It was surprisingly easy to exit the catacombs of death and shocking revelations.

  Regina had assumed there would be at least one further assassination attempt but apparently between Robin, the Queen, her parents, and Artem there had been a dramatic reduction in the local assassin population.

  Feeling guilty, Regina closed her eyes briefly in a strange grief for what had happened to Robin Buren.

  Perhaps in another life both she and he would have had a different kind of connection, one that would not have resulted in his gruesome death at the hands of her mother-in-law.

  As it was…

  Regina looked over at her beautiful dandelion, humming a soft nonsensical melody, practically skipping with joy.

  No.

  Regina could not regret her choices.

  Whatever had happened to Robin, Regina was relieved to follow Artem out of the darkness…

  …until she realized one important missing piece.

  “Darling,” she said, enjoying the way Artem’s hand fit in hers, “where is Henrietta?”

  She was surprised by the way Artem’s entire body stilled for a moment before he turned towards her with a too-wide smile.

  “Do not worry, my falcon,” he said cheerfully. “I would not have dreamed of leaving her in the dark, dusty catacombs. I took her out into the corridor and placed her in a safe place where she definitely is still sitting.”

  Regina was so deeply touched by his consideration that she was sure she only imagined Artem adding a softly muttered, “I hope.”

  Eager to see her cousin and ensure that she had recovered, Regina was still startled when they reached what appeared to be a solid wall and stopped in front of it.

  It was definitely the edge of the catacombs, but there was no exit.

  Regina stared at it, starting to realize that the Alpins must have really never wanted to marry outsiders into the family.

  Her opinion did not change when Artem tapped the wall in a series of smooth rhythmic beats and the stone swung open to reveal a coldly lit staircase.

  “I am not sure,” said Regina dryly, as Artem walked her up the steps, “how an Alpin’s bride was supposed to know how to find that door.”

  “Oh she was not supposed to find it,” said Artem cheerfully. “If her husband wanted to marry her, he would come back to open the door for her if the assassins had not killed her first.”

  “You,” said Regina, even more dryly, “did not wait for me to reach the wall.”

  He, in fact, had not even waited for her to take more than a few steps into the catacombs. Even when captured and removed, he had returned for her.

  “Why would I do that?” said Artem, genuinely puzzled.

  Regina felt something unfamiliar building in her heart.

  It felt almost like hope.

  Whatever the Sheridans and Alpins had been, they would be better.

  They would.

  Regina suddenly froze in place.

  “My sea urchin?” said Artem, looking back at her in worry.

  “If no one but the Alpin grooms know how to find that door,” said Regina slowly. “Then how did everyone in the last few hours know how to get into and out of the catacombs? Except me?”

  “You… probably do not wish to know,” said Artem slowly.

  Thinking about the Queen holding up the scalp of Robin Buren and her parents casually killing multiple assassins…

  …Regina realized she probably did not.

  It did make her aware that she and Henrietta might have had a harder time escaping than she had imagined if her parents had not been supporting her… but that was no longer a fear she needed to hold.

  Putting aside thoughts of a past that never was, Regina took her first steps back into the light.

  ~???~

  The hallway at the end of the staircase was grey and boring and Regina had never been so happy to arrive somewhere in her entire life.

  “It has natural light,” said Regina. “There is a possible sun somewhere outside those high windows.”

  Artem squeezed her hand.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “You have had a very long day, my duck queen,” he said sympathetically.

  “Anything but Duck Queen,” Regina wearily returned. “So where is Henrietta?”

  Artem’s face froze and he blinked rapidly, before smiling in a way that made Regina wonder if he was well.

  “Here,” he said gesturing to an alcove behind the column in front of them. “She is… here.”

  Regina joyfully skipped forward, Artem still attached to her hand.

  Henrietta was not, in fact, “here”.

  “I knew it,” hissed Artem. “That-”

  “Is she hurt?” said Regina in increasing alarm. “Has poor Henrietta been attacked by assassins? Was she kidnapped?”

  “Do not fear,” said a long drawl behind Regina. “I have only ever been kidnapped by idiots.”

  “Henri!” said Regina in joy. “Are you well? Are you unharmed?”

  “As it turns out,” said Henrietta with a smile with more teeth than smile, “years of surviving the Sheridan household means that we are all more resistant to most poisons and paralytics than… normal people.”

  “How un- how fortunate,” said Artem, smiling with an equal amount of teeth.

  “It is,” Regina cheerfully agreed. “What are you planning to do with that vase, Henri?”

  “It was going to be a wedding gift,” said Henrietta, her voice strangely sad as she slowly lowered the vase from above Artem’s head. “Unfortunately, I will just have to use it to help protect the both of us.”

  No one who knew Henrietta would ever accuse her of being a cheerful ray of sunshine. In fact, ‘surly’ and ‘sarcastic’ was her default state of being. Yet even for her, Henrietta seemed especially glum.

  “Forgive me,” Regina said, all but squirming in guilt as she stared at Henrietta’s face. “I know I have failed you by reneging on our plans to leave Carcosa together. You must be so angry that you missed your chance to leave!”

  Henrietta gave Regina a long, hard stare even as she walked briskly to keep up with Regina and Artem’s rapid pace.

  “What is done is done,” Henrietta replied. “Anyway, I presume you discovered who is out to destroy you.”

  “It was the Nevilles and the Burens,” Regina said. “It seems both ducal families feared that if I wed a prince, our family could steal their territory.”

  “Clever of them,” Henrietta dryly said. “Yet now that you know, you can make sure the Nevilles and Buren cannot harm you again.”

  Regina winced at that, remembering once again the state of the assassin’s - of Robin’s body after the queen had finished with him.

  “I certainly think,” Regina said, “those two families are going to have to tread very carefully in the coming decades.”

  Then Regina actually released Artem’s hands for the first time since they had decided to get married. She took Henrietta’s hands in her own and said, “Even so, I have wronged you. I know you wanted to leave Carcosa and –”

  “Why,” Henrietta said with an arched eyebrow, “do you believe that?”

  The words dried up in Regina’s mouth, even as she stared at Henrietta in shock.

  “What do you mean?” Regina said. “Of course you want to leave! If you stay here, the Sheridan elders –”

  “Will try to either discover whether my power is strong enough to force me to marry cousin Gomer, weak enough to kill me, or nonexistent enough to wed me to some family that desperately tries to figure out what the ‘secret Sheridan ability’ is before abusing me for not having it.”

  Regina stared in horror.

  “Oh yes,” Henrietta dryly said. “That is the real reason our blood-damned elders never allow us to take the public test that measures the strength of our magic. It means that they can marry the children without powers out of the family since everyone wants the mysterious Sheridan power for themselves. Without the test, nobody outside the family can know if their marriage partner has the family magic or not.”

  “At least until,” Regina realized, “the magic-less among us demonstrate we have no powers at all.”

  “It is not as though the elders care about our well being inside or outside of the family,” Henrietta grimly said. “They may be all smiles and graciousness in public but they are rotten corpses under that coat of polite paint.”

  Regina knew that… just as she knew she would have to face the elder collective during this wedding.

  She would even have to smile and pretend she was glad to see her paternal grandfather… the man who had killed Ava because her father had begged his own father to spare Ava’s life.

  The very thought made Regina’s heart hurt.

  Even with that horror in store, Regina still had more pressing matters. Henrietta had done so much for her with so little gain for herself. Regina could not let Henrietta suffer for Regina’s choices.

  Barely masking her worry, she asked Henrietta, “Then what of you, Hen? I… I am sure that I can still smuggle you out of the country. I could keep you as an attendant for my honeymoon and then you could tragically ‘die’ while actually running free!”

  Henrietta smiled for the first time since she had smashed a vase on Artem’s head.

  “Or,” Henrietta said, “I could avoid having to start over in a new country and leaving all the people I love, which does include you, you numpty… because you use the power you have accrued first as Princess and then as Queen to make me your chief lady-in-waiting.”

  Regina’s jaw dropped as she realized that Henrietta’s plan made… perfect sense.

  However, it would mean that she had to become more than merely the wife of a powerful prince.

  To wrest Henrietta away from the clutches of the Sheridans who legally owned all unwed Sheridan children, Regina would have to be queen.

  It was not that Regina had not realized what she would need to become to gain the power to protect her loved ones and herself. She had known from the moment she told Artem that they would get married what path she was choosing.

  However to do so would mean that Artem would have to depose his own brother.

  Could she truly ask him to do such a thing?

  Yet Artem was standing there, listening to Henrietta suggesting thinly veiled treason and he had made no objections at all.

  “Think about it,” Henrietta said, as she took Regina’s arm and hurried her forward, even as Artem held Regina’s other arm and quickly followed. “Then make your decision quickly so I know what to do as well.”

  Henrietta, bruised and defiant, and somehow glorious, sauntered off down the hallway with her vase.

  Regina looked at Artem.

  Artem looked at Regina.

  “My dove-” said Regina even as Artem said, “My falcon-” simultaneously.

  “Yes,” said Regina, fear settling on her once more. “We need to talk.”