When the first blast of the blonde's power hits the Queen, the darker woman is unprepared for its ferocity and she cries out as her shoulder blades make rough contact with the heavy doors of the castle. She grits her teeth, feeling horribly winded, and glowers at her assailant angrily as she very much preferred it when it had been herself throwing Emma around the halls of her house.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

She snarls, her voice raw with fury, and she's unsurprised when she's unable to push herself from the unforgiving wood as she can feel the telling electricity of the blonde's magic rushing over her like wandering, invisible hands. She attempts to thwart that intoxicating power, but her own dark force is momentarily weakened as she struggles to come to terms with her current situation.

Eyes glittering, she watches as Emma lowers her hands and stalks through the destruction caused to the topiary and makes her way slowly up the steps until they stand face-to-face. As with the younger woman's previous musings that the Queen has refined her style, the brunette now ponders the vast differences between the woman standing in front of her and the shared haze of memories she has with Regina of interacting with the blonde when she'd become the Dark One. That version of the Saviour who had cast a dark cloud of anxiety over the town for a short while had been a crude caricature, just as so many before her have been at the mercy of the book and the Curse. There is a degree of pantomime that seems to colour whatever prophecy has been written on those pages, and while it is only something she'd been able to appreciate after many years living in a world she had once considered drab and tasteless, it had never been more apparent to her- to Regina- then when dealing with the Swan woman wearing a mask of makeup and anger. Now, she recognises the iron and the danger in the younger woman's magic- she recognises the darkness- but long hair hangs messy and wild in its curious silver, and black leather has been buckled and laced in a way not dissimilar to her own ensemble, although where she has accented tastefully with velvet and lace, the younger woman has maintained her more militant style.

"Let me go."

The Queen orders, striving to break free of the blonde's invisible grip, but the younger woman is powerful and keeps her pinned against the door at her mercy.

"Why? Are you uncomfortable?"

Emma asks silkily, and the Queen suffers a wave of confusion as everything about this role reversal has her lusting for blood, but there is something captivating in the blonde's husky tone that causes her to shiver. She thinks back to the moments leading up to this strange turn of events, and how the sharp teeth now grinning at her had been bared in hate as the Savior had choked out her furious mantra of 'fuck you!'. She thinks of how she had been ready to take the idiot blonde up on her offer, and how she might relish making the bitch thrash and scream for her before eventually continuing with her grand scheme of vengeance. She had taken great pleasure in knowing Emma had been uncomfortable, and her lips form a tight line as she recognises the current teasing note in the younger woman's words. She can't quite tell if the blonde's sultry, suggestive tone is an act of retribution, or whether the sinful timbre to her voice is a genuine threat- or promise- and this leaves her feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable.

"Saviour, you better think about who it is you're dealing with..."

She warns, and the younger woman raises a brow as she leans in so that they're nose-to-nose; the freshness of her shampoo the Mayor had once come to know so well replaced by the curiously warm scent of leather.

"The Evil Queen."

Emma replies mockingly, her teeth flashing in a wry grin that has the darker woman swallowing. It is not an expression anyone had ever dared offer her once she'd taken the throne, but it is one she recalls receiving from the Sheriff several times when trapped in her prison as Mayor. On each occasion, their bickering had reached a heated and undeniably flirtatious level. She- Regina- would say something cutting and snide to garner a reaction, and, usually, the result would be a sigh or the juvenile flash of the Sheriff's middle finger, but every now and then, Emma would snipe back, and when she did, she'd flash her teeth as she flashes them now; daring, baiting, and playing with fire.

She must know... Must know what she looks like when she does that.

"The Evil Queen."

She agrees with soft fury, but the younger woman's teeth remain sharp and goading.

My mother. My mother would smile like that, also.

"I take it you don't like being pushed and shoved around against your will?"

Emma demands with a flash of her own cold rage; her eyes and lips dark and distracting to the Queen as the harsh tones she recalls from Storybrooke have been replaced with gothic hues unlike any worn back in this better land, and thoroughly intriguing for it. Striving once again to lunge at the blonde, the darker woman manages little more than a twitch of her fingers as she remains pinned against the door; her power and the Saviour's thrumming tangibly between the two of them.

"You're new to this, dear, remember that. You may have the upper hand for this brief moment, but trust me when I promise you that your punishment for all of this will be severe."

"So you've been telling me all this time, and yet now look how we stand, Your Majesty. You had me as yours to rights and you fucked up... That knowledge has got to be stinging worse than your tailbone right now."

The blonde breathes, and as a small frown graces elegant features, green eyes glitter and the Queen yelps as she's pulled forwards just a little before being thrown pointedly back against the door; a finger of agony stroking down her back.

"I told you I'd win."

Emma seethes, and the brunette glowers at her before shaking her head; a slow smile finding scarlet lips.

"No. You were referring to the Saviour when you spoke those words. You're no Saviour, not now. Not with the darkness you've let back in. The Saviour might have been able to best me, but you... You're willing to play the game."

"You don't know what I'm willing to do."

"I do, though. You're willing to do what you could never do back in Storybrooke; you're willing to break the rules."

"I break the rules all the time."

"No, you break my rules- Regina's rules- and any pertaining to magic you don't understand. But, you play by a different set of rules, and you play by them strictly. You, Emma, the Savior, Snow's brat, you have a goodness that's expected of you and you've come to embrace that. The others, they pretend as though you don't have a past; that you pulled yourself through a broken and difficult childhood without a blemish on your soul. They call you the Hope, the Light, the Good, and you let them. Oh, I know, you resisted the titles at first, but you were all too willing to allow them to name you those things so as to avoid the mantle of what you were before Henry came to find you."

"You know nothing about what I was like..."

"I know that you were living a life where the only person you had to please was yourself. You came to Storybrooke and you allowed the others to need you and colour you their hero. You accepted the silent guidelines laid out by a thousand stories of the bold and noble protagonist. You play by a moral code that those idiot cretins all believe in, but underneath it all, you're angry. Underneath it all, you recall a time when there were no rules. When there were no friends and family counting on you to do right by them and to wear the mask of a soul untarnished by rage and darker fancies... Oh, you want to best me now just as much as you did back in Storybrooke, but the game has changed, Swan, and you know it. This isn't just about protecting Snow anymore. I toyed with you and you didn't like it. Or worse... Maybe you did?"

"I-"

"-You're no longer looking to simply stop me or defeat me. I can feel it; I can feel it in your magic as you keep me at your momentary mercy. One's power reveals so much. It's sublimely intimate."

The Queen confides, licking her lips as she speaks, and watching the younger woman's eyes as the latter seems to be searching her face for the truth. She finds great pleasure in the look of dubiety that finds cool green; Emma seemingly surprised at just how naked her magic leaves her.

"You want to play, Miss Swan. You want to take a break from maintaining that fine line of doing the right thing. I humiliated you back in that old house you've come to call your own, and you want to punish me for it... All those times you lied to Regina; telling her that vengeance and retaliation weren't the answer. All those times you scolded her for giving in to darker wishes... I can feel your wishes now, Saviour. Your desires. I can hear them as though you were whispering them in my ear, and our dear Mayor doesn't have anything on you. You're tired of playing everyone's good girl, and this has nothing to do with stopping me from hurting your family. This is a whole new game now."

"... Then let's play it."