Chapter Text
It's been three days - nights - they've slept three times at The Dim's Inn under the cloak of eternal fucking darkness and everything has been going strangely well. Strange for them.
No instant fuck-up that got them evicted from the capital within the first day.
No surprise amputation of a sleazy guy.
No theft of any massively important artefacts or possessions of one of the highest members of the society.
'The Nein is on the straight and narrow,' Fjord decides loudly over brunch. 'That's what I think we need. To be real thoughtful. Considerate, like. Really weigh our options before we commit to anything.'
Beau remembers that only the night before he had suggested to the innkeeper that the Bright Queen herself wanted them to have scented baths and their boots polished and washing done while they slept, and wonders if they've gone so far off course that some light racketeering is no longer considered a bad thing.
'This coming from the man who popped himself into a dragon's lair.' Nott—Veth—peeks up over the top of her crossbow, lovingly shining the metal. Yeza is examining the contents of her bag, rifling through the phials and foul-smelling compounds she's tucked away in various pockets.
Beau gets a whiff of something she thinks is sulphur—must have borrowed or stolen it from Caleb—and leans away, wraps a protective arm around her breakfast.
'Ah, well.' Fjord scratches at the short hair above his ear. Grins a little crookedly. The white of his tusks is barely peeking through above his lips now and it gives his smile a dangerous leaning, even without his meaning to. 'Yeah, I guess it is. Reckon with so much on the line we have to...grow up. Wise up. And fast.'
Nott's—Veth's—eyes widen. She seems impressed by his statement. Nods slowly. 'Very wise. Caleb probably said that earlier,' she murmurs to her husband, who nods distractedly. 'He's very clever, very wise.'
Fjord looks like he wants to argue but gives up after a moment. When his gaze slides over her, Beau grins. Too wide, and with way too much food in her mouth, and Fjord pretends to barf.
'Good morning!'
The table choruses a good morning for Jester, who takes her place between Beau and Fjord. For an instant, Beau is struck by the similarity of the first morning they'd met and it's strange how much they've changed since. Fjord is a warlock bound to a creepy sea-snake, Beau is an Empire human in a violently anti-Empire-human nation, and Jester is...still Jester. But, like, ten times more powerful now.
'You seen Caleb?'
'He's in the Firmaments still. Dude doesn't sleep.'
'Beau. You aren't supposed to leave him there!'
'He wanted to read and I was bored.' Beau shrugs. Shovels another mouthful of hopefully-bacon into her mouth. 'Speaking of, gotta dash.'
Packing up the hunk of paper that the Shadow-hand had delivered for Caleb, Beau makes for the door. The rest of the dining room is largely empty—one drow woman at the bar looking to get drunk—so her friends' conversation follows her and Beau can't help but shake her head.
'Have you ordered something?'
'No, not yet.'
'Oh my god, Fjord, are you still being considerate and measured?' Jester mocks.
'There ain't nothin' wrong with it.'
'Uh, yuh, for like important stuff. But breakfast is breakfast—just pick something before I go crazy.'
'But what if I don't like it? Look at that bowl - it's just mush. What is that? An' I don't even recognise the vegetables they gave Ducey-'
'I'm going to murder you,' Jester moans. 'I'm going to murder you and get locked up in that prison and it's going to be not very good because I'm pretty sure they won't let me get pastries. Not even these not good ones and definitely not the ones from Nicodranas.'
Beau turns onto the street and she catches a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of the pair of them bickering where she left them. Fjord grinning down at the moping Jester and waving to catch the innkeepers attention. Then the door closes and she's on her own, stepping from street corner to street corner and trying to balance the difference between not being seen and looking like someone trying not to be seen. She makes her way toward the Firmaments, and the library within.
On their second day, Shadow-hand Essik had taken them to the library.
It's fucking amazing.
Beau has spent year in the library of the Cobalt Soul and she thought that was the best library there could be. Aside from the whole...being kidnapped thing. Like, she got to punch people all the time and sneak out, though admittedly that wasn't strictly a library-coded activity. And the library was organic and handsome and filled to the brim with fascinating stories and information Beau had spent long nights reading—which is nothing that she would ever admit, especially not to someone like Caleb.
In the privacy of her own mind—again, never to admit to anyone—Beau can also admit that the Cobalt's library is nothing compared to this.
It's vast, it's incredibly well organised, it's beautiful. That's a trifecta right there.
The marble—it's in the name of the Marble Tomes Conservatory, she knew there would be marble, but there is some god. damn. marble in this place—is a dusk-purple but faint, like the colour is washed through the crystal. She sounds nothing like herself but it's...stunning.
Beau grimaces.
The marble also looks weirdly thin. Almost gossamer thin, fragile, like one knock could send the whole structure shattering to the ground. She knows it's not because—and this is way more up her alley than stunning interior design or whatever the fuck she let herself think about for a hot second—it's not thin, can't be, because the walls are at least a foot wide and often wider. She knows this because that's the kind of thing she looks for. Caleb had disappeared into the library with hungry eyes only for the books; Beau touched on them for a while, and eyed the other denizens, before she turned to an old game and began to look for the doors, and the stairways, and the service tunnels to connect the halls in her mind. Puzzles are kind of her thing, so today when she finds a hall that seems to end in nothing, she is confused at first until she remembers the freaky magic shit these drow are into and looks up to find her suspicion confirmed—the hallway continues, but vertically. Otherwise, it is unchanged: straight walls, the ceiling with a slight arch to it, the glowing green lanterns lending an eerie set to the whole place but also gentle, the dim cast softening any harsh edges.
The whole impossible, impassable passage would keep some people out, Beau knows. But she’s a monk, and awesome as fuck, and also what some people might call infuriatingly nosy and what others might call determined. Beau likes infuriating, and she likes determined; she thinks of herself as infuriatingly determined.
Makes it sound like people have things to hide—which they always do—and that she’s digging them up—which she is.
Beau unwraps the bindings on her hands as she considers the obstacle before her. Methodically, she re-wraps her hands and wrists and tests them out, closes her hands into fists before bending the fingers back as far as they will go. Satisfied with the wraps, she begins to stretch.
The walls are smooth. Too smooth to find a handhold, definitely. She can make the leap from the wall to the ceiling easily but not too many times. If the walls were closer together she could shimmy up them like she did with the well or that gnoll pit, but in this case there is too great of a distance between the walls. And leaping, well. Momentum will only get her so far. And if she were to get some way up, then what? She can't see any doorways in the hall where she could hang, or sconces, or anywhere that she could rest and recuperate. She can, however, see where the hall splits off forty or fifty feet above her head and she frowns. Momentum won't get her that far.
She's still going to try.
Beau backs up fifteen feet. Squints at the wall and backs up an extra five feet. Then she runs right at the wall. A second before impact, she jumps as high as she can and plants both feet on the wall, propels herself up and back to what would be the ceiling of this new hallway. It’s not ideal; the ceiling is probably nine or ten feet high and Beau can feel her momentum slipping. She does her best—hits the ceiling and pushes off—but when she hits the opposite wall again, she immediately begins to slip. No amount of scratching or slapping at the wall—floor, technically—will keep her up and she falls.
Landing with just a light tap of boot on floor, Beau stays there a moment in a crouch.
Just as she’d thought. Too smooth. Maybe if she had some adhesive material. Or if she found where the hall connects? But no, they wouldn’t have the hall here for no reason if she could simply find another way around. This is the barrier—at least the first one.
Touching the smooth stone again, Beauregard taps her fingers against it.
The sound carries, bounces off the walls better than she had.
There’s a spell, isn’t there? One that could help her stick to walls, let her climb something like this? Maybe Caleb knows it. There haven’t been any express instructions to not cast anything and with the Queen’s medallion in hand, Beau thinks there isn’t a whole lot she can’t get away with.
One more attempt, maybe two. Okay, three more tries, and then she’ll find Caleb.
//
‘Hey.’
Beau slips into the chair opposite Caleb. As different as the two empires are, she finds it’s funny that all libraries that she’s been to have almost identical reading rooms: the long tables, the benches, the little nooks, the faint lanterns. True, the lcolours are all strange and true the other students are largely drow, but the essence remains the same.
‘Hey. Caleb.’
No answer.
Frumpkin flicks his tail in her direction, which Beau takes as a silent ‘fuck off’ but she could kick him into another dimension—not that she ever would—so she’s not going to listen to him.
‘Caleb. Caleb. Caleb. Caleb. Caleb. Cale-’
‘What is it, Beauregard?’
‘Can you make me walk up walls?’
He pauses a moment, then resumes flicking through one of the tome in front of him. The paper in this book is weirdly red and at first Beau had been freaked out, but she thinks it’s just left over colouration of the purple-red wood things here are largely built from. The script is jagged and unfamiliar. Undercommon, probably, and Caleb’s eyes have that peculiar sheen to them that comes from his Comprehend Language ritual, black soot buried under the nails of his right hand.
‘No.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘No, Beauregard, it is not bullshit.' Finally, he pulls his attention away from his book and the magic over his eyes flickers and fades back to his normal ice-blue. ‘We are deep within the capital of a foreign empire, surrounded on all sides by strangers and magic that we do not understand. Forgive me,’ he says, tone implying he doesn’t actually care if she forgives him or not, ‘if I do not wish to take the risk of casting magic on you.’ He fixes her with a keen look. ‘Especially not one that will let you go poking and prying.’
Beau feigns offence. ‘I am offended, Caleb.’ She doesn’t feign it well. ‘How dare you? Making me out to be some kind of -’
‘Spy?’
‘Exactly.’
Caleb just stares.
‘Okay, fine. But, c’mon man, you know what they always say—better to ask forgiveness than permission. Right?’
‘No.’
‘Caleb. You’re killin’ me, man.’ Beau drops her head onto the table with a loud thunk. Lifts her hand in a vague sorry cross fuck off to any of the other readers in the room, a hold-over from getting too raucous at the Cobalt Soul.
‘In fact, I am not. Your saying does not apply. Not when you could be arrested and thrown into that prison. I am sorry, Beauregard,’ he says, and that soft Zemnian accent sounds weirdly earnest. Probably because he’s scared she’ll hate him for not doing it or whatever. Twitchy little snot. ‘I will not.’
Beau knocks her head on the table again. ‘You,’ knock ‘are,’ knock ‘so,’ knock ‘boring, Caleb.’
‘I prefer the term cautious. Please stop, you will hurt yourself.’
‘You’re hurting me! I’m curious! I have needs!’
‘Ja, I don’t wish to know about your needs, Beaureg—okay, ja, goodbye to you as well,’ he grumbles when she glares at him and leaves. ‘Don’t do anything stupid!’
She flips him off with both hands and slips out into the halls again, headed for the Professor’s workshop.
//
The Professor isn’t there now and Beau rifles through some things she knows are permitted to be rifled through because all the important things are well hidden. She knows; she’s looked.
There isn’t much in the way of adhesives. There’s wax - useless - and some kind of tar-like substance but it’s mostly goop - also useless. Beau doesn’t want to carve the marble either—first, because it seems like it would take a really long time to do that and would largely be a waste of time, and second because she suspects it would be at least a little disrespectful.
She could find another hallway to explore—and does—but something always draws her back. Curiosity, maybe.
‘My people tell me you come here often.’
Beau looks over from where she’s sitting on the floor. She’s actually been trying—and succeeding—to meditate at the junction of these corridors and so she’s unprepared to look up and find the Bright Queen looking down at her. Her face is angular and lovely; the green lantern light makes her look like she's glowing, rather than wan or sickly like it does for Beau.
‘Uh.’
‘Do not stand on my account,’ the Bright Queen says and, with a look of something that might be amusement, she reaches out and turns her hand over from palm down to palm up. Faint lines of translucent grey follow the tips of her fingers as she does and an energy ripples out with the Queen as its epicentre.
Beauregard feels her stomach lurch. For a split second, she feels strange: her hair weird and prickly on her head and arms, her body weightless, and then she’s flying—falling—through the air.
Above—below?—her, she can see the ground rushing up to meet her. Her instincts—and, okay, a small, very marginal amount of kick-ass monk training—kick in to flip Beau in mid-air so she lands lightly on her feet on the roof.
Which is now the floor.
Her head hurts.
Beside her, the Queen moves a few steps forward and then lifts her hand again. The same grey light gathers in her palm and she turns it over, flipping them again.
As soon as Beau sees the gesture, she jumps toward the Queen; she has to move fast or else be sent back down the same fifty feet. The drop wouldn’t hurt much but knowing that she had come so close to finding out what is up here and lost? That would hurt.
Grabbing onto the corner where the corridors meet, Beau adjusts herself so she can pull into the hall. When the the atmosphere shifts, returning them the right way up, there she is—laying flat on her back like an idiot, yes, but successful. And also beside the Queen, who stands there looking unruffled and unfazed. Somehow, rather than landing on her head, the Queen had managed to control her own shift during the flip.
‘Impressive,’ the Queen says, the same as she had that day in her Court. Her attention is a palpable force where it settles on Beau, lingering on her face. It’s a strange dichotomy—the light, almost disinterested tone, and the intense pressure of her attention.
It isn’t until the Queen looks away that Beau manages to suck in a breath; she feels dizzy, and only some of that can be attributed to that gravity-bending shit.
‘Forgive me,’ the Queen says, glancing down the long corridor. 'In the...rush of securing the beacon, many formalities were overlooked. Introductions, for example.’
Beau nods.
The Queen looks at her again and she’s smiling. ‘What are you called?’ she prompts, and it sounds like she’s trying not to laugh.
‘Oh! Right!’ Beau scrambles to her feet to stand with all the proper posture she can muster. Spine straight, hands loose at her sides, chin deferential. The neat clothes, the pretty hair...all those things that matter to people like this are missing, and Beau is just going to have to suffer her displeasure or ridicule. She feels doubly exposed without the Nein around her, and especially without her bo, but, well, she’s leapt into plenty of situations feet first without looking and this is no different. Right?
Except that it is.
Except that this is the Queen of another Empire, one that is at war with Beau’s own.
Except that this is probably the most powerful person Beau has ever met...and she’s alone. Fuck up, antagonistic, abrasive Beau.
‘Beau,’ she blurts out when the seconds stretch too long. ‘Beauregard.’
‘Beauregard.’ The Queen nods slowly. ‘I am Empress Leylas Kryn.’ She gives no indication of what exactly Beau should call her.
‘No shit.’ Oh shit. ‘I mean - uh - yes. We’ve gathered that.’ Beau sketches an awkward bow. She doesn’t lower her eyes all the way—that would just be begging to be attacked—but she thinks it’s sort of maybe halfway to a respectable bow.
The Queen makes no sign of pleasure or otherwise before she turns and walks away.
Watching her, Beau notes that the Queen isn't wearing her armour anymore but instead a long robe similar to the one the Shadowhand had been wearing but where his had been a dark grey hers is pure white. The heavy fabric is still and it makes her look like she's floating down the hall.
Beau doesn’t know this woman, or what potential dangers there are, or if she’s tricking her into going to the prison or something like that but...she really wants to know what there is up here.
She follows, mentally kicking her own ass the entire time.
‘Uh, I'm sorry if I was loitering somewhere I shouldn’t have been.’
‘No, you’re not.’
No, I’m not, Beau privately agrees.
‘Yes, I am,’ she says, just to be contrary. And then, because it’s true, she adds, ‘I don’t want to do anything that makes us look suspicious or ... ungrateful of your hospitality. Everyone is happy to be here and alive and you’re letting Caleb learn his wizard shi - er, stuff - so he’s thrilled. We’re grateful to have our freedom and some small measure of trust. I don’t want to do anything that might cast doubt on that. I’m just - curious,’ Beau tells her with a small shrug and the kind of grin she knows makes her look sheepish, exasperated with herself.
The Queen doesn’t quite falter in her step but, for an instant, Beau thinks she slows. ‘How many times did you attempt to make your way up here?’
‘A couple.’
A silver brow lifts in, like, a perfect arch. Hot.
‘... Nineteen times.’
There’s that smile again. The Queen shakes her head. ‘Persistent.’
‘That’s a nice word for it.’
The Queen laughs at that.
It’s a pretty laugh, Beau thinks, and gives her brain an extra kick.
//
The hall doesn’t continue for very long. The strange pair walk together around one corner to a set of plain doors that the Queen opens. Physically, Beau notes, and she doesn’t know why it seems strange to her but for some reason she thought that Queens didn’t open their own doors or hold their own cups or do mundane things like that.
‘My, what could you be thinking about? You look so concerned.’
Beau’s eyes flash up to the Queen’s face, seeing her watching Beau with that same intent expression from before. When Beau just shakes her head, shrugs, there is a flash of something across her eyes and then just as quickly it is gone.
Annoyance? No. Disappointment?
‘This is as far as you are permitted to go, I’m afraid,’ the Queen tells her, and she gestures for Beau to take a seat.
Feeling like an idiot for getting distracted, Beau looks around them.
She has been brought into a small antechamber, very much like the one that had been connected to the Court but more comfortable by far. In the place of stone benches are cushioned seats, and there are windows dotting the walls that show the night sky and a splash of stars, and the fountain in the centre of the room is small and provides a quiet source of white-noise, strangely comforting.
To the side of the doors, the Queen has hung her cloak. She stands now in a simple dress. True, it’s made of beautiful material but she isn't dripping in jewels and rings to show her station. She doesn't need to. She's not a small lady by any degree but out of her armour she is smaller than she had first appeared, and doesn't look nearly as fierce lacking the horns and spikes of her silvered chain and scale. Though she looks softer—the dress simple, easing the set and breadth of her shoulders, her hair tied back in a loose braid, no helmet—she is in no way less imposing. It is a different kind of imposing, Beau allows. There is an authority, a confidence, that doesn't leave her even in common clothes outside of all her queenly shit.
It makes Beau want to fidget.
Instead, she stills herself. Steels her spine, feels her chin jut out. She’s a contradictory little shit, even in her own mind.
'Anywhere?'
The Queen smiles. Nods.
'Okay.'
Beau moves over to one of the seats by the window to gain some distance. She's surprised to find that the Queen follows her and sits on the same seat.
There isn’t much space between them. A foot, maybe less. As a drow, she doesn’t run particularly hot but Beau can feel—or imagines she can, at least—the energy that crackles off her. She’s a powerful woman and Beau thinks it’s more than likely that her possessions alone would be formidable.
For a short time, they sit in silence. Beau's tongue feels like it's swelling and she makes a note to ask Jester later if it's possible to be allergic to small talk or uncomfortable silences. Then, the Queen shifts in place, turns to face Beau a little more directly.
‘A rumour came to me that you and your...team are leaving the city.’
Beau nods. This, thankfully, is something she can answer. ‘We’re headed further east.’
‘The Ghostlands?’ The Queen sounds genuinely disturbed by the notion and now Beau is doubly glad that they had acquired passage via the tunnels. The Queen relaxes when Beau tells her as much. ‘Ah. Yes. This is to find the kiln your companion mentioned.’ It’s more statement than question but Beau nods anyway. ‘Fascinating. I had my people make inquiries. Shadow-hand Theylas will give over what little we have gleaned.’
Surprised, Beau turns to look directly at her. ‘Thank you!’
The Queen looks strangely at her, eyes dipping to her lips.
Beau realises that she’s smiling and immediately stops. It really must be a shit smile to garner that reaction; she should practice more. Or, better yet, just never do it again.
‘You’re very welcome.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Beau sees the dark hand reaching out and she stays very still as it settles over the top of her own.
The instant before they touch, a hundred and one questions are running through her mind. What the fuck is this? What does it mean? Does the Queen like me? Does she think I’m hot? Or does she just realise that I’m the weakest link? Is she using me? Of course she’s using me but for what purpose?
The instant after they touch, Beau’s mind is empty.
A spark seems to jump between the Queen’s hand and Beau’s. For a moment, she’s afraid it’s like Jester’s trick where she fucks people up with a brush of her finger. But it’s not. It’s not like that at all. It’s more like lightning, if lightning didn’t hurt. Lightning crackling through her skin, and blood, and through her brain and back and forward in that doubled - tripled - hundred-fold sensation that settled in her mind whenever she took a hit of the beacon.
‘What -’ Beau manages to get out, a little garbled.
It felt like it had taken an hour to crawl and crackle and burn through her body but the Queen hasn’t even finished settling her hand on Beau’s by the time it passes.
Beau throws her hand off, jumps to her feet, backing up toward the door. She gets there, has a hand on the door to shove it open when a fraction of that energy buzzes in her head, below her ear.
There’s a door behind her. She’s leaning tiredly against it, feeling the light hum of the wood and magic as it snicks closed and locked. The room she has entered is opulent, almost indecently comfortable. She gives into its lure, begins to strip off the silver armour. A part of her knows she’ll be displeased in the morning to find the armour carelessly discarded, will have to take it to her room to clean each link of the silver chain oh so carefully, but a much much larger part of her wants it gone. Wants the weight of it off her shoulders, just for an hour or two. Wants to be free of the reminder of what waits for her outside of these walls.
‘If you are an assassin, I’ll have you know that I’m in a terrible mood and you’ve come at a bad time.’
‘And why is that?’ Beau says, feels her mouth moving, feels the words hiss from her tongue in a beautiful but entirely foreign language. Feels the amusement that bubbles up from her own belly. Feels all of this...and the uncanny, unhappy separation that is the knowledge that this is not her own body.
She looks down at her hands when they come up to remove her helm. Long, tapered fingers of dark, dark blue. Silver scars now faint across the fingers—a fighters hands, yes, but ones that belong to the sword at her hip.
‘My wife has been gone for a very long time and I’m furious with her, that’s why.’
‘Perhaps she can make it up to you.’
‘She will have to try,’ the stranger laughs from deeper within the chamber and Beau-not-Beau toes off her boots and kicks them to the side, moving further in.
‘ - not the way this should be done,’ the Queen is saying when Beau blinks out of...whatever the fuck that had been. Her face is blank but her eyes... Her eyes are like twin flames, searing hot, and Beauregard isn’t sure if she wants to back up or not. ‘It is supposed to come to you naturally but I thought perhaps you wouldn't know the signs, and with you leaving,’ she says. Snarls. In someone less regal, it would be a snarl. She masters herself again quickly and her tone evens out. 'I was afraid of what might happen if you had no notion of it. This hasn’t been documented in someone so distinct from us, someone so wholly uninformed.’
‘Pardon my common, but what the fuck are you talking about?’
Stillness settles over the room, like they’re both shocked by her outburst.
Across the room, a coy smile tucks into the corners of the Queen’s mouth. Very slight, almost unnoticeable.
Beau notices.
‘You remind me so much of her. Her mannerisms. Charm.’ The smile grows into something more familiar. She’s teasing Beau. The Queen seems to realise it at the same moment because her smile disappears entirely and her expression grows more severe. She draws herself back, sits straighter. She hasn’t moved from the seat, which Beau appreciates. ‘In the weeks and months to come, you may experience some confusion. You may close your eyes for but a moment and open them to find some foreign view before you—a city street you have never walked, a dark cavern, a home. Even a land beneath the waves. It may feel strange, definitely confusing. You may be frightened,’
‘I’m not scared of shit,’ Beau bites out.
The Queen arches a brow.
Again, Beau is woman enough to admit it’s hot.
‘You may forget your name for a time, as though it doesn’t belong to you. You may not recognise the people around you. It is different for everyone but you may feel the sensation of tearing or compression. Perhaps itching or burning all over your skin.’
‘Burn? What did you do to me?’ Beau rubs her hand where the Queen had touched her.
The Queen follows the movement. ‘I did nothing,’ she says firmly enough that Beau actually believes her. ‘That is a surprise to me as well. I merely wanted to talk.’
‘What is a surprise? Talk about what?’ Even as she asks, Beau knows. Compression. Memories. Confusion. Forgetting her name. Her legs feel weird. Weak, like they're filled with water. ‘You think I’m one of them. One of your soul people. Your consecuted.’
She knows she doesn’t imagine the surprise in the Queen’s eyes. There’s a softened edge to it—it isn’t the harsh surprise of someone finding out Beau isn’t someone to be taken advantage of. Nor the surprise of a friend or parent seeing something new in her. This is the surprise of a stranger in front of another who sees something familiar, something of home, where she wasn’t expecting it.
‘Absolutely not.’
‘I am your queen! You do as i command!’
‘I am a venerated member of my den, Leylas - you do not command me!’
Beau finds herself slipping again into a—her mind rebels against calling it a memory but it is kin to that. She knows that, even if she doesn't like it. In the memory, the vision, the whatever it is, she is striding forward. Someone is striding forward. And it feels like Beau’s eyes are behind their eyes, like she’s piggy-backing on them. In them.
In the vision, the Bright Queen is standing in front of her just as she is standing in front of Beau in the antechamber but she’s younger. The armour is less ornate and the Court behind her looks ever so slightly different. The decorations on the den thrones are shifted and the space is entirely empty save for the two of them. She takes a step forward and then another, and there is a moment when she isn’t sure whether she is moving or her double.
Her eyes are the same, Beauregard notices, her mind swimming. White and fierce.
‘You may be my wife and Consort, but you do not have the power to disobey me. If I order the blackhands to the front lines then you must obey!’
‘That is not a decision that you can make on your own. All of the dens must agree—and I think you will find that Theylas at least disapproves of such action. It’s aggressive and dangerous,’ Beau hisses. ‘Do you wish to put all our fighters in the line of fire at once? Reveal our hand to our enemy at such an early stage?’
‘I wish to win this before it consumes us! This war may very well be the death of all that we have worked so hard to achieve. My love,’ Leylas says, and her voice softens. She touches Beau’s cheek, cupping it. ‘I have seen it.’
‘You have seen things like it,’ Beau disagrees. She takes Leylas's wrist and pulls her hand from her face.‘We live and we live, I know because you tell me time and again. But I fear you forget that we change too. That circumstances do not last forever. What good is living again if we cannot change our minds about what has been done? Or are we doomed to live the same life over?’
The vision of the younger Bright Queen folds in on itself. A white-hot ache starts behind Beau’s eyes and it’s like a burning paper curling in at the edges, the memory cracking and breaking and Beauregard scrambles to hold onto it, to follow it to something else she can reach, but it’s gone.
//
Beauregard sways on her feet, staggers. She reaches out for something to catch her balance on but she’s standing in the centre of the antechamber. Before she falls, two cool hands catch Beauregard under the elbows and the Bright Queen herself is holding her up.
‘What did you see?’
‘You tell me,’ Beauregard snaps. Well, tries to. Infuriatingly, the pain of the migraine makes her words weaker than she’d like. Breathless. Her skin prickles but she think that might have something to do with the fact that a super strong, mysterious, terrifying, beautiful woman is holding her. A shiver goes down her spine as she stares over the Queen’s shoulder; Leylas’s hand shifts on Beau’s elbow, sliding ever so slightly up so she’s...holding Beau instead of holding her up.
There is a moment where Beau feels her body sinking into the hold, where it feels not just good but right, the most familiar thing to her. But then she catches herself and her whole body tenses. The Queen’s fingers tighten for a moment before she pulls away, steps back.
‘Disorienting, isn’t it?’ Her eyes are like molten silver, soft. Inviting. Dangerous. ‘I don’t envy your position. In each of my lives, I’ve had guides to teach me what to do, to centre me. People who have walked the same path before me who could teach me how to control the amnenesis.’
‘You really are talking about that. You really think,’ Beau stops, folds her arms over her chest. If she rubs at her skin, it’s just because the whole thing was weird, not because she’s tingly all over. ‘You really think I’m one of you. I’m not.’
For a moment, it looks as though the Queen is going to argue. Then, she simply bows her head.
‘I have further business here.’ She waves her hand toward a door on the far side of the chamber. ‘Have you any further curiosities?’
Yes.
‘No.’ She recognises a dismissal when she hears one.
‘Then here we must part.’ The Queen heads for the other door. It opens untouched and she begins to walk through it. In the frame, she stops. She doesn’t look back, but her voice carries—soft, likely magically enhanced so that it reaches Beauregard unchanged, or perhaps to Beauregard alone. ‘Stay safe...Beauregard. Come back when you need our help.’ Now, she turns very slightly. Enough that Beauregard can see that faint smile again that warms her steeled expression. ‘You don’t have to call it help. I know you’ve never liked that.’
And then she is gone.
It’s a long time before Beau can muster the thought to say, ‘You don’t know me,’ and by that time, the Queen is long gone.