Chapter Text
The night Lenore died was eerily still. Frigates of mist hovered between the trees, clammy and quiet, and bright owl eyes twinkled in the dark. It smelled of moss and old earth on the overgrown path they took home. It was not a well-marked path, or a direct path. Lady Annabel and her beloved Lenore steered their horses down this path when they wanted to be alone. And after many hours surrounded by advisors and ambassadors and diplomats all vying for her attention, a peaceful ride through rumored-to-be-cursed woods was exactly what she needed.
Her gallant Lenore rode alongside her with a careful eye ever-scanning the forest. Threat of harm was constant when it came to the queen. There were many who wanted her head served to them on an opulent platter, a feast shared among friends to indulge in her decadent demise. She was a well-respected leader, but not a well-loved one. The best leaders, Lenore had told her before, never were well-loved. It was a pretty thought.
For all the years Lenore had stood, unwavering, beside her, all the times Lenore’s hand had hovered near the hilt of her sword, all the warning looks Lenore had leveled at anyone who got too close, too bold, too ambitious with her queen – for all of that, the moments when Annabel thought she knew Lenore best were ones like these. Riding quietly side by side, scarcely speaking, communicating instead through glances and the rustling of fabric and they shifted their weight on the saddle or brushed hair from their eyes. Nothing between them but the mist.
Her beloved Lenore, protector and loyal confidante. Her beloved Lenore, with her wry little smiles and sharp wit and fearless candor. Annabel did not allow herself to dwell on things she wanted very much from Lenore, but could never have. Things like secret kisses and fingers laced around waists, faces buried in hair and shared breaths. Lenore would bear punishment for these daydreams, if they were to become real. The narrative would paint her poorly, as some conceited and opportunistic brute who dared far above her station. And as much as Annabel would sometimes trick herself into believing that Lenore’s covert glances in her direction were more than watchful, more than fond – Lenore had never given these hopeful theories any proof. And so, they were content to go on as they had, Annabel carrying the weight of a country on her shoulders and Lenore ensuring that no one would interfere with that burden.
She felt more than saw Lenore sit up straight in the saddle, her body stiffening. Annabel turned to look. Lenore’s brow was furrowed over bright, alert eyes.
“What is it?” Annabel whispered this, she always whispered when Lenore’s left hand had moved to the hilt of her sword.
Lenore reached out suddenly, gripped her forearm. The intensity in her voice made Annabel shiver. “ Run .”
And they did, nicking their heels into the horses’ flanks, hoofbeats thundering suddenly in the still night. But they had been watched, followed. It outraged Annabel, as the bola was flung from somewhere deep in the underbrush and tangled their horses’ ankles. This was their path , their tranquil bubble outside of the anxieties and complicated games the rest of the world played.
How dare they , she thought as figures clad in black with half-masks and weapons drawn leaped from the shadows.
How dare they! as Lenore struggled to free her leg where her fallen horse had pinned it.
But what could Annabel do? Her power dwelled in long cavernous hallways and throne rooms and arbitration disguised as parties. Here, all alone in a great yawning wood, what threat did she pose?
Lenore, however, posed a very great threat. She was on her feet before a single goldspun hair on Annabel’s head was touched. Her longsword, Ravenwing, flashed in the dark. Her armor was light but sturdy, the heavy black cloak she wore broadening her silhouette to paint an imposing foe. Despite the horror that crawled with hooks and talons up Annabel’s spine, her heart fluttered like a young girl’s. Her Lenore, coiled and ready to strike. Her beautiful dangerous Lenore, teeth and sword bared. Eager to cut deep.
The intruders swarmed the path in an instant. It was not like the assassination attempts that had come before, Annabel realized – this was exhaustively planned, bided for months or even years. And their secret path home had not been a secret for a very long time. Lenore dispatched the first three masked adversaries in hardly the span of a blink. The cruel metal of her sword sliced through a lung, a throat, a stomach. Hot blood steamed on their unmarked path. The cloying smell of iron hung thick in the air.
Annabel, back pressed against a wide tree, stayed behind Lenore like she had been taught. Running made it harder to protect her. And that was Lenore’s first and foremost thought. No harm would come to Annabel, she took this for granted as she always had. It was well known in her country and beyond that Annabel’s bodyguard could out-fence, out-run, out-kill the best of them. Her skill with a blade was unmatched, and her keen perception sometimes exceeded Annabel’s own. Once Lenore had cut the hamstrings of a disgruntled merchant before anyone else had even noticed the dagger in his hand. And so, when Lenore felled four more attackers Annabel could hardly be surprised.
The wood was littered with bodies now, some still gasping. But more came, many more. Lenore took a step back and Annabel shivered in a lightning current of shock. Lenore did not regain the ground she had lost, but drove her blade through the heart of the assassin who had pushed her there. His eyes went wide over his half-mask, and he crumpled to the ground even as five more rushed to take his place.
Three more dead, but Lenore took another step back. She was within Annabel’s reach now, and Annabel could hear her breath come hard and feel the heat rising from her body. Her sword arm dripped red. Annabel said, “Let’s run.”
Ravenwing darted out, cleaved through flesh like warm butter. “Stay where you are, my lady.”
“But–” They pressed in, and Lenore parried but took another step back. Close enough to smell the wild earthy scent of her. A blade swung out from the throng and fresh blood arced along its path from where it had struck Lenore’s arm. A shallow cut, but contact nonetheless. In a fleeting daze Annabel realized she had never seen her dear knight bleed before.
She broke protocol then, grabbed the fabric of Lenore’s cloak in her trembling fingers. “Lenore, please. ”
“Stay back, Lady Annabel!” Lenore’s tone was uncommonly brusque. She hefted Ravenwing in a nimble crescent that slashed through a wrist and a cheek. Her other hand braced against the tree trunk beside Annabel, perhaps to steady herself or perhaps to keep the queen trapped. Her breathing was ragged now, angry and panicked. Twenty-five fallen men cluttered the path, but twenty more pressed on and it was too much, too much. Lenore parried but was struck, lashed out with her blade but was blocked. Tears stung Annabel’s eyes but still this was a dream to her, surreal and drifting, too absurd to be real. Her Lenore could never lose. Her Lenore was untouchable, a force of nature, Achillean in her victories. The world over cowered at her ferocity.
But Achilles, too, did fall.
Annabel stared at the blade’s tip where it pushed out from Lenore’s shoulderblade. It had pierced her under the collarbone swiftly and cleanly, but by the tremor in Lenore’s arm beside her she could tell that it caused terrible pain. Annabel stared, consumed with a dizzying shrieking despair, and with fury for those who hurt her precious Lenore.
Lenore parried another barrage, but was struck in the thigh. Yet another wicked sword pierced her, and another. Even as she continued to fight, another and another. Lenore choked, coughed blood, clumsily clipped one of the attackers in the upper arm. She was nearly pressed against Annabel now, and summoned all her strength to keep herself upright. Her blood marked the queen’s hands.
Annabel suddenly realized she was screaming. This could only happen in her bleakest nightmares. Perhaps this was a nightmare. Perhaps she’d wake to a gray gentle morning, run out indecently in her nightclothes, find Lenore standing in wait by the towering hall window and throw her arms around her with tears and laughter. Perhaps she’d shower her noble face with kisses. Perhaps she’d hold tightly to her until Lenore smiled sheepishly and asked her what on earth had gotten into her, and did she want to discuss it over a walk in the orchard?
But Lenore’s blood smeared her hands, and the blood of many others wept from Ravenwing which was still clutched in Lenore's trembling fingers. She was coughing for air, shaking on her feet. She managed a few words before the wolves descended, in a strained whisper and not sounding like Lenore at all.
“Now, my lady,” she said, “ now you run.”
Annabel hesitated only for a breath, but Lenore’s unspoken words were just as clear to her – If you die now, I will have made this sacrifice for nothing. Lenore pushed her away, turned, swung, severed a throat so deeply its head nearly detached. Just one more, as a dramatic signature to her life. And then she was pounced upon, pierced through with blade after blade in a delighted frenzy, a feast of blood and vengeance. Though it killed her with every step, Annabel did run. Partly, because it was her only way of honoring her knight’s last wish. Partly, because she could not bear to see more. But she heard Lenore hit the ground behind her, and heard her last ragged breaths. It replayed in Annabel’s head again and again as she fled, fueled her to survive and never forget a single thing about Lenore for the rest of her days. The growing distance between Annabel and Lenore’s body felt wrong , so wrong. Annabel should have been beside her, cradling her head and promising her last moments would be painless, holding her long after she had gone.
But she ran, ran furious and swift through blankets of mist and blue-green shadows. Tears blurred her vision and spilled hot down her face, but she scrubbed them away and kept running. Her milk-white boots kicked up damp earth and moss. Her haggard breath clouded in the air. Her pursuers were fast too, after they had come down from the high of vanquishing one of the most feared swordsmen in the kingdom. Their footfalls thundered faster than hers, and she could envision them with Lenore’s blood decorating their weapons. It ignited a fire of rage and violence in her, but she could do nothing to feed it but run. She would run until her legs failed her and her muscles sang with agony, or until she was struck down. But if she was struck down, she promised herself, her last thoughts would be of her Lenore and of her fearlessness and gallantry, her enduring loyalty and the wordless smiles they shared when no one would notice.
And then, with her huntsman’s footfalls drawing inexorably nearer, Annabel’s boot plunged through empty air and she was falling into the earth. A musky warmth enveloped her, a perfume of damp loam and thousands of years of birth, death, and rebirth. Her stomach dropped, her throat tightened, and for one horrible unending instant there was only darkness and vertigo.
A rough stone floor rushed up to meet her. She crumpled, her skirts and riding cloak folding around her like a wild rose. She lifted her eyes, and was met with two more eyes peering out from the threatening dark. They burned with dull embers and faintly lit a face that was neither animal nor human. The face hovered twelve feet above Annabel. It stared unblinking, unspeaking.
Perhaps these woods were cursed, after all.
Though the shadows were too dense to see her surroundings, the sound of her boots scraping over the stone was muffled. She and the face were in an enclosed place underground, perhaps with roots twisting down from the ceiling. A centipede scuttled all too close to her hand and she inched back, all sense of disgust or surprise muffled. As extraordinary as her current circumstances were, she could not register their extraordinariness. It was not the most impossible thing to happen in even the last few minutes. Lenore was dead.
Her breath hitched and she bit back a scream. Lenore was dead. Lenore was dead. Lenore was dead.
I smelled your desperation , the dimly-lit face said. Only its lips shifted, and only slightly, like a marble statue learning to move. It is decadent. What has happened to make you feel so?
Annabel peered up at it, at her. She was old, old and patient and stygian. There was a playful wickedness in her. It both repulsed Annabel and drew her in. She saw herself, though she didn’t wish to.
“My dearest friend…my most beloved is gone.”
How dear?, said the face, and bent nearer. Its eyes smoldered with primordial flame. How beloved?
“I am dead without her,” Annabel confessed in a whisper. The crushing weight of Lenore’s fate hovered just over her shoulders. She could not accept it, but the moment she could it would all come crashing down. “She is worth more than all of my life and everything in it. Without her, the world is cold and numb. If I live beyond today, it will be solely to grieve for her.” She closed her eyes against the dark. “My Lenore, my Lenore…”
The tears had never dried. Her eyes burned raw.
The face observed her pain, coolly. She said, These woods are known to be cursed, and yet you wandered them oft with your beloved. I think you like the dark quiet places, the blight, the unholy ground. I think you are like me, little lamb. She paused. Annabel wept silently. You are a sovereign of many peoples, are you not?
“For whatever that is worth.”
I will return her to you, said the old thing and there was a smile in her voice, for a pittance.
Annabel stared at her own hands in her lap, not daring to hope. But against her wishes, the weight above her head lifted just a little.
“Do not trifle with me,” she warned the old thing – and her voice was gaunt and almost a snarl. “If this is some kind of deception–”
That is not how I handle my affairs. She sighed out a breath of clammy autumn twilight and dead leaves. I do not need to lie to get what I want.
Those words chilled Annabel, but the weight above her lifted further still. Maybe she could get what she wanted then, too.
“How would you do it?”
You will go to sleep, and wake up in your bed with the sunrise. You will run from your room and find your beloved at the window waiting for you, and none the wiser for the fate they have suffered.
It sounded all too wonderful to be true. Even so, Annabel’s heart fluttered with pure, giddy and lightheaded joy. If only it could be true, she’d do anything for it to be true.
The old thing heard that naked and tender thought, drew it out of her, cradled and fed it. In return, little queen, she said, you will give me your kingdom for one night, to do with as I choose.
Annabel should have been stricken with horror. She should have rejected such a request with dutiful ire and demanded to be set free, to die a monarch’s death for the sake of her country. And a part of her did recoil, sick and repulsed and incredulous. But another part, a greater part, leaned forward. It was a high price, to be sure, but one that acknowledged Lenore’s worth. A little more, Annabel accepted that the old thing spoke the truth.
“And what could you do with it in one night?”
It is not my concern what you will do with your beloved, she purred. So do not ask me. When you wake, it will be yours once more. All control will be returned to you, and I will have no power there.
That this was the first intention the old thing had concealed was not lost on Annabel. She frowned and weighed her choices, but they both knew that she’d already made up her mind. She’d favor waking up without a kingdom to waking up without Lenore on any morning, any moment. It sickened her that the choice was so easy to make. She was not so naive as to think the old thing would devour some crops and depart with a curtsey. What kind of queen was she, to throw away potentially thousands and thousands of lives so carelessly? Would she and Lenore end up in jail, or on the run? But it didn’t matter. Just those words – she and Lenore – were enough to make anything possible.
“If I agree to this,” Annabel said, “Lenore can never know the cost of her life.”
If you don’t reveal it to her, the old thing said, she won’t.
The best leaders, Lenore had told her, never were well-loved.
Annabel straightened her back, dried her tears, and stared up at the old thing with neither coldness nor warmth. This was an exchange between two neutral countries, and a fair one. Each got what they wanted, and the people suffered. It was as it always had been. For all of Annabel’s calculation and angling for better trade, better roads, better alliances, it all fell apart here. There was no room for that tonight. She would bear this burden alone. But it was worth it to have Lenore with her again, to feel her hovering protectively just behind her shoulder, to catch her sarcastic little smiles like distant lightning, to see her grim and brooding at the window with her arms loosely crossed. And more than that, it was worth it for Lenore to live again. She was the best of all of them, and least deserving of her agonizing fate. It was Annabel’s turn to safeguard her.
“I give you my kingdom for one night,” Annabel told the old thing, and for the first time its face shifted into an expression. Delight. “And in return, you will make Lenore live again with no memory of her demise.”
The face bowed, nodded, and said, It will be done. Now sleep, little queen, and wake to your beloved.
Annabel did sleep, suddenly. Her head fogged and swam, and she collapsed on the rough stone floor. Guilt and joy curled up alongside each other in her chest, and when she dreamed she dreamed of fire and blood and her beautiful Lenore in the middle of it, scorched and drenched in the sacrifice Annabel had made.
She woke to watercolor dawn light and birdsong. Her sheets had been kicked about in fitful sleep. She rose, squinting, remembering, wondering if any of it had happened at all or if she’d somehow dreamt it from start to finish. Her nightgown hung delicately from her shoulders, innocent white and not the color of a dread queen. One thought pierced, crisp and certain, through the dazed bewilderment.
Lenore.
Annabel threw off her blanket and dashed for the door, flung it open with no care for who might see. In her mind, Lenore’s sword dripped with blood and her breath came ragged and pained. Annabel raced down the hall in bare feet, past braziers flickering on the walls and tapestries illustrating her kingdom’s victories and conquests. None of that mattered, there was only one person who did and she had died last night in the cold and sharing her last moments with only her murderers. Annabel swung round the corner and saw what she had seen every morning since she had donned her crown at thirteen and Lenore had been only a knight-in-training. Lenore leaned against the wall, arms loosely crossed, painted in the gray morning light. She looked well, somewhat troubled as usual but well. Alive. Well.
Lenore started at Annabel’s sudden breathless appearance, began sheepishly, “My lady, you’re in only your nightgow–”, but was embraced with such vigor that the words died unfinished. Uncertainly, she wrapped one arm around Annabel’s shoulders. Not enough to be inappropriate, but a decisive show of concern. Annabel (very inappropriately) held Lenore tight, heard her strong heartbeat and nearly cried. She smelled of wild earth, ivy and moss, the untended roses that bloomed every summer on a far corner of the courtyard where they often roamed. It was her Lenore, alive and well, safe and at the moment very confused.
Reluctantly, Annabel released her knight. Still Lenore kept a hand on her shoulder.
“Lady Annabel,” she said, “is everything alright?”
“A bad dream.” Annabel blinked back a fresh welling of tears, raised her head to take in Lenore’s dubious expression. Her mouth had drawn to one side, one acute eyebrow lowered in a suspicious frown, the other arced in a question. To satisfy her, Annabel insisted, “A very bad dream. The worst of my life.”
“How dreadful.” Lenore softened to this. She tucked a stray curl behind Annabel’s ear, far too forward of a gesture in public but in private one that Annabel would cherish all day. “You really should get dressed, my lady. It is not very queenly of you to be scampering around in your bedclothes.”
“ Scampering. ” Annabel waved her off, pretending to be appalled. “As if I could be accused of something so inelegant.”
A grin touched the corner of Lenore’s mouth. She leaned back against the wall again, cocked her head, studied Annabel with a playful sort of roguishness. “I suppose it depends on who’s judging, your grace.”
“At the risk of the wrong judge wandering about,” Annabel said, “with regret I will get properly dressed. Wait for me?”
“As always.”
It took all of Annabel’s courage to turn away from Lenore and retreat back to her room. Each step between them was a mistake. Something terrible could happen, Lenore could be ambushed or have a catastrophic accident. But, Annabel reminded herself with a deep breath and one finger toying with the curl Lenore had tucked behind her ear – But, Lenore was still the most feared swordsman the world over. It had taken meticulous planning and fifty skilled attackers in the most covert place only the two of them had known about to kill her. It would not happen again, Annabel told herself as she shut the bedroom door and pulled the nightgown over her head. It could not happen again.
Lenore was alive. Lenore was safe. And whatever the consequences, Annabel would accept them without remorse.