32
QUEEN MORVANA'S POV
I was annoyed that my son's asinine bake-a-thon made it to my desk along with information on werewolf patrols, and for a moment, I felt less like an elder horror and more like an irate mother of awkward teenagers.
“Baking contests,” I sneered to an empty throne room, the words sounding silly in my mouth. “My son threw down with his half brother in competitive baking.”
"The half-breed did win, Your Majesty," one of my advisors chimed in helpfully. “His chocolate soufflé was apparently pretty special.”
I looked at him blankly, eight centuries of experience offering no basis for this exchange. I have seen huge empires collapse and great nations rise. I caused wars that moved continents around. And my son is losing formal challenges his blood pudding lacks necessary consistency.
“Blood pudding, in all fairness, it’s unreadable —”
"Stop talking."
He wisely stopped talking.
I stood up from my throne and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows through which I could look down on generations of personal creation, a façade of grandeur built on centuries’ worth of stagecraft that helped disguise the inherent ridiculousness of supernatural world politics. At what point had I become the villain in some comedy sketch instead of this world's maker?
The world had gotten so complicated nowadays. Back in the day, you conquered lands and got rid of threats and ruled through intimidation by superior power. Now there were “alliances” and “diplomatic considerations,” apparently, “baking contests” to navigate.
"Bring me, the wolf-child's surveillance shots," I ordered as I reclined in my throne with a tired grace that came from living too many centuries and overseeing far too many dramatic underlings.
Screens had illuminated with images of little Linda- the half-way point in my breeding bridge between alpha lines who was supposed to be just a tool in my grand plan. But instead, she roamed about through my tunnels, making innocent comments on the placement of windows and how I should get a new wallpaper.
But it was the video of her power demonstrating itself that made me lean forward genuinely interested. The kid had hucked a grown-up vampire down the length of the hall like it was a beach ball. She wasn’t just strong for a five year old—she was stronger than all werewolves, at any age.
“The alpha bloodlines are interfacing more powerfully than we had expected,” my chief strategist noted, his ancient tone weighed down by too many missed predictions. "She is already showing talents that really wouldn't develop until she's an adult."
"And her parents?" though I had already gone over the reports of Laura and Lucien working together at a pace that was surprisingly efficient.
"Better as a team than we figured. Their tactical unity nullifies many of our advantages.
I sighed, a trick I’d learned to mimic from watching humans that was surprisingly satisfying for demonstrating intricate frustration. "So my clever plot to keep them weak and divided had instead turned them into a more formidable united front."
“So it would seem, Your Majesty.
"I hate being wrong. After eight centuries of generally being right.”
My council of wise old counselors seemed uncomfortable at my confession of fallibility. They were all more than half a millennium, none ever dressing as anything other than formal attire used in court during the height of their mortal times, and were utter shit at dealing with modern things.
“Maybe,” one of them dared to say, “We should go back to the old ways. Massive force, intimidation, just the tactics that have worked for hundreds of years.”
“All of that worked great when werewolves didn’t carry smartphones and join social media,” I said. “Before they can band together globally to deal with threats in minutes not weeks. The world’s changed, gents; we’ve got to change with it or be like the dinosaurs.”
“Dinosaurs didn’t sound like that —” another adviser started.
“I get that not evolving dinosaurs was a metaphor, Clarence. I'm using a metaphor. Do try to keep up."
Before they could reply, the palace shuddered— not a quake in the walls and stones, but something deeper, more basic than that. The threads of ancient sorcery at the heart of my realm were reacting to something they knew, something they loathed.
I stood up suddenly, all of my centuries of experience blaring warnings that my mind was just now digesting. "What was that?"
"Unknown, Your Majesty. It sounded like it came from the bottom of the basement."
The deepest chambers. The place where I'd hidden the regrettable thing that had been safest left undisturbed—the very thing that had led me to this place in which to build my palace. The ancient thing that was here before vampires and werewolves, the one I’d spent millennia guarding while I developed my power around its sleeping body.
"No," I whispered, ice suddenly crystallizing through centuries-frozen veins. "Not now. Not yet."
There was another rumble, this one even stronger,and a voice that caused every vampire in the palace to stop, frozen with an atavistic terror. It used a language older than language, communicated ideas that bypassed the rational mind and went straight to the ancestral memory imprinted in the supernatural DNA.
“The child,” the message said, and while they were foreign words every living thing residing within the palace understood them. "The bridge has arrived. The convergence begins."
My veneer of confidence melted and I crumbled as my misunderstanding was laid bare. Linda wasn’t just a strong werewolf baby. She was not just another tool I could wield in my political games. She was the key—the genetic key—to jumpstarting a power that I had gone to great lengths over the centuries to keep sleeping.
"Vacate the sub-levels," I ordered, my words piercing the air with strength dissonant to the fear pumping through my ancient veins. "Everyone to the upper floors. Seal the deep passages."
"Your Majesty, what is it? What's down there?"
I turned to address my council; I wanted them to see the fear I kept behind my eyes for all these centuries of war and death. Something older than all our ages put together. Something that should have stayed asleep until the world was ready for what it stands for.
The echo of the voice re-amped through stone and shadow. "Linda. Child of two bloodlines. Bridge between war and peace. Come to me. We have been waiting."
On my monitors I saw Linda respond to the summons, saw her parents try to protect her from something they could not comprehend. The child's power was calling to the ancient one, and its power was calling back, an answering harmonic that would change the very fabric of supernatural life.
Or destroy it entirely.
"What does it want?" my strategist said, centuries of experience imploding in the new situation.
“Choice,” I said, the word heavy with prophecies I had devoted lifetimes to averting. "Linda stands for a potential future of symbiosis between our species—not utilising just one. That possibility is being responded to by the ancient one.”
“And if she chooses wrongly?”
I watched the feeds of that little girl, holding her parents’ hands, her five-year-old face reflecting so much more wisdom than any being that young should have. "Then the old one will make sure that both species will die out before making the mistake again."
The voice returned again, except for once it wasn't just a presence in the air or background noise of my thoughts: no, this time I heard its words intimately and personally, as if it had found a way to say them into my ears alone.
“Morvana, Queen of Shadows, Architect of Blood. You've been playing your games for too long. The child shall determine all whether it be peace, or extinction. Your role is finished."
Eight centuries of rulership — of meticulous attention, ruthless empire-building in blood and horror — all rendered insignificant by a force out of an earlier time; a power that regarded my grand schemes as merely child’s play.
I was afraid now for what felt like the first time in centuries. Not of loss or extinction—these ideas I had long outgrown. But of having to stand on the sidelines, while a five-year-old girl chose the destiny for all supernatural beings.
The irony wasn't lost on me. I had taken Linda hostage as a weapon, and instead I had stirred the only force in the universe that could make all our weapons useless.
Somewhere in my palace, a child who should have been fretting over kindergarten homework was about to make a decision that would resonate through the hall of eternity.
And there was nothing I could do to determine the outcome.