Chapter 84. Feeling used.

The next morning.

"Everly! Time for breakfast!" said the cheerful voice of Everly's annoying duplicate, Beverly.

Everly groaned miserably at being forcefully awakened. "Go away! I don't want anything, just let me sleep!" she replied from beneath the comforting darkness of her blankets.

After returning to the memory palace, Everly had applied emergency treatment to Matty, and managed to heal the wounds he'd received from Kestrel. Despite her recent mastery of light magic, it had been a surprisingly difficult undertaking, and afterwards, she wanted nothing more than to pass out on her bed.

Everly's memory palace had begun its existence as a mere mental construct that she used to keep the fighting skills that she'd developed in her previous life sharpened. Over time, as she began to develop her considerable psionic abilities thanks to her bond with her spirit elemental, Eris, the memory palace grew with her as she aged and gradually became more substantive, until it finally began to manifest itself as an actual location in the astral realm. As her personal demesne, Everly's control over the palace was absolute. Anything she envisioned within its walls became real and nothing could exist within it without her permission. It was the ultimate fortress from which to conduct her war of conquest against the outside world.

On the days when she felt like doing it, anyway.

Today, however, Everly wanted to lay in bed and sulk at the unfairness of life. Her grand plans for the near future had been kiboshed due to those meddling assassins and now the moment she'd been waiting months for would never come to pass. It just wasn't fair! Why was fate singling her out? Surely, Everly was the unluckiest girl in the world.

Everly's grip tightened on her sheets as she remembered the contemptuous look of superiority that Lady Kestrel had shot at her as she and her surviving crony made their escape. Everly knew that look well; it was one that she herself practiced in the mirror all the time. It essentially said, later loser.

"Everly! You know if you keep focusing on what happened, those intrusive thoughts are going to start popping up again," Bev said as she opened Everly's door and stepped inside while holding a tray stacked with French toast, honey, syrup, and a glass of cold milk. "Who cares if some bug took a swipe at you? You'll get around to paying her back later."

"She hurt my rat," Everly fumed. "I like my rat. It was so uncalled for."

"Uh, she killed the guy you wanted to marry too, didn't she?" Bev asked her.

"Yeah, she also did that," Everly said with a glower as she sat up. "Thanks for reminding me. She clearly doesn't know who she's messing with."

"Ev, I know you hate it when I ask questions—" Bev began to say.

"It just really annoys me whenever you show curiosity about things," Everly said darkly.

--"But why did you want to marry Septus, anyway?" finished Bev. "I know you said it was to get the commoners behind you, but that doesn't really sound like something you'd care about."

Everly sighed, knowing that Bev wouldn't stop bugging her until she answered the question.

"Okay, fine! If you must know, I had a sudden burst of inspiration out at Haverlock, when those insurrectionists were shouting our lives for the king! You remember those guys?"

"Oh, yeah," Bev nodded as she set up Everly's tray. "Those guys were fearless! And then you and Grail charged in and chopped them up to silly bits, that was pretty funny."

"Yeah, it was," Everly agreed as she took a bite of her breakfast. She growled happily to herself, pleased that she'd decided to eat, after all.

"But when we were done, I started thinking, how am I going to keep these assholes tamed? It was really going to take a shock to the system to make them behave. I couldn't just kill Septus; that would inspire more disobedience for years to come. Or rather, I had to kill him in a way that would break their will to keep resisting. Like during a moment when they thought they finally achieved victory."

"And then it occurred to me," Everly said with a dreamy smile now slowly growing on her face. "The perfect solution! A man, a woman, the union of two feuding houses, the jubilant cheers of the crowd just before they turned into screams of horror! I was going to—"

"Oh, I know this! I know this!" Bev cut in excitedly. "You were going to red wedding him!"

"Okay, first thing, Bev: Don't ever interrupt me,I find it aggravating. And second: Don't use the term red wedding as a verb, that's even more annoying. Besides, out of respect for how litigious that author is about defending his copyright, we should instead call it the dead wedding. I'm a necromancer, after all."

"But that's what you were going to do, right?" Bev insisted as she jumped onto the bed to lay beside Everly. "You were going to marry him and then bury him, right? Alongside any other potential enemies? That sounds awesome!"

"Tch, you know nothing, Beverly Skolder," Everly smirked.

Still, she remained upset over how things had gone. It had been such a beautiful plan! The dead wedding had been a cultural event that had shocked millions of people worldwide back on Earth, and that had been over a mere television show! Who knows how well it would have been received if she'd gotten to do it in real life?

"I'm so mad those jerks stole that moment from me," she muttered.

"Oh, don't be like that, Evie," Bev said brightly. "The royal court has already accused you of killing Septus, so in a way, you're still getting the heat you wanted."

Upon hearing those words, Everly leapt from her bed and hurled her tray of food against a wall. "They're blaming me for this?" she shouted in outrage. "I was the one who came in peace! I wasn't going to kill him until after the nuptials, and five minutes of fun in a dark closet!"

"Just five minutes?" asked Bev. "Everly, he was toothsome."

"Okay, maybe ten minutes," Everly said after giving it some thought. "He really did have that whole Shawn Michaels as a greasy libertine vibe going on."

"Shawn Michaels is one sexy boy!" Bev said enthusiastically.

"Yeah, he's also proof positive that evil is more powerful than good," agreed Everly. "I mean, compared to him, Brett Hart is looking rough.

"Hey! Show some respect for the hitman, life has been hard on him," Bev said rebukingly. She then kissed her fingertip before pointing it toward the ceiling and saying, "We still miss you, Owen."

"All hail the king of Harts," Everly said reverently.

The two of them then shared a moment of silence before continuing.

"So, what are you going to do about getting framed for regicide?" Bev asked her.

"Well, what am I supposed to do?" Everly said as she sank back onto the bed. "It enhances my reputation somewhat, so it's not like I'm going to deny having done it. At the same time, I don't like being used in the machinations of someone else. It pisses me off."

Bev pulled a brush out of her pocket and tapped her lap. Everly then placed her head onto it and visibly relaxed as her duplicate began running the brush through her long hair.

"Obviously, you can't just let them get away with it," Bev said as she worked.

"Obviously!" Everly said. "If I let some random losers get the idea that they can manipulate the empress of all people, then the problems will never end. Clearly, I'm going to have to kill them all."

"Not all of them," Bev said. "Their leader, Kestrel. She has something you want."

"That sword," Everly said hungrily. "Bev, I don't know what came over me, but as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it. I felt…I felt like the universe was doing me a disservice the longer it was in her hands instead of mine. I was getting so angry that she didn't just hand it over to me on the spot. God, just thinking about it makes me want it even more…"

"Yeah, I think I'm feeling sympathetic pangs of greed," Bev said as she continued to brush away. "But can you really take it? All the legends about the holy sword say it's for good people only."

Everly stopped to look at her burned palm. "That makes absolutely no sense," she said.

"Why do you say that?" Bev wondered.

"Remember what Anne told me during our first fight? She claimed she was the original maiden of the holy sword. Do you expect me to believe that some mass-murdering vampire has better character qualifications for holding that sword than me?"

"The way you said that felt a little racist against vampires," Bev said reluctantly.

"It's fine. They're socially acceptable targets," Everly assured her.

Now Bev began pulling Everly's hair back into three thick long bundles, which she then began carefully twisting overhand into an impressive French braid. She studied the results carefully as she worked, clicking her tongue against her teeth as her fingers deftly moved throughout Everly's locks.

"Matty's going to want to go with you," Bev said after she was finally satisfied with her efforts. "He's going to want revenge after getting humbled in front of you so badly."

"No, Matty's off this one," Everly said sadly. "He's back to overseeing the rat room for now. I love that little guy, but he did technically fail me, and you know, failure has its rewards and all. Can't go soft on him just because I love rubbing his round belly."

"Everly," Bev said in exasperation. "You already know Carter's gonna flip his gobbie wig if you insist on handling this alone. Don't you remember the lecture he gave you after you came back from killing Anne?"

"Hey! Carter's not the one running this show, okay?" Everly said defensively.

"No, he's just the one who keeps the troops organized, handles the administrative duties of your burgeoning empire, and makes sure the trash gets picked up on time," chided Bev. "He also does the cooking."

"Damn it, he's an excellent cook," Everly was forced to admit.

"You have to bring someone with you," Bev insisted.

"Bah! Fine," Everly scowled. "Uh, do you want to do it?"

"Hell, no," Bev said firmly. "It's scary out there. I'm staying right here."

"Didn't I tell you to get a job or else?" Everly asked her.

"Yeah, but you say a lot of things," Bev said indifferently.

"You're lucky you're a living personification of my twisted personality and that I'm too narcissistic to harm you. Otherwise, I would totally smite you for your arrogant flippancy," Everly said to her.

"There's worse things to be in life than a house pet," Bev smirked. "Um, speaking of which, are you going to talk to her today?"

"Talk to who?" Everly asked, although she knew very well who Bev meant.

"Are you going to talk to Fenn?" Bev insisted on asking. "It's been two weeks."

"Well, is she being cool? Is she being reasonable?" asked Everly.

"Ev, at some point, maybe you just need to realize that what you want isn't necessarily what she wants," Bev said delicately.

"And that's complete bullshit," Everly cut in. "What I want should be exactly what she wants as well! She's really not doing this relationship any favors by insisting on having free will. I wish she'd take us more seriously!"

"Everly, that might be the most psychotic thing I've heard you say in a while," said Bev. "What's she even guilty of? You're the one trying to give her Stockholm syndrome."

"It's going to work, too," Everly insisted. "It's like baking a cake. You just need to let the oven do its job."

"Is she even worth the effort you're putting in?" Bev asked. "It feels to me like you're less interested in protecting her like you say, than you are in breaking her spirit. It's weird vibes, Ev. I don't want to say people are gossiping, but yeah, they're really gossiping."

"Tch, like I care," Everly sniffed. "Fenn needs me. She can't do anything on her own and it's time she realized it. We were summoned to this world to reign over it together. Both of us! But until she admits it and can see that my way is best, she'll only head into another disaster. That's just who she is."

"Well, technically, the only disaster she's run into so far, has been you, hasn't it?" Bev grinned.

"Hey, shut-in! I have my limits," Everly warned her.

"Right, right," Bev nodded, while still wearing an impertinent smile.

Everly turned away from her duplicate to avoid being provoked into making an angry remark. When had Bev become such a little troll? Or maybe she'd always been that way and Everly was just now noticing. It was hard to tell.

"So, are you going to go after the eastern temple?" Bev asked after she picked up Everly's tray and its scattered dishes.

"Obviously," Everly replied. "Disguised or not, who else can just teleport their people into a king's throne room at will? That had to be the work of their sending choir."

"That also jives with their leader being a holy warrior," Bev said thoughtfully. "Maybe they found a way to steal the sword from the western temple?"

Everly nodded. "Exactly. They're finally making their move against me. Pride must have gotten around to telling them about our secret invasion."

"Does that mean the choir of seers has betrayed you?" Bev wondered. "I mean, didn't you make a deal with them?"

"I think so?" Everly said as Bev helped her get dressed. "Honestly, the specifics of how they were meant to honor our arrangement are sort of lost on me. Were they supposed to give me a warning if their temple moved against me? Or were they supposed to stay out of it? It's confusing because we've never actually met."

"All I remember is, no spoilers being a thing," said Bev.

"Whatever. I can just loosely interpret our deal in any way that seems favorable to me," Everly said indifferently.

"That doesn't seem fair in the slightest," Bev said.

"Right? I consider it my first successful devil's bargain," Everly said proudly.

"You're still going to need backup," Bev said. "For Carter's sake."

"I said I know already," Everly grimaced. "Titania and Eris are still hibernating, Carter's doing all the paperwork, Grail is about to begin the campaign against Oldstead, you're a useless parasite, and Matty's on the mend. Who does that leave me with?"

"Everly, you know exactly who that leaves you with," Bev said.

"Oh, God, I don't want to. It'll be weird," Everly whined.

"I never liked that cow to begin with, but she never got a chance to do anything," Bev said. "Show her a little empathy! She used to be one of us."

"You and Nev were nowhere near as disappointing as that waste of space," Everly snorted. "Whenever I look at her, all I see are my past mistakes."

"Pencils have erasers for a reason," Bev insisted.

"Ugh, I just can't argue with that face!" Everly said. "Fine, Ghost Knight can be my bodyguard. It's such a simple duty that even she can't foul it up."

Suddenly Bev's arms wrapped around Everly's torso and gave her a hard squeeze. Then Bev propped her chin on Everly's shoulder and said, "I'm proud of you."

"Oh, shut up," Everly said as she began to blush.

"I'm serious," Bev said. "I'm not gonna say you're not as bad as everyone says you are, because you're obviously so much worse, but for some reason, I still feel proud of you."

"Whatever," Everly said.

But she did enjoy the hug.