Pandora's Box

Chapter 10: Part II

Pandora's boots felt like they'd been fitted with anchors meant for the Queen's Breath. Still, she plodded silently through the network of private passages connecting the suites of the royal family. She chided herself for letting Malachai avoid the pending tongue lashing. He had disappeared quickly enough after returning to the castle. Pandora wondered if he were in the barracks packing a bag and ready to travel in disguise to the Ivories.

The air in the modest stone hallway was dry and nearly a season cooler than the rest of the castle. A select group of trusted hand servants kept the enclosed space dust free and the bracers flickering with tiny flames.

The princess clutched at her arms, willing her thoughts into focus. The door to her mother's suite of chambers seemed three times larger than last she had seen it. Pandora's imagination painted the door with endless rows of jagged shadows that looked like some hellish beast's fangs. It was as though she were a child once more and knew she were about to be caught in the wrong. She shook the thought free. She was no child. There was no game being played.

Now wasn't the time for childish fears.

Pandora lifted a pale fist to knock, but a shimmer of cerulean energy fizzled from the doorway. The latch clicked quietly and the door glided slowly open into the queen's chamber. Her heart pounded in her temples. In her throat. In her fingertips. She's expecting me. That can only mean one thing, Pandora thought.

She knows...

Adella's chamber possessed the warmth of a life well-lived. Myriad oil paintings depicting the far reaches of the kingdom's corners hung from the soft-colored walls. An oversized hearth dominated half of a wall, containing three separate, crackling fires. An altar of carved snow pine covered by small white candles occupied the space beside the hearth. A few plush high back chairs, a pair of lounges and a vanity far too modest for a queen filled out the anteroom's furnishings.

Pandora sucked in a breath and stepped over the threshold.

Queen Adella knelt before the altar, head bowed, lips moving in hushed prayer. The queen wore only a delicate slip of pale blue, elegant curls of blinding blond cascaded down her back. Pandora stood in silence as the prayer were completed. Adella exhaled a heavy breath. She stood without acknowledging her daughter. Her voice was quiet, but laced with steel.

"You've done it then. Tampered with magic so delicate the very sunlight plays cautiously around it."

"I did—"

Adella spun toward her daughter, hair flowing in a storm behind her. The princess flinched, certain that a furious tirade were coming. Her mother had warned her of the potential disaster waiting patiently for a bite at a young practitioner's arrogance. Pandora had refused to heed the queen's warning and now innocent people would die. She bit her lower lip and looked back upon her mother.

Tears.

Only tears.

Instead of clenched fists and muscles trembling of fury, Pandora found a pair of tears rushing away from the corners of Adella's eyes. They fell like little droplets of crystal, plunging from the queen's regal cheekbones. The steel in her voice remained, but a veil of suffering—of someone who knew the future contained more anguish than a mother's heart should ever bear—enveloped the queen, stifling her gentle aura.

"You did what you thought was best. But sometimes that isn't enough, my daughter. It has been said by many a people that the road to Oblivion is paved with good intentions." Adella turned her focus to a window darkened by the night beyond the glass. "There can be no understanding for what you've done—"

Pandora clenched her fists and trampled the floor as she stormed into the room. "I did what you should have done! If you hadn't sat by and done nothing, if you'd used your own magic instead then he would be fine. Everything would be back how it was before..."

The sudden flash of anger leached the little strength from the princess's limbs. She wavered on her feet. The edges of her vision darkened and her body suddenly felt feather-light.

Pandora felt soft, strong hands lower her into a chair. The princess sunk into the plush cushions, and words gently whispered over her, warming her like a favorite quilt. The world sorted itself out and the princess opened her eyes. She began to speak, but the queen hushed her with a motherly shh.

"No understanding," Adella repeated, "but forgiveness through redemption lies beyond the grasp of no one."

Pandora's eyes welled and the empty feeling in the pit of her stomach shrank by a fraction. "Redemption? But how?"

Queen Adella took a seat on a plush armchair to her daughter's side. Dressed even in her night clothes, she possessed every bit the stately presence of the King's Bride. Adella brushed a twist of platinum blond behind her ear.

"As with all things, my daughter, magic is a simple thing made complicated by the hands of mortals. In tampering with the energy of the Blight, you've incurred a debit on your ledger. The cost is yours alone to pay, the account yours alone to balance."

Understanding came slow to the princess, but when it did it struck like a runaway battering ram. The creature's horrible face flashed into her mind. Its crown of jagged bone. The way it had reached out to her with Drake's own voice. Pandora sat upright in the chair, she clawed her fingers into the chair's arms without realizing. "I'm on my own then? Even now, with that—that thing, loose beneath the House of Sunsets, you'll sit there and do nothing?"

"I'm sorry, my daughter, but we are not all as reckless in our defiance of magical law. The price of the Blight is a debt of blood, one that can only be paid by the person who called upon its power in the first place."

Pandora shrugged, defeated. "Then I'm to face him alone."

"Of course not." Adella's smiled warm and full. "As though I would send my only child alone into the darkness."