A red moon painted the unreachable pink.


    Over the buildings that fought to reach it, January blew a strong wind. People were hugging themselves for warmth as they returned to their equally freezing homes. Some would get to enjoy firewood, some hugging their families. Sickly children announced her arrival. No one was waiting except a mother with hot cocoa, sitting in her chair by the window. The mother was waiting for a savior, for a miracle, and daybreak.


    A trail that led her through the forest and into the city was frozen. The horses moved slowly. The sound of their man-made shoes did not reach the ears the same. It was quiet, and the expedition wished the silence would turn into a warning sign. The more they stepped onto the slippery ground, the more they wished it would melt under Thomas’s shoes. He was the only one walking, having found riding behind Diane insufferable.


    “Finally!” one of the Ravens groaned. Thomas was still not familiar enough with the Ravens to know them by voices; some not even by faces.


    “I think I told you to stop whining,” Kyla replied and sniffed a few times the cold air that was now beginning to smell like smoke.


    “Why is it so cold, anyway?” another Raven asked.


    Thomas glanced to the side and saw that Julia, the green-eyed shapeshifter he had had a pleasant talk with once in his living room, had grown fur since he last saw her. He flinched and accidentally nudged Diane’s horse, causing her to look down on him.


    “Is everything alright?” she asked. Something had shifted in his stance, his voice, and his heat. It was all more distant, unfamiliar.


    “Of course,” he replied briefly.


    It was an unusually cold winter, as there was no snow in sight. Diane had her head so full of everything that the last thing on her mind was her freezing people, the ones she was trying to save from a cataclysmic fate. Brandon was gone, probably to try to taste redemption; his sins were different in each set of eyes, so it was unclear which one exactly he was divinely sorry for. Diane was running away as well. It was the winter for sure that made the air in the castle unbreathable. Thomas couldn’t keep his eyes off Julia. He had to physically push his head to look straight ahead and not at the appalling creation to his right; even then she was in his mind and on his limbs. He scratched himself so much that Diane repeated her question.


    “Yes, yes,” he, again, replied briefly.


    “You know,” she started awkwardly, her head spinning and looking everywhere but to her right, where he walked, “if you have anything… I don’t know… troubling you or anything… you can tell me.”


    He stopped scratching. “Of course. Just how you always tell me,” he mumbled.


    If his voice weren’t so honest Diane would have felt offended. But she still knew what he meant and was shocked at his sudden brazenness. She did find it somewhat charming, though, but refused to accept it.


    “Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked, quite suggestively.


    “Not at all.”


    “Are you angry?”


    “No.”


    “So, you are.”


    “I said I am not.”


    “That is how I know you are.”


    Thomas looked at Diane, annoyed. “Then, what was I supposed to say?”


    “That you are angry. Because you are.”


    Thomas decided not to respond. The Ravens were chatting about something, and Kyla was looking at the Dove and her Fool, probably trying to find an answer to Diane’s question. Then the street lanterns slightly lit up the forest path. They could see the local bakery now, the one Thomas used to work at. They had finally reached Lewtown after two days of traveling, as they had to stop by some villages for Diane to inspect certain things she told no one about.


    “Did you and Elaine have fun?” Diane asked.


    Thomas’s eyes widened and he looked at Diane like she had also grown horns.


    “What, you thought I wouldn’t know?” she asked with a smile. “There is not a single thing that goes on in that castle that I don’t know about.”


    Thomas proceeded to watch her smile brighter than she probably had in five years. It caused him to smile too, despite the turmoil he was living through.


    “So, did she tell you?” Diane asked, unaware of her own brazenness.


    “Yes,” Thomas replied with a slight tremble.


    “Good.”


    Thomas waited a moment. “You’re not going to ask me about it?”


    “No.”


    “Why not?”


    “Because you don’t want to tell me.”


    “That makes no sense!”


    “Yes, it does. You never ask me about the things I don’t want to talk about. You don’t even ask about the things I want to talk about.”


    Thomas’s jaw sunk slightly. “Like what?”


    “Like anything. You must have so many questions.”


    “Aren’t you supposed to, I don’t know, just tell me things?!”


    Thomas was starting to feel truly annoyed.


    “Not if you don’t show any interest in them. I don’t want to bore you.”


    “Bore me?! What…”


    “Hello?!” Kyla yelled. “Are you two deaf?!”


    Diane and Thomas turned towards Kyla simultaneously. Neither of the two had realized that the group, them included, had come to a halt in the middle of Lewtown. They could barely see ahead from all the fog that enwrapped them. There was no one out, the only sound they could hear coming from the clock that rose above the gray, reaching for the sky that was now completely dark.


    “What is it?” Diane asked, only seemingly nonchalant.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    “I asked you five times where we should go now?” Kyla repeated.


    “Thomas’s house,” Diane replied.


    The air was cold, and heavy with the remains of the rain that had been soaking Lewtown for days. The fog was so thick the streetlamps looked like little moons. The expedition was walking towards the path the Dove and Fool had engraved in their memories.


    Diane had felt wailing in her bone marrow; she had tried to push it out in the open, to replace the rain that seemed to refuse to bless Painron, and slightly subdue the cold, merciless air. She would visit her mother’s room daily, each time less hopeful that she would find her sitting by the window, looking at the hills. When she didn’t know what else she could do to push this strange itching out of her system, she remembered that somewhere on the edge of Lewtown, far away from both the forest and the city center, rose a house not bigger than her living room. Be it Destiny, George Brown, or nostalgia, something whispered in her ear while she was dreaming that the little town towards the western border might provide relief. So now they were here. It would be their last stop before visit George’s house in search of the rest of the truth.


    “Actually,” Thomas suddenly said, “I do have something to tell you.”


    “What is it?” Diane asked, not paying too much attention to him.


    He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I don’t know if it’s my place to say it but… I think you should stop letting the Judge treat you like a doormat.”


    Diane’s horse came to a halt. She was so flabbergasted by his “advice” that she blocked out all the curious yelling of her teammates. “What?!”


    “I mean… The only thing that woman has done is cause you pain. She made you go to Cercer to risk your life for some will even though she knew what it said, she made you… me, kill your mother for King knows what reason, and she still, after all you have done, refuses to tell you the truth! I don’t think she deserves your sweat and tears if you know what I mean,” he replied; the shivering of his voice would make anyone believe he truly meant it.


    “Diane!” Kyla yelled, now standing next to Thomas. “What in the world are you two doing?!”


    “Do you realize what that means?” Diane asked Thomas, shaking all over.


    “You are Diane Hunster. There is not a thing in this world you cannot do.”


    “And what if that’s not true? What if I messed it up because I thought I was better than them? I am a queen now. I have a responsibility towards millions of people. I might be okay with risking my life, but I will never be okay with risking theirs. Before I put this stupid crown on, I thought none of it would matter. But it does. I have to do what is best for them, even if it costs me my life and my dignity.” Then she rode off alone.


    “What have you done?” Kyla asked Thomas angrily.


    “Nothing,” Thomas mumbled and started walking towards his house. Diane was waiting for them there.


    Fiona was not expecting them. She was finishing her nightly routine when the bell shook the furniture in the living room and she jumped up, knowing it would be bad news. Nothing worse than her son and the queen could have waited for her in the fog.


    “Oh,” she let out, partially terrified by Diane Hunster. There was nothing left of the little amiability the queen had possessed; it was all dried out of her system by the ones who put a crown on her head. Worse than Diane was Fiona’s son, with no expression on his face. He looked straight through her, into the past. They all went inside. It was a little past midnight, the clock had announced. The Ravens took their places outside the house, with two of them guarding the front and back entrance each, one on the roof, one in Diane’s room, and one in Thomas’s. Fiona Roswell was dead, so there was no need to guard Kelly Hammer.


    Sometime deep into the night, Diane went out of her room and into the living room. She had her uniform on, and her boots left muddy footprints on Fiona’s floor.


    “Is everything alright?” Fiona, who also had trouble sleeping, asked Diane.


    Diane sat opposite her, on the sofa. “Yes.”


    “Are you sure?”


    “Yes.”


    Fiona nodded and continued looking out the window. Smoke spread all around the peaceful little town, waiting to be washed down by the rain.


    “Can I ask you something?” Diane spoke suddenly.


    “Of course,” Fiona replied. She had had uncertainty in her from the moment she saw it was them waiting before her door. Still, the rain seemed to be an hour late. If it had appeared with the Ravens, their queen, and Thomas Hammer, it would have already washed away all the smoke and let the two Ravens breathe in freshness in the small living room.


    “Do you think that, if, by some magical coincidence, I survive all this, I deserve to live on?” Diane shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “It’s a stupid question. You don’t have to answer,” she quickly added.


    “Diane,” Kelly muttered, her eyes closing, and her fingers numb. “Of course! Why would you think such a thing?”


    “Because this is what I have been preparing for all my life. This is my life. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to live past my duty.” Diane let out quickly and continued to inhale deeply and look around the room with her eyes mirroring the sky; there was only smoke in her lungs. “It feels like the hoop is getting smaller and smaller and I…” She never finished.


    “Are you afraid?” Fiona’s heart was beating irregularly, with huge gaps between each pang. If it suddenly stopped moving, would it have saved her queen better?


    “Yes,” Diane replied, so quietly that her usually strong and confident voice was almost subdued by the moving of the clouds. “I am the queen now.”


    “Do you miss your mother?” Fiona asked softly.


    “Yes.”


    Fiona hoped the time had come for Diane to let her feelings out in the open, but no force in the world could make Diane Hunster, the queen of Crystalia, shed a tear before a traitor she pardoned.


    “What does one do without duty, Mrs. Hammer?” Diane asked, more to talk to herself than to listen to an answer. “Can life truly allow you to move on and live on past emotions?”


    “Then, why don’t you find a new duty?” Fiona suggested to fill the silence; it was the mother’s instinct, to be sure.


    “Like what?”


    “Like being the queen? Ruling?”


    “I don’t think I can do that.”


    “Why not?”


    “I have given them my youth. I think that’s enough. It’s not my job to rule over the dead.” She made a small break trying to collect her thoughts. “There is so much going on all around them and they just… don’t care.”


    “They see you the same way. You don’t care about their routines, do you?”


    “Routine, you say.” Diane tilted her head to the side slightly and Fiona observed everything, from her hands crossed on her lap to her spine, straight as an arrow; her hollow, dejected eyes, and lips that pointed downwards. “I have decided to reject every moral and ethical principle I believe in if it means it will bring them a better tomorrow. If I survive it… I don’t ever want to catch a glimpse of a person again.”


    “I’ve met your father once before. You two are so similar it’s frightening.”


    Diane groaned.


    “No, I mean it. I was a Raven back then, he a prince. I remember him always having his head up somewhere in the universe, chasing some ideals and changes. But, you know, your people don’t need new ideals and changes. They need you to work with what you have. To turn what you have into something they can understand. Your people need their queen, Diane,” Fiona said. Then followed silence, the heavy kind that matched the fog-filled air that came through the cracks in the window. “I am sad I didn’t get to meet your mother. She must have been a remarkable person.”


    “She was,” Diane replied and smiled, hoping to squeeze her eyes too tightly for tears to come down. “She loved me.”


    “I know a room full of people who would love you if you let them,” Fiona said with a smile. Then she sighed when she saw Diane’s expression change into something more similar to fright. “You are young, it’s natural you don’t see everything. But, Diane, that is why you need people. You need someone to point to what you cannot see.”


    Diane turned her head towards the window. “Do you think it will rain tonight?”


    Fiona felt nervous. “I don’t think it will.”


    “I am glad.”


    Distance.


    Rejection.


    Bewitchment.


    “May I ask why?”


    Diane slowly stood up. “I might die tonight.”


    The queen took her coat from the hanger next to the living room door and wrapped it so tightly around her body that Fiona was afraid she would suffocate; the same coat she had worn the day they had met, only it seemed to have grown about two sizes.


    “Are you going somewhere?” Thomas suddenly appeared in the hallway, his eyes puffy and his hair all over the place.


    “Thank you for tonight,” Diane said too confidently like she wasn’t planning on ever saying anything to Fiona again.


    “Where are you going?” Fiona asked, nervousness growing out of her body and filling the street.


    “Diane!” Thomas called after her.


    Diane didn’t reply. Fiona heard the door open and close quickly. There were no more dirty footsteps in her house, though Fiona would have gladly cleaned them all.