by A. M. Miller
“Nah, I know Nana is in town and you don’t get to see her that often. You two need time together. I’ll be fine.”
They shared one final hug. When Tiffany let go, Raven turned to hug Dion. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed tight. He was surprisingly strong for someone who spent most of his day sitting in a computer chair. When they let go Raven waved goodbye. She watched them climb into the truck. The engine roared to life and she waved again as they pulled off.
Once they were gone Raven walked back inside of her house. She leaned against the door and let out a sigh.
“Alone again,” Raven whispered into the dim hallway. She made her way to the shower. Raven noticed how stiff and tired her body was as she undressed.
Is this what the tin man felt like when Dorothy found him?
Her bones were rusted metal.
The marble tile was cold against her feet. She pushed back the blue curtain and turned on the faucet. The pipes clanked before the showerhead began spitting out water. Raven waited for the water to heat before stepping in. Hot water rained down on her skin but she could barely feel it. In the quiet of her shower, Raven’s thoughts spoke louder.
Her fingers pulled through the tangles of her hair but eventually, they found their way back down to her neck. She grazed her scar again and the one memory she’d been trying to suppress the whole day came rushing back to her.
Raven watched in horror. Blood dripped down her mother’s arm and onto the carpet, soaking it in crimson. Her nails clawed deeper into the wounded flesh. Raven’s heart thundered in her chest at the surreal sight.
Raven reached out and grabbed her mother's arm. “Stop it, mama. Stop it.” She tried to sound brave but her voice broke. Tears blurred her vision and ran down her face. She didn’t remember when she started to cry but she couldn’t stop.
Her mother’s body relaxed, no longer fighting back, as she stared into her daughter’s eyes. “I can’t stop, baby. I thought I got away, but they’re still coming. No one can stop them.” Tears swelled in her mother’s brown eyes. “Once they’re here, they’ll set our whole world on fire.”
“Mama.” Part of Raven sensed what was happening. The look in her mother’s eyes, the blood on her arm, she knew her mother’s problems weren’t just physical. No one else had been inside the house with her when this happened, which could only mean one thing.
“It’s them!” Her mother stressed as if Raven should have known who they were. When Raven said nothing, her mother tried again. Her bloody hand gripped Raven’s sleeve and pulled her closer. “It’s them, Raven. You remember them, don’t you? The ones that filled your dreams with screams…the wonderful… monsters.”
Her mother’s face twisted, full lips drawing out into a smile. She no longer looked like herself. Gone was the beautiful caring woman she’d always known. The crazed look in her brown eyes frightened Raven to the core. She tilted her head back and laughed, her cackle echoing off every corner of the room.
“Mama, please stop it. Mama, you’re scaring me!” Raven tugged back but her mother’s grip was too tight. She could feel her heart racing inside her chest as more tears slipped from her eyes.
Her mother’s head snapped forward. Her lips curled into a wicked grin. “Oh, sweet, Raven. I fear I’ve gone mad.”
Raven could still hear her mother’s words. The memory blurred after that point. She wouldn’t allow herself to go any further, but she knew how it ended. Raven had the evidence of her mother’s attack written on her face. Some of the scarring had healed over time but not all.
Lost in her thoughts, Raven didn’t notice the water had gone cold. She turned it off. Her body shivered but she felt disconnected from the cold. Raven stepped out of the shower and wrapped the large towel around her body, her toes wiggled against the mat.
Five years had passed since that night. When Raven’s father returned, he’d found them in his room. Raven all scratched up and his wife bleeding to death. He called for an ambulance, something Raven should have done when she first entered the room. Her mother woke up inside of the hospital a few hours later, horrified by what she’d done. They sent her to several different doctors before finally locking her away.
Raven moved with her father back to the city, their time in suburbia forever tainted by the horrors of the incident. She was the one who first asked to visit her mother. Her father refused. The therapist had told him it would be too traumatic for Raven, but Raven didn’t let that deter her. Denise More was her mother and she’d be damned if she let the woman who’d given birth to her rot away alone in a ward.
She told him he could not keep her away. He didn’t understand why Raven would want to see her after all that had happened.
“Because I need to understand,” Raven had shouted during one of their more heated debates. Not knowing why was the hardest part. Her therapist told her it was because she had trouble correlating the attack with the attacker but Raven knew it was more than that. Loving mothers didn’t turn into crazy women overnight.
Yours did. A voice hissed in the back of her mind.
“Raven,” her father called from downstairs, snapping her out of her thoughts. She hadn’t heard him come in.
He’d only just gotten off his shift. Raven could hear him shuffling downstairs as he moved around the kitchen looking for something to eat.
“I’m up here,” Raven yelled.
“Okay... just checking,” her father yelled back.
It was quiet afterward, the soft drip of the showerhead echoing in the bathroom.
That was the most they would talk today, which was for the best. Raven could barely stomach being around her father and it always proved more difficult around this time of year. He was far from innocent in the destruction of their family. In that, they’d all played their role.
3
The Heart Queensland
Lu stared at the mangled bodies. Their limbs were twisted in unnatural directions and faces masked with horror. The air in the room had a fowl stench, coppery and wrong. Blood stained the walls and floor, dripping down from the ceiling. Too much for just two bodies. She’d rushed from her chamber in nothing but her white nightgown when she heard the screaming and rustling footsteps. Now blood coated the bottom of her feet. The wet stickiness was warm against her flesh.
Lu stood too shocked to move. The horrific scene before her seemed unreal. Her brain tried to process the situation but she couldn’t think straight. Nothing made sense.
One of the maids stifled a cry. She’d been the source of the screaming. The sound was enough to shake Lu from her trance.
“What happened here?” Lu asked, still facing the carnage. Her voice didn’t sound right. It lacked the proper amount of emotion. She thought she must still be in shock.
“I came to prepare a bath for the queen, but-“ The maid's voice cracked and she paused to sniffle.
“But what?” Lu asked. She turned to face the maid. The maid was a young pretty woman with smooth caramel skin and sad doe eyes. The king’s pick, no doubt. He’d always liked the weak ones.
“I noticed something was off about the guards. When I got closer I noticed the blood on their armor and that they weren’t moving, my lady. I called for help but when I opened the door they were already dead.” The maid started to cry again.
Lu’s fist clenched at her sides. Her nails pinched into her palms and she focused on the sting of it, drowning out the sound of the girl’s cries. Turning, she looked at the guards standing on the other side of the room.
“Where is the Jack?” Lu asked, “Why was he not here to protect his queen and king?”
One of the knights stepped forward from the group. The other’s parted to let him through. He stood almost a head taller than the other guards and wore shiny black armor with a red and white cape. On the back of the cape, there’d be a grouping of hearts that matched his ranking. The same went for the rest of the guards who wore their castle uniform. Only those that ranked seven and up were allowed to serve in
the inner walls of the castle.
“The Jack of Heart was found dead not too far from the queen’s chamber,” said the tall knight.
This can’t be happening, Lu thought.
The king, queen, and jack, were all killed in one night. Never before had the queensland been so vulnerable. The queen and the jack were supposed to be the strongest members of their court. This wasn’t supposed to be possible. Lu felt the urge to run. She was faster than all of them. It would be nothing for her to escape. She knew the castle and how to hide in the places they’d never look to find.
But running would mean leaving the Heart defenseless. She’d known this time would come but she’d never expected it to happen this soon. If Leo were here he’d be able to handle it. Her brother always knew the right thing to say to calm her, but Leo had gone to collect seeds. He wouldn’t hear of their parents’ death for another week.
Regardless, this was not his responsibility.
“How?” Lu asked, hoping no one heard the tremble in her voice.
“We believed that the previous Jack of Heart perished while trying to protect the king and queen,“ the knight answered. “Someone had been hiding in wait. He went after Jack first. We can’t be sure but it looks like poison. Once the Jack was out of the way, the killer came for the king and queen.”
“Who is he?” Lu asked.
The man’s eyes fell to the floor. “We don’t know”
“You don’t know?” Shock, confusion, and fear over her parent’s death were quickly turning into anger as the panic rose inside her chest. “How can you not know? Someone was strong enough to defeat our king, queen, and jack. They slip past our defenses without any detection. How?”
The knight did not have a response for her.
“This cannot happen. You have to have some idea of who is responsible. This is the Heart. We are the strongest queensland known to this realm.”
“Princess-”
“We are meant to be impenetrable, defenders of the light. How then is it that we are defeated by one man?” Lu was almost shaking with anger. Attempts to calm her would only intensify her outrage. This was not the time to be placated.
“Forgive us, princess, for we have failed you,” the knight said. He dropped down to one knee and bowed his head. The other guards followed his movement.
Lu looked down on them. “You want my forgiveness, but I am not the one you failed.”
I am not the one who is dead, Lu thought. She turned back around. The king and queen’s bodies still lay broken on the floor. Her anger faded back into fear as she looked at them.
“For these grievances you will answer to the people, we all will.” Life without her parents did not scare the princess. Their relationship had never been so close. Lu did not know the feel of her mother’s hug or the look of her father’s smile. She could count on her fingers the number of times she’d seen her parents in the previous year. Only two involved any conversation. She would not miss what she never had.
What the princess feared was a queensland without its rulers. Soon the entire queensland would know of their deaths. They needed to take control of the situation less the queensland fall completely apart. She glanced around her parent’s chamber. Besides the bodies and blood, nothing seemed out of place. The bed was made and the fireplace was fading to embers. The glass doors to the balcony were open when she came in. Their killer could have escaped through there but everything else was left untouched. Why? Where were the signs of struggle?
“Bring me the Jack’s apprentice,” Lu ordered, turning back toward the guards.
“I am the one the previous Jack named as his apprentice,” the knight she’d spoken to before said. “I came as soon as I heard the scream.”
Lu eyed the tall man over again. She knew of the Jack’s apprentice but she’d never been given the chance to meet him. His helmet kept his face hidden and eyes shadowed. She glanced past the man toward the other guards. “The rest of you take care of the bodies. They will need to be wrapped and prepared for the wall. Make sure the hall is cleared. No one gets in and no one gets out. One of you will help this maid back to her bedchamber. She will not be allowed to leave until I clear her.”
Lu turned to the maid, her eyes narrowing. The maid bowed her head and averted her eyes from the princess’s glare.
“You understand the importance of silence, do you not?” Lu asked.
The maid nodded, bun bobbing, she kept her eyes on the floor.
“Then don’t speak a word to anyone,” Lu gestured to one of the guards, “Or he will cut your tongue out and serve it to you on a platter.”
Words her mother would have said, Lu assumed. Lu watched as the girl began to tremble. She hoped that fear would be enough to keep her mouth shut. Power was the ability to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy, knowledge of this chaffed at Lu’s skin; that power was hers now.
She turned her attention away from the maid in favor of the other guards. “Go now.”
The guards bent at the waist, offering a bow before snapping into action.
Lu turned back toward the previous Jack’s apprentice. “Do you know what comes next?”
“As the queen's only daughter and heir, the throne belongs to you now. You must pick the next members of the royal bond in order to gain full control. I am the Jack’s apprentice. I have trained under him making me the most viable option to fulfill his role. I would give my life to serve you, but the final say must be yours, princess.”
The royal bonds were an important part of every queen’s rule. They’d been tradition since the start of the queensland. Each bond served an important role in strengthening the queen’s power. The Jack of Heart protected the queen and led her army. With the assassination of her parents, people would be expecting her to bond with a powerful Jack as soon as possible. Doing so would ensure the stability of her queensland. This attack might mean the possibility of an all out war. She would need a strong Jack by her side.
“You haven’t completed training yet, have you?” Lu asked. The last Jack’s apprentice died only a year ago. She’d watched the funeral parade from her chamber window and burnt a red feather for him in the church’s light. He’d fallen while accompanying her mother on a mission. The new one would barely have trained enough to cover the basics.
“I may not have finished training, but while I worked with the previous Jack, I learned many things. It will be hard to find someone with my level of skill and training,” the knight said.
His point was valid, though perhaps arrogant. Little skill was better than no skill. Even if he wasn’t fully trained as a Jack, he was still a soldier in her mother’s army. To be selected to train meant that he’d showed a skill set other soldiers had lacked. The whispers she’d heard about the new apprentice painted an impressive picture, the question was if the real thing could live up to the stories.
“You sound rather confident,” Lu said taking a step forward, “Remove your helmet.”
Lu wanted to be able to look him in the eye.
The knight removed his black horned helmet. He looked young despite his thick beard. His round face was boyish and dark skin smooth. Black braids twisted past his shoulders and his full lips held a gentle curve. His amber eyes were what made him look more mature. They were hard set, sharp and intelligent.
He’s not from the Heart.
Everyone from the heart queensland was born with bright red eyes, a gift from the goddess after Lolakia’s blessing. It made spotting foreigners easy.
“How old are you?” Lu asked.
“Sixteen.”
Lu’s brows rose at the statement. She’d not thought the previous Jack to pick someone so young to be his pupil. The boy must have been highly skilled in order to move through the ranks so quickly.
A young Jack for a young queen.
Lu herself was only fourteen years old and now she would be the ruler of an entire queensland. Every choice she made would have an impact on the people of the Heart.
My
people, Lu reminded herself, because they were hers now. She’d watched the people of her inner city from the castle wall. Seen mothers and children, husbands and wives, friends and lovers-- all of them going about their lives, trusting that the crown would keep them safe. They needed protecting. They needed someone better than her, but she was all they had.
“How does an outsider find his way into such high ranking?” Lu asked.
The knight held her gaze, showing no signs of agitation at her remarks. “I may not have been born to this land but my heart has always resided here. I would do anything to protect it and its people.”
“Will you be able to stand by your words in the face of an unknown enemy? He killed our queen. Will you bring justice to this land at all cost?”
“We live and die for our queensland. I would never turn my back on her,” the knight said.
Lu knew the man would be her Jack the moment he stepped forward as the apprentice. She didn’t have enough time to find another candidate. This would be a sloppy makeshift arrangement, but if done correctly it would be just the thing the queensland needed to make it through.
“What is your name?” Lu asked.
“Domicin.”
Lu hesitated for a moment. Trusting people didn’t come naturally to her. From what she observed everyone in the court had an agenda. Something they wanted. Something to die for. Something to kill for.
“Lulana Heart, first daughter to the queen, Princess of the Heart,” Lu said. This was the last time she would speak her name. Soon, no one would remember that she ever had one.
After her coronation, her name would be wiped out of existence. Any text that included it would be destroyed and any memory of it erased.
Forsaking a name to fulfill a higher calling was something every queen of her line was expected to do. Lu’s eyes again returned to where her mother had laid. The other guards had already taken the body away, but she could still see its imprint in the blood against the marble floor. All her life Lu had only known her as the queen.