ONE
KIYSA.
"You know, I know there are plenty of people that you could shoot at instead of your dearest,most beloved and eternally cherished sister."
Some sisters picked flowers together,told stories over a roaring fire,but not my sister Aylen and I. We much preferred to stand in the cold dirt with the rising sun on our backs, Aylen with her bow and new arrows,and I with a new book. I had wanted to read in the early light but instead I stood with my back against a tree as human target practice.
"I wouldn't exactly use beloved to describe you Kiysa, and I don't like anyone in town enough to want to shoot, consider yourself special,little sister. Also, last night I read the end of your book after you fell asleep so unless you want me to tell you how it ends, indulge me just this once. Now stop fidgeting." Aylen ordered,hazel eyes focused on not me,but the bark just beyond the top of my head.
If a stranger had walked upon the sight of Aylen with her bow at currently aimed my head, we would need a great explanation. But anyone who lived in the our village and beyond it knew of Aylen Byrd,the Shield of Xentis, the Queen's Wolf. Xentis had many names for her, some kind,some not since the War of Queens ended two years ago, but in my eighteen years of life, I have only called her sister.
I was fourteen when she left to fight alongside Queen Haella,our queen and Aylen's best friend since before I even existed. They would follow each other anywhere and when Queen Haella's sister positioned herself to take Haella's crown and Xentis,I knew it was only a matter of time before I would watch Aylen ride to her death.
I was sixteen when the war ended, and Queen Haella returned Aylen. The Shield of Xentis had come home, or what was left of her. The war had broken Aylen and Haella couldn't ever look my mother in the eye when she brought home. I found myself filled with rage at the queen I had once thought of as a second sister for taking Aylen away and giving us back a shroud of a being. My world altered the day Haella's carriage came to our doorstep.
Which is why when I saw her carriage for the first time in two years approach our home out of the corner of my eye, I didn't even notice Aylen's arrow in the tree above me.
"Don't look so terrified, you know I would never hurt you. What? What is it?" Aylen said,and looked at me and then looked behind her. Without a word, Aylen took off,bow and quiver forgotten. I ran after her,both of us barreling through the door of our home,nearly knocking over our mother and several of the Queen's guards.
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Aylen took my hand and together we started to bow, but before we could,Queen Haella lifted her hand,hood falling to her shoulders.
"Please, don't do that, you of all people should not bow to me. I have come to ask you both one question and only one question." Haella said and took something gold from one of her guards. It wasn't until I heard Aylen gasp that I realized what exactly it was.
Queenspear.
Haella took a deep breath and held it out in front of Aylen,her hands slightly shaking.
"Will you kill me?"
TWO
AYLEN.
There was a stillness in the room.
Kiysa's shock was readable,hands clenched around the back of a chair she had started to pull out for the Queen. No one wanted to be the one to speak first, who could? What are the appropriate words when your best friend and Queen asks you to kill her?
I couldn't look at Haella,so I looked at Queenspear. I've seen my face in its reflection only three times in my life.
The first time I was eleven,when Mother forged it. For generations,the women in our family made Queenspears. When Grandmother's hands could no longer lift a weapon, Mother took over our trade,Haella's spear her first commission.The moment I held it in my hands, I knew I was never going to make the next Queenspear when my mother's hands could no longer lift a weapon.
The second time was nearly ten winters later when I took my place as a Shield of Xentis in the War of Queens. I had felt such a lightness of being when Haella dragged the blade across my palm,bonding my blood to Queenspear. I was never more sure of anything in my life then to fight for something tangible, to embrace the possibility of death and rise above it.
The third time I was facing the possibility of certain death but there was no embrace of it,no rise,just pain,unending,unyielding pain in the dirt,with nothing but the screams of others failing to embrace that glorious death. In the dirt I wasn't a Shield of Xentis, I wasn't the Queen's Wolf, I was a girl with broken bones and the bloody remains of a left hand, dying because two sister queens couldn't get along.
And on this fourth time, I look at Queenspear and I don't see that eleven year old, I don't see the Queen's Wolf on the precipice of beautiful and righteous battle, I don't even see the broken and bloodied girl in the dirt.
All I see is Death.
I took the spear into my hand once again, running my hand again the gold, and find the courage to look my queen in the eye.
"Yes."