Thunder growled outside her window, making Dinah shiver. Silver flashes streaked across her bedroom walls, sneaking through the cracks in the heavy pink drapes. Her bedside lamp cast an amber glow—she always left it on during storms.
The kettle hissed downstairs between shouts of her parents arguing again. Mama’s voice reverberated up through the floorboards—‘Don’t you dare—’ A door slammed. Papa’s low rumble answered, his words lost but his tone sharp as broken glass. Then came the crash—a plate, maybe, or one of Mama’s picture frames hitting the wall.
Why can’t they just stop?
At eight, Dinah already knew her parents’ rhythm—shouting, silence, Papa off to Uncle Ryan’s. She was used to the way things were by now. She just wished she could have had a sister. Even a brother would do. Yesterday at school, she’d watched the Brennan twins share their lunch. Dinah had turned away and eaten her apple alone by the fence. She squeezed Mr Huggins tighter into her chest, her pale fluffy friend she’d had since she was three. At least there’s always Granny.
As if summoned by the thought, a figure appeared at the door, drenched in light from the hallway before she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. ‘Sweetie?’ Granny said, her voice shaky.
‘Here, Granny,’ Dinah whispered, sitting up and reaching for her hand. Granny’s hand found hers, the way it always did. She sat in the comfy chair beside the bed. Sometimes, she fell asleep there. The faint scent of lavender clung to her nightgown—it always made Dinah feel safe.
‘Are you alright, poppin?’ Granny asked, adjusting herself in her chair, peering down over the rim of her glasses.
‘Yes, Granny. Will you tell me a story?’ Dinah settled back amid the covers, bracing herself for one of Granny’s always amazing tales.
‘Hmmmm,’ Granny hummed excitedly, whistling air between her teeth as she reached into the vault of her mind for just the right story for this night. ‘Ah, I know the one. Do you remember the story of the blue knight?’
Dinah scratched her head. ‘I think there were a few about him, weren’t there, Granny?’ The blue knight, with his azure eyes and electric-blue hair, outshone only by his turquoise armour. Who danced when he fought and wielded the legendary sword Axima, crafted by angels and unstoppable in battle.
Dinah always loved the story of the blue knight stuck in the bog, where he fell into a secret world of mud where orcs served the Mud Mother. There was also the one where he met a flying shapeshifter. Dinah found that one hilarious.
‘No, no, this is the one with the last witch,’ Granny said, shaking her shoulders as she readied herself to tell the story. ‘Ah, now this one’s an old tale; the knight himself used to love telling it around the fireplace in his old age, long before you were born, poppin.’ Dinah’s toes curled under her blanket. She clutched Mr. Huggins tighter, leaning forward even though she couldn’t see Granny’s face clearly in the dim light. Granny didn’t need a book; she closed her eyes behind her glasses and went there, went into the story like she wasn’t only seeing it but living it.
She breathed deeply when she was describing a smell; stroked the hem of her clothes as she described a texture. Dinah had learnt to close her own eyes too, to let go of herself, her own body, her own awareness, to drift away and let the story take her. Then Mama and Papa’s fighting didn’t seem so loud. Then the thunder and lightning outside the window didn’t feel so scary. Then Dinah could drift away, disappear, somewhere else …
‘The witch’s name was Emelda,’ Granny began. ‘She was a beautiful, dark-haired woman in her prime. She had been a highly desired lady, courted by many suitors until the king of Athàn decided he wanted her. He was a fat old toad, but he had a reputation for collecting magical items and artefacts. Soon after their marriage, he died in suspicious circumstances and she inherited everything, becoming known openly as a formidable witch-queen.
She had been poor, once, they said—and powerless. But she’d sworn she’d never be either again.
She always wore an armoured chest-piece made from black onyx, it seemed to ripple in the light as though it contained some kind of mist inside. When she felt her visitors were holding something back, small silver ornaments in her hair tinkled strangely, and the truth inevitably came out soon after. People feared her and her new queendom, most of all her own subjects—and rightly so—she used her newfound power to crush anyone who questioned her claim to the throne.
Witches and wizards hadn’t been seen in the world for long ages, and only stories remained that told of their penchant for wickedness, of a time long forgotten when they’d used their power to rule the world—and there were no winners in the wars that followed—only mutual annihilation of their kind.
Emelda became Queen Emelda I, Lady of Athàn, Mistress of Flame.
‘That last title came later though, I’m getting ahead of myself,’ Granny interjected, clearing her throat. Dinah looked over at her lovingly, breaking out of the trance of the story for a small, sweet moment to glance at her dear Granny, whose stories were always told with such love, patience and tenderness. Granny caught her looking and smiled softly, reaching over to stroke her hair.
‘When she was your age, I imagine Emelda might have looked just like you.’
Dinah’s hand flew to her blonde curls, fingers tangling in them protectively. ‘Does that mean I’ll get dark hair when I grow up?’ she asked, suddenly alarmed. Granny chuckled softly, taking her hand in hers. ‘Oh no, sweetie, you’ll always be a blonde.’
‘How do you know?’ Dinah’s eyes widened.
‘Grannies know a lot of things. Now, back to the story.’ She leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and drawing a deep breath. Dinah watched her face in the lamplight, transfixed. Sometimes she looked like a young woman when she told her stories. Other times, she looked well beyond her years. There was something about Granny that she could never quite hold onto, and she loved her especially for it.
Something thudded against the wall downstairs. Dinah’s shoulders tensed. She counted: one, two, three seconds of silence. No shouting followed. Maybe it was thunder?
Granny went on, ‘The thing about being a powerful witch, though, is that it doesn’t take long before people begin to plot your downfall.’
Dinah pulled the blanket up to her nose. The word ‘downfall’ made her think of her father’s voice downstairs—low and dangerous, like a cornered rabid dog.
‘Emelda had usurped the throne, taken no new husband, and had no heir. Her vassals accepted her reign only out of fear, but behind the scenes, they were making alliances to see her deposed.
When those plots became wars, however, Emelda won every battle. No army could stand against her. She’d simply burn them all to ashes or wash them away in a tidal wave. The last battle she had started and ended at the same moment, as she had the men running away screaming all the way home to their families. That tale spread far and wide, and no ruler could ever amass an army against her again.
She was invading the neighbouring kingdom of D’Orogra when she lost her temper after a lord there refused her offer of a parlay. She burned his entire city to the ground. As it happened, that lord was Harwyn Lonal, father of Derrin Lonal, the blue knight. Sir Derrin had been at a tourney in the kingdom of Chok, far to the east, where he had been finishing up his adventures with the Brotherhood of Niyo. When news reached him of the witch-queen’s invasion, he returned at once to D’Orogra. When he heard of his home’s destruction, and the death of his entire family—save his sister, who lived to the north with her husband, and would now be the only Lonal to carry the family bloodline forward—he rushed upon the queen.
Emelda had grown so arrogant that she didn’t bother to use an army. So she was vulnerable when Sir Derrin Lonal attacked her in the open, when she was having her morning bathe in the river on the way to her next city to sack. He bested her in combat—Axima, the sword of angels, was able to resist her magic. He stripped her of her armour and artefacts, destroying them all in a fire—all but one: her black onyx chest-piece, which he kept as proof of his victory, while she was forced to watch, wondering if she’d be thrown in next.
Instead, he only stared into the blaze, with all the foul magics of her ornaments oozing out in a sickly green plume. She caught him glancing at her every now and then though, looking back at the fallen queen, with no army, no crown, no power.
The king of D’Orogra honored the blue knight greatly for his success and his loss, and decreed that according to the law, the witch must be exiled, because killing a witch was said to be a bad omen. But no one was willing to volunteer to carry her off to the desolate lands of Horothan, and the king was reluctant to command anyone to either, so he said she should instead be killed the only way witches are known to be killed: by burning.
As the fire was lit and Emelda began to weep from the pain of the heat underneath her, something stirred in the knight’s heart. He looked at her sobbing face and saw, just for a moment, his sister. The only Lonal left. And so Sir Derrin Lonal took pity on the witch who murdered his family and burnt his home to the ground.
Extinguishing the flames, he volunteered to carry Emelda into exile in the lands of Horothan, stripped of her magics and forced to fend for herself in a desert wasteland.
She would likely only survive a few months, perhaps longer if she was resourceful. The king agreed, and the knight escorted his captive, chained hand and foot, into the Wyld Forests, where they journeyed north toward Hayden’s Hold.
Along the way, the pair were treated with contempt almost everywhere they went. Many people were angry at the knight for saving the witch from death and thought he’d been hexed by her to volunteer himself for such a task. For his part, Sir Derrin didn’t try to defend himself, didn’t try to explain that he was just trying to see the normal course of the law carried out.
Some said that was just the nature of the blue knight, that he was always humble and long-suffering and not easily provoked. Others said that his grief for his family and his home’s destruction at the witch’s hands had damaged his reasoning, that his spirit was broken, that he’d never be the same again. Yet others whispered that surely he must have some plot in mind for the witch, that perhaps he’d spared her from a fiery death only to see her suffer in some manner worse still.
But those whispers never gained much traction, because it was clear for all to see that Sir Derrin never treated Emelda badly, never raised his voice or his hand to her. She was always quiet, her shackled wrists resting in her lap and her head bowed. Some said she was always staring at her chains, perhaps trying to muster some spell to get them off, but others said she had the face of a broken woman, a face that would struggle to meet anyone’s eyes ever again.
Still, the knight always kept her close, never allowing her to remove her chains.
They travelled through open plains and dark, dense forests, barely exchanging a word. Sir Derrin would catch their food, while Emelda built them a fire to cook it over with her shackled hands as though she’d done it a thousand times. The knight watched her work and wondered what kind of life she’d lived before she was a queen. She never met his eyes. He told himself her humility was an act—but he’d seen that hollow look before, in the faces of dying men.
He noticed how she positioned herself at night—always with her back to a tree or rock, never in the open. He often thought how he would feel if all his strength and renown were stripped from him, and he was shackled and carried off into exile. In those moments he understood her, just for a fleeting moment.
He caught himself speaking to her once—asking if she wanted water—and stopped mid-word. She looked up. Their eyes met. He turned away. His anger returned and he thought of her crimes, of the cities she’d razed, of the lives she’d snuffed out, of his family …
‘Granny?’ Dinah said suddenly, ‘I bet Emelda was scared, wasn’t she?’
‘Scared?’ Granny said, chewing on the word for a moment. ‘Why, I suppose she might’ve been, my child. It’s always scary to go to a new place where you’ve never been before, and she knew the chances of her survival in the wilderness were practically none.’
‘But I mean, she was probably scared to sleep outside, wasn’t she? If someone bad came along in the night, she wouldn’t be able to fight back or run away in her chains, would she?’
Granny peered at Dinah ever-so-subtly from her chair, reaching over to place her wrinkled hand on Dinah’s little one. Granny’s hand trembled slightly as she squeezed.
‘Oh she needn’t be scared of that, after all, the blue knight was there with his Sword of the Angels to protect her should any danger fall on them. But you are a clever girl, aren’t you, poppin? Because, as it happens, they did come upon some danger during their long journey.’
‘As they travelled through the Valley of Omkoth, where the charcoal rocks towered on either side of the barren path like old walls of a forgotten citadel, they began to hear grunts and squeals echoing around them. The further they went, the more disquieting sounds they heard, and the pair found themselves uneasy and unable to rest.
As they were making camp one night, things came to a head. Ominous clouds gathered in the sky, drenching them with thick, lumpy rain. With no hope of building a fire, the knight and the witch huddled together for warmth with empty bellies. Then the screams started; baying cries like a pack of hyenas washed over them from the high walls of the valley on either side.
Sir Derrin rose to his feet quickly, his eyes straining to see through the rain and the dark. And then, quick as lightning, orcs came pouring down into the valley from the jagged rocks, spears brandished and squeals of hungry excitement lashing from their worm-like lips.
The knight met them with his sword like smoke meets fire. Emelda watched him dance, parrying perfectly to smash the monsters back from where they came. The valley flooded with screams and black blood. Then came the next wave—led by a troll with two heads and a giant, bloated body. His roar shook the ground as he came crashing down from the rocks, smashing his way forward with a silver club the size of a man.
Faster than she could see, Emelda felt the knight duck and roll towards her, and for a split second their eyes met as the troll charged towards them. He saw her eyes widen—not with hope, but with understanding. She knew what he was asking of her. She knew it might be the last thing either of them did.
Emelda saw the hesitation on Sir Derrin’s face—but also the desperation, the fear—and then she heard metal thud to the wet mud below her. Her chains were off. He thrust something into her trembling hands—her armoured chest-piece.
The black onyx hummed against her palms, warm and alive. Power crackled up her arms like frozen fire, making her veins glow a faint green beneath her skin. The air around her shimmered as a hissing sound pierced the air. But before she could think—before she could move, a flash of silver slammed down into both of them like a wave of solid water. The air went out of her lungs, and she scratched at the dirt desperately, trying to find herself again.
Beside her, the knight grunted as he staggered to his feet, spitting out a mouthful of blood before heaving his whole body into the thrust of his sword. He pierced the troll’s leg, but it barely seemed to notice, and now a pack of orcs were swarming him like flies.
Gasping, Emelda fell to her knees. The troll loomed above her, its great club raised above its two monstrous heads once again, preparing to drop it on her. She looked down at the piece of armour in her hands, let the magic flood her, felt it coiling like a spring inside of her as it burst from her skin in a stream of green liquid fire that lit up the valley brighter than the Sun.
When the light faded, only the rain remained, pummelling the ground amidst Sir Derrin’s panting, as ashes surrounded him in a circle where before there had been orcs. Bewildered, he looked for the troll, but saw only the handle of its club, nestled atop a heap of black soot.
His eyes moved to the witch, who was still kneeling on the ground, looking down at her hands, palms-up on her lap. She suddenly shook as though waking from a trance and let the chest-piece fall to the ground. She stared at it in the mud, that cursed thing that had given her everything and cost her more. She didn’t reach for it, but for the shackles strewn about her. The knight watched as she placed her ankles first inside the leg bonds, closing them delicately before moving onto binding her wrists.’
Dinah noticed Granny’s hand drifting absently to her wrist as she spoke, her fingers tracing the pale skin there, where faint marks showed in the lamplight. Dinah saw but said nothing—Granny often rubbed that spot when she told stories.
‘Lock them,’ Emelda said softly, though she kept her eyes on the chest-piece, slathered in mud on the ground. It was the first time she had spoken. The knight stared open-mouthed for a moment before coming to his senses. Reaching for the key in his pocket, he locked her chains once again, and wiped off the chest-piece before sliding it back into the folds of his robe. They both sat together in the rain, huddling once more for warmth.
‘Please,’ she said after some time in a weak voice, startling the Sir Derrin awake from his dazed sleep. ‘The armour. Hide it from me. I cannot rest knowing you have it.’
Sir Derrin looked at her for a long moment, rainwater streaming down his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She didn’t ask what for. He got up a few moments later to walk away into the dark of the valley. When he returned, Emelda was asleep. At first light, their journey resumed as before.
As they left the cursed valley and came out into the fresh light of day, something felt different for both of them.
The dirt path gave way to green grass, and soon farmland began to appear around them. They came the next day to Tyfaan, the furthest outpost of D’Orogra, and the last stop on their journey before they would enter Horothan, the desert wasteland where they were due to part ways.
The knight decided that they both deserved a break after the ordeal with the troll, so he checked them into the local inn for the night. Making sure Emelda’s irons stayed covered under her long, ragged robe, he sent her straight up to the room with orders not to come out or open the door for anyone.
But the blue knight himself was not so easily overlooked, and later that evening as he relaxed by the fireplace of the inn with his feet up and a flagon of ale in his hand, some young lad started hollering: ‘Aye! It’s Derrin bloody Lonal!’ and almost immediately the inn was in an uproar, with everyone crowding round the knight to ask him a flurry of questions:
‘Is it true you beat Sir Harry the Hound in single combat with only one strike of your sword?’
‘Did an angel really give you that thing?’
‘What happened to your family?’
‘Did you kill the witch who burned your home?’
‘I heard you tried to save her life!’
‘I heard you was carrying her off into exile—’
‘Ey! He came in ‘ere with a woman!’
From there, everything snowballed until Sir Derrin managed to slip away upstairs. ‘We’re leaving. Now,’ he said to Emelda as he came into the room. She only nodded and set to quickly gathering what scant supplies they had set down on the little table in the box room.
A knock came at the door, and the knight sighed. ‘It’s me,’ came the voice of the innkeeper, a surly, no-nonsense woman with straw-like hair and a large mole above her lip. He opened the door, just a crack. ‘We’re leaving, don’t worry,’ he said to her.
‘Nonsense!’ the innkeeper barked. ‘I came up to check you weren’t thinking of doing such a foolish thing.’
She peered past his shoulder at the witch, hunched over the table, her shackles scraping the wood as she packed their things.
‘She can’t do any … funny business with those chains on, right?’
The knight’s jaw tightened. He glanced back at Emelda, who hadn’t looked up from the table, then gave a single, stiff nod. The innkeeper sighed, stiffening as she put her hands on her hips. ‘If you leave now, you won’t make it out the town with … her. They’ll string her up, they will. It’s a bloody wonder you haven’t ya’self. You sure she hasn’t bloody hexed you or summat? Stay put for now. If there’s any trouble I can’t handle, you’ll have to jump out the window and see how far you can run with that big sword, hope for the best. But if not, stay put ‘till the wee hours, then hurry off to Horothan while the town’s asleep, alright?’
Derrin nodded once again. ‘Damn you for bringing this to my bloody inn!’ she snapped, and spun on her heel for the stairs.
‘It’s a trap,’ Emelda murmured softly from the corner, still not looking up at him. ‘She’s luring us to our deaths.’
‘You’re just paranoid,’ the knight tutted, then added a little more harshly than he meant: ‘You’ve been surrounded by enemies so long, you see them everywhere.’
‘You’re right,’ she said quietly. ‘It is what I would have done. Once.’
So they stayed in the room all evening, waiting for the night to settle.
Derrin woke choking on smoke. Heat pressed his face; the room was red noise. He couldn’t see Emelda—only her blanket, her cup, her chains scattered like snakes.
She was gone.
He couldn’t see the door. Couldn’t see the window. Couldn’t see Emelda. Only the chains—open.
The roar of the fire grew deafening as part of the ceiling collapsed behind him, showering sparks across the room. Strong hands seized him by the shoulders, dragging him backward. He tried to fight them off, tried to shout that he needed to find her, but his throat wouldn’t work anymore. Everything spun. The last thing he saw before darkness took him was the night sky, clear and full of stars, and the orange glow of flames.
When he woke, he was lying on damp grass with ash in his mouth. The inn was a charred ruin, smoke still rising from its blackened beams. Bodies lay covered in cloth nearby—the innkeeper among them. Derrin staggered to his feet, searching frantically for any sign of Emelda, but before he could take three steps, hands seized his arms—too many to count. Faces loomed close, their features distorted by fury and soot. Someone spat at his feet. A woman whose apron was singed black pointed a trembling finger at him.
‘You brought her here!’ she screamed, her voice breaking. ‘You brought the witch and she burned us all!’
They dragged him by his arms and legs, his sword belt stripped away, his boots scraping through ash and mud. They threw him out of Tyfaan by his limbs, hurling curses after him.
‘Anyway, my darling Dinah, that’s the end of the story,’ said Granny, shifting forward in her chair. Dinah blinked, half lost between the fading magic of the story and the soft ticking of the clock on her bedside table. The house had grown quiet, and the storm outside the window stilled. She was feeling sleepy, but couldn’t rest completely until she knew what had happened to the witch.
‘But it can’t be the end, Granny, we don’t know what happened to Emelda!’
‘Hush now, child, you’ll wake your parents,’ Granny shushed, her smile not reaching her eyes. She looked tired, as if she needed the story as much as Dinah did.
‘The blue knight is the one who passed this story on, poppin, and he always used to finish it by saying that he believed without a doubt that Emelda survived and went to Horothan to carry out her exile.’
‘Really?’ Dinah beamed, ‘but … how could he know? She might’ve died in the fire … why wouldn’t she have saved him?’
‘The townspeople never said anything to him about finding the witch’s body. He thought if they’d found her dead they would’ve been triumphant about it. But they said nothing. Their focus was on getting rid of him. They must have thought she’d already gone,’ explained Granny.
‘Maybe … ’ Dinah grumbled, stifling a yawn.
‘And as for not saving him … ’ Granny paused, ‘well, someone put him out on the grass.’
Dinah nodded. ‘But her chains …’
‘Maybe she had to take them off to escape the fire,’ Granny said quickly.
‘Okay … So she went to the desert and died there a few years later. But that’s still a rubbish ending!’
Granny chuckled. ‘Maybe. But not all stories end where you think they do. I never said she died there,’ she smirked, leaning in for a kiss on Dinah’s forehead. ‘Night, beautiful girl.’
Before Dinah could call after her, Granny was up and out of the room, and Dinah was left alone with racing thoughts of what could have happened to Emelda. She turned over in her bed, closing her eyes. Dinah wondered, not for the first time, why Granny never talked about when she was young. She only ever told stories about other people.
Downstairs, she thought she heard Granny’s voice and the creak of her chair, and then a faint hissing rose in her ears, like a kettle left too long on the stove. She turned toward the door—but the room was empty. Only the lamp hummed softly. Her fingers traced circles on Mr. Huggins’ worn fabric. She held her breath, listening. The sound faded—or perhaps it had never been there at all. Just the house settling. Just her imagination.
She pulled the covers up to her chin and squeezed her eyes shut, but behind her eyelids she could still see flames dancing, and a woman in chains choosing to lock them herself.
Outside, thunder rumbled once more—but this time it sounded almost like laughter, low and far away.