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DARKSTALKER

What was wrong with him?

What was wrong with him?!

The queen was right there, sleeping soundly, ready to die by the simple touch of his tail. And yet when he saw her beneath him, knowing that he was about to kill her … he couldn't seem to bring himself to actually do it.

He tried, over and over again. He hyped himself up and sent the signal to his tail to throw itself down and hit her. But it was as if his tail had been struck with paralysis. When he flexed his tail to whip it down, his brain undid the motions.

"Darkstalker, please," Clearsight whimpered desperately beside him. "This isn't the time to be having second thoughts."

"I'm — but, I'm not," Darkstalker said hesitantly. "I want this. I know I do."

"Then kill her," she said, terror rising in her voice. "Hurry up and get it over with!"

"I can't," he said, folding his ears.

"Fine, then get out of here!" Clearsight demanded. "We're in trouble, Darkstalker. We're going to die if she wakes up and notices us."

"No, I need to kill her!" Darkstalker said. "I'm trying to do it. It's just … something's stopping me."

He didn't understand this. Was he feeling guilty at the thought of killing his queen? Why? He wanted her dead. He was justified in wanting her dead. This was to protect Fathom and Indigo. This was to bring peace to the NightWing tribe. This was to take power away from a terrible queen and give it to the best queen any dragon could ever ask for. His reasons for killing Vigilance were benevolent. He knew this. Even his friends all agreed with him about this.

Just do it, he told himself. Don't feel bad for her. She had this coming. If you don't kill her, one of her daughters will. Hit her. Darkstalker lifted his tail, summoning the last of his confidence. Hit her!

And before his body could protest — before he had the opportunity to hesitate for a second longer — Queen Vigilance opened her eyes.

At once, Darkstalker's eyes widened, and without a second thought his tail thumped down against the queen in a panic.

And as quick as that, it was all over. The queen fell limp. Her mouth slowly opened, and her eyes began to roll back into her head. Her breathing — which had been gently lifting and lowering him and Clearsight as they stood atop her shoulder — now ceased.

Darkstalker relaxed. There was a part of him that was expecting remorse to start settling into his chest. Maybe it was the same part that had kept him from swinging his tail sooner — that insisted that maybe there was something wrong with ending the queen's life, even though it couldn't articulate why it was the wrong thing to do.

But as he looked now at the lifeless queen, he felt no remorse whatsoever. His misgivings vanished with the queen's life, and now all that was left was the sweet taste of victory.

Folk songs and old tall stories often cited that in death, dragons looked peaceful — as if they were sleeping, dreaming innocent nothings. If this were the case, Vigilance was an exception. She looked bitter and twisted as ever. The only difference was that now, with her jaw hung open and her eyes half-closed, she looked powerless too. Completely powerless, for the first and last time in her life.

A soothing tingle began to rise up his legs. His thumping heart softened, and relief thundered into his soul. He closed his eyes and smiled. And then he laughed.

All that stress, all that tension, all that preparation — finally, it paid off. Vigilance was dead. He finally killed her. Soon, her power would become his.

Well, his and Clearsight's. He looked over at his partner to give her a congratulatory smile, only to find that she'd collapsed into a shivering ball. In an instant, Darkstalker changed his train of thought and crouched down to comfort her. "Oh, Clearsight, my dear," he said softly. "It's okay."

She didn't respond. Her eyes were a ghostly gray, and her body was unresponsive. She was having a vision attack; the first one she'd had in years. Darkstalker felt his sympathies fluttering in his heart, but he wasn't surprised this was happening. After all, this was a big decision they'd just made. It was going to change the course of history dramatically.

Darkstalker could only hope that in the hurricane of futures Clearsight saw, she would find some of the bright and dazzling ones that were in store for her.

He held her until her visions subsided, and held her more after that. "My poor sweetheart," he cooed. "I've put you through so much."

"Darkstalker," she said with a crippled voice. "I need you to promise me something."

"What is it?" he asked, leaning into her warm scales and wrapping his wing around her.

"You're going to become very powerful, very soon," she said. "You're going to start demanding more. And if you aren't very careful, you're going to lose sight of yourself in the process. Promise me, Darkstalker: if I ever warn you that things are starting to look bad, listen to me. You know that my seer powers are better than yours. If you don't make the right choices, then the future will become hopeless long before you realize it."

"I will always let you be my guide, Clearsight," Darkstalker said. "I made that vow to you the night we got married."

Clearsight stayed quiet, and Darkstalker could tell that she wasn't fully convinced. He had to imagine that there were futures swirling in her head proving to her that this may not be a promise he would keep.

He let her have those worries. They were part of what made her her after all. He remembered a conversation that they'd had a long time ago: "I need to worry, at least a little bit. You want the dragon who guides you towards the best future to care about her job, right?" she'd said. If she needed to spend a few more months, or maybe a few more years, of her life worrying about what could happen, then he'd listen to her worries and let her have them.

But he wouldn't let her define him by the futures she saw. He was going to define himself by the futures he made.

"Now," he said to her, "let's go get our crowns."

After they'd used the enchantment to teleport themselves back to their room and return to normal size, the next order of business was to deal with Vigilance's daughters. This wasn't going to be easy, but all he needed was some diplomacy and charm, and maybe some threatening implications if need be. He ordered Listener to go back to her house, at least for the time being. In the event of retaliation from Vigilance's daughters, he didn't want her to get caught up in the dispute.

After she left the palace, Darkstalker and Clearsight went into the palace corridors and found the nearest guard — whom he instructed to wake Vigilance's daughters and summon them to the throne room for an urgent parley with the queen. The guard obediently marched off towards the princess's corridors, and Darkstalker made his way to the throne room once she was out of sight.

The throne room was empty and unguarded. There wasn't much use in keeping guards situated there, as there wasn't anything worth guarding. The NightWing throne was just a dreary black marble slab with a velvet cushion on it. No dragon would have found it worth vandalizing. And even if anyone did decide to deface the throne, they in all likelihood would have embarrassed themselves quite significantly after being captured and interrogated by a pair of mind-readers.

Darkstalker found it worth sitting on, though. He stood upon it and took his seat, staring down at the open space before him. He spotted Clearsight as she walked up beside him and took her seat next to the throne. My first order of business as king will definitely be to install a second throne, he mused.

A few minutes later, the doors opened. Three female dragons walked in, alone. From a distance, Darkstalker could see a hint of fear in their eyes; worry over what could have possibly provoked their mother into having a word with them in the dead of sunset. But once they saw that it wasn't their mother sitting on the throne, their posture changed and their fears dissolved into a guarded perplexity.

The eldest of the sisters, who led the three of them, tilted her head at Darkstalker. "Where is the queen?" she asked. "And why are you sitting on her throne?"

"Actually, I summoned you here to help me figure that out," Darkstalker told her. "Please, come closer. I don't want to have to shout in order for you to hear me."

They complied, taking many steps toward him. They advanced with a cautious gait, stepping so quietly that their talons couldn't be heard clacking against the ground. "Where is Queen Vigilance?" the eldest asked again.

"She's currently lying dead in her bedroom," Darkstalker said matter-of-factly. "I am sorry for your loss, but we have to negotiate some things before the rest of the palace —"

"She's dead?!" the princess interrupted. "How?"

"I killed her, of course," he said, his words slick and sable. "She's been doing a terrible job as queen, don't you agree?"

The sisters looked pensively at one another, silently disagreeing with Darkstalker in their heads — although none of them were bold enough to actually say so in front of him.

"Your names are Acuity, Fury, and Virulence, right?" Darkstalker asked them. "I've made the effort to remember your names, but I'm afraid I don't know who's who."

"I'm Acuity," the eldest answered, her voice shaking. Brand new fears started to rise up in her mind, softening it. "The little one here is Fury, and this is Virulence."

"Well-met, you three," Darkstalker said. "Now, since Vigilance is dead, that means officially, one of you is now queen."

"That would be me," Acuity told him, swallowing hard as ripples of denial and fear slithered through her open mind. "Matrilineal primogeniture. When the queen dies, her first hatched daughter assumes power."

"You were hoping one of your sisters would challenge her before that happened, I suppose?" Darkstalker questioned. "None of you seemed too thrilled with the prospect of becoming queen."

"We just weren't too thrilled with the prospect of dying," Virulence muttered. "Our mother is scary."

"But you don't want to be queen, do you?" Darkstalker asked more acutely. "It's a serious responsibility, having to answer to the entire NightWing tribe. Do you think you're capable of taking your mother's place?"

Acuity's mind flashed through the lectures she'd received as a dragonet about queenly responsibilities and expectations, and she remembered how bored and uncomfortable they made her, and how little she took them seriously. It dawned on her how unready she was for the kingdom to be thrusted on her back.

She shook her head. "Of course not," she said, her voice airy and thin. "I can't — I'm not …." This wasn't supposed to happen, she thought frantically. The queen isn't supposed to be killed. Nobody's allowed to kill the queen except us!

Something suddenly clicked in Acuity's mind. "You're a murderer!" she cried. "You should be executed! Someone get the guards and arrest this traitor at once!"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Darkstalker said firmly, just as Fury began to turn around. "Not if you don't want to be queen. Not if you don't want to be responsible for the dissolution of the Night Kingdom."

"What are you talking about?" Acuity spat. "The queen is dead. Not having you beheaded for killing her isn't going to change that."

"No, but having me beheaded will take away the best option you have for this kingdom," Darkstalker said. "All three of you: abdicate your right to the throne and grant it to Clearsight. She and I will rule over the Night Kingdom instead of you."

The three sisters exchanged looks of shock and disbelief. "So … that's why you killed her?" Acuity eventually said to him. "You just murdered our mother in cold blood, and you expect us to just hand the crown over to you?"

"Last I checked, it wasn't too uncommon for the crown to get passed down to the dragon who murdered the queen," Darkstalker commented.

"You're delusional," Acuity said. "We can't let go of our family's claim to the NightWing throne. That would be absolutely preposterous."

"Would it be?" Darkstalker asked. "I am the first animus dragon the NightWings have ever had. My wife is the most powerful seer our tribe has had in centuries. You three, on the other talon, have no powers, no ambition, and no intuition on how to run a kingdom. We would do a far better job managing the tribe than any of you, and I think you all know that."

"What I meant was that we have a family legacy to uphold," Acuity said. "Our bloodline is the first and only of the NightWing tribe. Clearsight wasn't related to Vigilance: the tribe will not consider her a legitimate successor."

"That mindset will change with time," Darkstalker assured her. "Once Clearsight proves herself to be the most capable queen we have ever had, any mutinies that there once were will eventually fall apart. And it won't be as terrible at the start as you might think. Far more dragons in the Night Kingdom know Clearsight's name than yours, after all. If you choose to pass down the crown peacefully, then the rest of the tribe will follow."

The three sisters went silent. As their thoughts stirred, Darkstalker realized that Acuity had accidentally conflicted herself. The pure and honest truth was simply that she didn't like Darkstalker, and she didn't think a dragon who had unjustly murdered her mother should be rewarded with the right to rule the kingdom (which Darkstalker totally disagreed with; he was quite confident that murdering the queen was very just indeed). Acuity pretended that she'd had a less shallow justification for opposing Darkstalker, but Darkstalker refuted the reasons she gave. Which just made her hate him more.

But on the other talon, he'd given her good reasons to forfeit the crown. And she really didn't want to be queen.

"If you choose to abdicate the crown to me and Darkstalker," Clearsight suddenly said with a firm voice, "we will reward your humility and level-headedness by allowing you to challenge us in the future."

Darkstalker had to keep very tight control over himself in order to keep his eyes from bulging out of their sockets.

"If you want to take the kingdom back from us, then defeat me in a duel and it will be yours," Clearsight went on.

Okay, that was not what Darkstalker was expecting from her, and he had very mixed feelings about it. On the one talon, it was nice to hear her speaking in a queenly and official and actually kind of imposing manner. This was what Queen Clearsight sounded like.

But on the other talon, he wasn't exactly thrilled by the thought of Clearsight getting slaughtered by one of Vigilance's daughters. He would definitely rather she be slaughtered by one of their own daughters — and preferably after he and Clearsight had ruled over the Night Kingdom for one or two or three hundred years.

But on the third talon, he trusted Clearsight. She wouldn't say something like this if she actually expected Acuity or her sisters to challenge her any time soon. Maybe Clearsight was simply trying to maximize their likelihood to cooperate with them.

Which it seemed to be doing. Acuity's body language softened, and Darkstalker could practically feel the building sense of surrender in her mind. "Do I even really have a choice?" she asked dejectedly.

Clearsight paused as she tried to think of the perfect answer to that question. Which was taking too long; after several seconds, she started thinking slightly more rebellious thoughts, which was absolutely not okay. He spoke up, answering for Clearsight: "Not if you want the Night Kingdom to survive. Among the four potential queens in here, only one will be able to lead our tribe to victory against the IceWings. The rest, I'm afraid, will probably lead us to extinction. Clearsight and I know which one is which, and we have the future sight to prove it. I think deep down, you know the answer too."

A slight bluff, since he didn't see any indications of extinction in the future. But Darkstalker figured that overplaying their incompetence to them would be better than actually letting them rule. Scratch that, letting them rule would lead to his exile. It was a better alternative to killing them and dealing with a palace that was very, very, very angry with them.

Acuity looked to her sisters for a moment, both of whom looked even more uncertain and defeated than her, then lowered her head, facing Clearsight once again. She prostrated herself and said, "The throne and crown will be yours, Clearsight. If our mother is dead, then I will be given the kingdom before the end of the night. I will abdicate it as soon as it is in my posession."

And then she spoke the most beautiful words that Darkstalker had ever heard in his life:

"May you rule with wisdom, Queen Clearsight and King Darkstalker."