o

CLEARSIGHT

The rest of that day was the greatest trial of mental fortitude that Clearsight had ever faced in her life.

The choice to put Darkstalker to sleep in the last timeline was bad. It took more inner strength than she thought she'd had at the time. But at least it didn't last very long. She'd waited for about half an hour for Darkstalker to see her at Agate Mountain, and their interaction lasted no more than a few minutes once he was there.

And at least she had known that there was a second chance waiting ahead of her: that after she'd betrayed her soulmate, she could find her enchanted watch and turn back time. She was able to cope with what she had to do, because she was acting in a world that would certainly be left behind.

She did not have either of these luxuries afforded to her this time. Darkstalker wasn't going to kill Queen Vigilance for another two hours: he still had to prepare an assassination plan, and determine how to proceed from there in order to give Clearsight her title as queen. She had to sit and watch as this uncertain and terrifying future played out in front of her. And of course, she had to be there to help Darkstalker figure everything out.

"Are there guards stationed in her sleeping chamber?" he asked her. He was slouched against the kitchen table, keeping track of the ideas and plans they'd gone through by scribbling them down on a leaf of paper. They had all agreed to not leave Darkstalker's parent's house until they either came up with a full plan or they ran out of time to do so.

Clearsight shook her head. "None are inside her room. But there'll be two guards standing outside her door that you'll have to get through. There's no other way inside."

"And is there any way to get through them without killing them?"

"I don't know," she said shakenly. "I can't tell you unless you figure something out. Darkstalker, I really don't know about this."

"I'm sorry, Clearsight." He looked up at Clearsight and placed a talon on her shoulder. "Trust me: this is going to lead to a brighter future. I know this road we'll need to take isn't very pleasant, but the ends are going to justify the means. Now please, help me with this: I don't want to have to kill anyone other than the queen, but I need your guidance for that."

Clearsight fought back the urge to let her mind gallop into dark, sinister futures. She held back her tears and nodded.

Darkstalker smiled at her. He then turned his head towards Listener. "Listener, did you ever get the scavenger sized goblet back from the village like you said you would?" he asked.

Listener nodded. "It's been collecting dust in my room ever since those SkyWings destroyed their den."

"Good, I can use that to sneak into her room," he said, scribbling down another note on his paper. "What about her daughters? Are their rooms guarded?"

Clearsight closed her eyes and looked ahead. "They won't be an issue," she said.

"We can wake them up early, then," he said. "They'll be summoned to the throne room an hour before sunset, while everyone else is still asleep." He tapped his talons on the table ponderously, then said, "Indigo, what do you want to do with Lionfish?"

"I want to kill him," Indigo said sourly.

"Do you actually want to kill him?" Darkstalker pressed. "Because we'd need to make a lot of arrangements right now if you're going to do that."

"No, we don't," Fathom said for her. "Lionfish just wants to go home. He doesn't deserve to die."

"He knew what he was doing," Indigo refuted. "He betrayed us just so that he could rope us back to the Sea Kingdom; he deserves what's coming to him. And even if we wanted to keep him alive, he'd just flee back to the Sea Kingdom at this point and tell Queen Pearl herself."

"If he's killed, dragons are going to start asking questions," Darkstalker told her. "What are you going to tell Wharf when he finds out his friend has been murdered?"

"I'll figure something out," Indigo murmured.

"No, you won't," Darkstalker said. "You can't kill Lionfish without Wharf suspecting you, and you wouldn't have a convincing reason for killing him if you tried to explain yourself."

"What should we do, then? Kill him too?"

"I've already said that Vigilance is the only dragon I want killed tonight," Darkstalker said firmly. "I suggest we send Wharf and Lionfish home under the condition that Lionfish is not to tell anyone about Fathom and Indigo."

"And what would hold him to that promise?" Indigo asked.

"Threatening to kill him if he breaks it should suffice," Darkstalker told her. "He would know better than to try deceiving an animus dragon who's married to the best seer in the world. We'd know if he were going to lie before he gets the chance to reveal your secret."

Clearsight's eyes flashed. Visions swam to the front of her mind of them approaching a waking castle, of arrests being made and alarms being sounded before this plan could be fully executed. They were losing time.

"Darkstalker, we need to go soon," Clearsight told him.

Darkstalker looked at the clock on the living room wall, hanging above the family portrait that Whiteout had painted. It was nearly mid-day. "Ah, snakes," he cursed under his breath. "You're right: we need to get to the palace now. Listener, I want you to go home and get both of your goblets. Take them to the palace, and meet me and Clearsight in our chamber. Make sure nobody sees you with them."

"Will do," Listener said. She rose from her seat cushion and made her way to the door.

"Wait — before you go," Darkstalker suddenly said, rising to his feet as well. "Are you sure you want to follow through with this? Supporting me is going to be risky. Do you really want to be a part of the web of politics and scandal that I'm diving into?"

"Absolutely," Listener said confidently. "You deserve to be king, and Clearsight deserves to be queen. I'd be happy to accept the consequences of helping you get those titles."

Darkstalker smiled brightly. "Your friendship means more to me than you know," he said. "You will be rewarded for it, I promise. Now get going: we'll be waiting for you."

Listener nodded and took her leave, as Darkstalker brought his attention back to the others. "Whiteout," he said, "I want you to stay here with mom and dad. You'll be safer here than in the palace."

"I know, dear brother," Whiteout said, her voice soft yet confident. "We shall stay in our den of secrets until your moon rises from the shore. In the meantime, I must prepare a new portrait! It will be covered in jewels. Beautiful, elegant jewels of all colors, surrounding two royal diamonds in the center. Oh, how brightly the diamonds will shine, brother! Would you like it to be hung in the palace when it is done?"

"Of course," Darkstalker answered, beaming at her. "I wouldn't want it to be anywhere else."

"Then go out and fly," she said. "If these hours ever come a second time, you will not get to use them the same way."

"I will use them wisely," Darkstalker said. He brought his eyes over to Clearsight now, and she felt her heart flutter with all the same emotions she felt when he'd first laid his eyes on her, all those years ago. Fear, excitement, nervousness, unrelenting and painful love … it all came flooding back to her.

"Clearsight," he said, taking her talons and holding them gently, "will you stay by my side? Will you be with me until we're done with all this?"

Clearsight shrunk down, fear and stress cornering her like a caged scavenger. "I don't know, Darkstalker. I don't know if I want to be there to see it when you ..." But her visions were already corrupting her memories, telling her what she would be missing if she ever chose to leave Darkstalker's side later today. She saw the queen's lifeless body, broken from its peaceful sleep by Darkstalker's swift assassination. She felt the cloud of terror that would come with watching her die.

"But I need you, Clearsight," Darkstalker insisted. "I need you to give me strength and guidance. Please, I can't do this without your support."

Yes you can, she thought. The queen will die whether I'm there with you or not. Regardless, she took Darkstalker's words to heart. She was there to share Darkstalker's burdens. And so, without a word, she nodded to her husband.

Darkstalker gave her a smile of relief. "Thank you, my love. Now, let's fly."

At last, Clearsight and Darkstalker left the house and took to the sky, their eyes set on the palace. Fathom and Indigo took their rear, staying as close to each other as Clearsight was to Darkstalker.

She was tired, and the air felt thick as her wings cut through them. Her muscles tugged against her brain, as if they instinctively wanted her to turn back, or land in the shadows of the ravines beneath her. With each wingbeat, she found it harder to actively look into the future. Every time she did, phantom worries came in place of true visions.

She was so afraid and confused, and the throes of sleeplessness began to take away the brain power needed to handle that confusion. The future that lay ahead of her was one that she thought she would never allow, and yet its march forward was inexorable. She wasn't prepared. She'd never planned this far ahead.

They flew in through Darkstalker's open balcony, which was only barely large enough for a dragon to land on. Once the four of them were inside, they immediately headed to Fathom's chamber to confront Lionfish. Darkstalker and Indigo took the lead, marching briskly down the hall.

There was a fury in each of their eyes, but they read different things. Darkstalker had intense, calculating black eyes behind his scowl — one that he'd worn many times in the past. It was his raw ambition bleeding through, and it signalled through his march that he was going to get what he wanted and nobody was going to stop him.

Indigo, on the other talon, was straight-up furious. Her soul was boiling with rage, and she was fully prepared to let it out on the dragon who'd summoned it in the first place. If the futures Clearsight saw were any indication, poor Lionfish ought to be very afraid of her.

Darkstalker opened the door to the SeaWing suite, and the others made their way in. Lionfish was sleeping in the far corner, close to the curtains that hid the balcony. He woke to the sound of Fathom locking the door behind him, and when he saw the look on Indigo's face, he immediately leaped into the air and scrambled towards the balcony exit.

With impeccable reflexes, Indigo charged at the fleeing SeaWing. She pounced on him like a bloodthirsty panther as he tried to throw open the curtains. A heartbeat later, the curtains were torn and Lionfish was pinned to the balcony ledge, mere milliseconds from falling over and winging away.

"Just let me go, Indigo!" Lionfish squeaked out, his jaw being pressed hard against the concrete parapet by Indigo's front legs. "There's nothing you can do, okay?"

"Oh, there definitely is," Indigo said. Her claws curled around his face, digging into his scales. Lionfish let out a yelp of pain.

"Bring him back in," Darkstalker said, his voice booming.

Clearsight shuddered at the sharpness of his command. There was so much authority behind that voice. He's acting like he's already king. Her wings shrunk into her body as she recalled the visions she had where he used that regal voice for much more sinister commands.

Indigo did as Darkstalker asked, and dragged Lionfish back into the chamber, pulling him by his horn. Behind the fallen curtains there was a sliding glass door, which Fathom cantered to and closed as well.

Lionfish was thrown onto the floor in front of Darkstalker, and made no efforts to escape once he was let go. He simply rose to his feet and kept his wings tucked. "So you figured out what I did," he said plainly. "What are you going to do, kill me? Pearl would have wanted to know this, Fathom, you know that."

"I know. We were trying to keep it a secret," Fathom said pointedly. His face was rife with hurt — like he didn't have it in him to be genuinely angry, but he knew that he had a right to be.

"So I'm the bad guy for being loyal to our queen, and you're the good guy for breaking the vow you made to her?" Lionfish asked.

"I haven't broken either of my vows, Lionfish," Fathom retorted. "I never promised that I wouldn't marry Indigo. I promised that we would never have dragonets, and that's a promise I'm going to keep!"

There was a brief moment that Clearsight caught where Indigo glanced down at her claws, looking wounded. It was gone in an instant, though, and she straightened herself right back up.

"Look, Wharf and I just want to go back," Lionfish complained. "We miss the Sea Kingdom. We miss our old friends. We were never supposed to be here this long, Fathom. It's time for us to go home."

"I don't want to go home," Fathom said sharply. "Why would I want to go back to the Sea Kingdom? Everyone there hates me. Nobody even wants to look at me." He shook his head. "I feel more at home here than I ever could in the Sea Kingdom. This is where I belong."

At some point during their argument, Wharf had gotten up from his bed. Instead of trying to escape on his own, he slowly made his way over to them and stood beside Lionfish. Lionfish looked back at him and gave him a thankful smile. He then looked back at Fathom and said, "Whether you like it or not, we're done being trapped here. Queen Vigilance will be sending a messenger out at sunset, and it'll only be a matter of time before it reaches Queen Pearl."

"Queen Pearl is not going to receive that message," Darkstalker said, stepping towards them. "We're going to make sure of that."

"How?" Lionfish asked, stepping backwards nervously as Darkstalker advanced. "Short of killing the queen before she wakes up, there isn't anything we can do to stop her."

"I'm an animus, Lionfish: there are more possibilities than you might think." He straightened his head, so that it loomed over Lionfish and Wharf's. "Now, with that being said, there still remains the issue of what we'll be doing with you."

Lionfish and Wharf glanced at each other, confusion and uncertainty and fear rising in their eyes.

"Listen carefully," Darkstalker said. "We will give you one chance to go home, under the promise that you will not tell anybody else about Fathom and Indigo."

"Done," Lionfish said instantly. Clearsight could see a small slice of his nervousness being cut from his scales. "You have my word."

"Mine too," Wharf appended. "But … there's a problem—"

"—Yes, I know there is," Darkstalker said. "How am I supposed to know if you break your promise or not? You'll be in the Sea Kingdom, around Queen Pearl, and I'll be in the Night Kingdom, on the other side of the continent." With slow and methodical steps, he walked over to the fountain bubbling in the middle of the room. "Don't worry about that, you two: an animus dragon has his ways."

At that, he reached into the fountain and pulled out a pebble. "Pebble," he announced with dripping wet talons, "if Lionfish or Wharf are about to break the promise that they just made to me, I enchant you to start glowing a bright, radiant blue. Moreover, if you are glowing a bright, radiant blue, I enchant you to kill Wharf and Lionfish instantly when you are submerged in water."

Oh, that is both clever and cruel, Clearsight found herself thinking. Darkstalker's scroll was still a closely guarded secret between Fathom, Indigo, and herself, so Lionfish and Wharf wouldn't know that this enchantment was a bluff.

The blanched look that swept over both of their faces confirmed that.

"There we go. That should keep you from trying to rescind your oath to me," Darkstalker said. "Now get out of here, the both of you."

The two SeaWings fidgeted and shrunk away from Darkstalker, but neither of them moved from where they were standing.

"Did you not hear me?" Darkstalker growled as a flash of white reflected in his glower. "I said leave!"

"We can't," Wharf said, his voice warbling now. "Our orders are to stay and protect Fathom."

"Is it not obvious by this point that Fathom has revoked that order?"

"It's not Fathom's order to revoke! If it was, we would have asked him to let us go home a long time ago." Wharf pinned his ears and looked down. "Queen Pearl made it clear to us that Fathom doesn't have the power to send us back to the Sea Kingdom. If we go back now, and we don't have a really good reason, she's just going to send us right back — probably with even more guards than before."

"Queen Pearl is already suspicious of you two," Lionfish said to Fathom and Indigo. "I think the reason we were sent here with you and Indigo in the first place was because she didn't like what would happen if you went by yourselves."

Fathom and Indigo exchanged an awkward smile between each other that Clearsight suspected meant, 'Yep, Pearl was totally right to think that, and it's a good thing she was.'

A couple of heartbeats of silence passed as Darkstalker thought of what to say next. Before he could give any further instructions, however, Indigo left Fathom's side and walked up to Lionfish. "I hope you know that I planned on killing you for what you told Queen Vigilance," she said once she was close enough to bite him. "Darkstalker talked me out of it. He's the one who's giving you this opportunity to escape here with your life. You should be thankful to him for that."

"I am," Lionfish stuttered, his head vibrating with nods. "I'm sorry. I want to leave you alone; I've wanted to for a long time! I don't care what goes on between you and Fathom, and I don't care about this stupid kingdom! If I could fly back home with Wharf, I would, but there's nothing I can do!"

"I know," Indigo said. "But there's something I can do."

Without warning, she leapt at Lionfish and tackled him to the ground, moving so swiftly that for a heartbeat she merely looked like a fuzzy ball of sapphire scales. She pulled out the concealed dagger she had strapped beneath her wing, and stabbed Lionfish in the shoulder. A wail of pain escaped his jaws.

"Lionfish!" Wharf cried.

"Indigo, what are you doing?!" Darkstalker roared, trotting up to her.

He was the only other dragon that moved from where he was standing. Everyone else — Clearsight included — merely stood in shock, as if afraid that they'd get stabbed too if they tried to move.

Although it was a small dagger, it penetrated deeper into Lionfish's arm than any bite or claw strike could, which became evident when Indigo pulled it out of his arm. The blade was covered in blood and bioluminescent fluid, and the patch of glow-in-the-dark scales on Lionfish's shoulder grew faded and discolored. He tried scrambling away from Indigo, but she pinned his wings and straddled him to keep him from squirming.

"There's your reason for returning," Indigo said sharply. "Tell your queen that Lionfish got stabbed while trying to protect Clearsight from a thief. None of the medics here knew how to treat stab wounds on bioluminescent membranes, so he needed to go all the way back to the Sea Kingdom for proper treatment. Now hurry up and get out of here."

Indigo got off of Lionfish, who immediately scrambled for the balcony. He struggled a bit to open the door, wincing from pain as the blood pouring out of his shoulder began sliding down his forearm. Once he'd gotten it open, the fallen curtains in front of the door were smeared with blood, and Lionfish threw himself into the sky, leaving a red talonprint on the balcony floor. Wharf followed right behind him.

And then there was silence. Fathom took shallow, shocked breaths, and Clearsight remained frozen in place, terrified that this spontaneous attack might give rise to consequences she didn't yet foresee. That was not a calculated move on Indigo's part: Clearsight would have seen it if it were. It was impulsive and unplanned, and so it was more well-hidden in the threads of fate.

Indigo used the curtain to wipe the blood off of her knife, then put the knife back in its sheath. "That's that problem taken care of," she said coldly.

Darkstalker slowly walked up to her side and looked out the balcony. "So their story when they get back is going to be that Lionfish was stabbed, and the only way for him to get treated for his wounds was to fly across the entirety of Pyrrhia?"

"They can say whatever they want when they get back," Indigo said. "I just wanted to cut that useless traitor."

"Let's just hope that doesn't backfire on us," Darkstalker told her. "I doubt either of them are going to be too friendly with you for the foreseeable future."

"I'll worry about that later," she said back pointedly. "Why don't you leave me and Fathom alone for now? You have a queen to take care of, and I have a mess to clean up." She gestured towards the blood smears and stained curtains.

Darkstalker appeared as if he wished to protest further, but decided to simply leave her and Fathom be. He left their chambers and made his way towards the room that he and Clearsight shared on the southern side of the palace. Clearsight loyally followed right beside him, her tail curled around his.

"You're starting to see them, aren't you?" Darkstalker asked, tilting his head so that he could smile at her.

Clearsight cocked her head, confused. "See what?"

"The good futures that lie ahead of us," he said. "Now that you're letting yourself enter this path, you're starting to see that it will soon become infinitely better than you imagined, am I right?"

Clearsight looked away and hummed, feeling guilty for what she was about to say. "Not exactly," she admitted. "My visions haven't been overwhelmed with future memories of happiness yet. But they also haven't been overwhelmed with the evil and darkness I was afraid of all this time. I might just be too tired to see things properly. I'm sorry."

Darkstalker sagged a little bit. "I see…"

"I am still afraid, Darkstalker," she said pensively. "Right now, all I can do is hope that you truly will be a good king. I can't remember the last time I had so little guidance from my visions."

"With you by my side, I will be the greatest ruler Pyrrhia has ever had," Darkstalker said, extending a wing and hugging her with it tightly. Clearsight leaned into him. His touch reminded her that she really did love him, and that she would support him despite everything. It was the only moment of relief she'd been given so far.

Listener was waiting for them in their chamber, equipped with both enchanted goblets — one normal sized, the other smaller than a thimble.

"I got here as fast as I could," Listener said. "I don't think I roused any suspicion. My parents are still asleep."

Darkstalker smiled brightly at Listener, trotting forward to inspect the goblets. "Excellent," he said.

"What are you going to use them for?" she asked. "I know you said you'd use it to sneak into her chamber, but how is it going to help, aside from making you smaller?"

"Stealth," he explained as he turned and approached his wardrobe, which harbored a number of enchanted jewelry items. "Remember how we were neither seen nor heard by the scavengers when we were spying on them? Well, with the way I wrote the spell, we shouldn't be seen or heard by other dragons either. And, since we'll be extremely small as a bonus, we should be able to find a way into Vigilance's sleeping chamber without catching anyone's attention."

"I see," Listener said, tapping the goblet and making it ring. "But how are you going to kill the queen if you're so tiny?"

"With this." Darkstalker produced a long, black leather tailband. From a distance, it looked innocuous enough, but Clearsight remembered reading the enchantment Darkstalker had put on it and being very upset with him. She'd made him promise never to wear it unless he foresaw extreme danger without it, which was a promise he'd gracefully kept, until now. Seeing him take it out of his wardrobe for the first time in years made her shiver.

"When I wear this tailband, it makes my tail deadlier than a SandWing's," Darkstalker explained as he brought it over to the others. "If I deliver a sharp, intentional strike with my tail against another dragon, they will die instantly. It should work even when I'm very small. Clearsight, would you put it on for me?"

Even a menial request such as that sent the same jolts of fearful apprehension through Clearsight's muscles. She didn't even want to touch that tailband! She wanted to help Darkstalker overthrow the queen as little as possible, and deal with the consequences later. Supporting Darkstalker with this, not knowing if it would lead to the fury and destruction that her visions had warned her about since she'd first hatched — that was a mental commitment that she'd never be prepared for.

But it was a commitment she'd made when she married Darkstalker. He was always going to take her into unknown territory; she knew this. In fact, she embraced it most of the time, letting herself grow attracted to his tendency to surprise her in ways that no other dragon possibly could. Being his wife meant accepting and loving this part of him, even when it scared her.

And so, she continued to support him. Taking the tail band in her own claws, she tied it around the base of Darkstalker's tail, wrapping it snugly, turning him into the perfect weapon for assassination.

Darkstalker gently swinged his tail to get acclimated to the feel of the tailband on his body. "Feels good," he said. "Now let's go, Clearsight. We still need to do a couple of things after the queen is dead."

Listener placed both of the goblets on the ground and let Darkstalker and Clearsight approach them. Darkstalker closed his eyes and exhaled into the larger bowl. For a second Clearsight worried that Darkstalker's tailband wouldn't shrink with him, but Darkstalker had apparently thought of that when he wrote his enchantment: he and his tailband vanished instantly.

A few seconds later, Clearsight exhaled into the golden cup as well. She lost her balance a bit as the floor suddenly changed beneath her, but the transformation was otherwise swift and painless. With a few flaps of her wings, she was in the air, and now that she was under the effects of the enchantment, she was able to see Darkstalker waiting for her on the edge of the fountain.

"Remember: the way to return to normal is to put your talons on your head and say 'get me out of here'," he reminded her once she was by his side. "Now go on and lead the way. I have no clue where the queen sleeps."

And so Clearsight took the lead, winging to their chamber door and exiting out through the hallway. They glided high, staying closer to the ceiling than the floor, as Clearsight did a quick search algorithm in her head to find where in the palace the queen's sleeping chamber was.

One thing that neither Clearsight nor Darkstalker had considered was how fast they could move. Since they were the size of hummingbirds, they flew a lot slower than they normally did at full size. Their top flight speed was on a par with the pace of a walking dragon. Fortunately, the palace halls were designed for a dragon to walk through and not fly through, so they made their way to the queen's corridor in a matter of minutes.

She found the door behind which Vigilance would be sleeping, which — aside from the two burly NightWings covered in armor guarding it — appeared no less innocuous than any of the other doors. It had the same thick, dark oaken front panel that her own chamber had, with the same marble door frame and the same cast iron doorknob and lock.

The two of them thoroughly scanned the perimeter of the door but found no open spaces that they could crawl through. Instead, Darkstalker went for an alternative plan. He landed on the doorknob itself, clutching it tightly. Then, he thrashed his body around as he held it, causing it to rattle and move.

"What are you doing?" Clearsight asked frantically.

"Trying to get the guard's attention so that they open the door," he growled through his efforts. "He'll think that someone's inside and check to see what's going on. Stay close by: they probably won't keep the door open for long."

She nearly realized too soon what Darkstalker meant when he said that. The first guard flicked his ears, then looked down at the rattling doorknob, and Clearsight just barely had enough time to tell Darkstalker to get out of the way before he began to reach for it. Darkstalker leaped into the air, his tail mere millimeters away from brushing against the guard's talon.

He landed atop the door frame, and Clearsight landed beside him. Since the rattling had stopped, she wasn't expecting this to actually work. The guard was rumbling something that Clearsight couldn't understand, and didn't appear to be getting any response.

But to her surprise, he soon thereafter reached for his keys and unlocked the door. He cracked it open, and Darkstalker and Clearsight scurried in through the opening like a pair of hungry rats, perching themselves atop the inner lip of the door frame with their tails wrapped around their legs. Clearsight just barely had enough space to keep herself from falling over.

The queen was laying atop a massive bed with many layers of silken sheets, and at least a dozen black pillows. Her wings and tail were tucked in and her head lay on a large cushion at the head of the bed. She was slightly awake, scowling at the doorway as she growled something at the intruding guard.

A few seconds later, the guard closed and locked the door, and Clearsight let out a breath that she'd been keeping in. Once Vigilance tucked her head back into her bed sheets and drifted back to sleep, Darkstalker swooped over to her bed and landed ever-so-gently on her shoulder. Clearsight followed suit, slowing herself down as much as possible with her wings before any of her tiny talons touched the queen's scales.

As she settled down beside Darkstalker, she looked at the sleeping queen. And although she didn't appear to notice that either of them were standing on her, Clearsight could still feel her adrenaline climbing with every heartbeat. Even in sleep, Vigilance looked ferocious, as if she were dreaming about mutilating IceWing prisoners. She was so massive too — large enough to be able to swat the both of them like gnats if she'd woken up and noticed they were there.

"Here it goes," Darkstalker murmured, before lifting his tail.

The scariest part of standing atop Queen Vigilance at that moment was knowing that that could happen. There were visions, faint and unlikely but definitely there, where Darkstalker hesitated for too long, or moved too much before striking her with his tail, and Vigilance woke up, sensed them, and crushed them with a smack of her talon, killing them instantly.

I wouldn't be able to turn back time if that happened, Clearsight realized. The universe would be stuck with this timeline because Darkstalker and I would be dead. Nobody else knows about my watch. That wasn't a mistake she could undo.

Of course, the rational side of her recognized that this wasn't something she needed to worry about. Darkstalker was right there, prepared to end Vigilance's life instantly. This was something he'd been planning for — something he'd apparently wanted for years. He wouldn't hesitate to kill her now. He had everything he needed: the motivation, the support, and the opportunity. All he needed to do was flick his tail.

… So why was he hesitating?

She still felt Vigilance breathing beneath her. Darkstalker's tail was still raised. For some reason, he looked … doubtful.

"Darkstalker," Clearsight whispered. "Just do it."

Darkstalker's breaths grew long and deep. He drew his gaze towards Clearsight, his eyes desperate. And, as if he knew precisely the right words that he was supposed to say to torment her more than he already had, he said to her:

"I don't think I can."