Queen Andromeda's steady speed of flight represented well how determined she was. Finding Joseph MacRae no longer by his father's side could mean only one thing.

Her ex-husband was about to surrender.

It was hard to believe, after so many years, the end was so palpably near.

Andromeda touched down in the entrance hall and glided down the chapel's center aisle one dramatic step at a time. She was the bride, and her ceremony of choice would be fit for the queen she was and could now be. 

It's an occasion for the memory books . . . and the newspapers and periodicals. . . and the history texts. It will be glorified in works of fiction as well. . . .

The pews were littered with debris—what was once sacred writ and personal items—and the dead—some burnt beyond recognition, some not. Few of her soldiers were among them. They were alive, but weren't entirely present, however. Not anymore. Most of them had dispersed throughout the palace and city, but there was a busy cluster by the altar, a proud Gray Coat and Crown Champion blend.

And they took their work seriously. There were beads of sweat running down their faces as they pulverized flesh and bone with the blunt ends of their weapons.

When Andromeda hovered in their midst, they moved aside to expose the spoils of their most thrilling conquest to date. Stripped of everything, including the shirt on his back, the bound, bloody, and listless "Scott MacRae," Prince Rigel Kincaid, the King of the Unworthy, had already endured pain and humiliation beyond what was customary for an execution.

Andromeda held up her hand and thumped the end of her scepter on the ground. They obeyed the gesture to halt.

Scott MacRae's cognizance appeared to be vacillating between worlds—the living and the dead—but his head lifted long enough for him to catch a glimpse of his beautiful bride.

He twitched. His head and eyelids fell. She had every intention to prolong his suffering, heighten it, make it personal. And he knew it.

"Leave us," Andromeda commanded, striding closer.

There was a rumble of footsteps, the buzz of wings. The door of the chapel clapped shut when the last of her soldiers left the building. When the echo tapered off, Scott's eyes fluttered open.

He flinched at the sight of her face. She was now close enough to administer a kiss of death.

"This is the end for you, Kincaid." Her voice was soft like a purr. It was misleadingly seductive, the way she intended.

"So it may seem. Your father. My life. You win," he complied softly . . . humbly. "Now leave my family alone!" he screamed with a strength she was surprised he still had. Even so, his voice faded to nonexistence, devoured almost instantly by the cavernous halls.

Andromeda stood tall and took a step away from the stench of his existence. "I owe you nothing and that's what you'll get!" she hissed through clenched teeth. 

Scott was too weak to put up a fight. It was equally pointless to beg for his children's mercy. He had to know that too.

"Christopher. . ." she began again in a mockingly pleasant tone, "didn't come to his only brother's wedding. There's something not right about that."

Scott's head dropped and went still after a few bounces. He slipped away from her for a moment.

"Where is that regicidal degenerate?"

At his failure to respond, she kicked him in the groin. He came to and cried out with his voice and eyes too. "I have questions of my own," he wailed once he got his sniveling under control. "Whatever happened to our child? Did you kill it, too, just like everyone else who's failed you?"

She snickered, but her amusement receded as fast as it came on. "I'm not the only killer in the room, you self-righteous fool!"

"Your father was an accident!" Scott insisted. "But I feel not a shred of remorse!"

Andromeda's temper flared. Her scepter erupted with liquid fire. She shot at her ex-husband the same poison that he once cast into her face, scarring her for life.

It sizzled into his exposed skin. He wailed and squirmed on the stone floor, trying to soothe the blistering welts.

"You think that burns?" she howled with both pleasure and fury.

Andromeda's scepter called forth the chapel's wooden benches. They crashed into a pile. And she lit an inferno that would make even a demon shy away.

Then she used her magic to levitate Scott above it. "Now tell me . . . where is your son!"

"Never!"

Andromeda dipped him into the flames and flung him back in the air. "I could do this all day. Keep you alive but in agony. This is your final chance!"

She allowed him to crash at her feet. His skin was black. His pants were on fire. "No, it's yours. Leave him alone, or I'll find a way to make you suffer. But what difference would it make?" he coughed out with breath that had to be borrowed from some sympathetic god. "Your life is already a living hell. How could it possibly get any worse, you miserable shrew?"

With magic that was cresting alongside her unrivaled contempt, Andromeda blasted Scott back into the fire. She continued the up-and-down torture. Every descent into the flames was deeper and longer than the time prior.

Once she realized she was toying with a corpse, she let it fall into the periphery of the flames. And she watched—first skin, then blood, then muscle, and finally bone. Within a matter of minutes, Scott MacRae was reduced to ash.

Andromeda had been yearning for this day for most of her life. The King of the Unworthy was finally dead! But as the flames danced in exultation before her eyes, Andromeda was less than pleased. She expected to feel something.

Relief, joy, solace, closure?

She felt nothing, though. Empty. She assumed it was because her quest for vengeance was not yet complete. Scott's mirror-image, king-killing son was still out there. He was the next chapter and the newly crowned King of the Unworthy.

"Your Majesty?"

There was a long silence.

"Yeeessss," she finally droned without removing her wide, unblinking gaze from the flames.

General Crux Chevalier swooped in and landed beside her. "We have vanquished the uprisings. And the Aerial Palace is prepped for your homecoming."

"Very well. . ." she replied without inflection. "And my daughter? Surely, she never learned how to disappear into thin air!"

He snarled like a beast at her nerve to have the means to evade him. Like his predecessor, Gustave Cygnus IV, Crux was obsessed with Cassiopeia too, and always had been, but she would never accuse a Chevalier of being too soft.

For being wingless and weak as the day is long, there was something about that girl that drove them all wild, even her half-brother, who died as a result. That something was beyond Andromeda's ability or desire to comprehend.

Goals. At least Crux Chevalier had one, and it would keep him on the hunt and under Andromeda's absolute control for as long as Cassiopeia's flesh was still corporeal.

"I regret to inform you," he ground out, once he calmed himself enough to speak with some civility, "that an alleged Gray Coat killed his commanding officer and fled with the princess. We never found her or identified the imposter."

Christopher. . .

"They're together," Andromeda suggested. It's all starting to make sense. . . .

"Who is?"

"Christopher MacRae and Cassiopeia. Find the rat's nest where they're hiding. That appalling Aurora Borealis is as good a guess as any. Burn it to the ground and kill Christopher MacRae by any means necessary. Bring me his head and his sword. And escort Cassiopeia here, alive." Andromeda's plunging mood brightened when she thought of the various ways she could punish her daughter. It could be, would be, just like old times, and those were the good old days. "Once I've had my fill, she's all yours."

His snake-like tongue flicked out of his mouth as it contorted into what she recognized as a smile. "Yes, your Majesty. Thank you. You are exceedingly generous."

Crux launched himself into flight and flew at top speed from the chapel. Andromeda took a moment to internalize the death and destruction with a deep breath, and left it all behind as well. It is not over. There are other battles to be won. . . .

Outside, her general had their most experienced Crown Champions in a line.

As she hovered past, on her way to a hot bath and perhaps a spot of sleep in her own bed, Crux was describing their next mission. He stressed the importance of success and the consequence of failure.

"I have the highest confidence in you," he continued. "Victory is imminent. You will be the leaders, the heroes, the legends of a new Pyxis!"

They cheered for their general and their queen.

General Chevalier then ended his address: "Gather the beasts of fire. . . ."

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