They didn’t speak any further, not even when she stood there and waited. They had called her queen. Did they know where she ought to go?

She opened her mouth to ask, but they retreated into a crevice, lips turned up in cruel smiles. It was in their black eyes too: something more predator than human, a terrible rage contained.

Parvani shivered. Out of the darkness, she finally began to feel the cold, and she wrapped her arms about herself as she headed away from the three women and toward the sound of water.

Queen. She did not come here to be a queen. She had come for only one thing: to end a man’s life.

If her request was granted.

She emerged on a sandy bank that met the side of a flowing river like a hand cupping a cheek. Waiting on the shore was a long, sleek boat of gray wood, its sides painted green and orange. Swirling, intricate designs sprawled across the wood like the dye on her hands and feet. Hanging from the prow was a garland of marigolds.

It stunned her. Had this been done for her? Did the god know of the cultures of her kingdom?

Parvani kept shivering, but she forced herself to approach the boat, to carefully get inside and sit on the bench. There were no oars and no ferryman, but the boat smoothly launched itself into the rolling water, taking her onward.

Time passed, but she couldn’t tell how much. She sat in her wedding vessel with her hands tightly clasped upon her lap, head down, eyes closed, drawing upon her waning strength to do what must be done.

The sloshing song of the water began to ebb, and she opened her eyes. The boat had carried her all the way down the river into a small pocket of a lake. It berthed now at a rocky shore, beneath a growth of pointing stalactites.

Pointing at the figure of a woman.

Parvani swallowed her gasp. The woman was dressed in dark threads, a gown of onyx and raven feathers. A black veil hung from a crown made of a stag’s horns, shockingly white, as if bleached by the sun.

The woman stood silently, waiting for her to approach. When Parvani found that she could not move, the woman drifted to the side of the boat and raised a hand as pale as ash.

It took a moment for Parvani to unclasp her hands, now clammy and aching. She put one against the woman’s palm and felt herself drawn up by a strength that surprised her. She somewhat clumsily got out of the boat and felt the sharp chill of the rocks beneath her soles.

The woman studied her a moment. Through the veil Parvani could see a pale face, long and thin, exquisitely beautiful. In fact, this close, she didn’t seem a woman at all—she looked not much older than Parvani herself.