The Queen's Truth

The queen’s food has grown cold by the time she takes her seat. It took longer than she wanted to leave the privacy of her rooms, to face her family again.

“Coralia.” Murmured to her right—her husband, sitting at the head. Bleeding warmth from a smile.

Her spine snaps to attention, straight as always. She makes herself grab the fork, presses a close-lipped grin to her face. Pretends that she can’t see the fear glazed across his irises for her, for their young son directly across.

A son, the queen thinks. That’s my son.

The last word echoes in her mind, runs its fingers down her spine. Whispered into a well for the water to reflect back up at her. Son.

White knuckles against the fork’s handle—her knuckles, her small, delicate hand. The queen stares down at her plate.

“I’ll do that for you, love,” the king says, waving away a servant to cut her venison himself. She used to like it without a hint of pink on the inside.

Her first forkful bleeds between her teeth. Cold blood.

Their latest attempt to satiate the curse meant for her husband, something to give her a semblance of normalcy. She tries desperately to be normal.

What was once an occasional whisper has become a pulse against her every thought, a constant assault that leaves her own lips sealed. Her mind is heavy, what she’d call a conscience fighting for dominance against what was once foreign, now familiar as her own name. More so.

“Mama,” the boy across from her says, warbling on the last syllable—her son. “Guess what I did today?”

That mask of a smile stretches tighter. “What?”

“I finished the book you gave me, you…ueu—”

“Utopia,” she finishes softly. She’d forgotten her voice could be soft. “It means a perfect society, something we must strive for.”

The king coughs at her side, finished cutting the rest of her meat. “He was supposed to be at riding lessons. He may be too much like you.”

“I-is that a bad thing?” The boy’s face pales, the prince trembling.

The air above the table becomes taught, a vessel caught between two pieces of the queen’s venison. She’s too scared to cut it herself. It wouldn’t have been a bad comment, not before a month past. Before she started slipping.

Caspian is his name, picked solely so she could call him Casp. The queen grew tired of different suggestions after the curse found its way to her, worrying more over the monster growing within her than the babe. Afraid it’d affect him the same way.

But he was born with a tangle of curls and a cry in his throat; perfect.

“Of course not.” The king, husband, leans closer to the prince. “You mother is my life; I love every piece of her—even when they avoid their duties to read.”

Even at age six, the boy doesn’t miss his hesitation but knows better than to comment on it. He turns to the queen. “I finished the book but it made me sad.”

“Why is that?”

That tiny brow furrows. She almost reaches out to trace it. “It’s about a perfect…society, but tutor says that can never exist.”

Coralia can’t stop the pained smile from coming to her lips, more than a show of teeth. That’s all she’s been able to manage lately.

“Why did they write about something impossible?”

“Was it not interesting?” the queen asks. “Did it not stand for wonderful things?”

“I guess…but what’s the point if it’s never gonna happen?”

It was too far above his age range, so much that she’s sure it was mostly read to him, but he needed to hear it. The queen wanted to save that hard lesson for when he was older but she was getting older too, and tired…

He needed to understand before she was gone. She needed to make him understand.

The queen leans across her nearly untouched plate, pushing back the desire to drag her hands through the blood and lick her fingers. “We’ll never be perfect but that doesn’t mean we can’t strive to be better—as a kingdom, as rulers.”

Her son nods slowly. He goes back to picking at his food, nudging away his vegetables and going for the meat instead. “Sounds hard.”

“If it were easy, everyone would do it.” The queen makes herself press the smallest piece of venison between her lips. It tastes more metal than meat. “You know I…I try to be better even though it’s harder these days.”

Fear again, passed to the boy’s eyes. Her son. One of his little hands goes to his chest, against the marks she left there a month before. It’s a miracle he can stand to see her again.

“I’ll never be the same but I-I try to. Every day, I try to get better.”

Another bite for her husband, for her son, for their kingdom. For those that need her more than herself.

If it were her choice, she’d never eat again.

“I know, mama,” the boy responds mechanically. Already wearing that royal mask.

The otherness in her head wraps its fingers around her words, her throat. My son.

“You understand what happened that day, right?” the king asks. It’s like he read them from her thoughts before they were swept away. He’s always been so good at that, knowing her even when she doesn’t know herself.

Even when she’s not herself. The queen grips the edge of table as her eyes focus forward, as they blur. My son, my son.

The prince nods. “It was an accident, a-a scary one.”

“But it’s not her fault,” the king says quickly. “That wasn’t your mother; this is.”

No, no, her mind screams, but her lips are sealed. All she can feel is the skin beneath her nails and the blood in her mouth that’s not from steak but a different kind of meat, something rich, something warm—

“Isn’t that right, Coralia?”

But the foreign voice has a throat, teeth, a tongue to drag over chapped lips—her lips. Not again, not my son—

“Coralia?”

She bites her tongue until she tastes iron but it’s not enough. Her hands are trembling but don’t let go of the table; plates and silverware rattle against each other. She knows she should press cold venison to her mouth to curb the ache, the urge, but it’ll never be enough.

She’s known for a month but she couldn’t stomach not seeing her family whole again, not seeing her Casp—

“Mother?” the boy asks cautiously. Just a boy.

Scratches against her mind, once against his stomach. It’s all she can do to stay seated, to leash it back inside like the Enchanter told her to—

A hand against her arm, warm and soft. Husband. “You’re stronger than this.”

But she’s not; six years have weathered her defenses, her conscience, the last shreds of her humanity. Six years of losing the war battle by battle.

Please, please, my son—but she’s locked within, and no one can hear her. Only they can see the curse glaze over her eyes, a different kind of mask.

The boy is still before her. She can smell his sweaty fingers she once called sweet.

The other sniffs at that, releases her fledgling grip, makes her rise. Curls her lips into something worse than a snarl.

But it’s still her hand that scrambles for the knife—unused beside her plate as though saved for a different kind of meat, of blood. It took almost all her willpower to leave her chambers tonight, takes the rest of it now to see the motionless boy before her as her son.

The cursed monster leaps and the queen plunges the knife into its chest.

Her chest.

Its eyes go wide, her eyes. The voices fall still as the queen’s dying pulse.

Blessed silence makes her sigh but it’s more an exhalation, a submission. Stunned quiet from her flickering family, all eyes on the knife slipped beautifully between her ribs. It pulses in time, begins to slow.

The queen slumps into her chair.

“Coralia,” her husband whispers again and again, wringing her name between his hands—that’s her name. She’d nearly forgotten.

Her son is wailing but it’s lost to the wish of covering his eyes, that she could spare him from what she’s become.

Her pulse is lazy, her breaths ragged. “Be better,” she whispers across the table.

And when the curse falls away, the queen falls with it.