Awakener's Guide to Climbing the Tower

The parrot did not stop screaming until Russel returned to the capital, and the queen felt him the moment he crossed the gates. Whatever bond connected her to the creature ignored distance entirely, because the instant the prince entered the palace grounds, the woman standing beside the throne went rigid.

Misha saw the throne room form around her in a wash of blue banners, polished marbles, and afternoon sunlight pouring through windows several stories high. The king sat upon the raised throne dressed in ceremonial blue and gold, his crown perfectly straight upon his head even though his eyes stared blankly ahead.

The queen stood at his right.

She was beautiful in a way that immediately made Misha suspicious now that she knew what lived beneath the face. Her dark hair had been arranged carefully around jeweled pins, her gown fell elegantly from her shoulders, and there was nothing openly monstrous about her until Russel entered carrying the wooden cage.

Then her face changed, and for one moment, the woman disappeared. Something tall and pallid pressed against the inside of human skin, its limbs too long for the body containing them while another face seemed to stretch beneath the queen’s own. Its mouth opened wider than a jaw should allow, showing Misha the suggestion of narrow teeth before the glamour snapped back into place.

"Put that down." The queen’s voice stayed low, but the hand gripping the throne tightened hard enough for her nails to leave grooves in the carved wood. "Whatever that old mage told you, Russel, you would be wise not to test it here."

The prince barely looked at her, since his attention had settled on the king.

"Father."

He waited several seconds, but the king did not answer or even blink in recognition.

Russel’s fingers tightened around the cage handle before he raised his gaze toward the queen and said, "Despicable monster, I demand you to wake my father."

The queen smiled again.

"You return from a cursed forest carrying an animal in a cage, and suddenly I am the monster?" Her voice softened as though she were speaking to a frightened child rather than a prince who had crossed Nareth to find her weakness. "Would you truly kill an innocent creature simply because a bitter old man told you a story?"

Russel looked at the parrot, then at her. "No."

The answer came so calmly that the queen visibly relaxed, but Misha immediately felt that Russel was about to do something.

He opened the cage.

The parrot burst through the small door and launched itself toward the high windows, green-and-gold feathers flashing beneath the sunlight.

The queen’s smile widened as though Russel had confirmed every insulting assumption she had made about him.

"Not me."

Then, a spear cut across the throne room.

One of Russel’s surviving men had thrown it.

The weapon struck the parrot through one wing and pinned it against a wooden pillar with enough force to splinter the carved surface. The bird shrieked, but the scream that tore from the queen was louder and far less human.

"AAARGH!!!"

Her body folded.

The glamour slipped again as her spine bent beneath the gown, pale limbs stretching beneath her skin while her mouth opened around teeth that had never belonged to a woman. Misha saw the creature underneath for only a second before the human form forced itself back together.

"Stop!" The queen dug one hand into the marble floor as though pain were travelling directly from the bird into her. "Touch it again and every one of you will die before sunset!"

The parrot tore desperately at the spear with its beak.

An arrow flew from the gallery. It struck the bird through its other wing and pinned it flat against the pillar.

Another archer already had his bow drawn.

"Wait–"

The third arrow struck the parrot through the chest.

The bird stopped screaming, and so did the queen. Her body dropped across the marble, silk spreading around her while the illusion finally failed completely.

Then every person inside the palace who was under her spell screamed at once.

Guards dropped their swords, servants collapsed against walls, and the king lurched forward upon his throne and dragged in a breath so violent it sounded as though he had just surfaced after years underwater.

Then silence crashed down, and the spell was gone.

Misha watched awareness return to the throne room in pieces.

The prince did not celebrate, he crossed the hall immediately and dropped beside his father.

The old king stared at him, his lips trembled. "My son?"

That was all Misha saw before the dream fractured again.

===

Russel did not become king in one clean moment.

Misha saw his reign through scattered memories instead, pieces of councils, winters, battlefields, banquets, arguments, mistakes, and decisions that gradually explained why an entire kingdom would one day refuse to let his corpse touch the ground.

The first memory showed the coronation hall already prepared.

Blue-and-white banners hung between the pillars, nobles stood in ceremonial rows, and the crown waited on a velvet cushion near the throne. Russel stood several paces away from it while Uiylin, his father’s old adviser, looked one argument away from hitting the prince with his staff.

"The realm needs a king." Uiylin’s burned hand remained wrapped in linen from his encounter with the Qorcovane, and two fingers still refused to straighten properly. "Your father has surrendered the throne, the council has acknowledged you, and the provinces are waiting for decrees bearing a sovereign’s seal."

Russel looked past him toward several empty places among the knights.

"Then the provinces can wait."

One minister stiffened.

"Your Highness, some of the men who entered Nareth with you may never be recovered." He hesitated before adding, "We cannot leave the throne empty indefinitely for the dead."

Russel looked at him, and the room went quiet.

"They did not enter Nareth for themselves." His voice remained level, but the softness had disappeared. "They went because I asked them to follow me."

The minister said nothing.

"I will not wear gold on my head while the bones of my brothers remain where I led them."

And so, the coronation was postponed.

Weeks later, rain fell over the capital when the dead returned.

Not every body was whole. Some carts carried armor wrapped around remains, others brought weapons, rings, scraps of clothing, or bones identified only through magic.

Russel stood beneath the city gate for every wagon. He remained there even when the rain became heavier.

Only after the final man crossed back into the gate did Russel turn toward the palace, and... the crown came afterward.

===

Kingship did not suddenly make Russel virtuous.

He enjoyed wine more than his physicians approved of, gambling more than Uiylin considered dignified, and women considerably more than the priests wished to discuss. Rival courts eventually called him indulgent, foreign nobles called him shameless, and plenty of people used the simpler accusation, womanizer.

Russel never denied any of it.

He married one queen, although their marriage began more as political necessity than romance. Her family controlled the western marches, several important roads, and enough soldiers that both sides understood a marriage was considerably cheaper than another war.

They spoke privately the night before the wedding.

Misha saw them standing beside a fountain in the palace gardens while their attendants remained far enough away not to hear.

Moonlight caught along the future queen’s silver hair, turning the loose strands near her face almost white. Her violet-amethyst eyes were even more striking beneath the garden lamps, cool and luminous as they rested on Russel with a composure that made her difficult to read.

Russel did not waste time pretending.

"I will not insult you with vows I may not keep." His hands were clasped behind his back as he regarded the water. "Men of my house have kept concubines for generations, and I have never possessed the temperament of a monk."

The woman who would become his queen raised one eyebrow. "Then I will not insult you by pretending this surprises me."

That made him look at her.

She continued calmly, "I was educated to become your queen, Your Grace. I understand what kings are permitted to do, what courtiers pretend not to notice, and what priests condemn whenever it is convenient for them."

One of Russel’s mouth curled. "And what does concern you?"

"Whether any of those women will be permitted to build a court around themselves."

His amusement vanished.

The future queen met his gaze without wavering. "I have no interest in deciding whose bed you visit," she said calmly. "But the moment one of them starts reaching for my seat beside you, she is no longer your mistress. She is a claimant... and I will not leave claimants alive."

Russel stared at her for several seconds before a low laugh escaped him. "I begin to understand why your father demanded such an expensive marriage settlement."

She gave him a cold look. "If that frightened you, Your Grace, you chose the wrong woman to marry."

"Quite the opposite."

He reached for her hand, turning it gently within his own. His expression had lost its earlier amusement by the time he raised her knuckles to his lips.

"The seat beside me will always be yours," he said, pressing a slow kiss to the back of her hand. "Whatever liberties I take elsewhere, I will not permit another woman to mistake my attention for a claim to your crown."

He lowered their joined hands but did not release her. "You will be my queen. No ambitious fool will be allowed to forget it."

At times like this, Misha wished she had brought snacks. Something salty, preferably, because everything unfolding in front of her felt less like reality and more like an absurdly expensive fantasy production she had somehow been dropped into without buying a ticket.

The longer she watched, the stranger that feeling became. Silver-red foxes, princes, knights, memories that bled into dreams and dreams that felt too vivid to dismiss–none of it seemed like something she was supposed to be standing inside.

It felt more like an immersive fairy tale stitched together from fragments of someone else’s past, with Misha somehow cast as the unwilling audience member who could walk around inside the scene.

She folded her arms, then sighed. "I want some popcorn..."