Legend has it, if you stand in front of a mirror, shuffling an enchanted deck of cards, you can open a doorway between dimensions.
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Prince Teodric of Springport remembers the promise he made his father: to *not* try to reenact the legend of dimen...
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Arriving at the northern gate always threw me off. The dirt-road lined with shabby houses. The high guard towers overlooking the mess of busy streets. Or the hagglers trying to enter and merchants hoping to leave to sell their wares elsewhere. The dirty children crossing sidewalks running after starving kittens they wanted to hug tight. That fried meat scent coupled with sewer and trash and sweat, clogging the air and making it hard to breathe through the nose, and unsure whether or not one liked the smell.
The northern gate led into the poorer, less favorable neighborhood of Acewood—but I'd come through this way on purpose. Going through the main gate would attract attention I didn't want—yet.
These were the streets I'd spend my time trying to clean up, as queen. These were the jagged buildings I hoped to fix, the marketplaces I'd seek to fill with food and merchandise and supplies my people would need. These were the people I'd watch over, care for, speak to, speak for.
This was my home. As much as it irked me, as much as I'd rebuffed it, it was mine.
I'd managed to get past the gate-check unnoticed, blending in with a group of shepherds. Thinking ahead, I'd brought a worn-down hooded cloak with me before leaving Club Fields and had thrown it over myself a few miles before the gates. I'd also left my horse outside of the city limits, freeing it to graze forever in the meadows without being tethered to this world the way I was.
I didn't want anyone aware that Queen Gwenore was here. That I'd snuck back into my hometown to attend a vote that I already knew the outcome of. A vote that would result in me resting on my well-earned throne. Me, with Father's crown atop my head. Me, unhappy and disillusioned but ready to fight for what I believed in.
But they didn't know that yet.
If I was seen, recognized, another riot would come about. Why is a royal wandering the streets? And of all royals, the one who hates magic the most, who ditched this town to hide in her dilapidated castle far away?
This side of Acewood was where the riots had all started. These alleyways were where the knaves had begun riling up the populace by telling them the mages were unhinged, the mages were going to wipe the city clean, the mages were going to dethrone my father.
Lies, every word of it. The knaves were misguided, employed by a higher power I'd never been able to identify. They were unleashed here, spreading their fallacies to the citizens of Acewood, focusing on those less fortunate, egging them on. Pushing them to violence, urging them into storming the castle and dragging the mages out to hurt them. Maim them. End them.
And Jack, no matter how shaken by his brothers dying, no matter how shackled and in pain he'd been, never confessed the full truth to my father. He never told anyone who'd planted that seed of warfare in him, who'd told him to cause these riots that most of us still hadn't recovered from.
I took a left turn before heading deeper into the narrow, broken streets, knowing what I'd find if I ventured that way. Sanguine fluids still stained the walls of alleys where anyone associated with the castle had been executed. Smears of blood from guards, servants, apprentices. They were the non-magic folk who worked for the Aces but had no link whatsoever to them otherwise. The bloodthirsty citizens didn't care, didn't discriminate. So, while Jack and his brothers were fighting against the mages, the population steered their rage towards royalty.
