The Dark World

Prologue: The Red Queen

"The Queen is dead," the servant cried.  His words echoed through the vestibule, amplifying gradually until they became discordant noise.  Haunting, terrible noise.   "Sir Sebastian, you can't--" 

Sebastian heard the words; however, their meaning had been stripped away, like bark from a tree, by the time they reached him. 

It doesn't matter, he told himself. 

Nothing else mattered right then. 

His whole world had been swallowed by pain.  

As he strode toward the corridor leading to the Queen's bower, a sense of urgency flooded him.  The muscles in his legs burned with each step, long and quick.  The blood ran cold through his veins.  The weight of his black Commander's coat tugged at his back.  The hems of which swept the floors like a tendril of smoke.  

"Sir Sebastian, you can't.  There is a protocol!" cried the servant.

Sebastian hadn't the attention to spare the nervous fluttering behind him. 

All he could hear was the steady click of his heels against the marble floor.  All he could see was the gleam of the burnished floor.  All he could think to do was try his best to ward off the stinging pinpricks of grief as it swept through him, stealing away all of life's color with it, and, if he wasn't careful, his breath.  

His Queen was dead.

For two weeks, he tortured himself on thoughts of her death.

Stupidly, he believed that the more he turned the loss over in his head, the easier it would become.  He thought he could inure, become numb to it. 

He was wrong. 

So horribly wrong.

No amount of preparation could have steeled him for this.   He was a fool to think otherwise. He was a fool to believe he could forge a mental shield out of a shackle.  Heavy and cold, he had been wearing this shackle for quite some time now. Knowing, without really knowing, without confirmation. But he was good at guessing at fate. 

This fate, however, he would have carved out of his own bone if it would have mattered, if such a gesture could have convinced the Sunken Gods to intervene. But, the Sunken Gods were fickle, cruel creatures. Slow to move into action. Even harder to convince.

Wishing, he reminded himself, did not change the fact that she was gone. Nor could it. According to the palace announcement, she had been dead for days before anyone chanced upon her. Found in a puddle of blood so fresh and so red that the guards that came upon her had foolish hope.

Hope, he frowned at the thought.

Perhaps hope was the only thing more fickle and cruel than the Sunken Gods.

Had he not clung to hope? Even when he knew. Even before the palace issued the announcement, even before he received the courier's missive, he knew.

Rewinding the time in his mind to the day that he last pressed his lips to the back of her hand, he knew even then. Her skin was cold. The light radiating from her soft blue eyes had been sharp. Her stare had been vacant. There were words lingering between them; words that should not have been left unsaid.

The dread he felt when he left her side was diffuse, but it fell heavy over him, like a shroud made of shadow and lead.

Now, following the winding corridors to her quarters, forged from the darkest black marble they had been able to haul from the quarries near Mirrorstone Mountain, realization came in crushing waves.

What began as a worry churned over and over, making and unmaking itself, until it had grown, a collection of disjointed fears. Until it felt real. Until it was real. But, even then. Even when he thought he knew, even when he read the words written in the King's choppy handwriting, it felt like he was sleepwalking through a nightmare. Knowing, but not believing.  Believing, but not seeing.

Now, in her bower, he could no longer deceive himself, not for another breath. When his eyes found her, laying there like one of those tragic storybook princesses posed neatly on the bed like a dreamer, his heart ripped in half.

His queen was dead. Gone was her radiance. Her rosy cheeks and luminous complexion had been replaced with pale wax. Her hair, which had shimmered like liquid gold, lay dull and stringy around the crown of her head. Her handmaiden had swaddled her in vermilion silk, but even the deep red could not hide her shrunken body, bloodless and cold.

At her side sat the King. His long, lean frame was hunched over her, mid-sob. He spoke her name with such reverence, such fierceness, as if he believed he could speak her back into life. The King, however, possessed no such power.

He possessed no power at all.

"The pain," the King began, stirring at the sound of another, "where does it begin and end, Bash?"

With red-rimmed eyes and tear-tracked cheeks, the King stared deeply into his Commander's face.

Sebastian imagined the King was searching for hope, kinship, humanity.

What he surely found was an endless abyss.

Sebastian offered a shallow bow, but he could not spare a word. His jaw was locked too tight, and the frown slanting his lips had sealed them shut. His heart could offer no shelter.

Sebastian was doing his best to fortress his façade, to wall off the sensation of a thousand hells pounding at him.

Perhaps realizing that empathy was in short supply, the King bowed his head. "Take good watch over her," he said then rose from his seat. 

It only took a pace to bring the King to Sebastian's side.  Stopping short, the King squeezed Sebastian's shoulder.  It was a solemn gesture.

Sebastian stared ahead, frozen in the chill of his grief.

"The child?"

The words came out blunt and laced with unspeakable pain.  The very act of speaking them, of forcing them out of his mouth, felt like a dull knife had just sawed his lips apart.

The King lifted his chin, eyeing the door to the chamber. "Taken and discarded." His voice was small, too small for such a large man.

He then stepped away, the clacking of his heels filled the room, setting off a choir of chattering echoes

Sebastian stood stock still, eyes fixing the window beside his beloved queen.

The light fighting its way into the room was quickly choked by the darkness of the glittering marble.

When the door clicked shut, Sebastian, too, choked in the darkness lingering in that room.

"My Lucia."

If he could have carved his heart out of chest and given it to her, he would have. He would have bargained with the Gods.  He would have paid their price with his own flesh and bone if it meant bringing her back to life. 

But the Sunken Gods were fickle, cruel things.

They were hard to wake, and even harder to tame.