Rich held his breath, waiting for her response. It seemed that everyone around him did as well. To his amazement, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she broke down, tears streaming from her eyes as she crumpled to the floor, holding her face in her hands.
He tried to walk toward her with an outstretched arm, but she motioned for him to stay away. “Rich...I...I’d love to be your queen, but I can’t.”
Rich crouched so he would be at her level, though he still couldn’t see her eyes. What was she talking about? Was there some reason he couldn’t pick her? Arlenen hadn’t said anything about that.
“Nadia, I know we’ve had our ups and downs, but I don’t care about any of that stuff. I’ve moved on, and I think—”
Nadia swiped her hand through the air. “No! It’s not that. It’s Mallory. She cast a spell on me. She made me help her. I’m the dark kn—”
Her breath caught off in mid-syllable and her hands went to her throat. She gasped and choked, trying to draw in breath, but couldn’t seem to get even one. The healers rushed to her side. She looked like she was choking on something, but she hadn’t eaten anything, and Rich couldn’t see what could be causing the trouble.
Nadia’s face paled as her body twisted in strange ways, as though she were a rag doll two children were using in a game of tug-of-war. Rich launched all the healing power of his own toward her, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. “Do something!” he screamed at the healers. “Anything!”
“We’re trying!” one of the healers cried. “But this isn’t your everyday medical problem. It’s powerful dark knight magic.”
Nadia’s head fell forward, and she stopped making the gagging noises. Rich shot forward and grabbed her hand, using his powers of empathy.
In a horrible instant, he saw everything. The torture, the fear, the dark bargain she had struck to save Angela’s life. She was the dark knight the mages had detected.
Rich drew back his hand with a gasp, and Nadia suddenly sat up, speaking with the voice of Mallory. “Hello, Richie. Your girlfriend here should learn to keep her mouth shut. It was the only thing keeping her alive. Too bad.”
Nadia grinned, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. In fact, it somehow looked like Mallory’s expression too.
“But I guess there’s one last thing you might be able to do to help me...and her too.” Nadia’s hand raised limply as she pointed at Rich. She really did look like a puppet with someone else pulling her strings. “It’s a simple thing, when you think of it when compared to her life. Just this...”
Nadia’s near-lifeless eyes met Rich’s.
“I want to be your queen.”
The words hit Rich like a slap in face. Once again, he didn’t have time to think this through. Either he agreed, or Mallory would kill Nadia right there in front of all of them. He didn’t know how she was doing this, only that it worked and there was nothing any of them could do to stop it. This was all on him.
Nadia raised a single eyebrow, maintaining her twisted smile. “It’s not a hard question, Your Majesty,” she said. “And this sort of ventriloquist act is hard to keep up. So I’ll give you to the count of three.”
She held up a single finger, then a second. Rich clenched his fists, biting down hard on his lip. Arlenen had said she was a choice. An audacious one, but still a choice. He couldn’t let Nadia die, even if it meant being stuck forever with someone he couldn’t stand.
“Yes!” he blurted an instant before the third finger rose.
Nadia’s body winked at him and gave an awkward wave.
“See you soon, my liege.”
Nadia’s body dropped limply to the floor. He knelt beside her and turned her over, listening for her to draw a breath. For a horrible moment, he realized that Mallory might not honor her end of the deal. What if she had already done too much damage?
He was seconds away from attempting CPR, no matter who was watching, when Nadia gasped in a breath, followed by a violent coughing fit. Rich put his arms around her shoulders, trying to steady her as she coughed and shook. Slowly, she got control of herself again and looked over to Rich, tears in her eyes.
“Rich, I’m...I’m so sorry. There wasn’t any other way. I couldn’t let them kill Angela because of me.”
Rich tightened his arms around her into a close hug. He knew exactly what making a deal with the devil felt like. “Nadia, you don’t have to be sorry. I’m the one who should feel sorry for you. They used you, and there wasn’t anything you could do.”
She pulled back, her eyes red and puffy. “But she made me into a dark knight,” she said through a few sniffles. “I’m one of the bad guys. I’m just like my grandfather.”
Not knowing what to say to that, Rich let Nadia cry on his shoulder. This explained many things, including why she had been acting so strangely in the Corridor. A knight wasn’t supposed to hold the key, and she had secretly been a knight the entire time. It had been literally driving her insane.
Then another thought, a more hopeful one, came to mind. It was something his nemesis had said during one of their first fights. She had offered him a chance to join the side of the dark knights through “adoption.” If that had been possible for him, couldn’t it be possible for Nadia right now?
Rich shot to his feet, looking around for the best person to ask, and settled on the red-haired knight. “We can change her to our side, right? She can join us again if she wants to.”
The red-haired knight nodded gravely, resting on his mighty sword like a cane. “Yes. As the king, you will be able to do that. She will simply have to give you her pawn piece and allow you to trade it for a white pawn. Then you will have to redo the knighting ceremony, and she will be one of us.”
Though this was exactly what he wanted to hear, Rich noticed that the red-haired knight seemed hesitant. It seemed there was always a catch with these sorts of things. “Well, is there a downside to this?” Rich asked.
“In a way,” the red-haired knight said. “The dark knights don’t take kindly to traitors. She will be a marked woman for the rest of her life, and the dark knights will actively hunt her. It is a dangerous way to live.”
Nadia placed a hand on Rich’s arm and gently moved him to the side so she could talk to the red-haired knight. “Let’s do it. I don’t care if it’s dangerous. I’m going to join you and then spend every second I can trying to make up for the terrible things they forced me to do.”
She turned back to Rich, wiping the moisture from her face. Her genuine smile was back for the first time since her capture. “And Rich, we’re going to find a way to free you too. I heard what you did. No one has ever done anything even half that incredible for me.” Her hand slid into Rich’s and gripped it tight. “And when you’re free, I will gladly be your queen.”
A cheer went up from the knights around them, and despite everything, Rich felt like joining in. He kept his hand against Nadia’s, realizing how right it felt. He already looked forward to the time when she really could stand by his side.
“You know what?” Rich said, softly so that only Nadia could hear. “Once we save the world, we should catch a movie sometime.”
Nadia chuckled. “Throw in dinner and you’ve got a deal. You know, if we save the world, they might just make a movie about us.”
Rich nodded, imagining the movie premiere, complete with limousines, red carpet, and a mob of paparazzi. It seemed kind of ridiculous after all they had been through. “Well, in that case, you might need to take up acting.”
“Huh?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“You’ll have to play yourself. Because there’s no one else like you.”
She tackled him in a hug and held him there for a long time.
Rich and Mallory met in the ruins of the Corridor of Keys. The ruins lay where they had fallen, turning the ground gray around them. Clouds of dust and ash hung thick in the air, not letting the sunlight through.
In one hand, Rich clutched the white king piece while the other held the white queen. His parents and the red-haired knight had explained everything—what to do, what to say. They hadn’t, however, been able to explain how to make the feelings of dread go away.
Mallory’s hair had returned to its original dark color and she wore armor a little fancier than usual, adorned with gold as Rich had seen on the dark queen. For once, she didn’t appear to have any weapons, but Rich knew that could change quickly. He wore his grandfather’s armor, though he didn’t feel worthy of it.
They stopped an arm’s length apart, staring at each other. Rich held his face blank, while Mallory wore the tiniest hint of a smile. Rich bobbed his head slightly.
“Mallory.”
“Heinrich.”
Though it felt like signing his soul away, he reached out and offered her the white queen. “Mallory, as the king of the paladin family, I offer you the title of queen, bonding myself to you after the knightly order until death shall overtake us. Do you accept?”
As he gazed over at Mallory, he hoped against hope that she would simply bat his hand away and try to ambush him with the legion of knights she had hidden among the ruins. No such luck. She reached forward and took the piece.
“I, Mallory, accept your offer of bonding and the title of queen.” She stooped in a low curtsy. “Long live the king.”
Rich bowed, feeling his heart sink, ending with the ceremonial response he forced his lips to utter. “Long live the queen.”
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