by J. M. Page
Hunter nodded his head back towards the bench. “They’d both be proud of you.”
She smiled, looking down at her lap. “Yeah…”
He lifted her chin then, gazing deep into her eyes with that golden gaze that seemed to see to the very center of who she was, and he smiled back. “I know I am.”
The weight lifted from her chest and she threw her arms around his neck, burying her head in his shoulder as she hugged him tight. For a moment, he was still, frozen in her arms, but then his arms circled around her and held her even tighter to him.
“Thank you,” she said. “And I’m sorry about your mom.”
His hold on her tightened even more. “Don’t be. She’s not worth it.”
But you are, she thought, her heart thudding against her ribcage with each beat.
The light from above began to fade, shadows creeping across the garden, growing longer and longer until whole portions of the place were bathed in darkness.
Snow cursed, pulling back from him. “How long have I been sitting here?”
“A few hours.”
She cursed again. “I shouldn’t have wasted so much time. We have to get to the palace before she…”
“Turns my heart into pulp? Yeah, that would be nice,” he teased.
She shoved his shoulder, rolling her eyes at his cavalier attitude.
“What happened to Molly?” she asked. He shrugged.
“Went back a while ago. Told me we could have as much time as we need,” he said, dragging her into him again, kissing the top of her head.
Things had been… tense since they left the planet covered in flowers. Even that seemed like an understatement. But in that moment, in his arms, Snow wanted time to stop. She wanted to forget about everything going on around them. The danger they were both in. The uncertainty about the future. She just wanted to be with him and enjoy the moment.
If things didn’t go well… They might never get this chance again. It pained her to think about it, but it wasn’t something she could ever forget. A lead weight on her heart, dragging her down with every step.
She knew all too well how fleeting these moments could be. She remembered how someone you loved could be there one minute and gone the next. And she hugged him tighter, pressure gathering behind her tear ducts.
But it wasn’t over yet, she told herself. He wasn’t gone yet. There was still a chance — however slim — that this could all work out in their favor. She just needed to trust.
“Hey,” he said, his voice soft and reassuring. She was sure he was going to tell her to stop worrying, to not be sad, to keep her chin up. All those Hunter things that she loved so much. He had so much faith in her, even when it meant risking everything.
He brushed her hair behind her ear and bent to whisper into it, “Snow, look.”
The way he said that, slightly breathless, she couldn’t deny him. She lifted her head from where it was buried in his shoulder and gasped.
In the waning light of the day, the flowers came alive in another way. Not like those on their last planet, with clouds of sleep-inducing pollen. These flowers were glowing.
“They’re bioluminescent,” she said, awed, extracting herself from Hunter’s arms to caress the petals between her fingertips. “Hunter! They’re bioluminescent!” she cried, not sure whether to laugh, cry, dance, or collapse.
Hunter gave a nervous chuckle. “Uh huh. I heard you the first time. So?”
“So it all makes sense now! It’s here! It wasn’t in the other garden she tore up. It’s been here all along!”
He cocked a skeptical brow at her his head tilted to the side. “Snow, I—”
But she was too excited to explain or listen to his questions. “The flowers of the past bloom when it’s darkest; don’t you see?” she asked, waving her arms around at the garden surrounding them. “Flowers of the past…”
Realization dawned on him finally and they both stood there grinning at each other like fools.
“But how will we know where it is? Only some of the flowers are glowing, but there’s a lot of them,” he said. “Which one?”
She raked her teeth over her bottom lip, staring at the flowers that glowed in bright blues, greens, and purples. It almost seemed like magic.
“Wait…” she said, going from one flower to the next, then the next after that. “They’re lighting a path!” She laughed again, turning her eyes up to the glass ceiling. “You really were smarter than the rest of us,” she said, shaking her head with a smile. Then she took Hunter by the hand and dragged him behind her, following the path of the lighted flowers.
It ended at a patch of flowers that looked entirely ordinary and unimpressive in the light of day. They’d passed right by it earlier without sparing it a glance. But in the cover of night, the entire patch glowed enough to cast them both in a bluish underwater kind of light.
“It’s gotta be here,” she said.
Hunter nodded and dropped to his knees, digging into the earth with his bare hands.
“Wait, what are you doing?” Snow asked, slightly horrified as the glowing blooms were torn from the ground and cast aside, their light fading.
“How else do you expect to get it out?”
She wavered a moment more before she dropped to her knees and helped him.
After a few minutes of digging, her nails scraped against something hard and she worked frantically to free it.
“Here!” she said, pulling the box from the ground and sweeping the dirt off of it.
The metal box didn’t look like anything special, plain on all sides, its color impossible to discern in the dark, covered in dirt. The hinges were rusted enough that she couldn’t manage to pry the lid free and wound up holding the base of the box while Hunter forced it open.
Inside, there was a glass vial with a rolled-up piece of paper and a flattened disc the size of her palm. The disc — or rather, the device — had only one button in the center, the rest of it unadorned. No lights, no instructions. Snow passed it to Hunter and he slipped it into his pocket as she tipped the contents of the vial into her hand.
The paper slid free, and with it, two small pieces of metal clinked to the ground. It was almost too dark to read it now that they’d ripped up so many of the flowers, but by leaning in close to their glow, Snow could make out the smooth even writing that had belonged to her father.
I wish I could have done more for you. Use this well. We will always be with you.
He hadn’t addressed it to her and he hadn’t signed it, but Snow had no doubt who the letter was from and whom it was meant for.
“I guess that’s it,” she said. What had she expected? Some detailed plan for how to take down the Queen? She hadn’t even really been in power yet when the King left this note. He’d only had a suspicion that things might not be going well. Only an inkling his bride wasn’t what she appeared to be. And before he was able to stop her himself, he’d died.
No one believed it was a coincidence.
“Not quite,” Hunter said, fishing the bits of metal that had fallen from the vial out of the soil. “Here,” he added, dropping the pair of rings in her palm.
Snow’s hand closed into a fist, squeezing her parents’ wedding rings until the edges bit into her skin and hurt. We will always be with you.
“We should go,” she said, standing and brushing the dirt from her knees. “We’re running out of time.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hunter
Back aboard the ship, Hunter set course for the Queen’s palace on their homeworld of Elurrah. They’d hardly said anything since finding the device. On their way out of the library, Snow had stopped long enough to give Molly a hug and thank her for her help before she wrapped the shawl around her to face Givva City again.
By that time of the night, the only people wandering the city streets belonged to the Queen’s Guard. Thankfully, they retraced their path from earlier and found no one to stop them.
“So what’s the plan?”
Hunter asked finally, the purple mists of Givva slipping away as they hurtled through the atmosphere towards their destiny.
Snow turned the rings over in her hand again and again, their rhythmic clinking as constant as the hum from the ship’s engines.
“I need to call Beaver,” she said suddenly, her face determined.
“I can’t get off the ship for you to talk to him,” Hunter said, casting a sideways glance toward her.
“He’ll deal with it,” she said, placing the call. It connected quickly, the man Hunter only vaguely remembered appearing on the screen.
“Snow! How are things?”
She didn’t seem to have the time or patience for his pleasantries. “We have the means of disabling the chips,” she said without fanfare.
“Ah! I thought you must be getting close with the effort she’s making to discredit you.”
Snow nodded. “I’m going to need that help you offered.”
His brows shot up. “Oh?”
“We’re going to storm the palace—”
“What?” Hunter hissed. “That’s your plan?” Was she out of her mind? There had to be a better way.
She ignored him. “We need all the people you’ve got. Even better if they can rally support on Elurrah. We need to overwhelm the Guard so I can get close enough to the Queen to activate the device. After that, she’ll have no hold on anyone in the Empire and I can reclaim my throne.”
Beaver nodded sagely, stroking his beard. “And what about my people? Our cause?”
“There will be a place for you amongst my advisors. The Empire will need rebuilding. It won’t be the Empire of my parents. I’ll need your help making it great again.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “The family resemblance grows stronger every day,” he said without explanation.
Snow seemed to not notice the comment, but Hunter did. And he knew what Beaver meant. This was not the same girl so unsure of herself that he’d met so long ago. This was a woman on a mission, refusing to be deterred.
“Well?” she prompted.
“It will take time to get my people there,” he said.
“We don’t have much. It’s afternoon there now, we’ll arrive by nightfall. We make our move tomorrow morning.”
“Very well, you have my support Princess,” said Beaver, the last word hanging heavily between them. Hunter didn’t think that the rebels acknowledged the prestige of royalty, so using her honorific was purely a show of respect. “There’s a place I stay on Elurrah, owned by people sympathetic to the cause. I’ll give them a call. They’ll give you a place to stay and gather the troops.”
“Thank you,” she said with a stiff nod.
“Until tomorrow.”
“Until tomorrow,” she repeated. The call died and Hunter leaned back in his chair with a low whistle, eying her appreciatively.
“What?” she snapped, her posture stiff, still in business-mode.
“Oh nothing…” he said, his voice sing-songy.
She narrowed her eyes at him and folded her arms. “Hunter…”
“It’s just that… For someone who doesn’t think of herself as much of a leader, you’re certainly not having any trouble taking charge now.”
“So? Being a leader is what I was born to do. It’s what I’ve been trained for my whole life. It’s what all of this—” Before she finished her sentence, Hunter leaped from his chair and closed the distance, cutting her off with a kiss. The argument died on her lips and she melted into him.
“All I’m saying is it looks good on you, Princess.”
She smiled, heat flooding her face. “Oh… Well… Thank you.”
He stepped away and took his seat again, this time moving closer to her, reaching for her hand.
She didn’t take it, instead turning the rings over in her hand again. She held one out to Hunter. Her father’s. A simple platinum band without any inscriptions.
“I want you to have this,” she said, light glinting off the edge of the ring as she pushed it closer to him.
“Snow… I couldn’t… You should have them, they belonged to your parents.”
“Then give it back to me when this is all said and done. My father wore this into battle, it seems only appropriate that you have it now. You’re defending the future of the Empire as much as he was then.”
He swallowed, his hand trembling slightly as he took the ring from her and slipped it on his finger. It felt warm there, almost hot. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to give it back to her.
“So… storming the palace?” he asked, skeptical.
She nodded. “It’s time I face her. No more hiding, no more attacks from afar. One way or another, this ends tomorrow.” It seemed she was taking his pep talk to heart and trusting herself.
He only hoped her plan was good enough.
By the time they’d gotten to Elurrah, the word had gotten out. Something big was happening and the people were restless. Hunter was used to a more subdued, somber mood in the capital city, but this time there was music filtering from drinking houses, there were people in the streets, clustered together, excitedly whispering to one another.
He might go so far as to call the place festive.
“So much for keeping things quiet,” Hunter muttered under his breath. Snow walked at his side, her shawl pulled close. It wouldn’t do to have their cover blown at this point.
“At least they’re happy about the change?” she said, sounding unsure.
“Who wouldn’t be?”
She looked down to the pavement and a pang of guilt lanced through Hunter. It wasn’t her fault they were being foolish. But the Queen would know something was happening. It would be impossible to sneak up on her with all of this going on. She wasn’t stupid.
The place Beaver recommended was called the Rusty Brew. How they managed any business with a name like that was a mystery.
But the couple that greeted them were friendly enough. Both stout, plump, and cheerful.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” the woman said, her thinning golden hair like spun sugar on her head. “Wasn’t sure when you’d show up, but we got a couple rooms ready for you.”
“Thank you,” Snow said, dipping her head.
The main entry way had a staircase to the left, with a hand-lettered sign that said ‘Rooms’ with an arrow pointing up. Beyond the front desk, there was a double door that led into a bar, where even through the glass, Hunter could hear the raucous carousing going on.
“Everyone’s a bit excitable,” the woman said apologetically to Hunter’s sneer towards the door.
“Not every day you get to be a part of history!” her husband chimed in.
“We hope you’ll join us in celebrating?” she asked.
Snow hesitated, her eyes going to the double doors and then to the stairs. Crowds; she always seemed nervous about them. Hunter stepped forward.
“It’s a little early to be celebrating, don’t you think?”
Snow looked back toward the door, lowered her shawl and smiled at the couple. “I’d love to join you.”
Hunter’s jaw went slack and he stared at her like she’d grown another head. But the Princess turned to him, a playful twinkle in her eye, and shrugged. “I could use a little celebration. And I’m sure they want to hear from me.”
“Oh! They definitely do,” the older woman said, grabbing Snow by the arm and leading her to the doors. “Tanna, by the way, pleasure to meet you Your Highness.”
“The pleasure is mine,” Snow said, dipping her head.
Hunter watched them both walk through the door and stayed behind, still marveling at the woman she’d become over the past few weeks. Despite all her doubts and setbacks, watching her mingle with the crowd, she looked pretty confident.
Someone said something to her and her face lit up, her hand covering her mouth to hide her laughter. When he’d met her, he couldn’t even get her to crack a smile. Was it wrong of him to think he’d had some effect on that change in her?
“You know her, then? The Princess?” the man asked, still manning the front desk.
Hunter nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“Seems like our prayers have been answered, eh? Never expected her to be alive after all this time.”
He spared another look back to Snow. Now she was on top of a table, the whole rowdy bar quietly watching her with rapt attention. Her face was serious, clearly passionate, and that look of steely determination that was so familiar to him now glinted in her eyes.