Valerian
I have waited three centuries to watch a Queen walk into her own throne room and mean it, and I am not going to pretend, even to myself, that my eyes stay dry.
We march for the Palace at first light, or what passes for it here, the crimson murk lifting to crimson glare.
And she’s different. It’s not a costume change and it’s not a pep talk.
I’ve watched her be brave before, watched her be brave while terrified, which is the best kind.
This isn’t that. The fear’s simply not driving anymore.
She walks at the front of us for once, not tucked in the middle where we’ve always kept her, and the realm feels it.
I swear the ground steadies under her feet.
A fire geyser we pass roars up gold instead of red as she goes by, and she doesn’t flinch, she grins at it, like it’s saying hello, and maybe it is.
“You’re staring, arse-face,” she says, without looking round.
“I’m strategising.”
“You’re staring. It’s fine. I’d stare at me too, I look incredible.
” But she drops back a step to walk with me, and her voice goes low and serious.
“Tell me what claiming the throne actually does. Mechanically. Because the Oracle does love a vibe and I need to know what I’m walking into.
And I need to know what it does for the rest of it. The book. The link. Gav.”
This is why I love her, if you want the truth of it. Three centuries of scheming demons and I finally lose my heart to a bookseller who wants the mechanics.
“When you claim the throne fully,” I tell her, “you stop being the reopened realm’s caretaker and become its sovereign in truth.
The realm recognises you. Every demon in it, high and low, knows their Queen on sight.
They’ll no longer attack you. They’ll answer to you.
That alone turns a war.” I glance at her.
“And the book. The Arcane Tome isn’t just a record.
It’s the heart of the realm, the thing the Sorcerers folded us into.
In the hands of a Queen who hasn’t claimed her throne, it’s a book.
In the hands of a Queen who has, it’s a weapon and a key and a well of every scrap of power this realm has ever held.
It restores what’s been lost.” I hold her gaze.
“Including lives, little kitty. Yours. The two you burned. The book in a claimed Queen’s hands can give them back. ”
She stops walking. “It can undo the claw-marks?”
“It can. And more than that.” This is the part I’ve been turning over since the Oracle spoke, the part that’s finally let me breathe.
“The reason each death has weakened you and strengthened her is that a death frays the soul, and a frayed soul is where a fragment gets its grip. A claimed Queen, whole, with the book, doesn’t fray.
Take the throne, Tabby, and the bleeding stops.
The countdown stops. She stops gaining ground with every death because there’s no loose ground left to gain. ”
“And the link.” She looks past me, to Gavriel, walking rear-guard with his shield, always watching, always braced to die when she does. “The Auric Shield. His and mine. Every time I die, he dies. If I claim the throne and it stops me fraying, does it...”
“I can rework it.” I’ve been aching to tell her this.
“I couldn’t before, because the bond fed on the reciprocity, your death and his, tied at the root, same as Tabeitha.
But a claimed Queen commands the realm’s own magic, and the Auric Shield is the realm’s magic.
With the book, with you on the throne, I can reach into that bond and change its shape.
From a chain into a shield in truth. He guards you, protects you, finds you, and if the worst ever comes for you again, it does not take him with you.
He lives. Whatever happens to you, Gavriel lives. ”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then her eyes go bright, and she looks back at me, and she says, fierce, “Then that’s the first thing I do. Before the war. Before Mordecai. The second I’ve got the throne and the book, you free him. Promise me.”
“He’ll argue,” I warn. “He’ll say his place is to die when you die.”
“I know he will. He’s an idiot. A big, loyal, grumpy idiot.
” Her voice cracks, just slightly. “But I’m not going to spend the rest of my nine lives knowing every time I fall, I take him with me.
He didn’t sign up for me. The shield stuck him to me before he ever had a say.
He’s given me everything. I’m giving him this back.
His own death, that’s his and not mine. Promise me, Val. ”
“I promise,” I say, and I mean it with everything I have left, which after these months isn’t much, but it’s hers.
We come over the last ridge, and there it is. The Demon Palace. Obsidian spires clawing the red sky. My prison for three centuries, my home for a year, the seat of the Queen I never thought I’d live to serve for real.
And beyond it, far off on the northern horizon, a bruise of cold white light spreads along the edge of the world, and even from here I can feel it, clean and freezing and wrong, growing.
The Sorcerers. Massing. Days away, the Oracle said. Perhaps less.
Tabby sees it too. She looks at the white on the horizon, and she looks at her Palace, and she squares her shoulders. She doesn’t ask any of us whether she’s ready, because she’s finally stopped asking permission for anything.
“Come on,” she says. “I’ve got a chair to sit in.”