More eternities. Was she destined to be lost in this limbo forever? He stared at her as she spoke, no hint that he planned to answer her. She stared back, blue eyes staring into his own. In the distance of her mind, she heard a clock. Tick… tick… tick… How many more snaps of the second hand would it take for Mauja to find his words? How many more times would the minute hand, the hour hand, have to circle the clock face before there was understanding between she and him. Could there ever really be? Or would the batteries of her clock die before such understanding was found?

Tick… tick… tick…

Words came, but no understanding. His line too poetic for her simple mind, the depth of his emotion too strong for her to weather. Drenched in the blood of those my wielder calls enemies. She shuddered. She did not know what he meant, but she could feel something stir in her soul. Her muscles twitched, uncertain if they wanted to run to him or away from him, or perhaps if they just needed any movement at all. They ached as she stood there frozen- a side effect of standing too close to the Frosthjärta himself. Ice creeped its way into her body, between muscle fibers, tearing and shredding as it went.

She stood her ground. Or… she had meant to.

She flinched as he clicked his teeth, body shifting backwards sharply, her own ears falling back against her head, daring to make herself look imposing. She wasn’t. She was but a child in his shadow, an imitator, a copycat. But they dared not stay down for long. She did nothing but breathe as she waited for him, and even those breaths were slow and shallow, until flame appeared. Her ears arose, her body flinching backwards again. She feared him- he could ruin her in a moment’s notice and she could not defend herself. Even so, she loved him. Yes, he was a murderer, but that did not mean all of him was evil.

Indeed, looking into the flame, the queen was reminded of her own foul past. She had sectioned it off, locked it away in a distant part of her mind, trying her best to forget it existed. Still, it was real, and as the tendrils of Mauja’s fire danced and swirled before her eyes, she could not help but remember. Nachtfang. Half-brother, elder, crown prince. How many days had she traipsed after him with battling eyelashes, brushing against him, flagging her tail, nibbling at his neck, daring him to take her- daring him to use her as he pleased, if only he would name her queen when he stole the bloody crown.

Der Fuhrer. Twin, elder, second-in-line. Had she not had the same thoughts for him? Had she not rebelled against nature in the name of power? And even if the ideas had been instilled in her by a dark family that cared for noting except who they could devour as they built their castle ever higher, that did not mean she had not had them. And what of the foals that would surely come of such unnatural unions? Had she not dreamed of birthing them, and then abandoning them, relieving herself from their vile clutches… relieving them from that vile earth… to beg forgiveness of the fathers later, for her supposed inability to bear live children.

Perhaps, in that moment, she understood. He was a sword, wielded. But if he was evil, she had been something just as bad. She had not acted upon her evil thoughts, but not for lack of trying.

Mauja’s words could not come soon enough, as her body began to shake and tremor with the horror of the past that she had tried to forget, and that she had been reminded of here. She wanted to hate him for reminding her, to hate him for unlocking the vault that had stayed so carefully closed, but she couldn’t. It was not his fault, what she had done. He had not been there, not even known she existed, when those things had happened. He did not know they lingered there in the back of her mind, controlling her even now, though in more subtle ways.

They were what made her run away from Kaj and his love. They were what made her crusade so adamantly for peace. They were what made her bounce about and try to befriend everyone that she met. She had so many demons to make up for. Could she really blame Mauja for his own?

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she whispered, voice tremulous, hesitant. She didn’t know what to do. She had seen him and reacted, a knee-jerk response to her own fears. Cautiously, she stopped looking over his shoulders and dared to meet his eyes again. Somewhere within her, her heart still wavered. He was playing her for a fool, telling her lies and stories to draw her in… or was he? She no longer could tell his reality from her fiction, as if she ever could. “What am I supposed to do?” Why she left it up to him now, she could not say, except for that she was weak and tired of making decisions. She could hear Ophelia yelling at her, demanding that she stand up for herself. Perhaps by not running to Mauja and throwing her neck over his shoulder she was. Distance… it was the only way she could claim power over him now.

Khan & Kahlua