The Narrator

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings

Chapter Music: All it Cost Her...

The evening glow of the fading sun shines through the large windows in the Hall of the Monarchs. Dust floats through the air lazily, unaware of the eyes that follow it. That's all these portraits are good for anymore, the Singer thought to himself. To sit and collect dust.

In the twelve long years that followed the Lightning War, the Hall turned into a tomb. The outside world changing and evolving, but not here. Julian Jacos begged for this one stretch of room in the palace to remain the same. Untouched and forgotten by the world. Farley gave him his wish. It seemed fair enough. Let him have this one thing, she had thought. There is nothing else he wants that I can give.

Outside the tomb, a girl trots along the corridor. Brown hair flies behind as she skids to a stop in front of the door. She's on the hunt for her mentor, and she always knows where he haunts. As the only daughter to the Premiere of the Nortan States, she's lived in the old Palace her whole life. She knows every sealed hallway and every locked door. More importantly, how to get past them.

Carefully, she pulls the pins out of her hair and picks at the lock until the softest click congratulates her on a job well done. She opens the door with a grin, peeking in to see if her suspicions were right. They were. Julian always came here before lessons, or at least history lessons. She had little idea why.

"I see you over there, little one," the man rasps, "you're supposed to wait for me at my desk."

"I am not little."

"Of course not, Clara." Julian walks down the hall to her, limping slightly from the effort. Sara had wanted to fix that for him for years now, but he always shooed her away. Always claiming it was nothing to worry about. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. He didn't care. It reminded him of too much to take it away, even if it bothered him so. "If you're ready, we can hold our lesson here today."

"Okay." Clara followed her mentor a few steps down the hall. She knew little about the place, only that Julian liked it. She thought it may have been from the sun. He always liked to sit in the sun and bask in its warmth.

"Usually I start with readings, but I think I'll start with a question." Clara nodded. "Do you know who Mare Barrow was?" Clara thought for a moment. She had heard the name many times before, in whispers at the market or the council chambers. Of course, they shared the same last name. Grandma mentioned her once or twice years ago. No one ever gave her a straight answer on who she was though, just that she died a long time ago. She never poked much further than that. Clara shook her head, frowning slightly. She didn't like not knowing things.

"She was a Red, born in a distant town called the Stilts. You remember the Blood Divide from our lessons? Well, she helped fix it. But before that, she was just an ordinary girl who found herself in the court of a Silver king. She was like you, a New Blood. The Silvers didn't like it because they didn't know what she was, so they hid her. They made her pretend to be something she wasn't." Clara looked curiously up at her mentor. He spoke proudly, like he knew this person before.

"Didn't she marry one of the Silvers?" Clara had heard about that once. That a girl fell out of the sky and was promised to a King's son. The women at the market told the story like a legend. Like mere fiction. Although that didn't stop Clara from believing it was true.

"No, she was supposed to. But, something went terribly wrong. The Queen at the time used her to take the throne for her son, and that appeared to be that. Only Mare and the other Prince escaped to The Scarlet Guard." Clara knew how that went from the stories. The prince that stayed behind, became King Maven. She had heard of him plenty of times. Everyone spoke his name boldly, like he wasn't something to fear. She thought that was naive and stupid. Everyone can be something to fear if given the opportunity. She knew the king captured a Scarlet Guard plane once, but somehow everyone managed to escape. That's all Mom ever told her.

Julian coughs sickly, taking a moment to dab at his mouth with a small piece of fabric. It was a curious thing. Yellow, but with a thicker Red piece threaded around the border. Julian was no fool with it, he tucks it away quickly back into his robes. Before anyone can see the speckles of silver blood on it. "The Guard turned Mare into the face of the revolution, a soldier," Julian continues, "She was a terrific one too. Too smart for her own good. But then an accident happened and she was forced to choose something. To let the rebellion die before it had barely begun, or to do what the King asked her. She agreed and she saved the rebellion."

Clara's brows furrowed in response. She knew little about the world at her age, but she knew one thing. It was unfair. She had learned that lesson when Mother told her the story of her Father, the day she learned that happy endings were few and far between. She says the question brewing inside of her, "At what cost?"

Julian looked down at her with growing pride. Clara always asked the hard questions. Much like someone else he knew. Sometimes she would appear at his door and he would have to blink away the disappointment. Her shadow looked much like her if she was a bit shorter. Brown hair and fading ends added to the picture. A quality she earned from her father, but one that belonged to Mare just the same. Clara had yet to show her ability, even though Julian had already calculated it. Clara would have one, when it would express it self was another question altogether. That didn't stop Julian from wondering what it could be. A teleporter like her father or an Electricon like her aunt? There hadn't been another Electricon since Mare Barrow. Some say there never will be again, that the blood of the power died with her.

"She traded her life for everyone on board that plane. She was the King's prisoner and in time became much more. Your mother didn't want me to teach you this until later, but you're old enough now I suppose to know a little more. Mare Barrow became Queen of Norta after that. The last ruling monarch before the Nortan States was established. That's how she helped start blood equality. She was Queen once." Julian stops before a painting, looking up at it. Clara looks too.

A woman sits in it, with spiraling robes of blacks and purples of all shades. She looked familiar to Clara, even more familiar to Julian who stared hauntingly at the cold face. The woman hadn't smiled for it, instead keeping her eyes trained straight ahead with a spark of determination. She looked terrifying and fierce and strong. Everything she had intended.

"I've seen her before," Clara says. "My mother has a photo on her desk with a group of soldiers. She's in it. Did my mother know her?"

Julian sighed. "Once she did." Clara nodded. Again, she felt the familiar ache of when she should stop asking questions.

"What was she like?" Julian looked over to Clara with a smile before looking back up at Mare's portrait. She knows so little, and already more than she should, he noted. He thought of the many things he wanted to tell her, but couldn't. There was one thing he could tell her. Something with little meaning to Clara now, but perhaps it will mean something later to her.

"She wanted to change the world," Julian answers. Around them, the world had indeed changed. Each winter that had passed turned the rivalry of the Blood Divide colder, and more distant in memory than reality. The throne of Norta grew cold with it. Mare had gotten her wish. No Silver king sat on the throne again. Not even a Queen. Clara always assumed the security that trailed her around at the markets was because of her mother being the leader of the freed country. She had never stopped to think that perhaps it was because of her. That was the pact after all. They all had promised each other that Clara could never know what she was destined to become.

That didn't stop supporters from pledging themselves to Clara as the one true Queen, although she never heard anything about the exiled Silver lords and ladies intentions in the distant northern lands of the Lakelands. There, the name Mare Barrow and the heir she had promised to the throne was a sacred thing. Queen Iris and her Commanding General Evangeline made sure of it.

"I've heard the rumors, even if they're just that," Clara begins. Other whispers came with the name Mare Barrow. Mad, they all said. Maybe she wasn't, Clara thought, Maybe she was just sad. "She hurt people didn't she? People who didn't deserve it." Julian turns away from her. In some ways everyone deserved it. Sometimes he thought he had too. He betrayed her even if he hadn't meant too, and it had cost him everything. He could have seen it sooner like he had wished he'd done with his sister. The distant eyes that plagued them both, the fury that burned in Mare. He could have helped her instead of fear her. He knew the role he played in it and there was nothing he could do to mend it.

His eyes finds the painting next to Mare's official portrait, the sea of yellow is like a beacon next to the darker purples. Mare chose to smile in this one, they both had. Clara follows her mentor's eyes to it. The woman, Mare, sits in it. She looks about the same age in both portraits. Although she seems lighter almost, even a little more happy. She never thought she would recognize the man in it until she does. Her Julian Jacos smiles back at her. He's younger, hair still somewhat dark. Julian knew her once. He must have.

"How-" Julian looks back to Clara with sad eyes, her question dying in her throat.

"She was good once. But, that's the thing about power, Clara. It attracts the worst and corrupts the best. The power the crown gave her was a poisoned cup she could never stop drinking from. It wasn't her fault. We all failed her in some way."

Clara looked around the Hall. She spotted many faces of Kings and Queens who times were over. Two in particular caught her eye, the dead monarchs both had the same chilling, blue eyes. A few next to them, Mare stood in with other people she had never seen before. Julian was in one of them too with two others. Almost like a small family portrait. But no matter where she looked, Mare always looked the same. Still young and unchanged. She knew Mare didn't see much past the age depicted in the portraits.

She knew the fate of King Maven. He had died, but there was still one life that was unaccounted for in her lesson. "The other prince? Where did he go?"

"Gone." A voice answers at the end of the hall. Clara spins around in surprise.

"Aunty, what are you doing here?" Gisa Barrow doesn't smile at her niece as she glares at Julian, her long robes of Montfort green trail behind her. The Gisa Barrow Julian had once known died that day alongside the Silver lady, who she came to know to be Wren Skonos. Perhaps she was better for it. She left with Kilorn to the mountains of Montfort, on to become second in command to Premiere Kilorn Warren. The people knew her there differently than the people of Norta. As a fair, cold lady who will stick a knife in your side if you double cross her. One, jagged scar stretches across her cheek from where the Magnetron sliced her. Few people know where she earned it, and she intends to keep it that way. She still hasn't paid Evangeline back for it, and she intends to when she gets the chance.

"Kilorn and I are visiting on official affairs with your Mother, and I came to find you to surprise you." Gisa softens for Clara, the ghost of a smile on her face. She doesn't do it much anymore. It hurts when she does. Fitting, she told Kilorn when he told her he could take it to a healer, I was always the broken sister.

"Kilorn is here!" Clara bounds down the hall to Gisa, wrapping her arms around her and squeezing tight. "I haven't seen him in months! Where is he?"

"He's with your mother in her office. Why don't you go see him, I'll be right behind you." Clara looks back to Julian for permission to leave and he nods. She leaves a heartbeat later, a grin plastered on her face, nearly sprinting down the halls to catch up to her favorite uncle. Gisa watches her leave, waiting until her footfalls fade away into silence.

"You're not supposed to tell her that story," Gisa says, looking back to Julian. "Not yet."

"It's not a story. It's history. Farley asked me to teach her history so that she can make the right choice if she is ever asked to make it."

"How much did you tell her?"

"Not enough." The man wheezes out another shaky cough. Gisa looks on in worry at the man fighting for air. But she is no healer, no matter how many times she willed it so. She can only stare and frown at the sight.

"Julian, you are a man haunted by ghosts. I know why you offered to be her mentor as a teacher, and when it comes, to train her in her ability. I know you see her in Clara, sometimes I do too," Gisa sighs lightly looking up at her sister's portrait, "They have the same smile. There's so much of my brother and Mare in her...but don't plague her with our mistakes. She doesn't need to know who Mare was to us. She's still just a girl."

"She can learn from history. It's a lesson to us all."

"It's also a curse." Gisa dips her head at the fading man to leave. She never knew Julian before the war. Except that her sister had loved him with every breath. She often thought back to the day he arrived half-dead at the Scarlet Guard's makeshift base. Something terrible had happened, and that girl who sat across the war table from him had no idea something worse was coming for her.

"Gisa?" She stops at the door, turning to look back. "Where is he? He left for Montfort with you and Kilorn and I never heard a word." Gisa sighs at the question. Julian had asked her plenty of times what became of the Silver Prince who took her sister away from her. She never answered him, always too afraid to admit she let him leave alive. Too afraid that Julian might try to follow him. She spotted something different in Julian today. He seemed...weak.

"He made me promise not to tell you. I don't know why I kept it, but I did. It's been long enough now...Cal took a boat and sailed out of port years ago. No one has heard from him since."

"Maybe there's lands to the west," Julian murmurs. Gisa feels the hole of pity grow inside of her. Julian was always a hopeful man. But she didn't have the strength to tell him the crew of the boat hadn't been heard from either. Maybe they were alive somewhere and Cal knew better than to come back. Not that there was anything there that would make him want to in the first place. Kilorn would let him leave the first time, and Gisa wasn't sure if he would be as forgiving if he saw him again.

"It's good to see you, Julian. We're having dinner with Farley in a little while. I think Clara would like it if you and Sara came." He smiles at her, nodding his head. Gisa knew better than to wait for a better response as she left him there. The man rarely talked to anyone anymore unless it was Clara.

The sun set on the Hall of the Monarchs, bathing the portraits in red glory. Julian Jacos sat again in one of the chairs, looking out at the dying day. He felt it within himself too that his time here was waning with the day. Felt it in every shaky breath and aching bone. If he had nothing left, maybe he would have let Iris' Gods take him right then and there. But he did have a few things left. So he breathed one shaky breath and stood up, bowing his head at his Queen before leaving the tomb to eternal silence once more.

So they will live on, burned by grief. And the Lightning Queen? The girl who had felt betrayed and broken that day in the lingering echoes of her head. The girl who came to the palace as a prisoner and left as a corpse. She's still dead.