A while later, a knock on the door interrupted them.

  Zoë quickly let the doll she'd been creating fall into dust. She had no idea how Natalie and Hector might react to it, but given Natalie's father, she wasn't about to take that chance any time soon. Melody hurried to the door, behind which Rook waited.

  "Lunch," said Rook. She turned and walked away without another word.

  "...Thank you!" called Melody finally, after a moment's confused hesitation.

  Not often I see Melody totally speechless… "What's up with her?" wondered Zoë aloud.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Must be the cold-mercenary-sniper thing." She shrugged. "Assuming everybody in the camp is right."

  "Cinza said she was a spy and a traitor," murmured Melody. "I don't really see it though."

  "Mel, if you can read anything off that block of ice, I'd be shocked," said Zoë. "You want to go to lunch?"

  "Yes." Melody looked at her. "Are we staying?"

  "I don't know yet," said Zoë. "I still think we're way out of our league here."

  "I want to help her," said Melody. "Even if I didn't think she might be able to help me. She needs someone in her corner. Somebody who isn't Hector or Rook."

  "I'm not saying I don't want to help her," said Zoë, "but… what are we supposed to do?"

  "We'll know when it comes," said Melody. "Just like everything in life."

  "Everything?"

  "Everything," said Melody. She grinned. "I knew when I met you."

  "And which part told you to ask me to go away and then not speak to me for six months?" asked Zoë, smirking.

  "The dumb part." Melody rolled her eyes. "I think I made up for it though."

  Zoë held up the end of the multicolor scarf still wrapped around her neck. "This scarf's a good start."

  "Come on already!"

  Melody grabbed her and pulled her out of the room. The two of them emerged into the hallway of torches, where suddenly Zoë realized she had no idea where to go. After all, the 'throne room' hadn't really seemed like an eating place. She wondered if they should just go into the kitchen, following the source of magical energy, but something else happened instead.

  One of the torches suddenly changed from orange flames to green.

  "...Well, all right then," muttered Zoë.

  Melody, on the other hand, clapped her hands together with excitement. "Oh, this is so neat!"

  She darted forward, following the torches as they switched colors, seemingly all on their own. Zoë couldn't sense a spell anywhere telling them to change, beyond vague fluctuations in the main line of magical energy flowing through the hall. She followed Melody through the halls, which seemed more quiet and empty than before somehow with their footsteps as the only sound.

  "Why a castle?" she wondered aloud.

  "Didn't you ever want a castle when you were little?" asked Melody.

  "...No?"

  "I wanted to be a princess with my own castle." She slowed back down to a walk, taking Zoë's hand as they passed a wide teal-glass window overlooking the forest nearest Natalie's new home. "It was a big, safe place for all my family and friends to live in, away from everything going on around us I didn't really understand yet. Plus, you know, I'd get to wear pretty dresses and a crown and order everybody around," she added with a giggle.

  "Okay, now I'm interested," said Zoë.

  "In which part?" said Melody suggestively, her eyes flashing mischievously.

  Zoë was saved from answering as a hawk cry echoed from just around the next corner. They followed the green torchlight to a wide open room, where four long tables sat, covered with silverware and plates for dozens of people. A fifth sat perpendicular to the rest, and huge chandeliers hung from the ceiling with more torches set in them. The room was totally empty, of course, except for Natalie and Hector at the head table, setting out the last few dishes.

  Hang on… I actually recognize this place. She got this out of a movie and just… rebuilt it for herself. This whole castle is probably like that. Things Natalie knows that she was able to put back together. I bet if I really researched, I'd find others. The only thing missing is… well, all the people.

  "This is such a nice hall!" called out Melody as they walked down the aisles to join the other two. Rook was nowhere to be seen. Her head twisted left and right, looking at the huge glass windows dotting the ceiling, sunlight streaming through from the east. "You did really amazing work, Linnethea!"

  "Thanks," said Natalie as they sat down across from the others.

  "And this is my favorite food!" she added—and she wasn't lying. Zoë knew for a fact her favorite food sat on one of the many dishes they'd prepared.

  Hector smiled. He gestured. "¡Coma, por favor!"

  "Gracias," said Melody, and Zoë echoed her a moment later. They both bowed their heads briefly to pray.

  As they opened their eyes, Zoë was certain Natalie had briefly looked unsettled by the action. It passed, and soon enough, they were all digging into the food with gusto. Zoë filed it into the back of her mind nonetheless… just in case.

  Her dad probably used religion as part of his whole spiel… gotta be careful on that one.

  "Héctor, this was magnificent," said Melody, setting aside her plate.

  "Actually, mi reinita made that," said Hector, glancing at Natalie. She blushed, glancing away from them.

  "It's delicious. Thank you," said Melody.

  "Will you stay?" asked Natalie, still looking away, not meeting their eyes.

  The mood in the room instantly chilled. Melody hesitated, her hand still on her spoon. She glanced at Zoë. ...Okay, time to actually confront this I guess.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  "...We might," said Zoë finally. "I think we're both a little unsure what that means though."

  "Umm…" Natalie looked around, at the wide room, the ceiling above, everywhere. A hawk cried again, and from a perch in the rafters, it fluttered down to land on her shoulder. She rubbed its head briefly before turning back to Zoë. "I guess it just means living here. You can leave whenever you want, like I said. But, I figured… you two don't really have a home, right?"

  "We've got a tent," said Zoë with a shrug. She knew Melody wanted this more than anything, but was letting Zoë speak her piece first—another reason I love her. "The camp isn't that bad."

  "What's the coronation?" asked Melody.

  "Oh… well," said Natalie, glancing at Hector. "We just wanted to tell people this place isn't off-limits anymore. New queens in castles have coronations. So I thought I should have one. We wanted to hold it on New Year's Day, but then… well, a coronation doesn't mean much if nobody comes to see it."

  "Queen Linnethea of…" prompted Melody.

  "Queen Linnethea of Castle Hendricks," said Natalie with a shrug. "I didn't come up with anything else yet. We can name my queendom when it actually exists."

  "And we'd be part of your queendom?" asked Zoë.

  "Only if you want to be," said Natalie. "I promise to protect anybody in my borders. You can come and go if you want, and you just have to be a good person. That's all."

  Well isn't that the most vague criteria for citizenship I've ever heard. Should propose that to D.C. "Well, it's definitely nicer than our tent," said Zoë finally. This seems really low commitment. It's a risk, but… it'll make Mel happy, and I'd love to get out off the ground for once. "We'll think about it. Stay the night, maybe."

  "Okay," said Natalie.

  Hector began to clear the plates, setting aside the dishes which could be preserved as leftovers. Even with magic and an apparently easy supply of food—minus the cheese, of course—they still cared about waste. Natalie was talking to her hawk, still perched on her shoulder, while Zoë leaned back and stared up at the ceiling.

  "I wanted you guys to come," she added. "Hector and Rook said you seemed all right. She said you seemed 'worth knowing'."

  Mel's gonna want to stay. I'm still worried about all this, and Dad's right, I can't be too reckless. I'm only twenty-one, I've got a whole life ahead of me, and somebody I actually want to spend it with. I feel bad for Natalie, but… I just met her. This isn't my fight. I didn't even have a fight. Now I'm… what, signing up to be a soldier in her queendom?

  "I wanted to—" started Melody abruptly, before clamping down on her mouth with a squeak.

  Uh oh.

  "Huh?" asked Natalie, looking up.

  "Do you…" Melody cleared her throat, voice practically quivering with excitement. "Do you know if there's a way to awaken?"

  "...Well, you just read from a Scrap, like everybody," said Natalie. She shrugged.

  "But you'd die," said Zoë, as Melody deflated next to her. "Without Grey-eyes, you'd just die."

  "I dunno. I didn't meet her til like… months after I awakened," said Natalie doubtfully.

  Wait… what?

  Zoë fell back against her chair, dumbfounded. "You just… awakened, on your own?"

  "Yeah." She shrugged. "I guess that's not normal, though."

  Okay, so… Natalie just threw out one of the biggest things we knew about magic. Some people can awaken without Grey-eyes. That's… that's huge. But why?

  "What was different?" asked Melody breathlessly.

  Natalie frowned. "I dunno? I just… read a piece of the book. Just like everybody else. I don't have it anymore though," she added, as Melody opened her mouth. "Jackson burned it up."

  "If I read it… do you think—"

  "No way, Mel," said Zoë. "We're not taking that risk. We know you could die." She glanced at Natalie. "And we don't know why Nat— err, Linnethea's was any different."

  Natalie nodded. "You shouldn't try. I want you guys to stay around. You seem really cool."

  Melody smiled. "Thanks. I think all of this is really cool, though," she added, looking around the hall with awe, her burst of depression fast-fading. She's not given up yet, Zoë mused. She'll figure out why Natalie's was different.

  "What do you guys like to do?" asked Natalie, and it sounded strange… in that it didn't sound strange. Natalie had been on such an off-kilter tone since they met, Zoë hadn't been sure how to handle the girl sounding normal.

  On the other hand, Melody launched into the conversation as if they hadn't just been talking to a girl who claimed to be the magic queen of her recently destroyed hometown. "Well, Zoë's an artist—"

  "Lapsed artist," said Zoë, latching onto an easy way to center herself with a quick self-deprecating joke.

  "—and she's always trying to create things. I like to sing and write, and someday I want to be a teacher, but I haven't really settled on it yet."

  "I think my mom was a teacher once," said Natalie.

  "What did she teach?"

  "I… don't really remember."

  "I'd want to teach art," said Melody. "Or maybe humanities. Maybe both!"

  "What's humanities?"

  "Social studies and English," said Zoë.

  "Oh," said Natalie. "I wasn't very good at those."

  "What are you good at?" asked Melody.

  "Math. And I got pretty good at computers, thanks to Cinza and Quinn," she added, smiling a little. Who's Qui… oh, right. Her boyfriend in Seattle, the one people started harassing. Assholes. "I don't know what I'd want to do though."

  "That's okay!" said Melody, her smile wide and comforting as always. Even Natalie seemed swept up in it, to Zoë's relief, and all the awkwardness from their earlier conversation had faded away. "You've got plenty of time to figure that out."

  Annnnnd it's gone.

  Every torch in the room seemed to flicker. Natalie's face fell. The cheerfulness was gone, replaced by a hard edge, a steel not unlike the icy Rook.

  "You don't know that."

  "You're still youn—" started Melody, trying to recover, but she'd already lost Natalie, and Zoë knew it.

  "People die all the time. It doesn't matter how old they are," she said quietly. "That's why I'm building this place. To make that stop happening." She stood up. "Come with me?"

  Natalie didn't wait for an answer. She walked out of the room, the hawk on her shoulder. As she exited into the hall, Rook appeared again, as did the wolf. Melody glanced at Zoë, and after a brief silent conference, they agreed to follow.

  Together, hand in hand, they followed Natalie all the way out of the castle, past the torches now returned to their usual orange glow, back out across the wide lawn of the courtyard, and out the gates into the town of Rallsburg once again. The whole place remained as empty as it had been, with only the two huge stone structures of the castle and the library facing one another across a vast, emptiness, gentle hills and a few trees dotting where the town once stood. Only the roads remained, paved streets outlining the building plots.

  "This is what I want to do," said Natalie, rubbing the neck of her wolf as she stared out into the empty space. "I want to build something here. This is my home. It got blown up, but it can come back, and this time it'll be better. Magic will be allowed, and people can come and go whenever they want on the train or by car or whatever."

  "What about electricity?" asked Zoë. "Most of that needs electricity you know."

  Natalie shook her head. "We'll do it with magic. Technology just made everything worse. I don't want it anymore."

  Kind of a harsh reaction… I can't totally blame her, but that's some serious reductionism.

  Wait, what am I thinking? She's a kid! This is all insane! She's going to just… build her own town? From scratch, with magic? Who'd actually live here? Visit, yeah, but… seriously?

  Zoë couldn't believe what she was hearing, but… Natalie kept talking, and slowly but surely, she began to see something else emerge—something deeper and more meaningful, something which pulled at even Zoë's skeptical heartstrings.

  "I wanted a place of my own, but I was a kid. I lived with the Laushires, then Quinn, and now I live here. Hector and Rook, too," Natalie said, watching the wind blow through the trees, bending the grass in its wake. "None of us had a place of our own. Rallsburg gave Hector a place, but it was dying. Now we can bring it back, and we make it better. We actually have a place now, one we got to choose. We built it ourselves."

  Natalie turned to face them. "Cinza and Ruby have that too. They built their place from nothing, just a clearing in the woods. They're the happiest people I know. That doesn't mean they don't get angry or get hurt or anything else, but… they're happy. I want that too. I think I can have it here."

  She gestured back across the town. "There's all this space now, where people can live. I want them to, I just don't know how to do this. Will you help me?"

  Melody was already nodding, eager to accept, to join Natalie and build a new place of magic, but Zoë hesitated. She still found all of it absurd, but something in Natalie's speech struck her, hit a chord that truly resonated somewhere deep inside her heart, in a space normally reserved only for Melody and herself.

  ...I've bounced between so many places myself. I never liked home, I never liked college, and I never liked that camp, either. The only reason I wanted to stay was because of Melody, and because of magic. If this place can be whatever we want it to be? With more magic than anywhere in the world, and with the best chance Melody ever has to awaken?

  How can I say no?

  Zoë didn't answer Natalie directly. Instead, she turned to Melody, and the glint in her eye told Melody instantly everything she needed to know.

  "So…" said Zoë casually, a nervous grin peeking onto her face. "Which spot is ours?"