The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

"Ash, I agreed to see one child. Yet now there are three before me." The room was not built for five people. It barely managed two.

The bed, the table, the ruins of the second bed, and the narrow gap between them. All of it looked much smaller with five instead of two. Edda, Ren and the boy named Corin stood before me. The boy had not looked up from the ground. Ash stood to my side. For an instant, it felt like being a Queen again, watching supplicants kneel and make their requests of me.

The impression lasted only a moment. “Who the hell are you calling a child?!" Ren yelled. She yanked her sleeves up, or tried to yank them, from what I could tell of the strange gesture. The Academy uniforms did not have sleeves. Ren seemed to remember this mid-motion, and then she kept doing it. I had seen Zera patiently regard Hellhounds who chased their own tail, endlessly. Perhaps this was what she had felt then.

Edda caught her shoulder and pulled her back. "We are here to ask for help. Remember?"

Ren deflated, though the air seemed to leave her grudgingly. She folded her arms. "What help? It's not like this is something that can be help-" She stopped. Looked at the boy beside her. The word died in her mouth and her jaw tightened, and she did not finish the sentence.

The boy, Corin, had not looked up from the ground since the three of them had entered. He stood slightly behind the other two. I studied him. He was, in every measurable way, unremarkable. He was short, with dark hair that covered over his eyes. The nubs at his temples were so faint they might have been shadows. His hands hung at his sides, and they were closed.

In my time, even the lowest of the imps had carried something. They did not simply look at the ground, and hope nobody saw them. This boy was a Demonblood. He might have shared my blood, however thinly, but I saw none of it in him. It was no wonder I had forgotten his face in the corridor. He was the kind of person even the System's gaze slid over without catching.

Ash stood beside me. She looked between Edda and me, then spoke. "Edda. Tell Lys what you told me."

Edda glanced at us. The girl was perfectly stoic and composed. Whatever girl Ash had told me of in her story, she wasn’t here. "It's hard to believe you both really don't know," she said.

Ash shook her head. I frowned. I did not enjoy being reminded of the gaps in my knowledge, especially by children.

"For humans, elves, beastkin…really just about everyone else," Edda began, "sometimes the Ink doesn't take. Everyone knows this. It's uncommon but it happens." She paused. "For demonbloods or half-demons, it's different. The Ink always takes. Always. Nobody fully understands why. But it always answers."

I frowned. This seemed odd. That Inker had been rather full of himself at our Inking. "Then what is the issue?"

Ren cut in. "Just because it bloody takes doesn't mean it takes right." She turned to Corin and nudged him, gently. The gentleness was so unlike her usual manner that I noticed it before I noticed the gesture itself. "Can you show them?"

Corin held out his arm without looking up. I leaned forward to see. There was a mark there. Technically. I had to stare, squint, and lean closer. The Spark was so faint it was barely an impression. No, perhaps impression was too strong of a word. I could not tell its color apart from his skin. I had seen dozens if not hundreds of marks by now and every single one of them had glowed brighter than this.

"What is this?" I asked.

Edda hesitated. She looked at Corin. "The Ink always takes for us," she said. "But sometimes -more often than it should- it takes…wrong. The mark forms, and the Inkers all say it took…but the mark forms like that. It doesn’t do anything. You can’t use it to do anything. It’s almost worse than not getting any mark at all," She looked at the floor. "These people are called Hollows. It's one of the...very many reasons demonbloods distrust the Ink."

Hollow. I knew names like this. Names that were given to the weak by the strong, and worn by the weak until even they believed the name was earned. I looked at the boy. He did not flinch at the word. It seemed this is what that Inker had hoped would happen to me at my own Inking.

"How is the boy here at all?" I asked. "With a mark that does not work."

All three of them looked at each other. Even Corin. It was the first time he had looked at anything that was not the ground. "He got his mark here," Edda said. "At the Academy. After he followed us."

"Followed whom?" I asked.

Ren scratched the back of her head. "All three of us come…we come from the same village. Eryn. It's far out west from here. Far out west, enough that an Inker only comes around once every few years. It’s a tiny place. You wouldn't have heard of it." She said this as if she expected me to argue. I did not. "I got my mark first. There was a traveling Inker who came through and I got lucky." She gestured at her Sigil without looking at it. "My mark was always strong, even against other ones that did the same damn thing. The Inker told my parents I had potential. He told them about the Academy. It took a while to convince them, but I came here. And that’s about it."

"That is not about it,” Edda said dryly. “She wrote letters," Edda said. Her voice was flat, but something beneath it was not. "Many letters."

"I wrote like three letters!"

"You wrote two hundred and forty-seven letters. Sometimes we burned them when we didn’t have enough wood."

"Hey that’s….that’s rude!" Ren protested.

"So is sending two hundred and forty seven letters we can’t even answer." Edda said. Her face hadn’t shifted from the boredom, but I thought I saw her lips twitch. Just slightly.

Ren's face reddened. She opened her mouth, closed it, and turned to me so fast it was a wonder her neck didn’t snap from the motion "Anyway! Edda came here a few weeks ago. She got her mark from the same Inker when he came back through our with. Though her mark is….”

Edda picked up. "Ren told me more about this place than anyone should know about anything. Between all of her ramblings, I thought maybe it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to come here myself," She paused. "I wanted to learn. So I came." Something about the explanation did not fit, though it was certainly close to fitting. It did not matter.

"And you?" Ash asked, quietly. She was looking at Corin. "You followed them here, didn’t you?" Corin nodded. The motion was so small I might have missed it had I not been looking as intently as I was.

"Why didn't you get the mark earlier?" Ash pressed. Her voice was gentle, as if she had chosen each word very carefully. "You must have had chances. The first time when Ren got her mark. Then the second time when Edda got hers. Why didn’t you take it then?"

It took some time for the boy to speak. I did not even think he would. Surprisingly, even Ren did not break this silence.

"I was scared. I was the first time when Ren got hers and even more the second time when Edda went away.” His voice grew lower and lower by the word. “It happened to my mother too," Corin said. His voice was barely above a whisper now. "The same thing happened to her with her mark, I mean. Her mark doesn't work either. It’s so faint most people don’t even believe she has it," He swallowed. "And her mother had it too. And her mother before that." He was looking at his own hands. "Everyone…everyone in the village thinks it's something in our blood. So I knew. I always knew what would happen if I got one."

Ren had stepped closer to the boy at this telling. Her face had gone red. I almost thought I could hear the grinding of her teeth.

"Then why did you take it at all?" I asked. The question came out sharper than I had intended. “If you knew with certainty.”

Corin shook his head, slowly. He didn’t speak for several heart beats. I wondered if I had, yet again, said the wrong thing.

He finally spoke up. "They both left, I guess." He said it as if those simple words explained everything. Then, quieter still, he said, "I didn't want to be the one who stayed behind."

Ren's jaw tightened. She was looking at the far wall. Edda's hand, the one with that strange mark, which had been at her side, moved to Corin's shoulder and stayed there.

He had come because they left. I was not entirely sure I understood, but I understood more of it now than I might have once had.

I glanced at Edda. She was watching Corin with an expression that was careful and steady. I found my gaze lingering on her longer than was necessary. There was something about the way this girl carried herself, the way she stood half a step closer to Ash than to anyone else in the room, the way Ash had spoken her name with a familiarity that should not have existed after a single day. I looked away. Whatever I felt was unbecoming of a Queen. Damn Heroes.

"What the hell is that?" Ren was pointing past me, toward the pillow. I frowned and followed where her finger led. She was pointing at the egg. It sat half-visible against the bedding, its gold shell catching the lantern light, black veins threading through it. It pulsed once, as if aware of the attention.

Perhaps I should have kept it in the satchel, but the three had invaded my morning quite early. At least they had knocked, rather than kick down the door. "That," I said, "is the most powerful steed in the world." I paused. "In the future. You should look at it well, while you can. One day, there will be many songs told about the creature who sleeps within that shell."

Ren stared. Edda tilted her head, studying the egg with more interest than she had shown in anything. "Can I touch it?" Ren asked.

"You really shouldn't ask that," Ash said, before I could respond. "Or Lys might do something...reckless."

They both nodded slowly. “It sure as hell looks cool though,” Ren said. “With those black lines, I mean. Never seen one like that.”

“Of course you haven’t.” I said proudly.

Ren stared at me. I ignored her. The egg pulsed again. Perhaps it approved of this…strange compliment. I reached for it and adjusted the pillow around it without looking at anyone. The moment passed. I looked at Corin. He still had not looked up. "Very well," I said. "I will see what I can do."

Ren looked at me, and the skepticism was plain. "Can you really do something, though? You're just at Line. Whatever healing mark you think you have isn’t going to do much. We even had a few Crests look at him."

I regarded her. "It is beneath a mere serving girl to question a Queen. I will look at him. That is all you need to know."

Ren choked. “Serv-serving girl?!” Ash laughed. Edda held Ren back with one hand. The struggle seemed fake, she could have moved past the blue haired girl if she wished. Corin, slowly, stepped forward.

I placed my left palm on his forearm. The Cradle answered at once. White light bled from my skin into his.

With it, I searched. I felt the channels first, the ones around the mark. The ones it had left behind. They were there, like roots beneath soil. They were wrong. Channels were supposed to be meandering but flowing things. The ones I felt were tangled and knotted, looping back on themselves. In places they were constricted or pulsing faintly. With what, I did not know.

Then the impressions came. They always came with the Cradle. I had grown used to ignoring them. These I could not ignore.

The first was a road. A long one, stretching away from a village I had never seen. Two figures walked ahead of him, growing smaller. He watched them go. He did not call out. The second was a hand, reaching for a doorframe. The wood was splintered where someone had gripped it too hard. The hand let go. The third was the Inking itself. He knelt. He held out his arm. He already knew. He had always known. The certainty of it sat in him like a stone. He knelt anyway, because there was no reason not to anymore. Because even a hellhound might dare to jump off a cliff and fly, if it longed to chase a dragon.

Something in my chest pulled tight. I pushed past it.

Deeper still was the thing that made me press harder than I should have. It was his want to stand between his friends and the things that might hurt them. To be the shield instead of the thing being shielded. It burned in him. It burned even now, when he had nothing to give to the flame but himself. These impressions were bright. I had not known these impressions could be this bright. Was this because of my growing power, or something else?

I took a breath and pushed Bloom into one of the tangled channels. Gently. The channel grew. It thickened and strengthened and extended. And the pulsing wrongness grew with it. The knot tightened. The tangle deepened. Everything grew, even that I wished did not. I tried to separate them. I could not.

Corin made a small sound. No more than a groan he tried to swallow. I stopped. I shifted to my right hand. I pressed it to the same arm, just below where the Cradle had touched. Ruin seeped into the boy's channels.

The Requiem searched differently. It found impressions too. They were different than the ones the Cradle had shown, but no less vivid.

I felt his horror the moment the Ink settled and nothing happened. The other students' marks had flared, had glowed, had sung with color. His had flickered once and gone dim. It had never so much as flickered after that. I felt the slow understanding in the days that followed. That the thing he had feared his whole life had happened exactly as he had always known it would.

I felt his pain. The weight of wanting to protect his two friends, and now being protected by them instead. I felt his resignation hardening into something that looked like acceptance but was not.

Then, there was the other pain. The physical pain. This pulsing thing inside him pulsed and did not rest. It ached and ached and would never stop aching. He had not gotten used to it. He had gotten used to hiding it. My core hummed in answer. I winced.

And then, beneath everything else, so deep I almost missed it, was a question. It was not shaped like a question. It was shaped like an open door, and beyond it was nothing, and the nothing was better than what came before it.

I almost pulled my hand back. Marin had carried this question too. The child had not understood what he was asking. This boy understood it perfectly.

I reached with the Requiem, trying to find just the wrongness, to isolate the Concept of it from the boy's flesh the way I had once isolated fear from a bristleback. I searched for the seam between what was broken and what was whole.

There was no seam. The channels were the wrongness just as the wrongness were the channels. They were the same thing, fused at every point, indistinguishable. Almost, I tried anyway. Almost. I pulled back. My hands left his skin. The Ember Core hummed louder.

The boy was standing very still. He must have been in great pain. Perhaps more pain than I. No, I knew he was in more pain than I. He had not shown it, not in any measure. He had not shown it, because it was the last way he could protect his two friends now. The last thing he could shield them from.

His head was still bowed. This Corin must be a warrior too, I thought. For not quaking at the thing inside him.

I looked at the three of them. There had been hope on Ren’s face, when I had searched. Perhaps my method had been different from others she had seen, and so she had hoped. She had been trying to hide it. The careful stillness on Edda's face was now too still even for her. Even Corin had lifted his head, just barely. Just enough to look at me.

"I cannot fix this," I said slowly. The words came out quiet.

I watched the hope leave. It left Ren first. Her jaw tightened and her fists clenched and the Sigil on her arm flickered once as a wisp of flame shot up her arm and died. It left Edda second. Her shoulders sagged, just by an inch. It left Corin last, perhaps because there had been the least of it in him to begin with. "Sorry," Corin mumbled. The word was directed at the floor.

My hands were at my sides. I could feel them shaking. I did not permit them to shake, and they shook anyway. A boy had apologized to me for his own pain. The way Shera had apologized for me failing her son. As if a failed healing were a failing on the one to be healed, and not the healer.

Ash's hand found my shoulder. I had not asked for it. I did not remove it.

The three left after that. Ren's hand was on Corin's shoulder. Edda walked on his other side. The door closed behind them. The room was quiet. Ash looked at me. The question was in her face.

"I did not want to say it in front of them," I said slowly. "The boy's pain should be his own." I paused. "The channels the mark gave him grew wrong. The Cradle cannot fix what was never right -it only restores what was, or what could be. The Requiem cannot find a seam between the wrongness and the boy. Perhaps I am wrong, and I could have tried anyway. It would have done more harm than good, I think."

Ash listened. When I finished, she let out a breath that seemed to carry more than air. "Thank you," she said. "For trying. It was maybe too much to ask with…the pain you're keeping to yourself." She looked at me. "Just...thank you for trying."

Perhaps she both understood me too well, and not well enough. I stared at her. Genuinely confused. "Why are you thanking me?"

"Because you tried."

I held her gaze for one moment. Then I moved back to the bed. I took the egg and placed it in the satchel. I stood, and took hold of Ash's arm. She startled but did not resist as I pulled her toward the door. "To thank me for trying," I said, "implies that I have failed. I have never failed. Not once."

Ash was slow to start walking. "Lys, if they're the same thing then how are you supposed to do anything? You said it yourself, the Requiem is too risky."

I looked back at her. Something in my expression must have shifted, because her stride faltered.

"Did I say anything about the Requiem?"