Lights (Book 4)

Chapter 30: Swan

I never thought I'd find myself sitting on the roof of an Icicle Hall replica in an underground cavern, much less with my evil grandmother and my long-lost cousin beside me. 

Evil. 

That used to feel like the perfect adjective to describe Saralee Relasay Arystenn I, the ruler who had terrorized Lessaenes and Earth alike for most of her 300-year-long reign, but now... it didn't quite feel right. The nearly four hundred year old former monarch who sat cross-legged on the roof beside me, gazing wistfully into the distance as if lost deep in thought, looked almost peaceful. I watched her close her eyes, losing herself in the weight of the silence around her, and that was when I felt a strange, dangerous thought tickle the back of my mind. 

From what little experience I'd had with the former Ice Queen of Lessaenes, she seemed less evil than a lot of people in my life... less evil than Lillae, even. She had never taunted me, ostracized me, or belittled me like my pretentious older cousin had. The distance in my head between the gory images of intergalactic battles and planet-wide warmatches I'd seen in history textbooks and their flesh-and-blood perpetrator was quickly expanding, and it was beginning to feel impossible to reconcile. 

"So, why did you come alone?" 

My grandmother's words startled me out of my thoughts. She had toned down her Aura to dim her brilliant blue eyes to a warmer purple, allowing me to look at her without recoiling from the brightness. 

"What do you mean?" 

"You've told me much about your family- our family. Why are you the only one here? Are the rest of them too high and mighty to pay a lonely old woman a visit?" She phrased the question so innocently that I couldn't tell whether or not she was being sarcastic. 

"They're in the Program," Nemesis answered for me. "They're trying to find a ship that belonged to someone named Amanda Myers. Princess Viviana thinks it would be able to take them home. To Lessaenes, I mean." 

"My daughter has grown wiser," Queen Saralee nodded, her face flashing with a momentary expression of pride. "I truly did not expect her to recall the existence and location of Amanda's ship. This complicates our plan... but it also might make this much more interesting. After all, I am quite accustomed to meddling with the Program's inhabitants." 

"Could you do that?" Nemesis grinned widely. "Without all your Iceheart technology, I mean." 

"Oh, Nemesis," the Ice Queen laughed dryly, a dark glint passing through her eye. "I am the greatest piece of Iceheart technology ever created." It was only then that I saw, even if only for a second, the Ice Queen I always thought I knew. Someone who planned, who schemed, and who was incredibly, terrifyingly smart. 

"W-what do you mean by... meddling?" I asked, remembering my mother's stories of plane crashes, UFO attacks, and subtle threats written in glittery blue Aural ink signed <3 Queen Sara. 

"Well, I didn't go through all of the pain of sending Nemesis to Lessaenes to lure them here just so they could find a ship and fly merrily home!" Queen Saralee shook her head. "As you can tell, we have very few resources here on this dead planet. The only ship I had with me for these twenty years was the one I used to get here, and it was badly damaged. Only good for one trip. That's why I was overjoyed when my instruments detected that the Lessaenite Empire was constructing a wormhole that led straight here! Imagine that- a real wormhole! Oh, what I could've accomplished with that technology..." she trailed off dreamily before quickly getting back to her point. 

"I decided to use the ship to send Nemesis to Lessaenes, knowing she could come back via the wormhole and bring the rest of the royal family with her. I figured that if I could hold all of you here long enough, Lessaenes would send ships out to find you- functional ships I could use for multiple trips to gather supplies and eventually return home."