The War of Queens

Chapter 29

 “Then it doesn’t matter.”

 Jamie moved so that he was in front of her, his eyes unavoidable. He kneeled and spoke, “Your Grace, is anything the matter?”

 She turned away her head, looking down at her gloved hand in the snow. “I just… I feel so weak.”

 “Weak?” He was clearly shocked.

 “My people is dying and there’s nothing I can do.” She licked her lips. They were dry and chapped. “I am so reliant on my sister, she has to ask if she can do the ritual for me, even if she believes it to be of no use.”

 “Elizabeth.” He leaned towards her. “Look at me. Look at me.”

 Reluctantly, she turned her head to face him. “What?”

 “Don’t think like that,” he told her. “Of course Angelique offered to take your place. You are the Queen, and this ritual is dangerous. As your sister and your subject, she would want to protect you from danger.”

 “But I am the only one who needs protection,” she said, her words half a question, and half a sarcastic statement. “I never see any of you ask for help. My raiders can keep walking until the moment they die, no matter the pain, but I cannot jump into water without having to ask my sister for help.”

 “You didn’t ask for help,” he reminded her. “She offered it. We all offer our help, because we know that if you die, all of this would be for nothing. If you die, we are more than halfway to Etheron with miles and miles of ice behind us with no purpose to go on.”

 Elizabeth’s eyebrows drew together. Her throat was raw from the cold and the crying she kept back, and a knot had tied in her stomach. Her head hurt. How can I be their purpose? How can I be anyone’s purpose?

 Guia came to get her shortly thereafter. Elizabeth had dressed in a dress from her time at Junus’. It was white and layered by light fabric that would be transparent if she only wore one layer. She had pulled a large white fur around her shoulders to keep warm. She was led away, out into the snowy desert, to a small tent a little away from the hole that had been dug through the ice. When she was taken there late the night before, she had been shocked at how dark the water had been - black, actually, even though she had to wonder if it was only because of that it was night and dark. Gods, I hope it is not black, she thought.

 But her fears were confirmed almost immediately by Guia. “Before you dive into the blackwater, you will have a rope tied around your waist.”

 “Blackwater?”

 The old woman nodded. “That is what we call the ocean beneath the ice. It is so dark, it is almost black to the human eye.”

 She turned and brought out a bowl with some sort of green clay. Elizabeth remembered seeing a serpent once, with that very same colour.  With two fingers, the crone dove into it and then painted a line from Elizabeth’s hairline, across her forehead, down the bridge of her nose, past her lips and to the point of her chin.

 “Strange creatures hide in the dark,” she told Elizabeth. “You have to be somewhat… dark yourself, to survive in the blackwater. But only dark things can prevent dark things from happening.”

 Her fingers returned to the clay before drawing a straight line from each of Elizabeth’s temple, a line that curved upwards and crossed the other line just above her brows. Her finger pressed against the crossing. “This is your inner eye,” she told her before letting her finger drop. “It does not see this world, but the otherworld, the blackwater. There will come a point when you will need to breathe. Don’t go up. It will feel like you are going to drown, and it will be painful, probably more painful than anything you’ve ever felt, but you need to stay and wait for the second time you get this feeling. Then come up.”