Jace was dead.
Liliana stood on a tiny island. Nothing but sand and rock, as far as her shades had told her, and a cloak, washed up on the shore, its patterns faded and torn but unmistakable when she'd held it up—it was his. Foolish boy.
She didn't wonder how he died. She refused; she had wasted enough time on sentiment—on that boy. What had it brought her? Nothing but grief and pain and derailed plans. Friends who were probably, inconveniently dead too. An island in the middle of nowhere that she couldn't seem to planeswalk out of, no matter how many times she'd tried.
They'd been nothing but trouble. She told herself she was glad they were dead.
She silenced the part of her that protested. Things would be easier now that they were dead—now that he was dead. Fewer distractions.
She looked around. The drizzle that had started before she arrived had since turned into a steady downpour. Her undead servants stood as mindless as ever, rain dripping down their rotting bones as they held a tent of what remained of their clothes over her head—a pitiful shelter over a woman who refused to pity herself. She would find a way off the island if she had to kill everything on the island and in the ocean around it. This wasn't the first time she'd found herself in so desperate a situation and it probably wouldn't be the last. She'd gotten through them all, friends or no.
She raised arms and sent her summons into the ocean. At first nothing happened, then a fish jumped out of the water and landed on the beach. Its eyes were milky and its withered body was practically a skeleton. Another one joined it, this one with a fresh bite mark that exposed its spines. Then another. And another. A waterlogged sailor dragged itself out of the water, ropes and rigging clinging to its rotting flesh. Another one missing an arm staggered out of the surf. The sea around the island grew turbulent and Liliana smiled as the dead answered her call.
Friends she thought, as she channeled mana. The word seemed strange to her, even now. She'd been alive long enough to know that life was a game of chess. There were only queens and pawns. Friends were just people—and people were a means to an end.
A drop of rain fell on her cheek. One of her zombies had been a bent old man in life. He was barely tall enough to hold his end of the tent over her head and the odd droplet would run down to his end and off his outstretched arm. She looked at him, eyebrow raised in annoyance, and he straightened with a sickening crunch as his spine rearranged itself.
Queens and pawns. She knew which she'd rather be.
She could already imagine an annoyed Jace correcting her. There are other pieces, you know. The thought made her smile until a dull ache in her chest dampened the amusement.
She cursed.
There you go, Jace, she thought. Sad you're gone, just like I promised.
She lowered herself onto the sand, exhausted from the effort of her spell.
Her zombies were clumping together into a putrefying mass of undeath that she willed into the form of a raft. It was slow—the dead would only move as quickly as their failing sinews allowed—but already she could see it taking shape.
The rain intensified but her shelter held. She would have time to rest before they finished.
Jace's cloak lay at her feet. He did love his cloaks, she remembered fondly. She picked it up and pulled it around her shoulders tightly (she told herself it was for the wind). It smelled like saltwater and damp and nothing like Jace, she thought, as the sound of the rain drifted her off to sleep.