Youngest Princess Sybil Palemarrow, now to-be-crowned queen, sat curled up, a gray eggshell cocoon around her. Through the membrane and calcified outer layers, she looked asleep and uninjured, but a slight dulling whine of magic slowly released from her.

If Leland wasn’t a mage, if he hadn’t pushed himself to see through Sybil’s divine mask, if he had not stood before Lords and spoken to them as equals, if he had not fought against their magic and lived, he wouldn’t have noticed.

“She’s leaking,” he whispered, the sight of her removing all his prepared notions of sarcasm and posturing. Suddenly standing before Aunty P and telling her off didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, not the war outside, Ashford, even the Sightless King.

Sybil was leaking divine magic and mana, and that wasn’t good… right?

Aunty P’s blood soaked eyebrow rose like a free climber rushing up a cliff. “What?”

The single word punctuated the air with a force that reverberated in the drinking glasses and porcelain dinnerware. It shook Leland and Isobel to their cores, despite no actual power fueling her question.

“I was told that everything was progressing for her correctly…” Leland wasn’t too sure of what he was saying, but the Lord of Curses herself had told him that. “So hopefully the leaking is fine.”

“I don’t sense anything,” Isobel said.

He glanced back at her. “Yeah. Trust me on this.”

That roused a scoff from Aunty P. “Trust you? How could I possibly trust you.”

And just like that, those prepared notions of sarcasm and posturing flooded back into Leland. His spine straightened, his chin rose, a glare glinted from his eyes. He watched the woman who ordered his execution, critical of every gesture she made, every flinch she tried to hide.

She was scared.

It was like a beacon in the night once he noticed it. The blood, the healed head wound, the sitting in a fully furnished and set room despite a war going on not fifty paces from the front door.

This, this right here, had surprised her. Ashford’s attack, the bones of a dead Lord breaking apart. She, in her web of spies and Inquisitors, had missed something. And now, instead of the castle being a makeshift headquarters with temporary healing stations and barracks, it was primed for tea and cookies.

Leland even surmised that his and Isobel’s appearance here in this moment was a surprise. Otherwise she would have cleaned, or had someone else clean up her blood instead of showing the weakness of being woundable.

But was it worth it to bring this up? Did Leland want to press this issue and gain a step, or did he want to put it aside and work from a step behind if it meant ending the threat outside the gates. In the end, he decided to be the bigger man. After all, Aunty P could still order his execution rather than—

“You’re scared.”

Leland’s jaw went slack and he slowly, ever so slowly, tilted his head to utterly glare at Isobel.

Unconcerned , she continued, “How, in the name of the Lords, did you, of all people in this cursed city, get hurt? Unless, of course, all of that blood is fake and you were making some sort of power move against us.”

Leland agreed with her assessment. How did a spymaster general get hurt? Especially in her castle with armed guards around every corner. He looked at Aunty P, gauging any movement he could see. She had hardened over, nothing slipping past her mask of a blank stare.

“Did you not see the yard?” Aunty P asked, her tone sarcastic like a mother complaining to their child about stepping in a puddle.

“I did,” replied Isobel like a racehorse taking off at the starting bell’s ring. “And I also saw that the castle itself was unbroken. It turns out, a castle made of bone can’t be broken by the same bone.”

“And couldn’t I have been outside the castle when shards fell?”

“No,” Leland answered, deciding in for a penny in for a pound despite still wishing Isobel had kept her mouth shut. “You were by her side,” he pointed at Sybil in her cocoon of bone, “and there is no chance ever you would take her out of the castle in that condition.”

Like a politician with decades of experience, Aunty P replied by not acknowledging the previous point in the slightest. “And what do you know about her condition?”

Leland blinked, noticing the switch. “I know enough. But obviously you don’t, and that is why you put her in the safest location in the kingdom. Here, right in this castle. Where you acted as her personal guard.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“And you know that how?”

“Because you wouldn’t trust it to anyone else.” He paused for a moment, a glimmer of an olive branch surfacing. “I know I wouldn’t have.”

Her eyes locked to his. “I repeat my question, how can I trust you?”

Leland raised his arm up and gave a half shrug. “Don’t know. How can centuries-made prejudices be scrubbed away in an afternoon? The answer to that question could end many different wars across the world.”

Isobel leaned forward. “I have an answer.”

A shift in the air crossed the room.

“Do you?” Aunty P asked, her voice borderline hysterically jovial. “Oh tell me, O’ great Huntress! What wisdom can you sprinkle on me!?”

Leland shared a glance with Isobel.

“Uh, you just get Sybil to recount the events after we were taken when she wakes up.”

It started as a scoff, soon turning into a chuckle, then into a boisterous giggle, then a cackling laugh. Aunty P slapped her hand onto the table like Isobel had said the funniest joke ever created. The air shifted again and the Eldest Princess went dead silent.

Slowly she began to tap the table, more specifically a particular stack of papers. “Do you know what is listed in these reports?” Then without giving time for a reply, she said, “Of course you don’t. These,” she made a big gesture, flopping the stack at Isobel aggressively, “are the dead. These are the names of everyone who has died in this city, not including the cultists that were teleported here, civilian, Inquisitor, guard, soldier.”

Leland tried—

“six thousand nine hundred and eighty four.” Aunty P mulled, her eyes going glassy. “That is how many people have died because someone failed. Because I have failed. I thought my information network to be indomitable. Other nations and factions have tried to usurp the crown before, and all have failed before their planning phase even finished. Why? Because I hear everything.”

With a stiff arm, Aunty P pushed the stack of papers onto the floor, her own blood soaking the pages.

“The cracks started showing when you appeared, Leland. ‘Calamity.’ That single word, uttered by the Reflection King, sent my spies into a gathering frenzy. The name came back many times, but no information past ‘the calamity was someone powerful’ came back. Oh! But how people were afraid of it. People ran from it. They didn’t understand why they ran from it, but they did. Generational tales, mother to daughter, father to son, of the ‘Calamity’ and they sprint away and pray. They didn’t have any idea why, but they still told these stories.”

She paused, a single tear wiped away. “Low and behold, the Calamity is a Vile Lord. One so secretive and secluded that not even the kingdom’s Champions knew to ask about them when the divine decrees were initially issued. How was it someone so large went undetected by me for so long? How many other cracks are out there? Where does my information system fail? And how does it fail with a kid? A kid of two of my best Inquisitors no less? A kid who I’ve shared the dinner table with. A kid who I let my niece play with in a fountain ?”

She locked eyes with Leland. “And how is it, that same niece fell in love with him?”

Leland went to respond, but she continued right on by.

“One kid, and now my city falls into disarray. I’ve never had so many Inquisitors ignore my orders before. Your parents, I understand. They would protect you regardless of what you are. But her!?” Aunty P glared at Isobel. “The Huntress was a dog of the military before she met you. She took orders and she killed whomever we marked. On of our best assassins disguised as a hunter and tracker, and so emotionally lost the likelihood she’d kill herself before disobeying orders was ten thousand to one.”

A weight filled the air, and not from Aunty P’s rant. Isobel stared with fire in her eyes.

“And yet,” the regent queen spoke, her volume turning soft, “here she is. Healed by a kid whose Lord defies all rational explanation. He who is loved by all. Friends, family, my niece.”

Slowly she looked up, finding Leland. “Tell me, how is it possible?”

Before Isobel could explode, Leland held his arm out, blocking her path. She flinched from the gesture, and yet, relaxed. He breathed easy, and stepped forward, noticing his crow tattoo watching him.

He stopped a comfortable, but intimate, distance away from Aunty P, then spoke.

“My Lord is the Lord of Curses. She is my great, great, great, forty more greats, grandmother. She has never had a Legacy before me or since. I am her Champion, the Champion of Curses. They call her the ‘Calamity’ because once upon a time, at the dawn of time, really, some other Lords wished to use humanity as a sandbox to play in. They wanted to experiment and, for lack of a better term, play god. There were no restrictions in those days. Lords were true gods back then, the only limit to their power was, in fact, power.”

He snuck a glance at his tattoo. It watched him like only a grandmother could.

He continued, “She killed them all. Every single Lord who sought to play, or to increase their own power, at the expense of humanity. It took a special type of person to become a Lord, especially back then. Anything for more power, even if it was wrong.”

The crow held its head in shame.

“Some fell in line, others tried to fight back. But most Lords from that time died. From that point on she was known as the Calamity and purged the truly dark Lords while mentoring the good ones. The Lord of Magic speaks highly of her, for example. But that’s getting away from the point. To be a ‘Vile Lord,’ all a Lord has to do is kill another Lord, even if that Lord is evil incarnate.”

Leland kneeled, lining his eyes up with Aunty P’s. “I may be considered a Harbinger, but that title is far from what I truly am. My Lord wouldn’t have chosen me if she didn’t believe I’m a good person through and through. My magic may be in the hue of evil, but I assure you, I am not.”

Aunty P only had one question once it was apparent Leland had finished speaking.

“Why you?”

It was a good question, one Leland had thought of many times over the months. And while he had many answers to it, only one truly seemed to fit. He glanced at the crow tattoo. It was stark still, frozen, like how a tattoo was supposed to be.

“I think she wants me to succeed her as Lord of Curses.”