wear?" She taunted me with a grin too big to hide.

"Father will stop you. You can't kill all of us without the kingdom knowing it was your hands responsible."

She laughed, and that was perhaps the most terrifying moment of my existence.

"Your father is never going to leave his chambers again," she confessed.

"You killed him?"

"No, Your Father was never going to die. I simply needed him incapacitated, and now that he is, I am free to rule without question. He will stay my key to the throne. All that is left to be done is strike down the kingdoms responsible for the heirs of Fae and the heirs themselves

"The people won't accept that we have simply disappeared or died all at once," I debated her madness.

I'll kill your father, the king of Catalina, for interfering with my affairs. Louis will die a death like that of his long-dead father and leader of Mar. I'll have you flogged for conspiring to commit treason with Catalina, and you've already sealed your sister's fate for me

"I will stop you," I repeated.

"So you say, but I don't believe you," she laughed to no end.

"Why admit all of this to me, why be so open now?"

"Because I know you don't long for the throne, you never did. I'm giving you a choice. Leave now, run away and go find the ordinary life you long for or die like your adopted siblings in a dungeon screaming for an end that will be drawn out for ages," she said.

"You think I would turn on my family; you think I would be so disloyal?"

"What is loyalty Par.  People like us don't get to have what we want. We don't even get the chance to know what it is. We give ourselves because of morality and code too strong to break. We are shackled to responsibilities that we grow into," he spoke with earnest tone.

She started to come closer, and I backed away.

"We can not be weak for others, but we lack strength for ourselves, life offers so many doors, but we choose the one that lets us keep safe the people we are to never give up on. We do this despite the opportunity of new connections that could make us better and make us whole. How much will we sacrifice? It's a slope that we slip down until there is no bottom, humble as we are, humble as I tried to be, I knew what I was doing, but I did it," she continued.

She made small advances into my space until I felt her looming over me. She carried a dagger in her hand. I couldn't strike her down. I couldn't draw my blade on the queen and walk away with my head.

"Sad as we may be, we continue to march on, soldiers of a cause unknown, Loyalty that is a weakness, our crutch, never a joy," she said.

I stumbled backward, falling to the ground as she engulfed my space. I tried to run, but still, I could hear her voice like a whisper in the air around me.

"And we pray for salvation because no one will release us. Loyalty is forever holding us in place until we become what we swore never to happen on our watch. Loyalty is the last breath taken as every fleeting moment passes like a flicker of light on what could have been, Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, to hell with it," she mocked.

I turned out my light and tried to hide. The shadows were both my enemy and friend as she could not see me, and I could not see her.

"It doesn't have to be this way," I said.

"It can only be this way Par, there are no compromises In the war for freedom," she answered.

"You can leave; now more than ever, while you hold the cards, no one would stop you," I said.

She lunged at me from the shadows of trees in my path, and I quickly retreated into the cover of low bushes.

"No one can stop me. I'm offering you a choice, a chance to have what I never could," she argued.

Killing her would have been too easy. My sword had better reach, and my arms more strength, but if she fell by my distinct hands, it would seal fates more than my own.

"You're offering a life of dishonor and betrayal."

"But it would be your life and yours alone," she said.

She ripped the bush from the earth, revealing my hiding spot, and I tripped her as I got to my feet.

"Maybe you're right. This can only end one way."

As she got to her feet, I unsheathed my sword, the blade of The Last Dragon Kingdom.

"You think you can kill me," she mocked me.

She laughed again. My blade was sharp, but I couldn't use it without consequences.

"Even if you could, you would only put yourself in a position to take the blame for all that has happened to our happy family," she added.

"I never wanted a crown, but when I am king, I will make sure this part of history never repeats its self."

She slashed at my side, and I moved to dodge. She aimed for my chest and ripped my shirt to shredded nothing rather than my flesh. For all the speed I had, I couldn't use it without hesitation. For every reflex I used, she knew I would not strike back. But I had hope that I was smarter. She thought she had me beat. I lead her to believe she was pushing me back, but I was guiding her.

Those blue roses were never roses.

As she slashed at my body, I blocked as well as one could, but I took blood dripping wound after wound until I had her where I needed. She lunged once more, and with a swift kick, I threw her into the patch of deadly flora. Before she could stand, I pressed my foot on her chest and pushed her body into the thorns. At first, it seemed my plan hadn't worked.  She gripped my leg and meant to get me off, but her eyes began to bulge, and from her mouth foam ran. She clutched at me for a while as I held her pinned to the sharp ground until life faded from her eyes. I stepped off of her corps, and the deed was done. If anyone questioned how the queen died, they wouldn't ask twice if told her exotic children were to blame.