[ REGRET ]

She stood on the raised dais: tall, shoulders back, chin high, spine straight. She stood proudly, her raven hair a stark contrast to her fair skin, so pale it might have been white - but she was a Queen of Astapyre, and the magic of the crown changed them. Her queer eyes, one green one gold and both shot through with flecks of silver, were fixed on the young knight knelt before her. Those, too, were warped by the magic of the land that bound the Queens to the rocks and rivers and trees of Astapyre.

"And you understand your crime?" she demanded, imperious and cold, the silver crown that rested on her brow weighing more heavily than usual today.

"I do, my queen," her knight, her errant knight replied.

The blood of Astapyre and her nobles had to be kept pure - it was the only way. The Crown chose its rulers from those with the pure blood of the ancient, royal Astapyrian house, though now the descendants of that House had split into many. Their blood - the Blood of the Houses still ran pure though. Putting the Blood at risk of taint was punishable by death.

Queen Alyarne's knight knew that; to claim he didn't would have been a blatant lie.

"Then for the crime of lying with a girl not of the Blood-" a foreign girl, too, not even one of Astapyre "you are sentenced to death on the morn, by the hand of the queen."

The Queens of Astapyre always executed their own -- that, too, was a condition of the Crown. To Rule, were the royal words of the queen. "To rule," Alyarne whispered to herself; this was the price of keeping Astapyre thriving in a world where kingdoms rose and fell in the blink of an eye.

Not Astapyre, though. Because the queens ruled.

To rule.

The next morning was a grey one, a heavy fog settling on Astamoor, the capitol port city of Astapyre. There were no smallfolk gathered - just those of the Blood, and even then only the lords of their Houses and a few others had come. The deaths of their kin, however distant they were now, was not a celebration. It was not a spectacle, like the bear pits of the savage northern kingdoms, or the the public beheadings of the Kalispan Isles.

It was a tragedy that had to be witnessed, and even the weather seemed to understand.

Queen Alyarne wore white, the white of birth and marriage and death. Her king-consort stood in the forefront of the crowd, somber and silent in the crimson of mourning, with the thin silver circlet of his rank pressing into his brow. He looked as weighed down as Alyarne felt, the poor man. Alyarne had married Ket'ir before Queen Lerian had passed and before the Crown had chosen her to rule; she knew her husband, and knew he may not have wed her if she had come seeking with a crown on her head.

To rule. An honor, and a curse.

"Today, my lords," Queen Alyarne announced, her voice muffled slightly by the fog but still clear. Her hair was tied back in a braid. Her slender fingers gripped a knife made entirely of bone, from hilt to the tip of its thirteen-inch long blade. "Is a tragic day. For the crime of tainting the Blood, Sir Tyril, heir to House Ermadel must die. The Blood must be kept pure, for Astapyre. It must be kept pure, to rule. Sir Tyril."

The knight was knelt before her in ivory armor, the Ivory Rose of House Ermadel on his breast. His head was bowed so low his forehead touched his knee but at her command he rose to his feet and stepped up to meet her.

Alyarne moved as if to embrace him. He stood a full head taller than her. His warm brown eyes were fixed on that knife; his blonde hair had been cut the night before, and the short beard he'd worn had been shaved.

It was a pity, that she had to execute him. She felt pity - no, more than that. She felt regret, and grief, but the Crown had chosen her to rule.

"Sir Tyril," she whispered, one arm around his neck as she held him close in an embrace. They knelt together.

"My queen," Tyril replied dutifully. His voice was hoarse, and the arms that circled Queen Alyarne's waist shook.

With her other hand, the queen put the bone knife to her knight's throat, pressed deep and pulled.

Her kneeling knight slumped into her arms as Alyarne's dress turned crimson with his life. "May your soul fly swiftly to the halls of the gods, my son," Queen Alyarne said, voice a broken whisper.

She was the one-thousand and fifty-eighth Queen of Astapyre chosen To Rule, and far from the first to taste the bitterness of regret.