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."
So Nemesis' sudden arrival at the IAYN, her egging Lillae on despite the foolishness of her plan, our nighttime excursion through space... none of it had been a coincidence. It had all been a part of Queen Saralee's plan! The web she had us all wrapped in was so thick that I was beginning to wonder where reality ended and the Ice Queen's masterful scheme began.
"So... you're doing all of this just to go home?" I asked, wide-eyed. It seemed like too innocent an objective to be pursued in such a wily, backhanded manner, but who was I to judge? Perhaps, that was just Queen Saralee's way of doing things. Perhaps that was why she had been branded as an oppressor.
"I know what you're thinking," the Ice Queen nodded sadly. "It becomes necessary to plan a trip home as if strategizing for a Galactic War when there is no place or person in the universe that would welcome you."
Images floated through my mind, reminding me of all the times I'd timed my entrance into classrooms so that I could sit beside a group of people I wanted to be friends with. All the times I'd switched outfits before an IAYN social, analyzing the image in the mirror in front of me as if my life depended on it. All the times I'd turned away and pretended not to hear when people whispered behind my back: dirty half-breed scum... the product of an evil marriage.
Evil. Again with that word. As I quietly gazed at Queen Saralee, I wondered if in a few hundred years, I would be remembered the same way as she was. Disgusting. Evil. Guilty of the simple crime of standing out, of not measuring up to the societal standards that people like my cousin Lillae and my great aunt Keilee worked so hard to enforce.
Perhaps, Queen Saralee and I weren't so different after all. We were the victims of a cycle that had been playing out over and over again ever since the days of King Airel himself. Each generation of royal children was placed under more scrutiny than any child should ever have to endure and eventually, inevitably, the "odd" one was identified. Ostracized. Labeled. It almost made too much sense.
"But why now?" I asked my grandmother, intrigued. "Why return to Lessaenes now? I mean no offense, but... I don't think a lot of them would be very happy to see you."
Nemesis and Queen Saralee exchanged a knowing look. "Shall we tell her?" Nemesis asked.
Queen Saralee let a relaxed smile come over her face. "Of course." She reached into the folds of her robes, retrieving a tiny glass vial plugged crudely with a porous cork. The liquid inside was a light blue and the moonlight revealed a few small, shimmering particles that floated on its surface.
"Is that..."
"Iceheart Serum," Queen Saralee's eyes brightened as she held up the vial, inspecting it with pride. "They thought that if they destroyed all the factories, burned all the recipes, and killed half the Iceheart Department, they could prevent it from ever being made again, but they were wrong. Because it's all up here," she said, gesturing to her head. "It took me years to grow half the ingredients from scratch and harvest the rest from Earth's desolate surface, but eventually, I did it. I had been saving this for Nemesis' eighteenth birthday, but I think that now, I've met someone who needs it much more than she does..."
My heart caught in my throat as she held the vial out in front of her in a gesture of offering. Being able to empathize with the Ice Queen was one thing, but seeing the Serum that changed the universe forever with my own eyes, not to mention the very thought of taking it...
"I..." I whispered, my mouth struggling to form words.
"I understand," Queen Saralee said soothingly, retracting her hand. "I can imagine the horrendous lies they've told you about this Serum, and I want you to remember that no one is forcing you to do anything. Like Turning always is and always has been, this is completely your decision. But let me tell you something. I was there when the Serum was invented- the original Serum, before the Iceheart Department and all its additions and regulations. Do you want to know what your grandfather said to me that day?"
When I nodded, she continued. "He said to me this, and I remember his words exactly because of how deeply they touched me: how can we achieve true equality in this great Empire when some of us are, by virtue of genetics, born more qualified than others? The Iceheart Serum is not meant to create privilege, as some suspect, but to end it. Someday, Lessaenes will stand united in strength and power, with each one of our citizens as valuable as a thousand of the enemy. We do not stop inequality by taking from those who have, but by giving to those who do not. And that is what the Serum does- it gives without taking, exactly what is needed and nothing more."
Once again, I found myself at a loss for words. The part of me that was the daughter of the Heirs of King Airel wanted to believe that the Ice Queen was lying to me, manipulating me, but her words sounded exactly like something that could've come out of King Fenorel's mouth. After all, he had been the Empire's most prominent Rhenan rights activist for his entire adult life. He would never create something designed to put Rhenans and humans down...
"I know that's a lot to digest for one night," Queen Saralee placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. Before I realized what was happening, she had pressed the glass vial of Serum in my palm. "I'll let you sleep with this. Perhaps, you will wake up with some new insights."