She stood at her mother's bedside, holding the hand of the woman who had confessed wanting to die, and the ugly little hot coal that had lived in her chest for three nights, the coal she had chosen gratitude over, again and again, flared one final time.
And she looked at her mother's closed eyes, and she let it burn down to ash.
"Heal her, Professor." The princess's voice rang in the silent chamber, clear as a struck glass, and it was she who answered for the queen, because the queen had asked and the queen was still on the wrong side of her own skin. "Whatever it costs. Whatever anyone says. Whatever the elders have to turn their backs to survive. Heal her."
"So witnessed," said the eldest loyalist from the wall, in a voice like an old door closing. And one by one, down the line, silver heads bowed.
The queen's laughter filled the chamber, low and rich and four thousand years deep.
"Then witness it, all of you," she said. "I have been dying politely for four thousand years."
