I frown. “You mean to get at the ancient chessboard?”
He nods. “With the help of Matrexia, you’re going to learn how to warp space,” he says, his lips moving oh-so-carefully around the word warp.
I stand there, and I stare at him. Even though the remains of that control spell are still wafting around me – and they’re begging me to pay heed to them, begging me to follow them to their source – at the same time, I can’t ignore what he just said. “I’m sorry? What spell? What are you—” I begin.
I stop. It’s not like I haven’t seen people appear suddenly before. It’s not like I can forget that only this morning Antonio did a similar thing. He disappeared from one spot and reappeared in another. Magic can do all sorts of crazy things – and I’ve seen it personally do some of the most bizarre things you can imagine. From tunneling under the ground without access to any air, to bending reality itself, to changing your own appearance. So of course warping space is possible.
With enough power, anything is possible.
“In order to take the board from John, we must literally take it from under his nose. And the only way to do that is to steal the very space it inhabits, transfer it to Senator Rogers’ old headquarters in town, and then,” he chuckles and shrugs his shoulders, “the end will begin. We can’t get ahead of ourselves,” he says, his tone serious, as if I’m the one who’s jumping to the end here. “First, we must get close enough to the seat of Senator Rogers’ power in order for you to practice and ultimately master the spell.”
I’m staring at him, and I’m not making any attempt whatsoever to hide my confusion. “This sounds like a seriously hard spell to learn. What if it goes wrong?” My voice is tight with genuine concern, one I wouldn’t have to voice if he had a clue how to manage his resources.
Yeah, I get it, John had his problems, but at least he didn’t willy-nilly risk people on the off-chance he would win.
As I look at Spencer right now, I realize how much of a kid he is. Sure, he has the build of a man, and double sure, he has the deliberate desire of one, too. But at the end of the day, his thought processes are just so juvenile. The way he thinks that things will simply work out just because he wants them to – he’s the diametric opposite of John.
But I need to turn my mind off John and concentrate on what the hell Spencer is suggesting. Because, if it does go wrong, I can guarantee you it will be hell.
Spencer claps his hands together. “Don’t worry. You’re easily the most powerful queen I have ever seen. And with Matrexia’s tutelage, it will be simple.”
“I doubt it will be simple. Sounds like it will be dangerous. What happens if it goes wrong?” I demand once more.
This time I look at Spencer without a filter on my gaze. That’s not to say that I let him know all of the dark thoughts I’ve been thinking about him over the past several days. I just let my intensity out; I don’t try to modulate it with any sheen of affection.
Maybe it has an effect on him, because he straightens slightly. “There will be measures in place. We won’t rush you.”
“What could go wrong?” I demand once more. I let frustration filter out through my tone.
It’s enough that it finally gets Michael’s attention. Though he was standing there dutifully several meters away before, now he takes an angry step toward us. Even though you’d think people can’t take angry steps, you’d be wrong. Especially when it comes to Michael. He has so much sheer power behind his musclebound form that every single time his shoes slap against anything from floorboards to gravel to stone, it’s like two cymbals meeting. And now it is no different.
Because everybody turns their heads over their shoulders to stare at him, even Matrexia.
“Don’t talk back to your king,” Michael grumbles.
Me?
I slowly slide my gaze from Michael over to Spencer.
If there’s one thing I’m going to have to do before I take Spencer on to steal the original board, it’s going to be to break Michael’s back. Not literally, but figuratively. I’m going to have to snap his connection to Spencer. Because Michael is easily Spencer’s most powerful piece. Without him, he’ll be easy to quash.
So now I let my gaze slip as slowly as I can toward Spencer.
At first, Spencer looks as if he agrees with Michael.
So I let my arms drop, and I clamp my hand on my hip. “I’m not talking back,” I spit. “I’m ensuring this works. I am a queen, after all,” I say, really emphasizing the word queen. Though once upon a time, I hated people who drew attention to their own power and privilege, now I just have to get on with it. “I know my own power.” My voice dips down on the word power. “I also know what kind of king will come after me. John,” I let his name slip out of my mouth. I don’t spit it; I simply let it slide off my lips and tongue, almost as if I’m practically kissing the air. And though, usually, I would never have done that around Spencer, now it’s a calculated move. “John,” I repeat his name, “will not stand by idly. He’ll have spies everywhere. I guarantee you he knows I’m here. If I make a play for this board and I stuff up, he will capitalize on that. So I’m not talking back to my king,” I say as I now snap my gaze over to Michael, and I make no attempt to hide the fury behind it. “I’m ensuring he lives through this. I don’t want to lose my king,” I force myself to add.
I pause for several seconds until I slide my gaze back to Spencer.
It works.
On the pathetic statement that I don’t want to lose him, he looks as if he wants to throw himself forward and fold his arms around me.
His adoration is so damn obvious, I want to put a paper bag over his head.
I simply stand there and smile at him. “So I need to know what will happen if this goes wrong. And we need a true counter plan in place if it does.”
“Of course. Sometimes I underestimate your abilities, my dear. Now, come along. Once we reach Senator Rogers’ library, we’ll sort out the rest.”
“I’m sorry, library?”
“He had a library down in these tunnels. Though I have secured it, and I believe that John has no idea where it is, it is best for us to hurry. Because,” his jaw tightens, “as you say, John will try to capitalize on our every weakness.”
Yes. He will. Or at least I hope like hell he will.
Because if he can do that – if John can rise to the occasion, maybe… maybe my love for him will be founded.
Once upon a time I would never have broached the word love around John.
Our relationship was way too complicated for that.
Plus, I refuse to love somebody just because some dumb magical connection makes me do it.
But with John, unlike Spencer, it’s not just the imprinting process.
With John, the imprinting process was never that strong, anyway. Yeah, strong enough to get my attention, strong enough to draw me into his life in the first place. But unlike with Spencer, it doesn’t make me want to lose all control. Instead, it makes me want to gain control. It makes me want to protect John when he can’t protect himself.
And that’s what I’m doing here, right?
But have I really bothered to turn my mind to what will happen when I’ve done it and I’ve destroyed the game?
Will I be able to go back to John?
Will he accept me?
Or will he turn from me because I turned from him?
Those thoughts haunt me as Spencer leads me forward, down the stairs, and into the tunnels.
They aren’t the tunnels I remember, even though I’ve been down here countless times.
They’re compact, for some reason, almost as if someone has taken the exact size and map of the tunnels but compacted them somehow.
Spencer can obviously see the frown playing across my lips because he leans in close. “This is a compaction spell.”
He uses the exact same word that I did, and I frown at that.
Because it reminds me of one thing. That natural connection I still have to th
e magic in these tunnels is playing up.
It’s rushing up my back and alighting over my cheeks, feeling like the permanent yet soft touch of feathers all over my body.
It tells me that there was some form of control spell cast on here, and that Senator Rogers was the one to cast it.
And yet, that has nothing to do with the fact that this map is contracted.
“Senator Rogers took the tunnels and made… I guess you can call it a shortcut through space. He managed to reduce them down to a fifth of their size, enabling him to move through them faster.”
“I don’t get it – wouldn’t ordinary people notice?”
“You already know the answer to that,” Spencer says with another sly smile that tells me he’s once more enjoying my power. Or, more to the point, enjoying the fact he has access to my power.
I don’t bother to frown this time and instead half close my eyes as we walk along, the sound of our footfall echoing through the smaller but still grand tunnels.
I can feel it. There’s some kind of permanent reality bending spell cast on the place.
I shift to the side, reach my hand out, and trail my fingers across the concrete.
It’s almost as if this compact version is placed over the real version. The two can somehow exist at the same time without affecting each other.
“This is some pretty powerful stuff,” I comment.
“Senator Rogers was a lucky man,” Spencer explains.
“Lucky?”
“He came across very powerful artifacts.”
I open my mouth to say that Senator Rogers wasn’t a lucky man. He was a driven man. The reason he came across such objects was that he destroyed everything in his path to get to them. Unlike Spencer, Rogers was never scared. Senator Rogers had given away completely to desire and destroyed all other emotions in order to feed it.
I am way smarter than to breathe a word of that. Though Spencer seems prepared to forgive most of my mistakes, if I start unfavorably comparing him to other kings, I know that will be a step too far.
Instead, controlling the movement, I arch my head slightly over my shoulder, catching sight of Matrexia.
I wonder if, just like the castle I fought who took me to Spencer, Matrexia has any memories of Senator Rogers. If, somewhere deep in that shadow of her soul, she can even experience loyalty anymore.
Or maybe she’s simply nothing more than a pretty image painted over reality? A pretty image that comes with its own full set of magical weapons and a willingness to do whatever her king commands.
Staring at her now, I get the sense that she has some kind of intelligence, but it’s unrefined and brutal. It’s kind of more like the intelligence that a targeting system has, or maybe some fancy military AI. It’s not human intelligence – it doesn’t come with emotions or a sense of self. Nor, importantly, a sense of meaning or attachment.
And without those, all she is is a glorified gun.
And yet, I can tell that glorified gun is paying attention to me just as I am paying attention to her.
If I step out of line, I wonder what she’ll do.
Unlike Michael, I’m sure she can’t directly attack without an explicit order from Spencer, and yet, she is a full goddamn queen. She will have access to spells that I haven’t even dreamed of yet.
As we continue to walk through the tunnels, I let that point be hammered home.
I catch a glimpse of her over my shoulder again.
Though she has a long, slender, svelte form, her sense of regality and grace doesn’t come from that. It comes from her sense of control.
A sense I’ve always lacked. And yet… if I stayed the course with Spencer and allowed this queen to teach me, I’d gain it too, wouldn’t I?
I’d become a completely different person.
Hell, I’d become one of the most powerful people in the world.
… That thought should be seductive, shouldn’t it?
This is where I should pause and dream about the life I’m about to give up. A life where I will hold most of the cards. A life where I will be the most coveted person ever.
But that thought doesn’t cross my mind even for a second.
Because I cannot forget all of the people who have died. From Walter, to all of the enemies I’ve dispatched with my own hands.
They needn’t have had this destiny. It was created for them, not chosen by them.
And a world where you can’t control your own fate isn’t a world to be cherished. If you are the most important person in a broken system, that doesn’t change the fact you’re still in a broken system.
“Here,” Spencer says as he spreads a hand to the side. He locks it on the old, musty concrete. For several seconds, nothing happens, then it’s as if the very atoms beneath his fingers begin to shift.
The strangest hum hits the air, echoing out, sounding as if somebody is grating metal poles back and forth across each other.
It becomes high-pitched and sharp, almost loud enough that I want to cram my hands over my ears.
But before it can burst my eardrums, it cuts out.
And the tunnels grow.
Right there all around me. Frigging unmistakable and frigging inescapable. There’s nowhere I can run, there’s nowhere I can go as the floor beneath me shakes like a category 10 earthquake.
Though everyone else seems to be expecting this, I have to chuck a hand out and flatten it against the wall, and even then, I can’t hold my balance, because the wall keeps getting further away for me.
“What the hell?” I manage.
“In order to enter the library, we must once again decompress the tunnels,” Spencer answers.
Though he is keeping his hand against the wall, for some reason he’s moving with it, and not having to stagger to the side like I am.
After several more seconds, it’s done.
I collapse my hands on my knees, straighten up, and frown just as a door appears beside Spencer.
There’s the sound of stone against stone, and it carves right into the concrete.
It’s ornate, easily looking as if it belongs to a palace.
It has a large iron doorknob, one which Spencer pauses over, then grasps with both hands.
He knocks, and the door creaks open.
I get an immediate sense of Senator Rogers. Though I didn’t have that much to do with the man, the effect of him will always be printed on my soul.
For it is the effect of concentrated, malignant violence. The kind of violence that wishes to grow and grow and consume everything else.
The kind of violence that can’t abide with other people’s weakness or love or fear. It will infiltrate those emotions, take hold of them like a cancer, and turn them into itself.
I wonder if Spencer’s comment from before was nothing more than a throwaway ill-thought-out one, or if he really is that naïve. I wonder if he appreciates the difference between him and Senator Rogers, or if he genuinely expects it’s just down to luck.
A man like Senator Rogers wouldn’t even have luck in his vocabulary. The only thing he needed to understand was destruction.
You meet an obstacle, you destroy it.
You meet an enemy, you destroy them too.
Yeah, well, as the door creaks open, I get that sense, and it chills me to the bone.
I shift to the side, and as I do, I turn my head over my shoulder. It’s in time to see Matrexia.
Her face stiffens, and her eyes widen ever so slightly.
It’s emotion.
It’s not the gracefulness and regality that seems to be imbued in her very form. It’s emotion, plain and simple. I don’t need to be a genius to realize that she’s reacting to exactly what I am – the remnants of Senator Rogers’ presence.
… Though I’ve always accepted that there’s a lot in this game that I don’t know, there’s something I need to appreciate. What if there’s a lot in this game that even men like Spencer and John don’t know?
What if Matrexia is more than a
shadow, and Spencer has no idea?
What if he’s feeding her more and more power, and what if she still has a connection to Senator Rogers somehow?
And what if all of this is ultimately impossible? Me trying with all my goddamn heart and soul to end this game – what if that is nothing more than a childish dream?
I hate these thoughts. They’re the kind of thoughts that threaten to undermine me completely. But before they can take hold, Spencer waves me forward.
He looks as if he’s about to burst with pride.
He looks as if he’s built this library up from the ground with his very own hands, instead of finding and stealing it from a dead player.
As he takes a step into the room, lights turn themselves on.
Or maybe the lights don’t turn themselves on.
Maybe the library itself wakes up, because the sense I get as we walk into it is of some kind of living creature suddenly taking a breath and rising up. The floor doesn’t shake like it did out in the tunnel when it decompressed. That doesn’t change the fact that the magical energies of the room seem to expand, traveling upward and outward as if some powerful force is ascending.
If I thought I felt Senator Rogers’ unique energy out in the tunnel, in here, it’s completely impossible to ignore.
It has this truly sharp sense about it. It reminds me of a knife. Just not an ordinary knife. A knife sharp enough and direct enough to cut through reality itself.
If Spencer is aware of these feelings, he’s not reacting to them. He still looks like a child who’s come across another kid’s stash of candy. As he walks into the opulent library, he stops in the middle, turns, spreads his arms out, and chuckles. “What do you think?”
I turn my head up.
Though this library is technically located in the tunnels and should be made of concrete like everything else around here, it’s not. It’s huge. It also has one of the fanciest decors I’ve ever seen. It looks as if it belongs in some fancy European castle and not in the flood drains of this scummy city.
The Last Queen Book Five Page 6