Standing tall like a chiseled statue, Isobel commanded, “Explain!”

Sybil’s knees gave out and she crashed, landing on the soft grass as the impression of the Boneforged Monarch dissipated. The rush of movement expelled air from her lungs with a gasp, which devolved into a chuckle, then a bout of giggles. Tears welled and fell before she could whip them away, staining the Huntress’ ratty cloak she still wore.

With his shirt dyed red and what little stubble he had painted mangy crimson, Leland stepped over, sitting beside the princess. His hand still promised healing, the green glow of Touch of Regeneration clashing against the purple of the halo flying above his head. He tapped Sybil then himself, gesturing to Isobell if she needed healing.

She did not, only repeating, “Explain!”

A glance at Sybil told Leland she was far beyond dealing with the Huntress, so he answered what he could. “That was an Archon. Why it was fixated on Sybil, I don’t know. What it said to me, I don’t know. Why it didn’t just kill us, especially after you attacked it twice, I don’t know. Satisfied?”

Isobel snorted, her tone turning fiery. “No. Why—”

“Look,” Leland interrupted with bite of his own, “I don’t know and I doubt Sybil will either. Something happened to her, that much is obvious, but can you stop with your ‘I’m more powerful than you, answer to my will or suffer the consequences!’ façade? You are literally doing us more harm than good most of the time.”

She recoiled subtly, all notions of emotions other than anger fading away. “Excuse me!? Façade?” she screeched. “Who do you think—”

Leland tuned out her rant, listening halfway for a break for her to breathe. When that came, he quickly elbowed in.

“You don’t think I notice how you stare into the campfire? How many times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to find you still awake on look out!?” he spit, yelling far louder than anyone should in a monster infested woods. “Not to mention how you followed Glenny, Jude, and I for months stepping in when you knew we were in true danger. I saw through your charade long ago, Huntress! You’re not the hardened lone wolf you think you are! You care! I get it! You care! But you are also uncaring!”

Isobel tried to force in a string of words, but each fell away as Leland continued.

“Yell at me all you want! Demand me to fight single handedly, slap me when I do bad, mock me when I do worse! But don’t you dare yell at your Princess! We both know that,” he gestured to the deconstructed arrow still floating a few steps away, “is far beyond anything she is used to! Anything we are used to! So drop the façade and act like an adult! You are the only one in this party that can truly protect her!”

Leland went on to say something about how if he was killed, she’d be the only one left to help Sybil get back home. But Isobel had stopped listening. Instead she looked at Sybil, her Princess, and how the young girl had stopped crying and instead stared at Leland with bloodshot eyes. Her mouth was left agape, bisecting the scar that crossed from the bottom of her jaw up just under her nose.

A question came to her, how was she supposed to protect anyone from an Archon?

Leland was right, in a way, Isobel did care, something she finally admitted to herself when she disobeyed direct orders from Aunty P. and lied to the High Inquisitor. But that was a problem when an enemy approached she could neither see, sense, nor fight.

She cursed at herself. How did the kid notice the creature before her? How did the other kid communicate with it and get it to leave? How did she fail to kill it? How did she fail to protect the two kids she decided to protect?

Embarrassing, especially when kid number one started yelling at her for being pissed. How was she supposed to tell him, and the other one, that her anger was only toward herself, not them?

The answer was obvious, right?

“Sorry,” she choked out, the word like rotting meat against her tongue. How long had it been since she apologized and actually meant it?

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Leland sputtered his rant to a brisk stop, his eyes going wide. Sybil, not having the same relationship with the Huntress, took his lead, staring at the former Inquisitor with something far beyond shock.

“Sorry,” Isobel said again, this time far quieter, like she wasn’t saying it to the kids but rather to someone else.

Leland and Sybil shared a glance. Her tears were gone, but her cheeks were still wet. Regardless, the Youngest Princess of the Palemarrow Kingdom spoke.

“There’s a prophecy,” she began with, pulling Isobel’s eyes from staring at the ground, “that lords over the title of Queen for my family. As kids we were told about how the Boneforged Monarch made a contract with the First Queen, and every Queen since. We were to present ourselves to that statue in Ruinsforth for judgment, and if the Monarch appeared, then that child would become Queen… and replace the current one.”

A silent tear fell down her cheek. Sybil continued, “And that only one Queen could be alive at a time. Whenever this ritual finishes, my mother will be dead, and I will be ruling over a kingdom.”

A hardness befell both Leland and Isobell’s foreheads. Suddenly their yelling match was unfounded, dumb even.

“I don’t really understand how,” Sybil whispered, “but the Archon… it knew of the prophecy. It answered a question that I’ve had for years.”

“What question?” Leland quietly asked.

A somber smile eclipsed her lips. “There’s a hallway in the castle with a portrait of every Queen over the years. Some had Kings, others not. But each King was always different. Their skin color, their hair style, their facial features and how large their smiles are.” Sybil laughed. “My grandfathers were unique. My grandmother, and my mother for that matter, were not. They – we – have the same face. A face that is also shared by the Boneforged Monarch. I had noticed, but not enough to question it past all of us being related.”

Leland suddenly flinched and forced himself not to grimace. The back of his hand was bleeding, pecked by the crow tattoo, by the brand of the Curse Lord’s Champion. He frowned, trying to discern what the painful gesture meant in context.

“Do… what do you think that means, Sybil?” he asked, finding Isobel glaring sideways at him. She had noticed the tattoo move.

Sybil shook her head, putting both hands to her chest and rubbing her knuckles. She didn’t say what she actually thought, she didn’t want to even acknowledge that as a possibility. Still, Leland had asked a question and she needed to answer.

“Clones?” she said, more as a question than a statement. Even to her it sounded ridiculous.

Leland dropped his gaze, looking at his tattoo. The crow shook its head. “I don’t think you are a clone,” he said, relaying the message.

“Maybe your mother has a mutation that is shared between generations?” Isobel asked, her tone oddly soothing.

Again Leland looked at the crow for answers. It shook its head again. “Possibly,” he translated, “but unlikely, I’d say. All of those years and each Queen had the same mutation and was picked by the Boneforged Monarch? Unlikely.”

“But maybe it’s the mutation the Monarch chooses—” Isobel cut herself off when Leland glared at her.

“It is not a mutation,” he said firmly. Then a thought occurred to him. He presented it, “Maybe something to do with the Monarch’s soul?”

He glanced down, finding the crow nodding. It then pointed its inky wing out. Leland followed it, finding Sybil, looking spooked.

“You already thought about that?” he asked, pausing for a moment only to say, “You already knew it was something to do with the Boneforged Monarch’s soul?”

“I didn’t want to believe it,” she whispered. She stared at the crackling fire, finding its dancing flames enthralling.

Isobel stepped before her. “Don’t clam up now,” she said tenderly, both her hands on the Princess’ shoulders.

Sybil blinked, her eyes dry. “Do you know why the First Queen settled the Palemarrow capital where it is?”

“Ivory Reach?” Leland asked. “Because it’s in a highly defensible location? How many cities can say they are protected by the rib cage of a dead Lord?”

“Exactly. The Nameless Lord, as those bones are called. A name lost to history. A Lord who had fallen in battle long before our time, as the fables read… but that’s not what my mother says. She claims the Nameless Lord isn’t a Lord at all. It is a weapon crafted by the Boneforged Monarch herself to protect her own shredded soul as it slowly fixes itself.”

The crow tattoo nodded.

The conversation teetered from there. Leland asked many questions regarding this “shredded soul,” but as he was only a novice when it came to souls, he lacked the necessary inspiration to come to any conclusions. Isobel asked a bit more about the prophecy and the entailing ritual, all of which centered around the Queen’s death.

Those questions were hard for Sybil not because of the subject matter so much, but rather just how little she actually knew. For her whole life she had been standing on a patch of ice, but only now she realized just how large of an iceberg rested under the water. Worst of all, it was melting and soon enough would flip.

If it hadn’t already.

Exhaustion hit the group not long after, Sybil falling asleep first. Isobel and Leland didn’t speak, an understanding silently conveying between them. They needed to get the Princess back to her castle and the kingdom she was supposedly prophesied to rule.

Luckily the direction home intersected the eternal storm Leland needed to investigate for the Lord of Erupting Skies.

Thinking of the contract, something occurred to him. Why not forge a contract to travel faster?

He whispered, “Lord of Portals, I humbly wish to create a contract with you.”