Even in death, with a trail of blood leaking down his face, Ari looked as he always did.

Peaceful and unaware, the life having left his body only making him look more himself.

“Mousecrop.” I whispered, my eyes watching the blood drip over the bridge of my brother's nose before falling to one side.

“Forgive me for what I have done, Princess Aster. Please. You of all people must understand the absolute necessity.” My slain father’s most trusted advisor dropped to his knees.

The blood reached Ari’s pale cheek and turned back towards his mouth. “Mousecrop.”

“You yourself begged King Auger to stop his raiding! He would have never seen reason and ceased his aggression. We both know this. And your poor brother. Oh, Prince Ari, forgive me. With or without you, he was not fit to rule.” The man that I had known since my birth crawled over to where my brother hung from the book case and signed the stars like he was kneeled before The Night Queen’s altar.

“Mousecrop.” The trail of blood hung off my brother’s chin. I had sworn to be his keeper. His first and final act as King Ari had been to die. I had sworn upon my name as Princess Aster of Hollowshade. On my honor, I had sworn. . .and I had failed.

“Fret not Princess, Lord Rhaeywin has many sons that he has assured me you will have your pick of. You will not be able to marry him under the Stars of Selahmeire, but you never cared much for your father and I’s faith.” The blood dripped off my brother’s chin and struck Mousecrop in the center of his upturned forehead.

The man died that way.

“May you never find sleep in the shade of The Night Queen.” I cursed him, A tensioned spike of my inky purple aura running through the back of his neck and out of his open mouth from the floor. My power, my essence, had seeped out of me and flooded the study in the moments after Mousecrop’s betrayal. I had never been able to manifest anything near what was running out of me.

An ear splitting crack echoed up the halls. Shouting and the sound of armor clinking followed.

The soldiers had broken through and were rushing to slay whoever they met.

“The passage.” I said to myself, looking at the spot on the floor that would lead me away. If I could slip into it before they cornered me in the study and left me a cold corpse like the rest of my family, I could live.

“It should have been me,” I said, looking at Ari hanging dead off the wall. “I should have been king,” I turned my head up to the sky, where my father would be watching down at me from beyond the reach of the sun. “Watch me, King Auger! Watch me, King Ari! See who should have ruled Hollowshade!”

My shouting did not go unanswered.

A voice filled my mind like darkness does a room when the flame of its sole candle is suddenly blown out. “For you, Gloomwalker.”

“Selahmeire!” I shouted. The Night Queen had spoken to me.

My aura trickled back from the edges of the room. It slithered back from Mouscrop’s mouth and out the back of his neck, dropping him limply against the wall. My father’s corpse shifted as the inky purple withdrew from under him and writhed up my legs, forcing its way through the gaps in my grieves and breaking them away into their sections.

“Take this and darken the land wherever you may stride.” The Night Queen spoke to me again.

Like glass being shaped when it was molten hot, all of my power formed around my legs and waist into a living armor that was made for me, from me. Dark bell blossoms hung off my hips like a fauld and the surface of my new grieves seemed to dim any light that touched it.

“Let’s be all nice like and none of us will have to get rude, Princess.” A rough voice snapped my attention towards the door.

Through the small entryway, Dozens of Lord Rhaeywin’s soldiers scowled at me with battle darkened faces.

How dare he insult me by calling me princess. I told him how I felt, my words laced with the weight of my essence made manifest. “That is no way to speak to a king.”

The soldier that had spoken chuckled. “Girls can’t be kings.”

It was the last thing he ever did.

It was the last thing any of them ever did.

Bringing my foot up and stomping it in front of me, a tendril of my gloom rippled across the floor and under the boots of the soldiers crowded outside of it. I turned my nose up at them and they went the way of Mousecrop, with hardened points of amaranthine mass stemming up from the floor and spiking through them. They couldn’t so much as scream, but the panic shouts of their fellows behind them filled the air for them.

I strode forth, every step I took in Selahmeire’s gift sending pulses through the power that flooded from me. I was made to take those steps, to walk into the gnashing violence of those who had besieged Hollowshade and make them feel the pain they had caused me.

Like sliding over mud behind the stables after a three day downpour, I burst from the study faster than any of the soldiers could react. Dozens of them were packed into the hall. Brandishing swords, spears, and clubs all. With no effort required but sweeps of my feet and the direction of my will, I left them crushed and pinned to the floor and ceiling as I slid through the broken doors of the castle and left it devoid of life.

Chaos reigned within the inner walls of Hollowshade. Screams, cries, and the silencing impacts of violence broke through the smoke filled air. Every thatched roof of the subjects I had grown into a woman knowing blazed with bright orange fire and black smoke. One of the stable boys, he had not been around long enough for me to learn his name, lay dead on the ground at the foot of the castle stairs. As if he had been nothing but a fallen log, a group of the invaders wearing the blue of Lord Rhaeywin trampled over his corpse on their way by.

In the distance, my eyes found the Lord and his retinue.

Under the arch of the inner gates and atop his mount, with his retinue by his sides, Lord Rhaeywin watched the carnage ensue like he was watching trees being cleared on a patch of newly purchased land.

Like vats of bubbling tar had been tipped over at the top of the stairs, my power flooded out from me, sending a creeping tide in every direction. Any who stepped into it were caught at their ankles and pulled to the ground.

I painted Hollowshade purple with my power.

I washed myself off the castle steps like I was being carried by an ocean wave, my gloom following in my wake. Every burning house, every broken body that littered the ground, every soldier that found themselves in my vengeful path was swept under and sunk by my punishing tide. “Lord Rhaeywin!”

Like I had left the halls of the castle, no life remained behind me as I came to a stop before the Lord. Tendrils of my gloom writhed at my feet, desperate to lash out and coil around my enemies.

“Look, my sons. This is the princess that one of you will marry. Isn’t she a fetching young lady?” Lord Rhaeywin called out to the men mounted at his sides. He swept his blue gloved hand out over the ruins of Hollowshade. “It may not look like much presently, but the one who courts her will be bequeathed this land and made a lord in his own right.”

Selahmeire spoke to me again. “Be who you are, Gloomwalker. Do not let them dishonor you.”

“Father? Does she not seem ill-tempered to be a princess?” One of the lord’s sons asked.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I am not a princess,” I seethed, the pressure of my power quickly boiling to a breaking point under my feet as my voice rose. “I am King Aster of Hollowshade! The Gloomwalker! Chosen by The Night Queen herself! You will live only long enough to regret ever setting foot on this soil!”

Lord Rhaeywin laughed. “She does seem to be strong willed.”

Lord Rhaeywin’s sons laughed at their father’s words in agreement.

Like the soldiers before them, it was the last thing they ever did.

Like dancing on a patch of ice, I widened my stance and brought myself up into the air with my aura. Higher and higher I rose, first casting a shadow over the arrogant invaders and then darkening the arch and wall they stood between.

Their eyes gradually widened with fear as I ascended. One by one, they broke away, driving their panicked horses away from me as fast as they could. Lord Rhaeywin stood firm the longest, but when my power blotted out the sun behind me and threw shadows across the fields of wildflowers outside of the wall, his cowardice overcame him and he fled.

They could run as fast as they wanted, it would not save them.

Feeling as if every moment of my life had been a prelude to where I found myself then, I leaned forward and brought my amaranthine power crashing down.

I rode the punishing wave as it broke through the castle walls like they were made of paper. The invaders ran desperately, trying to escape my shadow that darkened the land, but there would be no reprieve from me.

My cresting wave of gloom incarnate slammed each of them to the wildflowers below as it crashed to the ground.

Lord Rheaywin alone remained. I loomed behind him, moments away from sending him to be with his sons, and shouted. “Say my name! Say it!”

One final, terrified, glance back at me was all the lord could manage before I threw a violent kick towards him. A purple tendril shot out from my gloom and coiled around his middle. Like a screaming child plucked from the ground, he was lifted off his mount and brought back to the ground with such force that he died before my tide washed over him.

“For my father! For Ari!” I shouted to no one, feeling like I could swallow the earth with my newfound might. In the sparse moments since I had crowned myself king, I had been chosen by The Night Queen, I had avenged my family, and I had slain the invaders all.

My gloom spread out over the land and I was lowered back to the ground just as I reached the edge of the hunter’s forest. The sun shone back over the land as my tide dissipated and just as my feet touched the ground, I caught sight of the castle.

Little more than ruins, I had left pure destruction in my wake. Everything was drowned in my gloom, choked by my dark power that laid out behind me like a purple lake. No smoke, no flickering fire, no sounds of violence, only a sickening quiet and stillness that had settled over Hollowshade with my will.

A dark coldness chilled the tips of my fingers.

“All hail Aster, King of nothing.” I whispered to myself, realizing what I had done.

Starting at the soles of my feet and aching up my bones, cold pain shook my legs.

My coil of bell blossoms crumbled into dust off my waist.

Blinding pain and a nauseating crunch slammed into my senses. I dropped to the ground, clutching at my left hip desperately. Like I had been shot by Mousecrop’s crossbow, my right hip cracked and leveled me. Unable to do anything but hold my breath and dig my fingers into the ground beneath me, I watched as my power faded from my legs. Every section that fell away in streams of dust, broke the bones of my legs as they left me.

King or not, there was only so much pain I could take. Just as the pale skin of my ruined legs was left bare, nothing enveloped me and I fell away from consciousness with a silent scream.

My eyes opened.

Night had fallen.

The pain in my legs had swollen into an incomprehensible throb that forced my eyes closed with every pang. I looked to the ruins of Hollowshade and found a sudden desert of amaranthine sand that glittered in the silver moonlight, remnant dunes of my gloom.

“What will you do now, King Aster?” A woman's voice spoke from somewhere out of my sight. I tried to turn to her, but only managed to send myself into another bout of held breath and clawing fingers.

“I want to die. Selahmaire, please. Make it stop,” I pleaded, ashamed of what I was saying but desperately wishing for the pain to end. “Take me into your shade, I beg you. Take me to my mother.”

“Your time has only just begun, King Aster,” The pain dulled in my legs as my lower half went numb. Relief washed over me and I closed my eyes and sighed. The Night Queen continued. “I will take you from this place, ease your pain, heal where you are broken, and teach you how to be Gloomwalker once again. There is only one thing I ask of you.”

“Name it. Whatever it is, I will give it to you.” I answered.

“You will forget Hollowshade and never return. You will run headlong into your new life as my apprentice and never look back.”

To abandon my kingdom and to leave whichever of my subjects had managed to survive the invaders and my destruction of them, there was no greater dishonor I could place on myself. I should have died with my family. I wished I had died alongside them in the study. That would have made it so easy to not say the weak and shameful words that served as my answer.

I sighed, beginning to feel sleepy in the wash of relief. “I agree.”

A small weight was placed on my chest. “Your crown, King Aster. I thought you would want to keep it.”

I placed my hands on the jagged amethyst and ran my fingers over its sharp edges, feeling myself drifting into a heavy sleep. “Thank you. Selahmeire. I am yours.”

Darkness, blessed darkness.

I burst back into consciousness and staggered backwards. My back slammed into something hard and the impact sent me sliding down to the ground.

“My legs!” I shouted, running my hands down them in fear of the blinding pain returning. Inexplicably, they were unbroken. A purple book lay closed at my feet and every part of my being willed me to reach down and open it. It was one of thousands that adorned the variegated bookcase that stretched above me as far as I could see, but I was drawn to it in particular.

I was in a library?

Where had The Night Queen gone?

My crown, I couldn’t find my crown.

No. The thought came and went from my mind suddenly.

I was not in a library, I was in The Well. At that realization, the questions came from me without thought.

“What is your name?” I asked myself. Ast-no, Autumn Aubrey.

I was Autumn Aubrey, not Mother Aster. The purple book at my feet was full of her memories and I had just lived through one.

“Who is Autumn Aubrey? I continued. A Maiden of Zenithcidel.

A bright red book fell from above me, landing hard against the floor and interrupting my answer. I looked up and saw the top of the shelf teetering back and forth from when I had fallen into it. Another book tipped off the edge and dropped down towards me.

“Fuck,” I said, having to throw myself to one side to avoid being impacted by the gray tome. Without meaning to, I kicked one foot back into the shelf. I heard the pages of dozens of books fluttering as they fell. Blue, yellow, brown, orange, green, all of them thumped to the floor around me, their covers open and pages waiting to pull me into their memories. Flattening myself against the shelf, I covered my head with my hands. “Why didn’t I get in the fucking chair?”

The rain of memories tapered off after a moment and I found myself in a loose ring of books that had somehow all missed me, I looked up to see if the memory storm had ended.

“Oh no.” I said, just as the white pages of a final cast off book enveloped my face and pulled me into the memories within it.

“. . .don’t know how to swim, Haimi!” Isla insisted again, her bare foot stomping on the sun bleached planks of the dock.

Convincing her to undress, even though we were miles from Merrowcrest, had been the hard part. Only Isla would be worried about being seen in her underwear when the only eyes around were mine and the fish in the water with me.

I pulled myself up with the old wood and propped myself out of the water on my elbows. “I told you this morning, all you will have to do is hold your breath. Get in before I drag you down here.”

“If I drown,” She pointed her finger at me in warning, but sat down beside me and dangled her legs above the water. “Or get eaten by some seabeast, I will haunt you until I drive you mad.”

I cradled my head in my palms. “Promise?”

Isla pinched her nose shut between her fingers and closed her eyes before kicking her legs out and scooting herself off the dock.

Slipping back off the old wood, I caught her before her head dipped below the surface of the water and held her afloat despite her mad flailing. “Easy, be easy. I’ve got you.”

Once she realized that she was not descending into her watery grave, she settled and let her weight rest onto me. “Okay,” She sputtered, brushing her sandy hair off her face. “It’s warmer than I thought.”

“Catch your breath and then take a deep one,” I told her, beginning to wade us away from the shoreline. “It will only take us a few moments but you won’t be able to breathe until we get there.”

Isla, despite the top of her head being bone dry, couldn’t manage to keep the water out of her eyes. “Okay, you’ve got me wet now. I am in the water. Will you tell me where you are taking me?”

“Take a breath,” I reminded her again, wrapping my arm around her middle and preparing to dive down. She listened, pinching her nose with the hand that wasn’t digging into my arm and puffing out her cheeks. Just before we slipped below the surface and left our clothes unwatched on the old dock, I told her. “We’re going on a date.”