 KINGSLAY
In the distance there are fires that curl in amber spirals up and into the air, eating up the life-filled bark of ancient trees. The flames snap and crackle as they grow, as they devour, and the air soon becomes heavy and thick with ash and smoke and death. He could stop them if he wanted. He could have them wax and wane while the winds hissed, and then peter out for the effort, if he wanted. But he likes the way they consume. He likes the way they turn the forests to charred, black ash and rubble. He likes the way they take, and take, and take. The way they give nothing back.
It is the only light he will not smother – the flames.
The only thing he can let live, apart from the girl with the muddy, brown eyes.
He felt a kinship with her, once – with her muddy, brown eyes, and the slope of her hips, and the way she breathed his name as though he was someone instead of something. He feels a kinship with the fire and the ash, now. He is like the smoke he leaves in the wake of his burning body, dark, and silent, and suffocating. He could end you while you slept. He could end you while you dreamt of things much softer, much lighter, much kinder, and less scathing than he. He is not someone. He is something.
Something vile.
Something wicked.
Something lethal.
Like the smoke, he winds through the trees left standing. He curls through the trunks, and skims beneath the low hanging branches that turn to kindling at the touch of the flames along the ridge of his neck and spine.
He has come for her.
He has come for the promises she made once.
He has come because the girl with the muddy, brown eyes is still lost to the horizon and once – once, Straia promised to bring her home if he gave her what she wanted.
And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.
i want the world in my hands
 That was a promise made so long ago. The world had changed since then. She had changed since then. Though her promise had not. She would try to find the girl for him. Not because she understands what it’s like to want someone that much, but perhaps because she can understand what it’s like to want something that much. She had the Chamber. Her first love, her only love. At least, the only one that would ever truly matter.
Not to say there hadn’t been infatuations along the way. There had, though in the end, they had all left. As everyone else does. She’s come to expect that the only constant in her life will be the Chamber. The Chamber was here before her and will continue to exist long after her. Everyone else – well, they were merely memories, in the end. The end just seemed to come far too quickly.
But Straia doesn’t dwell. She doesn’t need men. She needs the Chamber, nothing more. Needs it to be strong and powerful and feared. Well, that is less a need and more a want, but they seem to be the same thing sometimes. She wonders if Kingslay merely wants the girl, or needs her.
Granted, Straia has been to the Deserts on occasion, and never once has she seen the girl, this Etro. There are no more whispers of the power-stealing horse on the wind. Straia’s not sure she can even find the girl now, but perhaps. Perhaps the ravens could. But only if she was still in this realm, because Straia had no way of knowing what other realms to search. And as of yet, she didn’t think she could conjure those ravens to her.
Ravens follow the boy’s approach (grown now, but always a boy to her). They are made of water, and they swoop and splash and sizzle into the flames that lick her trees in his wake. The trees here have burned enough, and while she would always be the Queen of Ash and Ruin to some degree (certain things would never grow back), she was also ready for the Chamber to grow. To be more than it has in decades.
When he emerges from the tree line, she is already there with a ring of black feathers about her head like a crown. She wears it now and again, as she once wore the crown of flowers that Eight weaved for her. Never outside the kingdom, never to strangers, who don’t need to know what she has become quite yet. But here, she is no secret. “Kingslay,” she says, but nothing more. The boy sought her, and so she waits for him to say his piece.
straia the raven queen of the chamber
KINGSLAY
Above him there are ravens that are as black as ash.
They dive overhead tearing holes in the veil of smoke he has so gingerly crafted. He remembers them like the witches because of the way that they swoop and they swirl, and the memory makes the scars that would line his chest if it were not for the charcoal and soot come alive. The lines were carved through living flesh then by the long, gnarled nails of witches in the night, and the memory burns them hotter than the flames he surrounds himself in.
And the corners of his lips will twitch and quiver, not because the phantom scars are burning, but because the ravens are a welcome entourage.
They combat the flames while he burns them hotter, because he likes to watch the struggle, because the thrill of life and death is the only thing that he will ever be truly capable of loving, because…
Because he is what he is.
Because he is a monster.
Because he is a god.
He does not change. He does not grow. He is caught in a loop that leaves no room, or time, or space, for evolution. And she is a Queen now, with a ring of feathers strung round her forehead – and he is impressed even if it is only momentarily as he contemplates the methods of the feathers collection. He wonders if ravens scream. He wonders if they bleed and cry when you take away their wings. He wonders if she will let him find out, but decides in a moment that he will regardless of her clearance.
‘Kingslay,’ she says, like they always do. They would sing the name he gave them all, between their teeth and through their lips, until the end of time – or until he took it back.
“Etro,” he says, because he does not change, and he does not grow, and he has never been a creature of many words. And she will know precisely what he wants.
And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.
i want the world in my hands
Her ravens do not scream. They give to her willingly, because they seem to know no other way. As if they were born to serve her and only her. Certainly there are others that can command the ravens (the real ones, anyway, the ones she calls from the sky). But she can create her own ravens as well, her own personal army. And those ravens are hers and hers alone. They do not answer to others, do not waiver in their love of their Queen.
Even when she ceases to be Queen of the Chamber, Queen of Ash and Ruin, she will always be Queen of the Ravens. That title will follow her to the grave. Should she choose to die, of course. Feathers are not the only things that her ravens give freely.
He can hunt her ravens all he wants. But hers, the ones made of her dark magic, will not scream or writhe in his flames. They will simply burn in the sky behind him and live on.
His words don’t surprise him, but she does not smile. It is not so easy now. She cannot send a raven to the Deserts and call the girl away. Oh, how like Eight that would be. His crow that called her away to the meadow, where he gave her a crown of flowers. That was the beginning of their friendship. And then he gave her a throne. Now, she can give herself a crown.
“She’s gone,” she says, her voice still smoky as always, though so much else has changed. But she turns her eyes up to the sky then, and the ravens come. All manner of them, made of smoke and ash and ice and fire. Some are real, made of feathers as they should be. But it doesn’t matter, because they are everywhere, blocking out the sun. The Chamber is cast in shadow for a moment, but then they are gone, flooding out in every direction.
“If she’s within this realm, I will find her. But if not, then there’s little I can do till she comes home.” She had promised she would try. But that was all she could do for the boy who had disappeared for so very long. straia the raven queen of the chamber
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