VALENCIA SHUDDERED AT THE SIGHT OF HER HOMETOWN. She lived an hour north of the lake villages, where the deep woods cleared into a hilly, rocky village. The soil was rich for farmland just outside the main village, where a lucky few families cultivated the land.

Elliot drove them past the house Valencia built when her political career initially took off a year ago. Valencia remembered the feeling of triumph and guilt; her devil gave her a good life, yet she couldn't live like that when everyone else suffered around her.

Valencia guided Elliot to their final destination, surprised that she still remembered the way there.

"Whose home are we going to?" Ophelia finally asked the question everyone wondered.

Who are the two people that want the empress dead?

"I'll go in alone," Valencia disregarded the question.

"No!" Ophelia said. "How could you believe that I'll let you go in there alone when you said these people are out to get you?"

"I'll take one guard with me," she answered, motioning towards the vehicle parked next to them.

The detective shook her head. "You are rash."

Valencia pushed the car door open with more force than needed, the handle snapping back as she let go. She stomped off without closing the door.

"Cyra Stone would never!" Ophelia screamed through the door before slamming it shut.

Sometimes it hurt Valencia to remember that Ophelia used to work for the former empress, that Ophelia was loyal to Valencia's enemy. Valencia had to the let the detective continue working for her because she headed the empress' security detail - no matter who that person was.

Valencia reminded herself that Cyra Stone had done much, much worse things then her.

She entered the little house without knocking, a guard trailing behind her.

"Claude," Valencia breathed out, struck statue-still a few feet from the doorway.

The man in front of her was hunched over with charcoal black eyes staring deep into her own, as if he saw the tar black bones inside her. He had grey hair now and sagging pale skin, but the freckles speckled on his nose and cheeks were a feature etched in her mind forever.

Don't run now, her devil snickered.

"Are you happy now that he's dead?"

She hadn't heard his voice in years either. The empress was flustered with what to say.

"Claude, I—I—," she couldn't finished the sentence.

"If it's not Valencia Lenard," Claude's wife said, frowning, arms crossed.

Maggie Lemay, a short woman with thin, blonde hair, came up next to Claude and put her hands on his shoulders, helping him turn around.

"Come inside," they both said.

Valencia shuffled in behind them, whispering to the guard to wait in the hallway while the rest of them sat in the living room. It looked just like she remembered it; there was a family portrait on one wall that they saved so much money to get, broken down chairs and a table, and the thin blanket that Valencia remembered all too well.

The chair creaked as she sat. The empress swallowed hard as they stared at her; two sets of black eyes followed her every move.

"Selfish," Maggie said, "Selfish, compulsive, deceitful, sinful, monstrous. You are all things evil. Every single thing coming your way is what you deserve."

"You can see my future?"

Maggie stood up scowling, pushing the table between them sideways, and the sound of the leg snapping off the table filled the room.

"Is that all you care about?" she screamed, teary-eyed. "Do you only care about whether or not you are the empress? What happened to the young woman who promised us villagers a better Lehua? Or did that woman die when you murdered my son?"

Sinful, the devil muttered, just the way I like them.

She didn't think the words Maggie used to describe her were necessarily true. This woman was hurting, and Valencia respected her enough to let her get away with it.

Valencia wasn't a murderess. Cyra Stone, though, held knives of blood-stained glass — glass that could no longer hurt anyone since Valencia took over the throne.

"I am helping Lehua," Valencia stated. "Don't make that more difficult for me."

Claude furrowed his bushy eyebrows. "Are you insinuating something, empress?"

"I know you felt it," she replied, "The cold that just seeped in. The black magic in the air grasping onto your beating hearts. Tell me it wasn't you two."

"You think I'd make my life worse on purpose?" Maggie spat out. "We share one blanket. We have one heat source, the fire, and it's not like there's wood just available for us to burn. Did you know there are children here who don't even own a sweater, let alone coats, hats, and gloves?"

Valencia couldn't look them in the eye, but she forced herself to anyway. Her hands shook.

"I know what it's like," she said with a nod. "I starved. I shook in the cold. I was beat till I was red. I was angry. I did something about it, though. I became the empress, and I am continuing my fight. Are you? Or will you wallow in this misery forever?"

Maggie scoffed. "You're manipulative. We don't pity you. Your world will come crashing down in a blazing glory and you will realize that no one is on your side, not even that devil that says he loves you."

Valencia's eyes grew wide with the terror of knowing that Maggie could see right through her.

I do love you, her devil claims, just like you love me.

She was bound to him the moment he chose her, so how could Maggie say he wouldn't choose her too time and time again? How could Valencia's devil just leave her after all they've been through to have an entire empire at her feet?

"You need to leave," Claude said, motioning towards the exit.

Valencia stood up, stiff at the knees, letting her devil push her forward. He very rarely showed himself in front of others like this, helping her as if he were a caregiver. With each step forward, Valencia felt the devil's icy touch on her legs, and her heart raced faster.

At the door of the living room, Valencia turned her head back, to catch her last glimpse of Maggie and Claude Lemay. Their dark eyes stared into her's.

"I loved him."

Claude sighed. "It was never enough."

The empress bolted out of their tiny house, eager to disappear from her old life in her hometown. The guard quickly followed her, hot on her tail.

Outside, the biting wind made Valencia's cheeks and nose red in the few moments it took her to enter the car. She shuddered as she sat in her leather seat, waiting for Ophelia Fowler to say something about how she was right or once again comparing Valencia to the former empress.

But it was Elliot who spoke first. She could still hear him calling her an entitled bitch.

"Is it them?"

"No," Valencia answered, frowning. "I was stupid to think they could have been involved."

"Where to now, empress?"

"Back to the palace," she said, "I need to meet with Dr. Auden Oberlin immediately. He may be our only hope now at undoing this."

Valencia slumped back in her seat as Elliot pulled away from the house, blood boiling at the fact that Ophelia Fowler was right, again.