The Hollow King's Forgotten Queen

Varga

Blood, sweat and dirt coated my face, but I didn’t stop to defend my castle.

Smoke thickened the air, sharp with pitch and scorched stone, and it mattered not that these were my people uprising against me.

The new reformation would not wash away our beliefs in the old gods.

The ones who gave my ancestors powers through sorcery.

I swung my sword and it sliced through the man who ran to me.

“Sire, there was an ambush from the south.”

The south. Where my wife and unborn child fled toward her family.

Morana.

They came with fire. They came for blood. I would give them both.

I roared and grabbed hold of my axe from my back. Between the Widow Maker and Death Defier, I slaughtered my way across the battlefield to the garrison. My men had my horse ready. Two followed behind me, but they would not be able to keep up with me. Not this eve.

Jax ran free as I rode him hard, the night wind cold against blood already cooling on my skin.

The fear of what I may find grew as I saw my men left to die at the side of the road.

I pulled on the reins when I saw the smoke up ahead.

The carriage that I placed Morana in was still up in smoke, embers crawling along its blackened frame. I steadied Jax as I swung my leg over and landed on the ground.

Please be well, my love. Please be alive.

Hope rose when I checked the carriage. It was empty. The horses were long gone. I circled the carriage and my foot bumped into something. The dying light only showed a dark shadow on the ground, the air gone thick with the stench of burned flesh and pitch.

My men came and with them light.

The corpse was burned.

On its side.

Legs tucked in.

As if to save the prince.

I did not deny the truth before my eyes. It was her. Her small stature. The patches of velvet that remained, scorched black at the edges, clinging still to blistered skin.

I fell to my knees and the light from the burning torch shone down on the corpse. The gold around her neck was gone, but so was her skull.

I screamed toward the sky, calling the wrath of the Lord of Death. On the Enchantress of the Souls. I cursed all of Talaksia before I turned to my men.

“Burn everything. Raze it to the ground. There is to be no mercy.”

That was the night that Varga Belascu died and the monster was born.

Upon this night shall they continue to pay their dues.

The torch dipped lower, its light guttering, and I saw the skull beneath the wheel of the carriage.

Morana, my love. They shall pay.