My Wife Rules The World

Leon's hands weren't steady when he pressed dial.

It rang once. Twice.

Someone picked up.

"Leon." Emilia's voice was warm, professional, the same as it had always been. "It's been a while. What can I help you with?"

He exhaled. "Lady Emilia — I need to speak to Iris. Please. This is an emergency."

"Can you describe the emergency?"

"They're going to kill him." The words came out in the wrong order. He tried again. "My roommate — Noah — there's someone on a hologram who just gave the order to kill him and I can't get back into the room and I don't know what else to do, I need — please, I need her help."

A short silence on the other end.

"Let me check," Emilia said. "Please hold."

The line went quiet.

Leon stood in the hallway with the phone against his ear and looked at nothing.

---

The hallway outside Iris's main office was the kind of quiet that only exists in buildings where every surface has been chosen to absorb sound. Emilia walked its length, stopped at the door, and said her name into the intercom.

The door opened.

The office had a full glass pane facing Manhattan. The city spread out beyond it in the afternoon light, indifferent to the room. At the end of the long table Iris was working through a document, pen in hand, not looking up.

"What is it."

"You have a call."

"I had no meeting scheduled." Still not looking up. "If it isn't important, refuse it."

"It's from the only guy who calls your name without honorifics."

Iris's pen stopped.

She looked up. "Leon called."

"He says it's an emergency."

Iris set the pen down. Her hand moved briefly to her ear — to one of her earrings, a small dark bead attached to it. The same material as the Leon’s bracelet. She held it for a moment.

The bracelet hadn't sent a distress signal. Leon was physically safe.

"What happened," she said.

"A close friend of Leon, a boy named Noah, his life is in danger. Leon is requesting help."

Iris was still for a moment. Then, without any visible transition, she was somewhere else in her thoughts — Felicy across the table, hands folded, saying it plainly. He has to come to hate you. Completely. The link must sever from his side.

She looked at the table surface.

Her hand closed into a fist.

"Tell Leon I refuse to help." Her voice was even. "Make it clear — whether he or any of his friends lives or dies does not concern me. Then cut the call."

Emilia went very still.

"Lady Iris—"

"You can leave."

Emilia looked at her for one moment longer than strictly professional. Then she bowed and walked out.

The office door closed.

Iris sat alone. Outside the glass Manhattan continued at its usual pace.

She stood.

The room around her began to change.

The glass, the table, the city — all of it folded away, replaced by the flat grey light that had no source. The ground under her feet became dark soil. Headstones appeared in uneven rows around her, some upright, some tilted. Ribbons draped across each stone, names written along their lengths.

She was in the graveyard.

A shape moved at the far edge of her vision.

It came toward her fast — not running exactly, more like something between moving and appearing closer — and then it stopped and went down, bowing low with its single hand pressed to the ground. Where the other two should have been there was nothing. One hand. Same smooth blank face. The same continuous tears running from empty sockets down uninterrupted skin.

"Your Highness." Its voice was eerie and bright at the same time, the two qualities sitting uniquely beside each other. "How may I serve you?"

Iris looked down at it.

"Mimic," she said. "It is time for your punishment."

The creature looked up at her.

"Fifteen months ago you impersonated me. You called Leon in the mortal world. You made changes in the that realm without my permission, even if it was something as small as a phone bill."

"But Your Highness." Its voice fractured slightly on the edges of each word. "My will comes from your desire. It was your desire — your intense desire to hear that boy's voice — that I acted upon. I could not help impersonating you."

"That is not an excuse."

The creature bowed its head.

"Heed me," Iris said. "Travel to the mortal world. A boy named Noah — close to Leon — is about to die. Replace him. Send him here safely. Then impersonate his dead self in the mortal world until I give the order to send him back." She held the creature's gaze. "You will remain buried as his body. You will not surface. You will not deviate. Until I lift the command."

The creature pressed its single hand to the ground again.

"As Her Majesty wishes."

It disappeared.

The graveyard folded back. The glass, the table, Manhattan — all of it returned. The office was exactly as it had been.

Iris stood by the window.

She looked at the city below and said it quietly, to no one who could hear her.

"Sorry for the pain you are about to bear." She wasn't looking at anything specific through the glass. "I need you to keep believing that I let your friend die today. Even after this, your life may not remain a good one for some time." A pause. "I will make it up to you. Once it's all over."

She looked down at her hand.

Her fist had been clenched the entire time. When she opened it, four small crescents of blood sat in her palm where her nails had broken the skin.