The Last Queen Book Five Read online

  I do not cast a spell on them, or at least no ordinary spell. I do something far, far more powerful than throwing a bolt of fire or a strike of lightning at it. I don’t need to bend reality or tunnel through the earth. I don’t have to warp space or reach down into the forbidden power of atoms.

  All I have to do is lock my full attention on that wider, open path to a truly open future as I bypass the rules.

  And I feel it. Losing hold. I feel it slipping away.

  Though I’m fighting the original magical spell the game is based on, this is easily the least impressive fight of my life. At least on paper. I’m not leaping around, I’m not charged with magic, I’m not shaking the very earth with my power.

  It’s all in my mind. And that is far more profound and far more powerful.

  Just as I finally bypass that light, I hear a scream. Full throttle and primal, it seems to come from thousands of throats at once.

  From every player who ever was forced into this brutal game to every ordinary person who was ever caught up in it.

  I swear all of them scream together, but their screams don’t last. They ebb away, getting recycled into the background hum of reality until they leave one thing. One single voice.

  The original.

  The sorcerer who could not die, who partitioned himself off, broke apart his body, and created this twisted reality so that he could live forever.

  I hear his scream, his desperation, his soul-crushing plea not to die.

  But it is his time.

  He’s held himself off from nature for too long. And now he must be recycled back into the circle of life.

  He slips away.

  And so do I.

  It’s over. No more game. I manage a smile. My body may be broken, but that doesn’t matter. As my final act, I let that smile spread. For it is natural, and as I allow myself to slip away, I slip back into the arms of nature where I belong.

  I have time to open my eyes, time before my life slips away.

  As I do, I fall against the chessboard.

  I see it start to disappear. It doesn’t explode. It doesn’t break apart. It simply slips away. The magic it has kept trapped disappears, discharging quietly back to whence it came.

  There are rushing footsteps. Someone gets down on their knee beside me. They place a hand on my back. “You did it. You defeated the game. It’s over. Now just hold on,” John pleads.

  I sink into the warmth of his hand.

  I let it cleanse me. I let it drive through every irrelevant conclusion I ever made about this man, every irrelevant conclusion I made about myself. And I hold onto it as I slip away one final time. Because there’s nothing I need to hold onto anymore.

  It’s over.

  Epilogue

  I should be dead.

  I think I am dead.

  But then I wake.

  One eye, then the other.

  I think I feel my body, but at the same time, I can’t be sure. As I resurface, my mind has to be pulled back from the strangest, most wonderful dreams. Dreams of open futures, of countless, endless possibilities. Dreams of a mindset free from rules.

  But they slip away, and I feel it again – my body. It may not have the same weak, broken sense it did after I defeated the game, but it’s close.

  It takes an age to realize I’m lying in a hospital bed.

  I hear someone shift. I feel a warm hand being placed over mine.

  Just before I can slip back into unconsciousness, that hand anchors me. Just before I can wonder if I’m still dead, that hand reminds me I’m not.

  “You did it,” I hear a deep, resonant, memorable voice.

  The last voice I heard before I slipped away.

  John.

  I turn.

  He’s seated there beside me.

  He looks at me, and I look at him. And we say it all with nothing more than our gazes. Every comment that was ever left unsaid. Every argument that was ever left unmade.

  And every heartfelt desire that was ever hidden.

  Though he’s seated, he’s still battered and bruised, and I can see evidence of the massive bruising cut along his chest peeking out from under a dressing.

  For several seconds, he doesn’t say anything. He appears to get lost staring into my eyes.

  And I get lost staring into his.

  This is where I should ask all of those important questions. What happened to the original gameboard? Where is Spencer? Can any of us still practice magic? What’s happening to the city? What will happen next?

  Though all of those questions line up in my head, I don’t ask them.

  I don’t need to.

  There’s something about the soft, reassuring quality to John’s smile that tells me everything has worked out.

  Finally.

  “You did it. What I couldn’t. What I’ve been dreaming of since I was a child,” he says, and with every sentence he pushes from his lips, they become quieter as they hit closer to home.

  He doesn’t look away to try to regain his emotion. He keeps staring at me as if he can’t dare close his eyes while I’m in his presence in case I disappear.

  Though he’s been holding my hand, I finally find the strength to twist my grip and place my fingers over his.

  He responds to my move. Not by jerking away, but by allowing his fingers to warm. It’s not just with the unmistakable heat of his body. It’s with magic. Faint, but there.

  I smile. “So it still exists, then? Magic? It didn’t disappear when the game did?”

  He shakes his head. “But the rules disappeared. The constraints on practitioners are gone.”

  “And the kings?” I ask.

  A true smile spreads his lips. “Have become irrelevant. We were never particularly strong pieces to begin with,” he concedes with a shrug.

  I pull my gaze off him and stare at the ceiling. “What happens now? Where’s Spencer?” I ask easily and freely. I don’t feel it. Not a trace of it. And I don’t need to pull my hand up and lock it along my left shoulder to appreciate that the tracking symbol is gone.

  My body has reabsorbed it.

  Because my mind has gone past it.

  In shrugging off the rules of the game, I shrugged off every constraint, too.

  “Spencer was left entirely weakened by the fight. He was easy to overcome. As were his remaining pieces.”

  “What happens now? It’s not exactly as if we can put him in prison,” I point out.

  John concedes my point with a nod. “We have reached a new frontier,” he says, his voice gentle as he says we. “I can’t tell you what tomorrow will look like, but I can tell you that today is a new day. You did what no one else could. You destroyed the game in its entirety. You set us all free, and in doing so, you changed every magical practitioner on the fundamental level. Players have been set free from their kings. They’ve been set free from their pasts, too. Those who have lived their lives in a miserable, trapped hell are free to choose what to do next.”

  “And though some of them will choose to live lives that are better,” I concede, “some won’t.”

  Slowly, he nods. “Correct, some won’t. That is why it will be up to the rest of us to keep them in line.” He looks at me.

  I’m not fool enough not to know what that look requests. For it is requesting something of me. His presence is requesting that same thing. His smile, and more than anything, the heat of his hand. That blessed, unmistakable warmth.

  I tilt my head up and face him. “You want my help, don’t you?”

  Maybe he stiffens as he prepares for my response, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he waits as he follows his heart.

  Which is precisely what I’m going to do. You see, in destroying the game, I learned the most fundamental of lessons. You can live by the rules in your head. The false constructs your mind tells you about reality. The false assumptions you draw upon every single day about the people around you. You can navigate the world and chart your fate without ever questioning one of your assumpt
ions, or you can leave them behind. You can live every single day as if it’s just that – a new day.

  You can embrace change, not just in the world, but in people.

  Once upon a time, I don’t think I could’ve ever loved John. Not truly. I could’ve felt desire for him easily – I could’ve felt anything the imprinting process wanted me to.

  I could have fallen into lust with his wealth and power and knowledge.

  But love? The kind of deep-seated, soul-drenching love you get when you truly hold someone in your heart because all you want is the best for them?

  Not before. But now?

  Now I go with my feelings. And my feelings tell me to press my hand down further against John’s. They tell me to wriggle my fingers under his. They tell me to hold him.

  He looks down at my hand, then up at my face. “I’m not your king anymore. I can’t demand anything of you.”

  “You can request,” I say quietly.

  He looks at me. He nods. “Then I request your help. I request… your camaraderie. This new world will be just that – a new world. The times ahead of us will be the most critical. As the rules slip away and people chart their own destinies, we will need strong, good people to keep the rules,” he says.

  I am with him for every single word, until the last one.

  I flinch.

  He notices. “What is it?

  Rules, ha?

  A part of me wants to throw all rules out forever. To get rid of any single constraint on humans. But that part of me doesn’t live in the modern world. It doesn’t appreciate that in order for people to get by, you need laws. You need regulations dictating that you can’t do what you want to anyone.

  But those rules aren’t the same as the yoke of the game, are they? Laws help people to interact – they don’t stop you from finding your own destiny.

  Just before John can think I’m rejecting him, I fasten my grip around his. “I’ll help you. We’ll help each other,” I add.

  It takes him a moment to part his lips and whisper, “Thank you.” And the reason it takes him a moment to whisper those words is his attention locks on me. It roves over my face and centers on my mouth.

  Maybe he’s waiting to see what I’ll say next. Or maybe he wants to do something else with my lips.

  Or maybe, just like me, he’s taken by the opportunities of the moment.

  I’m no longer a queen. I still have my magic, though. And that magic is helping heal me now. It enables me to sit. To twist. To face John.

  It enables me to bring up a hand and press it against his shoulder.

  It enables me to lean in.

  I would never have truly kissed John as a queen. And I imagine he wouldn’t have been able to truly kiss me, either. But the game is gone.

  And our destinies have slipped away with it.

  What’s left is something far more important. Something far more fundamental. It’s something I will never let go of again.

  I lean forward, and we kiss. Is it the most passionate kiss I’ve ever had?

  No.

  I don’t throw myself at him like I did with Spencer. It lacks Spencer’s blinding heat, too.

  But what it does have is something far more precious.

  Hope. Hope that’s locked there in every hot press of his lips against mine. Hope that lingers in his warm breath. Hope that presses into me along with the firm touch of his fingers against my cheek.

  The hope of two destinies unleashed.

  Is the path ahead going to be easy?

  Hell no.

  Will we come across more problems? Absolutely.

  Will I be forced to fight again? Probably. But will it be different this time?

  Yes.

  Back when I was stuck in the game, nobody could change. Now?

  I will throw myself into finding the good side of everything. And if I can’t find it, I’ll create it.

  The end of The Last Queen. I hope you enjoyed this series.

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