Ashes of Revenge

Chapter 13: New Faces, New Kingdom

Everyone stood there, frozen in shock and disbelief. Well, almost everyone; Colt and Richard didn't even react in the slightest.

"That's impossible," the Queen said, still in a faint daze from Death controlling her.

"The Princess and Queen disappeared years ago. How do you know this is her?" asked the Prince, stepping a bit closer to his mum, noticing her faintly sway. This entire situation made him uneasy: first his mum's weird command and now she seemed to be in a type of . . . haze.

"Herbert, secret tunnels, an' Fernando babysittin'." Raven listed it off on her fingers. "How would a random peasant know that?" The Prince felt like she was mocking him, and by the unchanging cold features of her face, he knew that's exactly what she was doing. "My nursemaid's name was Catriona." She shrugged.

"And what of your mum?" Fernando asked, a glimmer of hope slipping into his voice.

"Dead." Her face dropped, and the emotion seemed to come at a delay.

The hope left Fernando's body before it could even settle. Elizabeth was impossibly alive, so he had thought maybe her mum would be too. "How did she pass?" He forced his voice to be as monotone as possible – like he had been trained to.

Raven gave a closed-mouth smile that seemed to go down at the corners. "I think it would be best if yeh don't know." Raven knew how much Fernando loved her mum, and she couldn't bring herself to tell him how she suffered.

"Very well," Fernando said as he bowed his head in respect.

Raven turned her attention to the Queen and Prince. "Tha King married yeh a month after we went missin'?" Raven asked, despite knowing the answer.

"Yes," the Queen said.

Raven pursed her lips and nodded. She wanted so badly to take her sword and drive it through the Queen and Prince and then drag their corpses to the King.

The Queen could almost sense Raven's anger. "There was a threat of war . . . a King without a Queen or an heir to–" She stopped when she noticed Raven's glare.

"Why isn't tha King here?"

"Some of the Monstro villages were destroyed, so he decided it would be best if we turned around, and he passed through to the Farian Kingdom."

Raven definitely hated her. "What's yer name?" she asked, despite knowing that as well. But, she couldn't reveal how much she knew – how much she cared – about the new Royal Family.

"Dara."

Raven turned her attention to the boy. "I take it yer her son?" The boy nodded. "What's yer name?"

"Victor." Raven nodded. "What brings you on this path anyway?"

"Frankly, I have no idea how we got here." At the mention of "we," Fernando looked back at Colt and Richard, who were talking to each other in hushed tones.

"Princess Elizabeth–"

"Raven . . . that's my name. No Princess attached to it either."

Fernando nodded, almost sadly before he proceeded, "What species are they?"

"The older one is Farian, Richard, an' the younger one is a Shifter, Colt." She could tell they all valued honesty as much as she valued a sharp dagger. Vaguely she wondered what principles she – or even Richard and Colt – would currently have if their lives had taken a different turn.

Fernando was slightly surprised for a second. It was rare to have a Mundus be with either a Farian or a Shifter, rarely both. "Friends?"

"Yeah, they are."