Kestra's Point of View

Kestra walked beside her mother as they navigated through the fields. She thought she'd seen a glimpse of Maia and Layla making their way to one of the teleporters, but she didn't go over to speak to them. They needed to do this alone. Like she and Myra needed to.

"We're almost there," Kestra said absently, even though her mother knew the palace even better than she did. She needed conversation to fill this awful, terrible silence. Needed words to anchor her to this time, this reality, when she wanted so much to be sucked back into the old one.

That life, that blessed life, when she had been just a child, unblemished by war, her innocence still unbroken. That life when her worst fears were a failed painting or an exam. That life when she returned home to see Aunt Viktoria and Aunt Vera each day after school, and dreaded queen-hood as one dreads distant, far-off things.

Lost forever now, of course. Torn apart by the empress that had stolen so many lives. And sometimes, even though it had been nine years, she missed it so fiercely that it hurt.

Myra squeezed her hand.

"We're here, Kestrel." She had not used that word in so long. It felt like trying to pull on an old shirt that she had outgrown. The shock of hearing it broke her out of her thoughts and she looked up; they had reached the beach. Viktoria's body, of course, had never been taken out to sea but paraded around by the Kallians as a trophy, but one of Vera's viziers had managed to steal her corpse from the celebrating Kallians and perform the basic ceremony before she, too, had been murdered. It was here, on the beach they called the Coffin, that Kestra's mentor had been sent out to sea. It had been a long enough walk to the beach that it could have justified a Teleporter, but they had wanted to walk here themselves. To make this journey.

Kestra stepped forward, until the waves lapping up on the beach kissed her feet, crashing on her toes before receding again. She and Myra had been close to Vera, but it was Viktoria who knew her best. It seemed right that the pair had died within days of one another. They had lived together, loved each other like sisters.

Vera hadn't just been a teacher and a mentor to Kestra. They had shared the bond of two queens who did not want their thrones. Something only those who possessed it could understand. It was that she now shared with Layla.

Kestra closed her eyes, remembering the last time she had seen the Keeper Queen:

"You must run," She said softly. "Myra made me promise...you must run. Now."

"How?" She asked.

"There is a passage in the castle," Vera said quickly. "Run. Get out."

"Where do I go?"

"Our people will rise up," her mentor said, finally sounding like a queen. "Help them. Lead them."

"I-I"

Vera gripped her shoulders with strength Kestra had not thought she had.

"You must. For your queendom, Kestrel. You must save us. The escape tunnel is in my bedroom, behind the mirror. Run. Now."

Before, the memory had been what she clung to to keep her going.When had given her hope, when all seemed lost, that had renewed her determination when she was ready to give up.

But now, it filled her with anger. How dare Vera place should a burden on the twelve-year-old girl she had once been? Twelve years old, and Vera had shoved those words, that crown on her. It had been Medea who murdered her family and stole her mother, but it had been Vera that had taken her childhood, her innocence. Rage rushed through her blood. She kicked the sand. Her mentor had given her an impossible task. Never thought to care about her, only Miras. She'd chosen the greater good yet again, as Vera had always done. No regard for the ones left behind, the ones who bore the weight.

"I want to leave," she told her mother. Myra gave her a confused look, but did not stop her.

———

Myra

Viktoria might not have been sent out to sea here—or at all—but the wildness of the ocean still held a hint of her friend. Here then, she would mourn.

She knelt in the sand, the water soaking through her clothes. Myra didn't care. She was lost, so completely lost, in her memories she barely even noticed.

Viktoria had been more than just a mentor. She had been... a friend. A friend in soul, such a deep and unbreakable bond that she could sworn she felt a great wrenching inside when Viktoria left the earth. She had been a fierce and bright soul It seemed impossible that mere steel could destroy her. How fallible life was. How like a candle, to be blown out with a simple breath of wind.

Viktoria had been brave and strong and kind and compassionate. The most empathetic person she had ever known. She had been a warrior, yes, but also so much more. Someone who mourned each and every life she took and wondered why it had to be that way. A soul that lived in darkness and steel, but brought such life and laughter to the world. Someone who had held Myra's hand through all the dark times and made her laugh in the bright ones. The kind of rare soul that blessed everyone who ever came across it.

Sometimes the absence of her hit Myra so hard that she was rendered speechless and could do nothing but sob and wonder how such a spirit could be extinguished with a simple sword-stroke. Sometimes it felt so impossible that she was gone that she wondered, even nine years after she had seen her friend die, that Viktoria might simply appear again and hug her tightly, reassuring her that it was all just a dream.

She sat on the beach for a long time. When she at last stood, she felt a nagging need to go somewhere else.

Myra found one of the teleporters still taking mourners to various gravesites and battlegrounds.

"Where do you want to go, Your Majesty?" one of them asked. She hadn't scheduled an appointment, they might not know where to go, or have time, but...

"The Warrior's Forest," she answered. "If you can."

With a sickening blur, she landed in the midst of small pines, slowly regrowing.

"I'll wait here?" The teleporter asked. Myra nodded and walked forward alone. The mines were still caved in and no one was eager to reopen them. Arrowheads still littered the ground, abandoned swords lay with them. The signs of battle hung heavily in the air.

She'd had several memorials erected in Rhea and Reyna's name. One in Veron, the city that had given safe harbour to the girls for most of their lives, another in Silvera, the city they and their family had been born in and a third in Azul, as a reminder that two elves' sacrifice had saved two valkyrie queens and hundreds of valkyrie soldiers. But here...here she felt closest to them. The place they had died. The last things they had ever seen.

Myra had barely known them, but her grief was still heavy. She never spent a day without thinking of those two girls. It had been her, her and Nala and Zara, that had condemned them. Traded their lives for others. For the greater good.

In the end, it had been her, not Medea or the Kallians or anyone else, that killed those two sisters. They could have made it out, could have kept living. Instead, they chose to die. Instead, they laid down their lives so that hope could survive. They had died as they lived: defending their home and their people.

Myra knelt down on the grass and did not rise for a very long time.