Diana stared into her face silently, her reproachful eyes judging and admonishing every corner of Lucy’s spirit, before turning away dismissively and beginning to walk toward the doorway. With both her head and her spear pointed toward the queen, she said: “Sure, sure. Have it your way. But we know whose fault it’ll be if we lose to an ambush.”

  Lucy, fighting to keep her frustration in check as she watched Diana go on ahead, turned to Kenneth who was still kneeling on the floor. When Lucy went to his side, his eyes were wide and looking distant.

  “Kenneth,” Lucy said with the utmost gentleness, “we have to go now. I know this is hard…but staring at him will only make things worse.”

  Kenneth said nothing and remained still, but in his eyes Lucy caught a faint glimmer that was enough to trigger an immediate understanding. He was not just mourning the one who had died in such a grisly manner before his eyes, but observing every detail of the knight’s golden figure—including the spot where had been stabbed in the back—and feared that he himself would inevitably meet the same fate. More than anything, he felt trapped.

  Taking this all in, Lucy added: “You still have a whole life ahead of you, you know? A life you can live any way you want, as soon as you’re free from your aunt. So let’s go and stop her. All right?”

  Kenneth remained silent, but Lucy could see a convergence in his gaze, the sense of it all coming together into a clearly-defined goal. He stood back up and wiped at his face, his small stature looking impressive and resolute in spite of the deathly green light that almost robbed his entire body of its form.

  Lucy was awash with both sympathy and admiration as she reached her hand out to this boy who, against an entire world trying to bring him down, still found it within himself to keep going. When Kenneth reached out and took her outstretched wrist, his grip was shaky but firm, resolved to never let go.

  Jogging together, the two of them caught up to Diana and the queen within the impossibly-long connecting corridor. The doors groaned and shut on their own, bathing them for a moment in a darkness that was so disorientingly absolute after being exposed to the array of lanterns in the hall for so long. But soon, there came the sounds of fire spouting, and all along their walls on either side lanterns came to life one-be-one as the four of them passed, like soldiers bowing before their commander. The same eerie green glow emanated from each lantern, yet the purple of the queen’s robes was distinctly clear, as if illuminated by a light of its own.

  When Lucy looked down the corridor, she could see the faintest glimmer of white: a doorway. It looked impossibly distant, yet even though she was not taking long strides, that distant white dot quickly came closer and closer into view, so much so that Lucy was startled.

  This unnaturally fast traversal made Lucy fixate all the more on how they were approaching what should be the final confrontation—and she did not have any plan for how to tackle it. Up to this point, she had merely been going through the motions as dictated by Diana’s plan to get them alone with the queen. Right now, Diana continued walking a few paces ahead of her, showing no signs of concern. Most likely, she had a game plan ready for when they arrived at the queen’s chambers.

  But Lucy didn’t want Diana to continue holding the reins any longer. Not after what she had done to General Hawthorn right in front of Kenneth. At the very least, she hadn’t immediately moved to strike the queen right then and there, so there was some caution on her part. After all, there was no telling whether she still had the invulnerability from their last encounter, and one failed attack might be enough to set Kenneth off again and turn the queen into that unstoppable giant. And unlike the last time that happened, they didn’t have an ally who could teleport them out of harm’s way.

  Lucy blinked, and before she knew it, she was already flinching from the bright light of the doorway. The brightness was so white and absolute that she couldn’t help wondering if the queen had led them into a divine light of judgement, as retribution for the “sins” she was imposing on Kenneth. But soon, Lucy’s eyes adjusted, and she found herself walking into a very familiar scene.

  An ordinary American living room, with a TV tuned to an oversaturated soap drama, the couch in front of it still imprinted with the weight of someone who had sat on it recently, bags and boxes of snacks bunched up into a pile at one side.

  As Lucy gawked, Diana scanned the scene with her spear still at the ready. “This what you and Ricardo saw?”

  As Lucy nodded, the door behind them shut with a loud thud—and vanished. All that remained behind them was a solid white wall, adorned with paintings that had a perfunctory aesthetic quality.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  As soon as it was clear there was no going back, Lucy felt Kenneth’s hand squirm. He stared with his mouth agape at the blank wall, then looked all around at the living room they were in as if confirming to himself that this really was where they had been trapped. From his weakening grip, Lucy could tell that his heart was sinking, and that seemed to indicate that he was nervously anticipating some untold action from the queen.

  As if sensing this, the queen turned around, standing at the centre of the room, and smiled at the three of them. Her robes and crown were even more garish when contrasted against such an ordinary and muted setting, but this also created an uncaniness that made Lucy’s skin crawl.

  “Now, then,” said the queen with perfect calm. “As you can see even with your uncouth eyes, there is no one in this chamber but I. I do believe that satisfies your conditions, yes? Hand over that insolent child.”

  She held her hand out with nonchalant expectation, as if she were merely asking for a salt shaker.

  “I said that we would bring him over to you.” Diana’s voice adopted a tone of indifferent dismissal to match the queen. “Never said anything about handing him over to your custody.”

  “What?” The queen’s face scrunched as her eyes glowed with scorn, but a moment later she relaxed into a cruel laugh. “You think you can fool me with a bit of deceitful wording. I see. But the divine mandate of the universe cannot be deceived. And it declares that all heretics are to be swiftly judged by me, this realm’s conduit of the divine. Now, I won’t ask a second time.”

  “Kenneth.”

  It had been so long since Diana had referred to him by rather an as “boy” or “kid,” so Kenneth and Lucy were both taken aback. Diana spoke it forcefully, but with a prideful resentment directed not at the boy, but at the one intending to smite him.

  Bringing her steely gaze to the Dreamer, Diana said: “Do you believe this woman has the right to punish you?”

  Lucy gave a silent gasp, but at great speed she realized what Diana was trying to do. If she could Kenneth to denounce any and all authority that the queen held over him, then that might dispel all of the powers granted to her by his subconscious.

  Kenneth looked back and forth between Diana’s hard gaze and the queen’s look of curious bemusement, his eyes wide and mouth stiffly opening and closing without his voice daring to utter even a word. After a few moments of this confused display, he balled his fists and hung his head with a grimace. “Yes! She does! I have to, or else…or else things will get worse.”

  “Why in the world do you believe that?” said Diana. “Why should you trust one word that comes out of her mouth?”

  “Because I’m the killer,” Kenneth said in a slow, slightly tremulous voice that made the walls tremble and the floor and couch mats squirm—Lucy saw, for a brief moment, a dense swirling darkness in the gaps in the floor that momentarily opened. Then, in a low, muttering voice, Kenneth repeated: “Because I’m the killer, because I’m the killer, because I’m the killer…”

  “Ohohoho!” The queen’s guffaws became louder, and not just because they were full-bellied laughs. She had grown ever so slightly larger, the floorboards creaking and sinking slightly, with more of that black ooze pooling outward and spilling into the white surface. “Even a heretic knows his rightful fate. So what say you stop delaying the inevitable. This is such a frightful waste of valuable time. Specifically, my time.”

  “Diana!” Lucy yelled. “Whatever you’re trying to do, stop!”

  Diana rolled her eyes. “And why should I listen to you?”

  “You see what’s happening to the queen. Clearly, this isn’t helping. Or do you really want to throw away all our chances?”

  “You—”

  “Oh, this is splendid! Splendid!” The queen clapped profusely with such force that it sent ripples through the room. She was laughing so hard that tears fell from her eyes, tears that were lightless and lacking in any depth, the sort that fell from eyes that had never known enough humility nor empathy to cry. “The heretic admits to his heinous sins, meanwhile, both of his guardians are disparaging one another! Such excellent entertainment! Now I no longer regret being woken! Haha!”

  While Lucy was distracted by the queen, Diana had already gone over to Kenneth’s side and knelt down to his eye level. “Listen, kid. What she’s saying isn’t the absolute truth. Not even close. But she tricked you into believing it. Believing it so much that you hate yourself just as much as she hates you. You’re not going to take that, are you?”

  “Of course she hates me!” Kenneth cried, wiping fresh tears off his cheeks. “Because I’m the reason Mom and Dad…Mom and Dad…”

  Lucy’s heart raced as she quickly glanced from the two of them to the queen, who continued to grow. Very slowly, but it was unmistakable.

  “Kenneth!”

  She intended to walk over and lend her own words against Diana’s, but the moment she tried to lift her boot, it barely moved until she put a great deal more force into it. Looking down, she that black, viscous liquid from earlier oozing over the floor like spilled oil. It wasn’t just the floor: the sludge was dripping down the walls from the ceiling, and the couch, its pillows, and the TV were gradually being covered in the stuff as if it were a fast-growing mold.

  “Witness the effect this accursed soul has had on the world!” the queen proclaimed with a savage grin. “Everything he has touched is forever tarnished and tainted, reduced to unholy slop that will drown the entire world in sin until he repents. Do you see now why you should have swiftly obeyed my command?”

  Lucy grimaced at her in frustration, but she was more pre-occupied with how the black sludge was steadily rising, now halfway up her calves.

  “Diana!” Lucy cried out, forcing herself through the sludge to join the two of them. Just pushing her way through the sludge’s resistance was exhausting, but Lucy didn’t let that stop her from speaking once she finally reached them. “We need to stop Kenneth right now or we’ll drown in this stuff!”

  Diana cast her a side glance. “If you’d stop interrupting me, I’d already have this all blown away.”

  “What I mean,” said Lucy, “is that you need to stop talking to him. Right now.”

  “Maybe you should stop running your mouth before seeing the results.”