Charon

The war room is full of noise, sound and fury signifying nothing. Maps and scrolls are littered everywhere, and chaos abounds.

When I stride into the room, however, a dead silence falls. Everyone goes still for a moment.

I look around. “Well?”

“Your Grace!” A burly man at the table jumps up. “You’re here!”

I frown. The man looks nervous. He’s bobbing up and down on his feet a little. It’s not a good sign.

“As you see.” I sweep my black cape to one side and take my seat at the head of the long table. My generals wait for me to lean back before resuming their own places. Papers are shuffled, throats are cleared. Something’s wrong.

“Tell me,” I say, pointing at the central map. “Where are we right now?”

The central map is the only one in this room not made from paper. It’s carved in stone and set into the crystal inlay of the table itself, so that every general can see the territory I intend to conquer from their respective places.

“We have advanced, Your Grace,” says the burly one. His name is Alecus, but I prefer to remember him by his size and shape. It makes him easier to replace if needed. Names take up too much of my mental space as it is.

And this one’s not going to last long, at least not if his shifty eyes are any indication. I let my gaze drift over the rest of the table and find a possible reason for that.

“Where’s Vanya?” I ask abruptly.

They all avert their eyes, including the burly one. His barrel-shaped body seems to almost shrink.

“She’s in the dungeons, Your Grace,” he says in a hushed voice.

“She’s where?”

They all flinch at the whiplash of my voice. Proud warriors, these, who I appointed to lead my forces into battle. Fit to hold the line against the steadily creeping campaigns threatening the borders of my Dark Fortress and defeat the enemy once and for all. Or so I once thought.

But here they sit, like a flock of sheep trembling at the sight of shears. Contemptible. I should have executed them all, but I just haven’t had the time.

“I’ll say it again, just one more time.” I keep my voice low and soft. “Where is Vanya Calrooke?”

Vanya is one of my lesser-ranked generals in the fight against the Illustrian royal forces, but she’s usually reliable. Not the most cunning, but her cruelness is admirable. If I’m able to remember her name, it means she hasn’t angered me enough to think about replacing her. Yet.

“She fell in battle to the golden hero, Your Grace,” somebody else replies. Dark and saturnine, the warrior Virithos, and known for his skill with the morningstar. “After Elle Argenti dispatched her, a decision was made.”

But not by me, his tone seems to indicate. I turn to the impassive figure seated to my right.

“Balthasar?” I say pleasantly. “Please explain.”

He at least meets my eyes. I’m glad to see I didn’t promote him for nothing.

“She needed to be punished.” He’s grim as always. “It was foolish of her to take on the golden hero in the first place. To lose so quickly was an even greater humiliation. She must suffer.”

“Agreed.” I tap my finger on the table, slowly looking over each of my generals. None of them seem to be injured or harmed. Did Vanya not fight back when they threw her in? Or did they drop off her unconscious body before she could fight back? “But now I need her here, to receive her orders with everyone else. We can always enjoy her suffering later, after the war is won. Or if she fails me again.”

Balthasar looks sad. This is someone who lives in a permanently bad mood. But the thought of letting Vanya off even temporarily seems to have rendered him speechless as well. She must have offended him in some other way, too.

“Oh, never mind,” I say impatiently. “I’ll go and release her myself. In the meantime, if the rest of you can stop bickering and get on with some battle tactics that will allow me to take my rightful place on the throne of Illustria, that would be ideal. Thank you so much.”

Getting to my feet, I notice a sweaty shine on the top of Balthasar’s bald head. Good. A healthy dose of fear is a good reminder that I’m in charge.

The uneasy silence continues as I stalk back out of the war room and take the sweeping stairs down to ground level. From there, the dungeons ensconced under the Dark Fortress are only a few steel-reinforced doors and passages winding downward.

But it’s more than enough time for me to reflect on the fact that Vanya Calrooke apparently let herself be imprisoned in the first place.

She’s no warrior supreme, to be fair. But at the same time, I find it concerning that any of my generals, high-ranked or not, can essentially be imprisoned without injuring or taking down any of their “captors.” This reflects badly on her capabilities. And on my judgment, for still keeping her alive.

Maybe that needs to change.

Kingship takes competence, and if I can’t manage my armies, then I’m no better than that feckless fool Zen Rathmore to rule Illustria.

The music swells as I enter the deepest of the passageways into the dungeons. I do enjoy the orchestral feeling of danger approaching via violin. Especially as I’m always the danger that approaches.

As I do now, going down the steep steps into the dungeon while the violin’s tone rises shrilly to a monstrous crescendo worthy of my reputation. Vanya has broken out from her cell, which is nice to see. I don’t think I could have forgiven her if she’d accepted captivity so tamely. At least she’s maintained some of her savageness, even in her captivity.

“There you are,” I say when I spot her lurking in a corner. “What do y—”

She screams.

How odd. This is usually the reaction I get when I’m lancing someone through the chest or tearing their jugular from their neck. And it’s definitely not a typical tyrannical Vanya move.

I don’t quite know what to do here.

Vanya looks unlike herself, too. Her amber eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them, and her nose is scrunched up, making her look like a small mouse who’s just seen the trap snapping shut. It’s so different from her usual viciousness.

Her scream cuts through the violins and fills the stone dungeons with echoes of terror. And before I can say another word, before I can even attempt to reason with her, Vanya ducks, dodges past me, and runs out of the dungeon as if demons from the Decaying Forest are at her heels.

As if she’s unarmed and helpless. And scared.

I blink.

I don’t think I can remember anything like this ever happening before.

It’s possible that Vanya is frightened that I’m here to punish her because she failed to kill Elle Argenti. I do not treat failure lightly.

How annoying. She should know better than this. To rush away in what can only be construed as a panic attack feels cowardly.

I sigh and disappear.

My shadow powers whisk me through my fortress and leave me in my study in the blink of an eye. The great bell in the eastern tower booms out, a slow and steady tolling of the hour through the darkness. It’s already midnight, and the flames in the ancient hearthstone burn low as I open my treasure vault.

No jewels or gold here, however. Money has no real value to me. What I keep in the gigantic carved stone chest in my study are weapons and equipment indispensable for winning this war. It’s a jealously guarded hoard, which none but I have ever laid hands on.

Like this shining silver-blue crystal ball, set on a plinth of rock marble and glinting with mysterious lights. I carry it carefully to my desk and focus my thoughts on Vanya. What is she doing? Where is she? Why is she behaving so differently?

The luminescent rich clouds swirling around the surface of the opaque crystal part to show me the path winding away from the Dark Fortress and into the Evernight Forest from above. Vanya runs clumsily, all of her usual lithe speed gone, and stumbles more than once.

I spread my hands out on the desk and bow my head over the crystal, trying to penetrate her thoughts. There’s an unfamiliar lag, however, that I’ve never come across before. It’s almost as if the usual distance between myself and the subject of my surveillance has grown unimaginably vast.

But she’s there. She’s right there. My own general, the Lady Vanya Calrooke, is only a quarter of a mile away from my fortress at this point.

And yet I’m unable to reach her. She’s going away from me in both body and mind, something one of my generals has never been able to do before.

Almost of its own volition, my fist comes down on the table with a thudding slam on the solid wood.

What is Vanya even doing? And how in the name of everything unholy is she evading my grasp?