Chapter 3

The King on the Carnelian Throne

“Uh,” Katelin trails off as I take a step back, moving to stand over the young child who has since stopped wiping off the harness.

I prick my ears, taking in Seneca and Icarus. The two don’t move, and the child crawls a pace until they’re pressed up against a foreleg, fingers knotted in the feathers around my hoof.

“What do you mean you’re here because of Arcane?” Katelin finishes.

Seneca inclines her head slightly. She spreads her palms. “Arcane’s dead, isn’t he?”

I raise my head, snorting. “He is.” I keep my voice flat.

How does Seneca not know? Everyone does. Who are they?

When the child whimpers, fear rolling off them in waves strong enough that I can feel each pulse, I blow a breath of air across their hair and nuzzle into their forehead. They bring their little hand up to my chin, pressing their fingertips into my whiskers. I only smile when they tug at my mouth and face.

“Gentle,” I whisper.

“You talk,” the child says, big brown eyes gazing up at me with unfiltered wonder.

Only a few years younger than Astra at most, they remind me of my stepdaughter.

“I do.”

Someone approaches, beckoning with their hands for the child to come with them as several carry Milla’s body away, wrapped haphazardly in a torn strip of burlap. People disperse at the sight of unfamiliar others. No one recognizes them, and if they’re working alongside the King, they’re a danger.

It wouldn’t be the first time the King tried to turn tricks. Some have fallen, believing his sugar-sweet lies. Seneca and Icarus could be part of the King’s tricks, some new effort of his to try to sway some to his side, to influence them to listen, to make them hear his false tale.

Are they? Are Seneca and Icarus followers of the King and the Amethyst Throne?

“Arcane was the Midnight Wolf, right?” Seneca asks.

“Where did you come from?” Katelin asks in turn.

I nudge the child into the arms of the person who scoops them up and turns, carrying them away. Heat thrumming through my veins and tingling within my horn, I watch the retreating person and child and Seneca and Icarus, ready to intervene and portal the child away. No innocents should get caught in the crossfire, especially not children. Seneca and Icarus can wait for just a moment; this child needs to be safe.

Katelin glances at the hill above the Sea where the King’s castle resides, and Seneca follows her gaze. A few spires and steeples and towers peek up, visible from the angle and above the handful of tents still standing and the few trees. A thin, triangular flag sways in a light breeze. I remember seeing it every time a Guard would bring me to the King’s castle to help with whatever addition he wanted to build at that moment in time. I’d spooked the first few times at the sight of it flapping erratically in the wind, but after the Guard and Soldiers beat me out of my fears, I no longer spooked.

“Ahh, so that’s where he lives,” Seneca murmurs. “Icarus was wondering. We were debating on our way here. We’d’ve been here sooner, but unfortunately…” Seneca gestures to Icarus’s bound wing, and he releases a long, low chirp. “Stuck wing. He can’t fly.”

“Is that something we can help with?” I ask, squinting.

Is his wing genuinely stuck? Can he truly not move it, or is this fake?

Icarus ticks his head to the side, eyes flashing with something dry and sardonic. Feathers along his back ruffling, he chitters, lower jaw chattering as he seems to try to say something.

“I know, Icarus. I know,” Seneca says. “But Icarus is saying that no, you cannot help with his wing in how you might be thinking.”

“Why can we not help?” Katelin asks, crossing her arms over her chest. Her shirt tightens across her back with the movement and her long, dark hair shifts.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Seneca glances at Icarus, who releases a low screech, high and shrill.

“Ok, ok, I get it.” Seneca rubs at an ear, but with a smile on her face, I don’t think she really means the supposed implied irritation. Or she at least is feigning it. She seems so genuine, and her friendship with Icarus seems so true as well, but the King has some good actors and he himself fooled me for so long. “No, you cannot help. The King bound Icarus’s wing. Before you say it, not this King. The King who attacked Icarus was a different King. The King we know I think was someone different. Does your King wear a hideous orange?”

Katelin shakes her head. “No, our King wears purple.” She plucks at her shirt. “He wears an outfit like this. It’s pretty close to these colors.”

Seneca grimaces, then turns to the golden eagle. “I don’t know what’s worse. Those purples or the oranges of our King, Icarus.”

Icarus snorts, laughing in a string of trilled chirps.

The last of the crowd disperses, young child gone and leaving behind only me and Katelin with Seneca and Icarus.

“Yeah, they’re both pretty shitty.”

“So you have a King, too?” I ask. “Where are you from? There’s only one King, and he lives in the castle and sits on the Amethyst Throne.”

Seneca shakes her head. “No, the King sits on the Carnelian Throne.”

“Where did you say you’re from, again?” I press, walking forward until I’m even with Katelin, whose dark hair sways in the breeze.

Icarus stalks in a circle, feathers ruffling as he huffs, chittering an irritated breath. He scoops up a talon-ful of dirt and throws it. Seneca doesn’t blink at the action and ignores him.

“We’re from Ragdon, but our Ragdon is different than your Ragdon. Arcane’s Midnight Tear, it resets time, in a sense. But it also creates different… timelines of Ragdon Island,” Seneca says. “They’re almost the same. Our Ragdon Islands both have a King, but yours sits on the Amethyst Throne and ours sits on the Carnelian Throne. However, the main difference is how the Ragdon Islands were made. The original island came first, made by Erebus, of course. However, when a Midnight Wolf blinks and sheds the Midnight Tear, the timeline splits into two and that Ragdon Island splits into as well.”

“How many Ragdon Islands are there?” Katelin asks.

Seneca shrugs. “As many as there have been Midnight Wolves. I don’t know the number. I don’t know if anyone does. I think only Lucius and Erebus know that number.”

I narrow my eyes, snorting as I swish my tail and stomp a hoof. “How do you know that?”

“Before the King bound Icarus’s wing, he and I spent a long time working to figure out how we could work best to get to another timeline of Ragdon Island. We ended up not having to, which is good because I don’t think there is a way. Arcane’s Midnight Tear was different, though. It wasn’t the same.”

Katelin shook her head. “Something was different.”

“We got pulled into his implosion after he shed the Midnight Tear, which should’ve been impossible since we were not in your timeline of Ragdon Island. But we did. Something was different.”

I look off to the side, ears swiveling as I listen out for any signs of danger.

Arcane brought them to this timeline of Ragdon.

No wonder they smelled slightly of him, even if I knew the Midnight Wolf wasn’t the cause of the harm on Icarus— that was the King. Seneca and Icarus’s King? Our King in another timeline? Was he even the same King? The King on the Cornelian Throne, whoever he is.

Arcane’s magic clings to Seneca and Icarus.

The Deer and the Eagle, they’d said.

Sticking to their skin and beings, I can sense the last remnants of him, the last bits of his power as the Midnight Wolf, the last bits of his self before he disappears forever, lost to Lucius’s claim for all eternity until Lucius claims Ragdon itself, brings Erebus to death, and the world will end, taking the universe’s something into a vast nothing.

“I think something was different,” I find myself murmuring.

“How so?” Seneca turns to me.

She walks over to a log and sits down after wiping off the dust. Icarus follows, settling down on the ground, ruffling out his feathers. When he tries to preen the feathers on his bound wing but can’t bend enough to reach them, Seneca wiggles her fingers without turning her head and Icarus sidles up closer, sitting down further and placing his wing in her lap. With movements that are too confident and smooth to not have been done a thousand times, Seneca begins to run her fingers across Icarus’s feathers, mimicking what he’d do himself if his wing weren’t bound by a magic none of us can undo.

Icarus whistles a few times.

“You cannot do it yourself,” she murmurs. “We help each other.”

“Arcane shed the Midnight Tear after the King’s Dragon set fire to the Sea. You’re standing in the Sea now. This used to be countless tents. A lot of weird stuff happened—.”

“BROOOOOOK!”

I flinch at Astra’s high-pitched squeal. Normally I’d be thrilled to see her, but not with Seneca and Icarus here.

Astra races over, light blue wings spread wide and mouth open with her tongue lolling to the side. Her green dew claws splay out as she slows to an easy lope, brown hair bouncing with every stride.

I step between them, watching as Seneca glances up from where she’s working on Icarus’s wing. The golden eagle tilts his head and allows Astra to approach. Jabez chases behind his daughter, too slow to keep up and I cannot stop her in time. He pants, gasping for breath as he stops beside me.

Icarus makes no move to pull his wing back and attack, but I still rush forward, pulling magic into my horn.

“Hi!” Astra exclaims. “I’m Astra! Who are you?”

Icarus chatters in response, blinking as he listens to her.

Seneca looks between Astra and me, amusement lightening her dark brown gaze.

“Who are you?” Astra presses Icarus, leaning forward, ears pricked and tail raised.

“He’s not gonna reply,” Seneca says, elbows on her knees.

Astra turns to Seneca. “Why not?”

“He can’t speak.”

Astra frowns. “Why not?” she repeats

Jabez approaches his daughter from behind and bunts his nose into her back. Katelin watches the interaction between Astra and Seneca from the side, while I remain a little closer, magic coursing through my body, a heartbeat away from exploding.