Queens & Liars-Sequel to Three Broken Kingdoms (Completed)

Chapter Five: The Cage of a Crown

Layla was mad. Willingly, wonderfully mad. Madness was better than the truth. Better than reality.

She wondered if most mad people knew they were mad. If they liked it that way. She certainly did. As she had said, madness was better than reality.

A reality where her homes were in ruin, her parents were dead and her twin sister had likely been killed as well, her aunt had betrayed her, her aunt was not her aunt at all, and she was trapped deep within Dorgon with a vengeful general.

Metaphors swirled in Layla's head. She could describe a thousand things, switching things she experienced with one sense with something wholly different. In her head, emotions were colours. Sounds had taste. Textures had tastes.

Such was the result of five years deep within darkness. Layla had begun not to simply see, but to observe. Joy was a bright yellow pink. Comfort was the smell of fresh-baked bread.

Joy, comfort. Things she had not known in an age.

Then there was the Silence. The great and deep Silence in her heart, which was grey and hopeless.

The Silence was better than the alternative, though. Layla drowned herself in its deep hopelessness because it was the only hope she had.

Myra might believe she was too broken for rage, but she was wrong. There was a rage that was buried deep within Layla Swallow, a rage that clawed at her insides and howled to be free. The general had embraced that rage; Layla kept it deep down within her. If Isidore had nurtured her thirst for vengeance, Layla had starved it, stamped it down into dust. But it was waiting. Always, it was waiting.

The rage within her was wine-red. It was the sound of screams and lions roaring. It was the taste of the sourest lemon you could imagine. It felt like a thousand jagged pieces of glass digging into skin. It burned and screamed and would not let go.

Layla had kept the rage tight within her for the past half decade. In its place, there was grief, and Silence.

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Myra

If Dorgon had taught Layla to observe, it had taught Myra to listen. Not to the sounds of the natural world, but to the voice within her. The voice that knew all. The voice that followed her wherever she went.

The voice of a dead goddess.

See? She was right. Myra was a blade destined to be wielded by the three goddesses. They were with her now.

Lyra, the voice that guided her through the darkness of Dorgon.

Sarai, the teachings of her predecessors that had given her the ability to kill, and the swift snow leopard that slumbered within her now.

And Belle, the memory of the daughter stolen from her.

Listen, Lyra told her now. The Shadow Queen is coming.

Myra jolted upright and squinted into the darkness.

You are to greet her, Lyra whispered to her.

Even deep within the darkness, Myra knew when the Empress stood in front of her cell.

"Isidore," she smiled. "What a low for the famed Dragon."

"You are the walking dead, Medea." Myra replied, and those words between them were a death promise. A promise made not only to Medea, but to herself and to her beloved fallen.

"It's nice to feel important," The Empress drawled. "But I'm not Medea."

"Liar."

Truth, Lyra told her. This is the Shadow Queen. And she is not Medea. Her name is Lysandra.

"Who are you, then?" Myra asked.

"I am Lysandra Crimson."

"Very well, Lysandra Crimson. What do you want?"

"Let her out, Lysandra." A cold, harsh voice echoed through the dark chamber of Dorgon.

"I rather like it in here," Myra protested. "Peaceful. Quiet."

Dorgon was anything but. The darkness here wrapped around her like a cloak, a solid, choking blanket of shadow.

It was said that Dorgon drove people mad. That was a lie. Dorgon drove people to the point where madness was a gift.

The cell door swung open, but Myra's chains remained.

"What would you say, Isidore, if I gave you a chance at your freedom?" Medea asked.

"I'd tell you to crawl back to whatever hellhole you came from." Myra replied sharply. Medea let out a hollow laugh.

"Don't you miss the light?" She asked the War Queen. "What would you give to hear the sea again?"

"There are some things that I would never do, no matter the reward. Serving you, valkyrie-killer, is one of them."

"As I suspected," Medea sighed. "You had such potential, Isidore. The most cunning military mind in centuries. In millennia. Lysandra, give the general and the Elfin Queen the crowns."

No! Lyra cried. Do not let them-

Myra struggled wildly against her chains, and silently urged Layla to do the same. Shadows, thicker and denser than the ones of Dorgon, gripped onto her shoulders and forced her to her knees. The crown was shoved crudely onto her head and Myra reached her hands out to claw it off-but they refused to obey her. Her free will sapped away, replaced with the Empress's.

"You will both serve me now. Any attempts at freedom will end in punishment for your people. Is that clear?"

"Yes," Myra's lips were forced to form the word, even as she struggled against the Empress' death-grip.

"Take them to their rooms," she instructed the guards.

"Rooms?" Lysandra asked, confused.

"Of course. The Elfin Queen and the Valkyrie General are our honoured guests, after all."