Chapter 19: Not Yet, But Soon.

A Demon Queen does not lie. Some people might call this a virtue. Those people are fools.

Virtue is for creatures who need the approval of others. It is a matter of authority. A lie is a concession -an admission that the truth is something one is too weak to face head on. I have faced Gods and found them wanting. I will not flinch before something as feeble as truth.

Sara had asked me if I could make Marin bloom again. I had not answered her. I had not said yes and I had not said no though I had opened my mouth to say at least one of those two things. I had simply stood there, and I had let the question hang. A question left unanswered by a Queen is a promise. I might not have chosen to make it but it had been made all the same. It was now beneath me to let it stand unfulfilled. If the duel was between the world and my promise, then the world would bend. I had bent it before.

I walked through the village with my jaw set and my arms at my sides. The day was bright and the air smelled of damp earth. People moved out of my way. Men had always said I looked especially frightening when I was determined. Right now, I was. Almost as much as I had been that day, so very long ago. I passed my spot by the low wall. I did not stop. Small footsteps trailed behind me, I did not turn.

“Lys! Where are we going?”

That diminishing name again. Repetition did not make it sound any sweeter. Perhaps no more could be expected of a child. “We are not going anywhere. I am going somewhere and you are following me without permission.”

The footsteps did not slow. If anything, they quickened until the girl was practically at my heels. I allowed it. A subject should be there to see their Queen grace them with her benevolent might.

The hut sat at the edge of the village, half in shadow where the leaves of the nearest oak blocked the morning sun. It was the quietest place in Hamel, and it had been quiet for some time now. No lantern hung from its door and no dried flowers adorned its frame. Ash had told me that the other huts had slowly come alive again after the phoenix. This one had been dead long before.

The mother sat outside on a low stool. The boy -Marin- was in her arms, wrapped in the faded white blanket I had seen a few times now. His eyes were open and lifeless. His chest only rose and fell in a shallow, mechanical way.

Ash was nearby, not by the mother herself, but close enough. She was stacking firewood beside the door. She had told me she did these tasks -tasks the mother no longer did for herself. Ash’s gaze found me as I approached. She straightened but did not move to block my path.

I stopped in front of the mother. The woman looked up at me slowly, and her face was a face I had seen before. It was in the aftermath of a dozen villages like this, long since razed by the horde. A face that proved that the fighting was done, and it had not gone the way one had hoped.

“I will see the child,” I said. “Marin, I believe his name is.” I pointed at him. “I have the power to heal things, and I will heal him.” My red eyes bored into the woman’s darker ones.

Her arms tightened around her son. I did not think she was trying to defy me. She did not look capable of it, not any longer. “They…they’ve all already tried,” she said. Her voice was hoarse and thin. “Trisha’s cousin came from two villages over yesterday. Sh- she had a healing mark, a strong one…it was a Line. I thought it might do….” She trailed off, and then shook herself before continuing, “The herbalist mixed something he said would help. Been giving him that every day…forcing him to take it but….” She shook her head again, and this time the gesture was so small her head barely moved. “Please…just let him be.”

“I am not some village woman, and I am no mere herbalist with some petty cure,” I said, sleeve pulled back and left arm raised, so that she may see the white Line. “I carry a Sovereign mark, one that allows me to fix things. You say other people have tried and failed. I say that none of those people are me.”

I did not understand the issue. A Queen stood before her, offering help. Men had committed great sacrifices all in the hope that I may look their way and grant them a hundredth of what I was offering this woman now. My favor had been rarely given, but it had never been considered, let alone spurned.

The woman stared up at me. It seemed my words did little and less for her -I could see that plainly. Perhaps this woman simply did not understand the being that stood before her and the power she possessed. To this woman, all power was equal, and all of it had fallen short. That was a common mistake the powerless -and even many of the powerful- made.

“Please,” The woman said again. The word was barely above a whisper. “I can’t.”

I opened my mouth to push further. To assert, to do what I had always done. My authority was something I had wielded for a very long time, and not once had it failed me. I met the woman’s gaze.

No…perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps having hope itself was the issue. I had broken armies, and yet I did not know how to break this woman’s pessimism. There was no purchase here. I did not know how to break through whatever shell surrounded this woman, not without breaking her with it. The old world had been much simpler.

I stood there, arms crossed. Very well. I sat down.

I sat down, cross-legged, in the dirt in front of the hut with my arms folded. I faced the woman, and did not speak. I had seen someone do this before, in front of this very hut. I did not fully understand why it had worked then. I suspected it had something to do with the act itself. It was not a thing I would have thought to do on my own, and I was not entirely sure I was doing it correctly.

I tried it anyway. Perhaps Ash had spoken to this woman. If she had, and if that was necessary for this particular gambit, then I was at a distinct disadvantage.

The silence stretched. I saw Ash staring at me, but she did not intervene. I took that to mean that I was doing this correctly. Sara had stopped some distance behind me. I could hear her fidgeting with a stick, scratching shapes into the dirt.

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Minutes passed as the sun moved overhead. A bird called from somewhere above us, and another answered it. The smoke from a nearby hearth rose into the air and thinned.

The mother watched me sit there. Her expression did not change. She tried to look away, which was rather difficult, considering I blocked much of her vision. Perhaps that had been the point. The minutes stretched more and the mother shot me worried glances that she might have hoped I didn’t see. I did. Then, she looked at me. Slowly, the expression on her face shifted.

Something about the woman’s shell cracked. I would admit the woman was a rather fierce opponent. Few had resisted any of my attacks for this long, but the result had always been inevitable.

Without a word, she shifted Marin in her arms and held him out -just slightly towards me. The boy was no longer being shielded. It was the smallest permission I had ever received. I rose.

“Sara.” I turned to the girl. She was ten paces behind me, watching with those very wide eyes. It was impressive she was still there, and she had been remarkably silent. “Stay there. Do not come closer until I allow you to.”

“But-”

“I do not know what will happen, and so you will stay there. That is not a request.” I tried to make my voice…gentle. The way I had heard Ash speak to children. It sounded strained from my tongue. The girl’s lower lip jutted out, but she stayed. It seemed this attack was rather effective against human children. I would remember that.

I knelt beside the mother and placed my left hand on Marin’s arm. His skin was warm beneath my fingers. That surprised me, though it should not have. Living bodies were warm. Even broken ones. “My power looks like a flame. Regardless of appearance, it is not one. It will not harm him.” I said. Better to warn the woman now, than have her interrupt needlessly. The woman faintly nodded.