The sun hid behind the reddish moon.

The air turned blue as she opened her eyes. Her ears got filled with the sound of the carriage eating the stone road, while the forest painted her eyes green. Diane had spent the remaining hours of the day roaming around Painron despite the freezing weather. She had found comfort in the empty streets and lanterns that introduced them. The fresh air had stimulated her brain, giving her ideas of all sorts. Some she had cast aside almost instantly; some still played hide and seek inside her consciousness. There was nothing more she wished to know. After the short and tiring conversation she had had with Timidus, after realizing that finding the Will another twisted “plan” she had fallen pray to, the idea of giving up and letting them do as they wish seemed most natural. The citizens of Painron, their whispers, and glances convinced her that she had given her youth to people who didn't want to be saved. It was only her and the hollow hope that a princess could change the world. As the carriage came to a halt in front of the familiar gate, she felt the muscles of her stomach tighten; the urge to puke grew stronger as she approached her home. Though there was nothing she wanted more than to lie down and let them kill her in peace, the Hunster blood inside her body was too thick to let her loose. The feeling of superiority she was born and raised with didn't allow her to submit to defeat. They would have all rather died than admitted they were incompetent. Diane wasn't used to feeling like a puppet. Even when taking orders, she felt a certain royal pride. Now, she only felt like a fool. The princess was afraid to open the castle door, knowing that the dead who rested in the walls she unwillingly owned can make her change her mind. Tobias fought for himself, she for mankind; where exactly did she go wrong? As the outside was so unbearably freezing, she had to sacrifice her soul for the flesh to burn with comfort.

The door opened with a creak, spreading the world of mystery before her. Except for a few servants finishing their usual chores, there was no sound to fill the sleeping castle. Diane had expected someone to welcome her, a baffled soul to comment on her unusual behavior. Going to see Timidus, she had secretly hoped, would make them talk about her sanity, her change of heart; someone would try to understand, to find the reason behind the struggles of the perfect princess. It seemed like the path was unimportant, as long as the goal had been reached. Once she had failed to bring home the treasure, her existence was erased from the memories of those who used to look at her bloody fingers.

Brandon probably knows everything I don’t. He was just playing with me, as usual. Now that I have failed them again, I might finally get some rest. Then… Well, I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. They will do what they want. They could change the plan again or simply get rid of me. It doesn’t matter anymore. But then… then it all goes to waste.

The small tiara on her head suddenly felt heavy. As she entered the large room she slept in, Diane put the lavish jewel on the table by the window. Moonlight illuminated the gemstones, gushes of cold air enwrapping them in wintery whispers. Diane took off her long coat and shoes and walked over to her bed. An envelope in light blue, with an opened seal, waited on her pillow.

"Dear friend," it read, "I am overjoyed to read about your well-being. The tranquility that had inhabited your soul found its way into my own, your words bringing the long-awaited joy that the recent happenings had taken away. I would be more than happy to visit your kingdom, with nothing but apologies and good intentions to bring with me. The king and queen, I take, are as excited to welcome me as Their guess. That being said, I will do my utmost best to bring Them my best intentions by the end of the week.

Forever yours,

Princess Naisa of Aquarius."

“Ah, yes,” Diane said to the empty room. “I forgot about this. How silly. It’s not like it matters now anyway. They will probably get rid of me.”

Diane's lips curved upwards; she told one of the guards that magically appeared before her door to call Kyla as soon as possible. Fear flew into the room through the open window, so she rushed to close it. The moon shifted from its previous position, leaving the tiara looking as displeasing as it usually did. The real battle was about to begin. The war Diane had been preparing for her entire life was going to begin with or without her. She lay on her bed, closed her eyes, and in the darkness saw her own reflection.

“Do you want to fight?” she asked that gloomy girl.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Yes. Now you do.”

“Well, if I am to die, I wish to die in glory.”

“But what if they don’t try to get rid of us? What if there is still a chance for us to be a part of this? Should we pretend it never happened or…”

"You called, Captain," Kyla said, closing the door behind her. She sat next to Diane, on her bed.

"Yes," Diane responded, the girl now nothing but a memory,"The Judge will be here soon. That will be my culmination: I either die a miserable death or live a miserable life."

Kyla shifted uncomfortably; she had never heard Diane talk about her own death and she didn’t like now the words sounded coming out of Diane’s royal mouth. “Well, what do you want? You are Diane Hunster, you can do whatever you want.”

“I used to be Diane Husnter. Now, I’m just a failure.” Diane sat up; the moon was so bright it projected her shadow onto the wall in front of the two. There was a queen looking straight at them. “But, you know what the strange part is? The only regret I have is not seeking the truth earlier. I have given these people my youth and for what? So they could have some… some creatures rummage though my closets and murder my people as they like? And for peace?!” Diane snickered. “And then I’m the ridiculous one.”

Kyla smiled. “So, you want to fight?”

Diane sighed. “I can’t fight, Kyla. You know I can’t. I’m not whole, I will never be whole. I hoped that finding out the truth would somehow make me remember but… It hasn’t.”

“But you have us.”

“No, I can’t… I can’t ask that of you. I have no idea what will happen next. If they don’t kill me, then they will give me orders again. And if I refuse I will be going against destiny herself. Even if I were who I used to be, it is too irrational to believe that I have any chance of living.”

"Then, what about Thomas?" Kyla urged her. “You will just abandon him?”

Diane gritted her teeth. "I will leave him to Isaac. They get along well. Following his lead is much better than following mine."

Kyla was displeased; Diane could see it in her eyes. "But what if he wants to follow you?"

Diane turned away; she didn’t like that shadow at all. “He is part of the Six now and he understands that. That means that he can’t choose what he likes better anymore, but what will keep him live. And I can’t keep him alive.”

"As you wish," Kyla said as she stood up.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Diane didn't bother denying she was contradicting herself again. She told Kyla to leave before letting her mind wander. She had just opened the door to complete tranquility when a sudden shortness of breath provoked her ears. A messenger didn’t have to open the door, and she didn’t have to ask him what for. He didn’t have to stutter, and she didn’t have to suppress a scream. Destiny didn’t have to sever a thread so soon.

It was, for sure, due to the night being such a warm one.

Diane stormed out of her room.

Even though the windows were open, no stream of relief strayed inside the castle on a hill. Beneath the guards’ uniforms formed uncomfortable mist, and they all, without an exception, shifted in their places, hoping to wipe it off without thinking of the uniforms they were soaking in return. One of them swore he could feel a grasp around his throat, like the water was pressing his skin, finger-like. Diane felt the grasp too. She hated making sounds inside the sleeping castle, but as her heels ran past the soaking guards, they distressed even the mice in the basement. For the first time in the twenty-three years of her life, the walls she used to discern so easily blended into an endless maze of paintings and golden wallpaper. She knew not where she was running to or which floor she was on, only that somewhere in the castle slept a head without a body.

“Where is he?” she asked the soldier who was running behind her.

He was composed. “In his study, Your Majesty.”

She stopped to catch a breath. The ruffles on her dress exasperated her. “And mother?”

“In the royal chamber, Your Majesty.”

“Still?”

“I believe so, Your Majesty.”

“Go get my father,” the princess ordered, still hoping that her eyes might see a picture different than the one described. “I will be with my mother.”

Her head was still pulsing slightly, and her mouth was dry. It crossed her mind that she should have gone to the kitchen first to get a glass of water, but it was on the first floor, and she had no time to go back. It could be that there was a beheaded person in her parents’ room, but she could also get yelled at by her father for reading nonsense that made her imagine such horrors. Her lungs got heavier as the stench became sourer. She would have cried blue murder had the blood not been so red.

“Mother,” she muttered, “what is going on?”

The room looked the same as when she last saw it: there was a window opposite the door, a large cabinet with her mother’s jewels to her left, and large bed to her right. It was only the smell that had changed. And a few colors. She looked to her left, and her eyes stayed there for a moment. Timidus’s head bathed in blood dripping from his neck. His body rested on the royal bed, mocking the weavers who decorated the wool he lay on. His disgusting, dirt-color eyes stared into Diane’s, still talking about a little dove and George Brown. Maria sat next to the bed, a few of her hairs decorating the artistic piece a vulture must have brought in.

Moonlight was fiercely fighting against cold, winter clouds. “What a pitiful time it is, to be so drenched in blood,” Maria said forlornly. It was desperate cry against the change of seasons. “It is finally starting to smell like winter.”

What to the outsiders sounded like mad rambling, to the daughter was the last roar of happiness. The shift in the position of the Earth brought about a sense of loneliness Diane had yet to shiver from; from the ground beneath her radiated the ice left there by the last Icelean to admit defeat to a new, monstrous race. And from the queen’s crown dripped traitor’s blood.

“Diane,” Maria said, not yet strong enough to stand, “don’t despair. Everything in the world must come to an end.”

Diane kneeled next to her mother, the blood that was dripping from the covers creating circled on her light-purple dress. “Not you,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because… you’re my mother.”

Maria looked at her daughter for the first time that evening. “That is exactly why it has to be me.” She couldn’t look at Diane anymore. “If you go now, you might be able to catch Him.”

The mist inside Diane’s eyes glistened. “It isn’t worth it,” the daughter replied reluctantly.

Maria wouldn’t have been the perfect mother if she didn’t count the number of lies that answer contained. “Is it?” She invited her daughter to run; only this time, Diane was escaping alone.

The Hunster pride woke up the duty sleeping inside Diane’s heart. She jumped up, unmindful of her surroundings; the only thing she could see was the open window, the only sensation she could feel the warm tears on her face. The princess was eager to pull the bulky dress off her body and, once she did, she jumped down from the second floor, only in her undergarments. Soldiers yelled after her, but she only saw the opportunity that appeared with each red moon. A solid golden disc formed under her feet, and she continued running midair, with new discs forming under her each step. At some point, she took off her heals and kept going barefoot. She didn’t care if the entire Crystalia had her on display, if her skin was freezing, and her fingers shaking; she had to punish him, no matter what it took. But she soon grew feeble; the discs that kept her from falling grew more and more transparent until she was able to create no more. She turned around a few times, still hopeful that the sinful red eyes would allow her to be reminded of the time she was eighteen. Instead, she was met with cold air and a clear sky.

“Coward!” Diane screamed into the mist as she fell on her knees.

Only her cries echoed in the warm night. There was no vulture; it was the mice who lay out the feast. Diane yelled a few more times before completely exhausting every excuse she had left. Stuck above a forest, with no idea how to get back to the castle, she let go of the magic holding her up and let herself fall on top of a tree. The leaves somewhat softened the fall, but the bruises and cuts created by the time her back collided with the ground proved it all in vain.

I never even had Him in sight, she thought to herself as her new injuries pulsed, irritated by the ice that lived beneath the ground.

Diane was in no hurry to go back to the castle; she took her time laying in the middle of the forest, breathing in the sharp winter air, and trying to come up with a plan. Her mother had betrayed her. Still, that thought seemed so foreign it must have been a dream; she must have fallen asleep on her ride back home with her cheek pressed against the window, so the raindrops on the glass made her dream of a horrible reality where she was laying in the middle of a forest, with her new injuries pulsing from the ice that lived beneath the ground. She lay like that for some time, nothing but the sky above. She was ignorant of the cold; only her fingers became numb and her back wet. Then, she felt pain in her chest; something spread and pulsed between her left lung and rib cage. It was hard for her to swallow, as if her throat had suddenly become thicker. She couldn’t move any of her fingers, let alone her limbs.

“Are you alive?” someone asked from the dark.

She would have stood up and faced them had she been able to move. Instead, she lay looking at the sky.

“I guess you are,” the man answered. “Maybe I should have pulled a bit harder. What do you think about that?”

She knew it was Him. She could barely hear His voice, yet the fear that made her unable to answer made her certain she had finally found the man she had been looking for. What she didn’t expect was to be so underprepared.

“Now, don’t tell me this is too much for you. Or, actually, do tell me. Anything at all. I have longed to hear your voice.”

Diane wanted to answer so badly her face turned red; it was the pull of gravity that trapped her right where she had been five years ago.

“No? No heartwarming reunions?” He said, somehow disappointed. Then He sighed. “Well, if you are so angry, I guess we should get this over with.”

She could barely hear him coming closer, as there was screeching in her ears. She felt the ground vibrate as her limbs become heavier.

“I will give you a choice,” He said, releasing his grip enough for her to hear him, “just like last time. Do you want to go, or do you want to see me again?” There was a short pause. “I would personally love to see you again.” He then started making circles around her body, far away enough for her not to be able to see him without moving her eyes. “These meetings just feel so special to me, you know. Like they’re our little secrets. What do you think? Nothing again? Oh, come on now! I know you were impatient to see me! Why else would you screech like an animal, begging me to show myself?”

Then He started laughing. It wasn’t a joyful, fulfilled laugh, but a tired, empty one. It drilled Diane’s ears for a while with perfectly timed and measured notes and pitches, like a broken music box. When it stopped, He came closer and traced the outline of her left arm. His fingers were soft and warm. “You should take better care of yourself,” He said, somehow ominously. “How else would I be the one to kill you.” He quickly turned his head to his left. The wind blew leaves in their direction. “Someone is coming for you,” He said. “I guess this works. Now I have another meeting to look forward to.”

As he said so, the pull grew so strong Diane was unable to keep her consciousness. Her eyelids fell over her eyes without giving them a chance to steal a glance at the man who murdered her mother. It was just her, the cold air, and a blue sky.