A raven's shadow slid across the throne room floor.
Cersei stood in the corner where servants belonged, his back pressed against the cold stone wall, as the bird landed on the windowsill. The raven had black feathesr and yellow eyes that gleamed in the torchlight. Then the bird exploded into smoke.
The smoke twisted and condensed and shaped itself into a woman.
High Priestess Ravenna.
She wore a black dress that hugged every curve of her body. Men's eyes followed her as she walked. The guards at the door stood straighter and stared.
The temperature in the room dropped.
Cersei's skin prickled. The air tasted like he'd licked a copper coin. His lungs felt tight, like something was pressing on his chest. Everyone in the room felt it. Some of them shifted on their feet. Others glanced around, confused.
Ravenna walked toward the throne and courtiers moved out of her path.
King Valorax didn't stand.
He sat on his throne carved from black stone with his shoulders filling the width of the seat. His arms were thicker than most men's legs and his black hair fell to his shoulders, streakde with gray.
A crown of black iron sat on his head. The thing was as wide as a wagon wheel and as thick as a man's forearm.
Ten rings covered his fingers. Each ring was the size of a child's fist, made of enchanted steel and black crystal. Each one weighed five hundred pounds. The king drummed his fingers on the armrest.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Ravenna stopped ten feet from the throne and bowed.
"My king. The Valdros army crossed the Ashfall Mountains this morning. They'll reach our borders in two days."
The king exhaled through his nose. " They really want to test us."
He turned his head toward General Korrin. The general stood beside the throne in full plate armor with his helmet tucked under one arm.
"Prepare the soldiers, it is time to fight to defend the kingdom, to defend our honor."
"Yes, Your Majesty." Korrin slammed his fist against his breastplate and the clang echoed through the chamber. He marched out and his voice boomed in the hallway. "Sound the war drums!"
King Valorax looked at his son.
The third prince stood before the throne, over six feet tall and wearing polished armor. He wore a smirk on his face.
"My son, this is your moment," the king said. "Go. Kill our enemies and bring me their commander's head."
The prince's smirk widened. He slammed his fist against his chest.
"Yes, Father."
He turned to leave and his hand shot out and cracked across Cersei's face.
Cersei's head snapped sideways. White spots burst across his vision and his cheek burned where the prince's knuckles had connected.
"Follow me, dog," the prince said. He was already turning away.
Cersei's fingers curled into fists and his nails dug into his palms. He pictured his hands wrapping around the prince's throat. Pictured squeezin until the prince's face turned red, then purple. Until his eyes bulged and he stopped breathing.
Instead, Cersei's mouth stretched into a smile.
"Yes, Your Highness." He bent at the waist in a bow.
The prince's boots clicked against the marble floor as he walked toward the war room.
I hate this. I hate bowing. I hate smiling when I want to spit in his face.
But Cersei followed anyway.
xxxx
In the war room, the prince buckled the straps of his breastplate. Metal clinked against metal. He picked up his sword—three feet of folded steel—and swung it in wide arcs. The blade cut through the air with a whistle.
The prince's boots scraped against the stone floor as he pivoted, practicing strikes. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he wiped it with the back of his hand.
"Another slaughter," he said in an absentminded, almost bored tone. He slid the sword into its sheath.
Cersei's mouth opened before his brain could stop it. "You seem sure our kingdom will win, sire."
The prince's head turned and his eyes locked onto Cersei. They were pale gray, like dirty ice. He stared for three breaths.
Cersei's throat went dry. His hands shook and he pressed them against his sides. For a monent he thought he had angere the prince.
But the prince shrugged. "My father could crush their king's skull with one hand. We'll be fine."
Cersei nodded and his chest loosened a bit.
Then the prince's eyes narrowed. "By the way, who are you to question me?"
"I—" Cersei's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. "I didn't—"
"You've got balls today." The prince's lips curled into a smile that showed all his teeth. "So you'll come with me to the battlefield."
Cersei's stomach dropped and his pulse hammered in his ears.
"But sire, I can't fight. I've never held a sword. I'm not—"
The prince wasn't listening. He grabbed his helmet from the table and walked toward the door. His armored footsteps echoed in the stone chamber.
"Meet me at the palace gates," he said without looking back. "Be dressed and ready."
The door slammed shut.
Cersei stood alone in the room. The smell of leather oil and metal polish filled his nose and his legs trembled.
He looked down at his clothes. A threadbare tunic, brown and stained at the armpits. Loose cotton trousers with a hole in the left knee. Cloth shoes so worn he could feel every bump in the stone floor.
This was all he owned.
"Dressed, he says." Cersei's hands curled into fists and his nails bit into his palms.
He walked to the door and pulled it open. The hallway stretched ahead with torches burning in iron brackets and shadows dancing on the walls.
Drums boomed in the distance. War drums. The sound shook the floor beneath his feet.
Cersei started walking toward the palace gates.
xxxxx
The mud sucked at Cersei's shoes. It was cold and wet and already seeping through the worn cloth.
He stood at the front line, surrounded by an ocean of metal.
Men in breastplates and helmets stood shoulder to shoulder. Their gauntlets gripped sword hilts. They carried shields taller than Cersei's chest.
Cersei looked down at his own arms. They were bare and pale and covered in goosebumps.
No armor. No weapon. Not even a gods-damned stick.
He's going to watch me die. He thought to himself.
Twenty feet away, the prince stood with a cluster of knights. His armor gleamed like a mirror, black steel polished until it shone with gold trim on the pauldrons. The thing probably cost more than Cersei would see in ten lifetimes.
The prince glanced over and his eyes found Cersei. A grin spread across his face.
"Look at him." The prince's voice carried easily across the mud. "Standing there like a lost puppy."
Cersei's jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.
I could run at him right now.
The thought blazed through his mind, hot and vicious. He could cross that distance in seconds. Punch that smug face. Claw at those gray eyes. Bite whatever he could reach.
They'd kill him for it. The guards would put a sword through his spine before he landed a second hit.
But what did it matter? He was dead anyway. At least he'd die doing something.
His weight shifted forward and his legs tensed.
A horn blast shattered the air.
The sound punched through Cersei's chest and his hands flew to his ears. The horn kept blowing, long and deep, making his bones vibrate.
"THEY'RE COMING!"
Cersei spun toward the horizon.
At first there was nothing, just grass and gray sky. Then the ground started to shake.
A low rumble built under his feet and grew louder. A dark line appeared in the distance, thin as thread at first, then thicker. Wider. The rumble became thunder.
Thousands of them. Horses and men, a wave of bodies charging across the field.
The prince's sword snapped up and caught the dull morning light.
"THIS IS IT!" His voice boomed across the line. "GLORY WAITS! KILL THEM ALL!"
The roar that answered him was deafening. Hundreds of voices screaming as one. The sound crashed over Cersei and drowned everything else out.
The prince's blade swung down and pointed at the enemy.
"CHARGE!"
The army exploded forward.
Cersei turned and ran the other way.
His feet slipped and mud sprayed up his legs. He caught himself with one hand, pushed off, kept running.
Soldiers thundered past him on both sides with their armor clanking and their voices roaring. The entire world was moving toward the enemy.
Except him.
Trouble beats dead. Trouble beats dead.
The prince would notice eventually. Would realize his pet servant wasn't where he was supposed to be, dying with a spear through his guts.
But Cersei would rather take a beating than a burial.
Behind him, the armies collided.
The sound was like nothing he'd ever heard. Metal shrieking. Horses screaming. Men howling. All of it blending into one continuous roar that shook the air.
Something suddenly slammed into him from the side.
A sheild of one of the soldiers.
Cersei's feet left the ground and he flew backward, spinning through the air. He hit the mud hard and his head bounced off the ground. The world went white, then spotty.
He couldn't breathe. His lungs seized up completely and he rolled onto his side with his mouth open, wheezing.
Move. Get up. MOVE.
His hands sank into the mud and pushed. His arms shook like reeds in the wind and the world tilted left, then right.
As he tried to stabilize himself, another soldier barreled toward him, not even seeing him, just running.
The man's armored shoulder caught Cersei in the temple and light exploded behind his eyes. Sound vanished, replaced by high-pitched ringing. He hit the ground again and tasted blood, hot and copper on his tongue. His own teeth had cut into it.
Everything spun and he groaned
However he tried to stand, he knew it was either he stood up or died.
His hands found earth again and his arms screamed as he pushed. His knees hit the mud, then his feet. He swayed with his arms out, trying to find balance in a world that wouldn't stop moving.
He noticed the motion on his left side a little too late
Cersei's head whipped around.
An enemy soldier on a black horse was charging straight at him. The soldier had red cloth tied around his arm and a spear in his hand with the point aimed straight at Cersei's chest.
The horse's hooves threw mud into the air and the soldier's mouth opened wide, screaming something Cersei couldn't hear through the ringing.
The spear came at him like a striking snake.
I can't die now, not like this. Cersei threw himself sideways.
He hit the ground and rolled through the mud. The horse thundered past so close its legs almost clipped his head. Wind from its passage whipped across his face.
The spear stabbed empty air.
The enemy soldier kept going, straight into a giant in Cersei's colors. Some brute with an axe bigger than Cersei's torso. The axe came down and split the enemy's helmet like kindling. The man dropped off his horse, already dead.
Cersei lay in the mud, gasping. His whole body shook.
Alive. I'm alive. I'm—
He soon heard hoofbeats again.
"Oh, fuck me—"
Another enemy soldier was charging straight at him.
Cersei scrambled to his feet but his legs barely held. He staggered left, then right.
Why? WHY ME?
There were hundreds of soldiers here. Big men. Armed men. Men in armor who could actually fight back.
But they kept coming for him. The skinny boy in rags.
The soldier's sword swung in a wide arc.
Cersei ducked and the blade whistled over his head, close enough he felt the air move.
But ducking killed his balance. He stumbled backward, straight into another shield.
The impact cracked against his skull and pain detonated through his head, white-hot and blinding.
His legs quit. He dropped to his knees, then forward onto his hands.
Blood dripped from his nose in little red drops that hit the brown mud.
His vision doubled. He could now see two soldiers walking toward him. No, it was just one. He blinked hard but the world wouldn't focus.
The soldier's boots squelched in the mud right next to Cersei's head.
Cersei tried to stand but his arms wouldn't listen. His legs were done.
The soldier raised his sword with both hands on the grip. The blade caught what little light there was.
Cersei closed his eyes.
At least it's over.
But just before the blade connected with his head, the world suddenly disappeared.
Not slowly. Not with warning. One second he was kneeling in the mud, the next he was floating in nothing.
Cersei's eyes snapped open.
Endless black stretched in every direction, dotted with stars that burned like white-hot coals. They were everywhere, above and below and all around him. No ground. No sky. No up or down.
His breath caught in his throat and his heart slammed against his ribs.
What the fuck is this?
He tried to move his legs but they weren't there. Not gone, just... not connected to anything. He simply floated.
"Am I dead?"
The words came out as a whisper that disappeared into the void.
Then a voice spoke. It came from everywhere at once, like the air itself was talking.
"No. You are not dead."
"Who—" His voice cracked. He swallowed and tried again. "Who's there?"
"I am the Goddess of Death."
The voice was female, cold and ancient. It didn't echo. It just existed, filling the space around him, pressing against his skull from the inside.
Cersei's mind went blank.
Goddess. Of. Death.
"You have shown something rare," the voice continued. "Doggedness. The refusal to surrender to fate very easily."
Cersei's couldn't feel anything except the pounding of his own heart and the cold seeping into his bones.
"I watched you run. I watched you fall. I watched you rise again and again, even as your body failed you."
The darkness shifted. The stars seemed to pulse in time with the voice.
"But more than that..." The voice grew softer, almost gentle. "I saw your heart. I saw the despair grow until you decided to finally accept fate.."
Cersei's throat tightened. His chest felt hollow.
Yeah. He had given up. What was the point of pretending otherwise?
"That is what I need," the goddess said. "Someone who has stared into the abyss and accepted it. Someone who knows what it means to die."
"Why?" The word ripped out of him before he could stop it. "Why would you need that? Why would you need me?"
Silence.
The stars burned and the darkness pressed in on all sides. Cersei's breath came in short gasps. His pulse hammered in his ears.
"I require your help," the goddess said finally. "I will summon you shortly. But first, you must accept."
"Accept what?" Cersei's voice was rising now, panic bleeding through. "I don't even know what you want! I'm nobody. I'm a servant. I'm scrawny. I can't even survive a battlefield. What the hell could I possibly do for a goddess?"
"You do not need to understand. You only need to accept."
Cersei's jaw clenched. His hands curled into fists even though there was nothing to hold onto, nothing to hit.
"And if I say no?"
The voice didn't answer right away. The silence stretched and the stars seemed to grow brighter, hotter, until they hurt to look at.
Then the goddess spoke again, and this time her voice was colder than before.
"Then you die.."
Cersei's stomach dropped.
Of course he didn't have a choice. It was either death or be shackled to whatever mission the goddess had for him.
His whole life had been one choice after another that wasn't really a choice at all. Bow or get beaten, smile or get hit, follow or die.
And now this.
He let out a long breath.
"Fine." His jaw clenched. "I accept."