“I EXPECTED YOU YEARS ago,” the man continued. “I thought you’d do what I did, and make the first person you met bring you straight here, assuming you could see them as a person. I thought you’d be eager to get down to the business of heroism and fulfilling your destiny. Not to run off to the woods and live like an animal. I suppose I shouldn’t make assumptions.” He coughed, covering his mouth with his hand; when he pulled it away, his palm was red with blood. “But you’re here now, come to save the world the same way I did.”
Regan stared at him. “I thought you disappeared after you helped Kagami take the throne,” she said, lips numb.
“Is that what they say? Well, I suppose it’s a better story than ‘I slit a silly little mare’s throat and bled her out in what she thought was going to be her throne room.’” His voice was cold, dispassionate; not cruel. He would have had to care at least a little to be cruel. “I was seventeen years old. I had a lover waiting for me, a farm I was set to take over when my father died, and suddenly, these talking horses were telling me I had to be their savior, even though there wasn’t anything to save them from. Kagami was the one who found me after I tumbled through my door. She said the king had ordered her family’s fields burned when they refused to pay their taxes, and so she thought saving the world might mean overthrowing the king. It was as good an answer as any. She took me here, to the palace, and I learned the king had been dead for decades, and an ancient human woman had been secretly ruling in his place, never showing her face to the representatives of the herds who came to call on her, never stirring from the palace. She was even older then than I am now, if you can believe it.” He coughed again, almost smiling. “I had never seen anyone so old. It seemed impossible that she should be among the living. She had been here since she was a child, speaking to her subjects from behind a curtain, and had been waiting for me for years.”
“You killed her,” whispered Regan.
“Yes, I did,” said the man. “She told me how to operate this palace from the shadows, and I killed her at her request, and then I killed Kagami, before she could go back to her farm and tell the others that their beloved king had been a human woman all along. That was how I saved the world. I took the old woman’s place behind the curtain. They all believe the Queen’s splendor is too glorious for any of her subjects to behold, and they’re happy to obey a voice without a face when it tells them to do things they already believe to be correct.”
Regan blinked, disbelieving. “How did murder save the world?”
“They believe humans are heroes. They believe they’re ruled by one of their own kind. Their world is built on those beliefs. They couldn’t survive learning they were wrong. It would destroy their entire system of governance, such as it is. So I did as she asked, and I freed her from their expectations. Then I put Kagami down like the animal she was, and sat back to wait for my door to return.” His expression darkened. “It didn’t. It left me here, alone, apart from my own people, to grow old and fade away in a world full of beasts, yoked to a throne I couldn’t abandon without revealing what I’d done and destroying the illusion. At first I kept my place because I wanted to keep my word to the woman I had killed, and then I did it because being old and alone in a world of beasts was so much worse than being their queen. So I stopped waiting for the door and started waiting for you, and now here you are, my salvation.”
“I’m not here to save you.” Regan took a step backward. “You tried to have me kidnapped. You hurt my family.”
“You mean the centaurs you’ve been living with? They’re animals, beasts. They don’t feel the way we do. They don’t love the way we do.” He scoffed. “Nothing I did to them had to happen. It was your fault, for not coming to me when you were first called into this world. If you’d been a better hero, none of this suffering would have taken place.”
“And what was I supposed to do when I got here, kill you? I was a child. I still am.” Regan shook her head in disgust. “I’m not killing anyone. I don’t want to be a hero. I was willing to save the Hooflands from a wicked queen if there was no one else to do the job, but I’m not willing to kill a man, not even a bad man. Destiny doesn’t exist. You got it wrong. Everyone here got it wrong.”
“You’re a child, and I’m not!” he yelled, with all the fury his wasted body could contain. He sat up partially in the bed, then fell back into the pillows, panting. “I was so young. I had my whole future waiting for me. I had my beautiful Elise waiting for me. And I spent my entire life here, in a place I didn’t belong, all for the sake of a bunch of animals and some stories they made up about how the world works. Now I’m asking a stranger to kill me and take my place, because that’s what humans do in the Hooflands!”
“What happened to the others?” Regan’s question was abrupt.
The man looked away, refusing to meet her eyes. “What others?”
“The ones who wanted the throne.”
“Dead,” he said. “Bones at the bottom of the castle’s foundations. They walked to their dooms willingly, with thoughts of power and privilege clouding their minds. Don’t mourn for them. They died generations ago.”
“I thought you’d say that,” said Regan, and cocked an arrow, and fired.
She had been in the woods for five years, hunting to fill her own belly and the bellies of her family. Her arrow flew straight and true, embedding itself in the headboard of the bed where the old man lay. He turned to look at it, mouth hanging slack and surprised.
“You missed,” he said.
“I didn’t,” she replied, and turned her back on him, preparing to walk away.
“Wait!” he yelled. “You can’t leave me here!”
“You’ll die soon enough, from the looks of you,” she said. “I apprenticed to a healer. There’s blood on your hands. Your lungs are killing you, and I don’t feel the need to make it any easier.”
“But whoever comes to find you will find me, and they’ll know about the lie! They’ll know Kagami was never queen, and they’ll know you’re not a hero.”
“Good. Let them learn that destiny’s a lie, and let them find the way to govern themselves, as they should have done from the beginning. Let them learn humans are people, the way you never learned that they were,” said Regan, and turned on her heel and walked away from the old man—away from the old monster—without a backward glance. She didn’t feel like a hero. She didn’t feel like much of anything beyond an exhausted teenager. She still felt like she was saving the world.
In the forest, she knew, her family was waiting for her. Maybe Chicory would be the next queen. The people of the Hooflands would have to decide how queens were chosen, now that they got to do it for themselves again. Maybe there was a record somewhere in the castle, some old ritual or line of succession for the people of the Hooflands to follow. Or maybe they’d decide not to have a monarch at all. The old man couldn’t have done much to rule them on a day-to-day basis, not while keeping his terrible secret safe. They could set the prices of their goods themselves, and not burn anyone’s fields.
At the end of the hall, Regan found another human-scaled flight of stairs, descending down along a well-lit hall lined with burning torches. Someone must have lit them. The man behind her wouldn’t have had the strength. So she slung her bow back over her shoulder, squared her shoulders, and began her descent.
The stairs seemed to go on for the better part of forever, or maybe it just felt that way because she’d made so much of her climb in the dark, and was so tired now. Just as she thought she could go no farther, she heard voices ahead of her, raised in argument. She found the strength to walk faster, and reached the bottom of the stairs, whipping around the corner to see a faun, a silene, and a minotaur facing each other. The faun was holding a rope, the end of which was tied around the neck of a familiar-looking kelpie. Gristle’s head was bowed, eyes on the floor. None of them were looking at Regan, whose bare feet were silent against the stone floor.
“—lurking around the castle wall,” said the silene. His voice was familiar. He had no pies to offer, but Regan remembered him all the same. Her stomach soured as she realized who the minotaur must be. “There was a peryton as well, but the filthy thing flew away. We have to tell the Queen!”
So even the old human’s servants thought he was Queen Kagami? That fit with what he’d said about how none of them were ever allowed to look upon the Queen’s majesty, but it still seemed odd to Regan that none of them would ever have demanded to see the Queen. Or maybe not. The old man had spoken of a curtain that sustained his pretty lie. There had been at least two humans secretly in control of the Hooflands. Maybe there had been more. Maybe this was how things had been since the beginning, with people falling through doors and believing they knew better than the people who were already there, all because they thought humans were the best possible thing to be. Maybe no one had ever seen a king or queen once they took their throne.
Regan cleared her throat.
Gristle raised his head as the three servants of the imaginary queen whipped around to stare at her. “It’s the human,” said the silene she recognized, in a faintly baffled tone. “How did the human get in here?”
“Queen Kagami is dead,” said Regan. It was true enough, even if it wasn’t the entire truth. “Let my companion go.”
The silene dropped the rope. Gristle trotted over to Regan, stopping close enough that she could feel the heat coming off his hide.
“Good girl,” he said approvingly. “Have you saved us all?”
“Maybe,” said Regan, gently untying the rope from around Gristle’s neck. Hands were useful things, from time to time. “I don’t know. I think you’re going to have to do some of the work to save yourselves this time.” She kept looking calmly at the three servants of the Queen. “Well?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to arrest me?”
“No,” said the minotaur, and bowed. “She ordered us to do things in her name that the Hooflands may never forgive us for. She reigned too long, and became no fit queen. We should not have waited for a human to save us.”
“I think you’re right,” said Regan. “And I think all people in the Hooflands should have the same rights and respect, no matter who or what they are. Humans and kelpies, centaurs and perytons, it doesn’t matter. We’re all people here. We all get to have the same chance to save the world.”
She placed her hand on the side of Gristle’s neck. His mane was still wet, as kelpies’ manes always were. He flicked an ear and drew back his lips, showing her his carnivore’s teeth.
“I swore to eat you when your task was finished,” he said. “If you’ve saved us, we have no more need for a human.”
“You never needed a human,” she said. “We were only ever something you wanted, whether or not we were supposed to be here. I don’t think you need me now, but I want to go home. I don’t want to be eaten.”
“It’s a kelpie’s nature to consume,” said Gristle. “I’ve never tasted human flesh.”
“Climb the stairs, then,” said Regan, who was too weary to keep a secret she had never asked for and didn’t believe in. “You might find something you’ll like.”
Gristle gave her a thoughtful look before he turned and walked away, the sound of his hoofbeats resonating off the stairwell walls. They were uneven, hampered by the shallowness of the steps, but they still echoed steadily. Regan let out an exhausted sigh and turned back to the Queen’s servants.
“Where’s the exit?” she asked.
The minotaur pointed. “Why do you speak to the kelpie?” he asked.
“Because I’m polite enough to listen,” said Regan. Then she nodded. “Thank you,” she said politely, and walked in the direction he had indicated, and once again, she did not look back.