Eight Months Later:

Dot in her elf form, lifted 100-pound planters and flower arrangements into her spare delivery van and dropped them off. She was not a bony weakling, but 183 pounds of solid muscle. Sweat poured down her dirt-covered face.

She took a water break.

Her phone rang, and she set her bottle aside and placed her phone on speaker mode. "Dot's Flowers 4 Most Occasions. What can I do for you? Oh, Quig, hi. You're not canceling family dinner night, are you? I'm looking forward to cocoon rolls and potato soup."

A sob reached her ears.

"I'm...sorry. Dot, I'm so sorry."

"What happened?" she asked.

"Noel is in the hospital... and isn't going to make it. I'll bring him home to die."

She howled. "Bro, he's fine. I saw him last week."

Quig stopped sobbing. "Trent shot Noel with a laser gun."

"That was five years ago. Did you hit your head? Are you on catnip?" Dot took a drink of water from her bottle.

"Don't joke. The gun's tip was dosed with a slow-acting poison. If the doctors caught it... um early enough, he would've been fine, but nobody knew. Trent would have murdered Noel in the contest legally, but his bosses didn't want it traced back to them. He's the puppet king."

"King Trent couldn't have murdered our oldest brother..." Dot's voice trailed off. "How much time does he have?"

"Three to six months. His son is with Betsy and me for now, but I think he left his son to you in his will."

"Can you help me raise him? I can't do this on my own. You're already raising a kid. Wouldn't you be a better choice?" she asked.

"Dot, you're the best choice and can stay in my cabin as long as you need. He'll be moved here as well."

"I doubt Noel will be the last victim." Dot stared at the dirt on her arms.

*

Four Months Later:

Quig covered Grew-Ella's mother's body with his own because he wasn't the intended victim.

Trent pummeled Quig with the force of a trained killer.

Grew-Ella flew, her hands reached out like claws, and her nails scratched at the puppet king.

"Grew-Ella, I'll send you to a workhouse or Kill Home if you don't leave. Neither you nor your mother can be queen." King Trent Mack tossed her into a planter.

"Why would we depose Quig's mother?" Grew-Ella yanked at him, but Trent barely budged.

Fragile bones in Quig's left-sided wing were crushed between Trent's fingers, and he screamed in pain.

Trent hacked off a piece with a switchblade from his pocket. He tossed a clump of feathers, muscles, and flexible bones, and it collided with the wall-sized glass window.

"I won't let you kill her." Quig scratched at his attacker's surgically enhanced elf ears.

Trent sprayed Quig with caustic repulsion spray, a type of truth serum that never worked, and both gagged.

Sticky, pungent sweat mixed with hair dye trickled over the side of Trent's cheek onto his chiseled chin, exposing patches of gray as he struck Quig in the back with a potted succulent. "I'm taking Grew-Ella's mother to the Kill Home!"

Quig shielded Grew-Ella's short mother with his body, and he punched Trent in the knee twice. His bruised hands reached toward the warm light streaming over him, but his arms collapsed onto the broken tiles.

Grew-Ella smashed a vase displayed on the party table, and she clutched a sharp piece and jabbed it into Trent's muscular thigh. She stabbed him again, and the tip broke, leaving bits of blue and white porcelain embedded in his flesh.

Quig couldn't hear Trent's thunderous screams because he lost consciousness.

A team of private medics and security officers rushed into the garden room.

Yoleta pointed to the moth-shaped badge on her black and pink silk uniform. The government executioner walked closer.

"You called them, and they'll kill you for me." Trent lunged at Grew-Ella, his fingers violently pressing into her throat.

She stabbed him again.

He screamed and let go.

Yoleta wrestled him to the floor and wrapped cuffs and chains over his struggling wrists.

The lead medic brushed Quig's black hair out of his tear-filled eyes and strapped an oxygen mask over his face.

Quig stared up at Grew-Ella, and his mind drifted as thoughts about the other alternate versions of himself spread across the multiverse. 'Are they dying like me, or are they starting families?' His eyelids closed because of his misfiring brain.

Grew-Ella reached out to her mother. "Mom Karen, we can't lose him."

A medic stepped over broken planters, her gold boots imprinted in the dirt, and she lifted Quig's severed wingtip.

Grew-Ella rushed in and out with a jug of ice and handed it to the medic.

Trent struggled with the dark metal chains. "I'm the king. Arrest Professor Grew-Ella." Droplets of blood trickled down his leg and fell upon pots of roses and their wounded petals.

Trent landed on the thorns of dying roses. "I have a legal right to slaughter Kindness Rebels. One of them can't become the future queen."

Grew-Ella stepped over him. "The Kindness Rebels are a political party, not an anarchist group. Neither I nor my mother would ever choose to be queen!"

Yoleta grabbed his arm. "Sweetie, I'll make this vanish, but I require a deal that the Prime Minister and I won't try to assassinate each other."

Trent grinned. "Sorry, but I don't have to sign anything. The king is allowed to slaughter anyone they wish to."

Yoleta sighed and unlocked his wrists. He won.

Queen Avery-Joy entered wearing a velvet cloak. "Where is my son?" She stared at Quig and addressed the medic. "Treat him for the same poison that killed Noel. I've arrested the owners of the lab, and they're going to go on trial for Noel's murder."

"You can't prove I killed him," Trent said.

"Noel died two weeks ago, and I decided not to relinquish the crown for the prosperity of the kingdom. You repaid my generosity by slaughtering my son."

"He's still alive," Trent said. "Quig was just in my way."

She tossed her black and silver crown onto the floor. "The queen chooses when we abdicate!"

"I'd have to resign." Trent shook. "Yoleta will execute me!"

"If you sign a blood contract, she won't send you to the Kill Home," Avery-Joy said. "It looks like that prophecy of a Kindness Rebel Queen is coming true only because of your stupidity."

Trent grunted in pain. "I was given to do a job, and I attempted to do it."

"No, you betrayed my family because you understand the fake prophecy of the rebel queen as much as I do," Avery-Joy said.