(Epilogue from The Nightmare King)
Evangeline had paced a hole in the floor by the time the group came back with Mimi. She rushed forward and embraced the child with fierce relief, and barely managed to keep from crying. She wouldn’t admit how afraid she’d been, and was embarrassed for them to see it. It was strange for her to care this much for someone. She’d been around a long time. People came and went. She’d grown accustomed to not getting attached; it was easier that way.
But Mimi had taken her by surprise. She’d met the girl at an internet café once, where Mimi was playing some online game with strangers. The strangers had been giving her a hard time, and Eva had watched the girl’s face fall as she’d dealt with their meanness.
Eva had stood up, approached the table with her coffee in hand, and said, “Want some help?’
Eva was a very fast learner. She hadn’t played many computer games up to that point, but knew that once she was introduced to them, she would catch on very quickly. She would kick ass. It was part of who and what she was.
The girl looked up at her and could obviously smell the dragon in her, because her expression was that of someone who instantly knew the person in front of them had something in common with them. She smiled hopefully and said, “You play League of Legends?”
Eva shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“Then, yes please!”
Eva was right about catching on quick. The strangers giving Mimi a hard time shut up fast, and the pair of them won every match they played. Their friendship was solid from then on.
Eva had expected it to fade. But it didn’t. She was enchanted by the little red dragon. She cared for her deeply. Like a little sister. A very little sister. Eva had several thousand years on Mimi, after all.
So when she came back from the Duat in one piece, Eva had a hard time letting go of her, and only did so when a limousine from the Swallowtail Foundation came to pick the girl up. That was where Mimi lived – with her aunt in an enormous high-rise apartment complex that housed the mysterious Swallowtail Foundation, which Eva happened to know was owned and run by an equally mysterious and exceedingly wealthy green dragon by the name of Verdigris. The name all but gave it away.
The only one who didn’t come back from the Duat was Nicholas Wargrave.
According to the returning party, Nicholas was in Nero now. And the Entity was dead, along with Amunet. Adelaide had returned to the Nightmare Realm to retrieve her dog, whom she insisted needed lots of love and attention. Meanwhile, Nero and three other kings had traveled to a placed called the “Cemetery,” which Eva knew absolutely nothing about, apparently for security reasons. There, Nero recited three passwords to the three kings, and secured his place once more at the Table of the Thirteen.
Evangeline didn’t even know how to feel about all of it. She was relieved the Entity was gone. She was also frightened. She’d learned something unsettling about herself.
She had come so close to being in a situation that she couldn’t get out of, all because she’d made a rash decision and followed her heart. She’d wanted to do good for the world. She’d wanted… hell, in truth, she’d just wanted to be as worthwhile as her mother had always been.
Eva sighed now as she thought of the old witch. Her goddamned powerful and perfect mother. The woman who commanded respect for thousands of years, no matter what form she took. There was no living up to her. Even when Eva tried, she was so misguided, she ended up making an ass of herself and doing something like working for the most evil being in the realms.
When the Entity had ordered her to kill Lalura Chantelle, Evangeline had almost laughed. He’d known that Lalura was her mother. But he’d had no idea what Lalura was. However, to laugh in front of the Entity would have been suicidal. So she’d pretended to go along with her orders. She’d faced off with her mother.
Sort of.
Her mother was an Entity too. Only, there kind were really called Nomads. That was what ancient cultures had called them, anyway: taxidiotis in Greek, musafir in Arabic, viatorem in Latin. The Travelers. The Nomads.
Lalura Chantelle was just like the evil creature that the supernatural Thirteen referred to as the “Entity.” Except that rather than being composed of the negative aspects of existence, she contained and possessed the positive.
She’d been a cranky old bat as a human witch. She’d been blunt and demanding. She’d been bossy and impatient. But there was a very big and very important difference between being kind and being good. Lalura Chantelle was a canker sore of a human being. But she was good. And she’d helped countless people in her own rip-off-the-Band-Aid way.
When the time came, Lalura of course knew that her daughter was sent to kill her. She met up with Eva and put on a show for anyone who might have been watching. She’d “beaten” Evangeline. And the grisly task of her murder had been given to someone else. It was given to the Entity’s Traitor. As misfortune would have it, the Thirteen still did not have absolute proof as to who the hell that was.
But whoever he was, he succeeded where Eva apparently failed. He killed the old witch.
Now Eva was left wondering what new form her mother had taken. Where she was at any given moment. Who she was helping.
“Not me,” she said softly and with a bite of acid. She’d been staring out the window of the BART train, watching the platforms and people blur by. They were just like her thoughts, indistinct and many. But each vital. Life was so vital.
She was on her way to see Mimi. The girl wanted to introduce Eva to the new Dragon King, Calidum. For some reason, it was important to her. And truth be told, Eva had been curious about this guy anyway. So she’d agreed.
She could have just transported directly into the Dragon Realm. But that would have given an aspect of herself away, and probably would have been taken as an unwelcome interruption. People didn’t generally like it when strangers managed to breach their realms’ defenses and just waltz right in without a care. And that was the least of what Eva could do.
So she’d agreed to play down her abilities. Way down. She’d even hopped on the BART so she could meet Mimi and Cal – that’s what Mimi called him – at the Westfield Center in San Francisco. They were going to have yogurt together. Of all things.
Eva smiled to herself, shaking her head. Mimi took any opportunity she could to eat candy, especially Gummy Bears, and getting kidnapped by the Entity and narrowly escaping death had earned her an afternoon of being spoiled by none other than the king of the dragons himself. So he’d agreed to buy her a large vanilla yogurt topped with Gummy Bears.
Eva would bet that the male students in her small, elite class weren’t teasing Mimi quite so much anymore now that the king was her personal friend.
The BART pulled up to the platform she needed, which was basically right underneath Westfield Center, a large well-appointed shopping mall in downtown San Francisco. The food here was fantastic; Eva’s personal favorite was Loving Hut. She knew the layout well enough to hop right off, move down a few feet to the windows of the Starbucks that was at the edge of the mall, and double check her reflection in the glass before moving on.
She’d used her magic to change her hair again. Eva’s real hair was just too attention-grabbing. No one in the world had waist-length waves of pure snow white with the thickness of three heads of hair. So she’d turned it light brown and put it in a braid. The braid had been too thick, though, so she’d immediately taken it right back out of the braid and just left it hanging free and loose in its shimmering layers.
It was still attention-getting, but this time not for being strange, just for being beautiful. Of course, Eva felt her real hair was beautiful. But she was partial to it because she’d inherited it from her father. And she missed him.
Eva stopped in her tracks and turned back to the shop windows beside her. Tight blue jeans that very much flattered her long, slim legs. Black combat boots. A slim fitting black tee-shirt. A thin and soft pink hoodie. No fandom, no decoration. And yet, she managed to be anime beautiful. No matter what she did.
She met her own reflected gaze. There in that wholly unnatural and wholly lovely lavender hue, she saw her memories. In those memories, she was running along the top of a mountain cliff, a man following just behind her. She stopped at the pinnacle of the peak and turned to face him, giggling with glee and ready to jump off.
The man was dressed in all white. He always would be; he couldn’t wear anything else. His hair matched his royal robes, and his star-white eyes flashed merrily. He was such a handsome man. Tall, strong, majestic and wise.
He was the Great White. Anharidan.
He was her father.
Now, Eva closed her eyes, lowered her head, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She had a sudden headache. It was the result of the unwelcome urge to cry. She shoved the urge willfully back and lifted her head again.
The Great White was dead. He’d been murdered by the Great Gray thousands of years ago, when she was but a child. That was the way the story really went. That was where the legend got everything wrong. It wasn’t Bantariax who’d been betrayed and killed by his brother Korridum. Anharidan had gone down instead.
In truth, the Great Gray had been confronted by Bantariax, the Great Black. But the Great Gray escaped judgment, only to vanish into the realms. He would never to pay for his crimes. He would never even so much as explain why he’d done what he’d done.
And she’d lost her father to a rogue dragon. A wanted man.
Years passed and they turned into decades, which became centuries, which eventually blended into millennia – and the Great Black vanished along with the Great Gray. The legends changed and warped, and all true belief in the first three Legendary Dragons vanished. Like Santa Claus.
Except Evangeline happened to know Santa Claus was very real. And so were the Legendaries.
She thought of this as she made her way up the escalators onto the third floor of the busy mall and turned right. Yoppi Yogurt was where she was supposed to meet Mimi and her VIP friend.
“Eva! Over here!”
Eva heard Mimi before she saw her, and she smiled. She couldn’t help but smile; the girl’s enthusiasm was just so fresh and beautiful. A group of people in front of her began to disperse, and Eva waited to pass through them, wondering what new video game shirt Mimi would be wearing today.
They parted enough for her to step through, and she smiled a great big smile.
“Eva, you’re four minutes late!” Mimi chastised as Eva caught sight of her at the opening to the closet-sized yogurt shop. She was wearing a bright red shirt with a yellow flaming tire that said, “Fire in the Hole!”
“Sorry, Charmimi, blame it on the train,” said Eva through her grin as she picked up the pace and hugged the young dragon.
“No worries, this is Calidum! I call him Cal.”
An odd sensation came over Evangeline. It was unlike any feeling she’d ever had before. It was somehow familiar, like a dream she’d just awoken from, or a song she’d heard somewhere recently. But it was more than that. It was a flush of adrenaline. And a hit of morphine. And a shot of tequila. It was a buzzing in her ear and a kick-start to her heart, and the sensation that she’d just lost every aspect of control over her own life.
She turned slowly around, the smile slipping from her features…
And came face to face with the very handsome man who was supposed to be Calidum, the red dragon and new Dragon King. But who was, in fact, Korridum… the Great Gray.
She knew who he was at once.
Korridum’s eyes flashed with equal knowledge and recognition. He at once knew who and what she was. He knew everything about her. Just like that.
And what was worse… he smiled. Because there in that fateful moment, in that crowded mall, in front of perhaps Eva’s only true friend, Evangeline realized one more thing. One fundamental, monumental thing.
She realized that she was his queen.
And he realized it too.