The Hall of Queens was like any other house—fully furnished, carpeted, and bright. Strange that that light didn't shine through the windows from the outside.

As soon as she stepped inside and June shut the door to the hall, lights flickered on, illuminating the whole lobby. Carpets muffled Xanthy's steps as she traipsed around the lobby. Lush chairs and beige walls greeted Xanthy's eyes. Xanthy's sweat evaporated as a cool breeze blew around her. Was there a cooling spell in this hall? Amazing.

Eight corridors branched off from the center of the building including the one that connected the entrance. The lobby was quiet and the air inside was a bit stale. People hadn't been here for a long time. June led them straight into the center corridor, his footsteps eager against the rugs. Xanthy and Canelis glanced briefly at each other before following.

A mysterious breeze of authority swept over her the moment she passed through the opening. The walls on this one were plastered with paintings of this High Queen's family, boasting jeweled coats and styled hair. All of these fairies had bluish gray hair, almost the same shade of yellow eyes, and crooked teeth. Xanthy sucked in her breath. Banshees.

June passed these portraits without attention and breezed towards the end of the corridor where a painting as tall as two fairies hung a few meters from the ground. He bowed as he stretched his hand out, gesturing at the painting.

"Behold, Marrione the Founder," he said as if the name is worthy of so much reverence. "The First High Queen that heralded the establishment of a city where all races could interact freely."

Canelis bowed at the portrait. A woman gazed down at Xanthy with pale, yellow eyes painted in such a way that they looked like miniature furnaces. She wasn't smiling, possibly to hide her crooked teeth or people at that time thought frowning in official portraits was formal. Silver hair glazed down the woman's shoulder in straight lines resembling threads from a loom.

Xanthy stepped closer and tapped her chin. The strokes captured the details of Marrione's ballooning gown, up into the exaggerated curves she appeared to possess. The background was simply a mess of blended colors, as if dark orange and green smoke met together behind the former High Queen. "Okay," Xanthy drew away and looked at June. "Why are you showing this to me?"

June gaped at her. "I'm educating you about our island!" Surprise was evident in his tone. "Marrione was the reason fairies of every race could be in the same places at once," he gestured towards Canelis behind Xanthy. "You wouldn't even have met her if Marrione didn't become the High Queen."

"Marrione the Founder is the ambassador of unity," Canelis added. "Unfortunately, at the end of her reign, her advisers saw an incompetency and had her executed."

Xanthy gasped. "Why?"

"Politics is a filthy game," Canelis shrugged. "There are many reasons why they conspired against their own Queen. History books conflicted with each other about it. Some stated that the incompetency existed in the form of mental instability while some claimed that the advisers wanted someone else on the throne."

"She was executed wrongly," June stepped between Canelis and Xanthy and began walking away from the painting. "After she died, the whole island felt the need to honor her hard work that they built this structure in Lanteglos. Now, here we are."

Xanthy glanced back at the painting one last time. "So what's with the portraits? Are they her family?" she pointed to the general direction of the smaller portraits hanging on the walls.

June shook his head. "They're the advisers," a grim look reflected on his face. "After the High Queen ascends to the throne, she has the liberty to choose advisers for her court or just retain the previous set. In Marrione's case, she had to build hers from nothing."

"Which is her first mistake," Canelis tapped her chin as she stared up at a portrait of a boy with blue-gray hair. He didn't look older than Xanthy. "She only picked those from her race and refused to choose from the other races. It ignited a lot of protests for lack of representation but she didn't listen. If I have to theorize the cause of her downfall, I'd bet that the races conspired with the advisers to dispose of Marrione when she didn't listen to the complaints."

"What happened after she died?" Xanthy asked. They made it out of the first corridor and moved on to the next. The same arrangement greeted her.

"The War of Queens," June said. Xanthy's stomach churned, remembering what Cyrdel had told her about that event. "It's the solution the head of the Imperial Court came up with to determine the next rightful High Queen."

Canelis fingered the pommel of her sword. "It's a battle worth spending time on," she bared her teeth. "I've always wanted to watch one. I heard it was quite the sport."

Xanthy knitted her eyebrows. "You treat loss of life as a sport?"

"It depends on how you look at it," Canelis dusted off her robe even if it wasn't dirty. "Fairies agreed to this arrangement because they wish their High Queen to be competent in all areas to ascertain their capability to rule," Canelis inclined her head. "If your life depended on it, wouldn't you be willing to learn things fit for a Queen?"

"Does the War of Queens teach cake-tasting or sitting on thrones until one's butt bleeds?" Xanthy scratched the side of her face.

"You view Queens as cake tasters and beings who lounge on chairs?" Canelis raised an eyebrow before shaking her head. "Unbelievable."

Xanthy crossed her arms. "Well, aren't they?"

"No," Canelis frowned. "Being a queen requires tenacity in all situations. Queens are people who strive to do everything with their best and with a flair of finality. Friendship should not be an issue in achieving goals. Most importantly, Queens value common good over life."

"So killing teaches that?" Xanthy blinked. She's not convinced.

"It trains adaptability, strength, and wit," Canelis tucked her hands inside her sleeves. "The War of Queens have been an effective assessor in producing the next High Queens. No one ever questions that."

Xanthy pursed her lips. However absurd and unethical that sounds, she wasn't in any place to argue. These were people who believed in it so much that no matter what she said, her words would find empty ears.

Still, the idea of forcing young women to kill each other for the throne ignited some fury inside Xanthy. She wanted to wail and demand that they stop this practice but who was she to change anything? It's not like the Virtakios could do anything about it.

Xanthy's eyes widened with the realization. Or could it?

Xanthy shook her head. Not the time for those thoughts. She followed June and Canelis deeper into this new corridor. "So, the next High Queen is...?"

Canelis pointed towards the end where a portrait of a woman with long dark hair, narrow dark eyes, and a familiar frown hung. Canelis grinned without humor in her eyes. "Alxys the Conqueror," Canelis said. "A pixie."

Xanthy regarded the bone-white gown pooling around the Pixie High Queen's feet. "She's scary."

"Rightly so," Canelis nodded with pride glinting in her eyes. "She decimated all her rivals in one night after hunting them down and skewering their heads on individual pikes."

Xanthy shivered. That was wrong on so many levels. Soon, the tour went from corridor to corridor. June and Canelis were trading information about the High Queens that made Xanthy believe in miracles. So June and Canelis could really get along.

Over the course of a few hours, Xanthy had learned that Alxys the Conqueror had banned all synnavaim use in Lanteglos to encourage equality. This order was later redacted by her daughter who succeeded her in the throne as the limit of a reign came.

Salah the Defender, the next High Queen abdicated her throne due to having a child outside of her marital bounds. Canelis wouldn't say anything more about it when Xanthy asked.

"Salah was a shame for pixies," Canelis had said before striding out of the High Queen's corridor like the wind.

"Pixies didn't want to acknowledge that they had an adulterous Queen come out of their race and even have Imperial power," June leaned in to whisper to Xanthy once Canelis was out of earshot. "It's a pride thing."

Dina, the Brownie High Queen, came up next. Xanthy's jaw had fallen upon gazing at the woman she had only seen as a statue. Smoldering hazel eyes tore through Xanthy's being as Dina's portrait stared back at her. Instead of wearing a gown, Dina had opted to wear a bright red overcoat with matching trousers that hugged her legs tightly. The outfit only accentuated Dina's pointed chin and sharp cheekbones that made up an overwhelming aura not found in brownies at all.

"Dina had taken on a moniker that described her as tame," June nodded up at the High Queen's portrait. "She wanted to grow out of that so she made this look to be her portrait."

The next was an air sprite High Queen called Cariss. She was the one that put the Air Sprites as the Imperial Race for the first time. It stayed that way because when Cariss failed to produce an heir, another War of Queens took place.

"That's when January the Weak won and put the Sylkrana bloodline on the throne," June nodded as they went out of gods knew what corridor now. "Her daughter, Nevrin, is who we have on the throne now."

They stopped in front of January's portrait and Xanthy blinked. White hair protruded from the High Queen's head and fell in wavy locks down her back. She turned to June. "Are you related to her?" Xanthy jerked her thumb back at the portrait.

June shook his head. "White hair just means someone was born with great affinity to magic or no affinity at all," he smoothed his hair off his face. "That, or it could result as a magical spell backfiring"

Xanthy scratched her chin. Yeah, June did tell her about that back in Cardina. "Your mother's lucky to have not lost you when she cast whatever that spell was," she smiled at him.

"Yup, luck happens to run in our family," June squeezed the back of his neck.

"The Zeilran family?" Xanthy raised an eyebrow

June barely blinked as he looked at Xanthy straight in the eye. "Yes, the Zeilran family."

Xanthy followed them as they began walking back towards the center lobby. "I'd like to meet her one day."

"I told you, my family doesn't care about me," June's expression darkened.

Xanthy gulped. "Okay, I'm sorry."

June pursed his lips and said nothing. They walked in silence until something caught Xanthy's periphery. She stopped and turned to a portrait of a man with a crooked smile. Weren't portraits supposed to be made frowning? She squinted at the man in the portrait. Something about him was...familiar.

"Xanthy?" June called.

"Hey," Xanthy flinched but she turned to June who began walking back towards her. "Do you know who this is?"

June took one look at the man in the portrait and shook his head. "Xanthy, no one cares about Council members when the High Queen they serve is no longer in power," June glanced at it again. "Trust me, no one remembers a name once a High Queen steps down, much less two hundred years later."

Xanthy kept her eyes on the man. Something about him tugged at Xanthy like an unscratched itch. His wind-swept mop of hair sat atop his head like a dirty washcloth. Youthful cheer sparkled in his eyes. The paint had long ago faded and dust coated the surface. The original colors were distorted. Xanthy squinted. She could glean a shade from the man's hair. Light brown. No, lighter...khaki?

"Xanthy, you coming?" June's voice sounded far away now. Xanthy hummed and turned towards the direction of his voice to find him and Canelis already at the opening of January's corridor. She wrenched her eyes and curiosity off the man in the portrait and followed her friends into the next corridor.

All conversations blurred in her ears as her mind refused to think of anything other than the man in the portrait. Who was that man and why was Xanthy drawn to him like she was? The rest of the tour and their walk back to the inn they were staying at were a faded backdrop as Xanthy's mind painted one face over and over in her head.

That night, Xanthy stared up at the ceiling on her mattress. Whenever she closed her eyes, the man's face flared up in vivid colors that she had to wrench her eyes open again. Finally, she gave up sleeping and sat up on her bed.

No matter what nonsense she dreamed up here, tomorrow would be another day with another set of worries. Why would June detour with a trip to the gallery? Was it to ease their nerves?

Xanthy's stomach turned then. Tomorrow, they would enter Edgerift, the Imperial City. Xanthy would ask for an audience with the High Queen and help Canelis rehabilitation help from Lanteglos Then, Xanthy would meet the Death Knight before finally tracking the Heiress down and giving her the justice she deserved.

That should be what would happen if things worked out well.

Xanthy sighed and plopped back into the bed. Crozal and the other moons seemed to gloat at Xanthy from their place in the sky. The stars twinkled brighter against the amalgam of various-colored rays fighting for dominance in the night. She propped her arm over her eyes and sighed.

Tomorrow was another day.