Epilogue

The board was already set when Emma arrived.

She didn't remember anyone setting it. She was fairly certain no one had announced a game, and she definitely hadn't been invited, which normally would have offended her except that she'd brought cookies and was therefore already winning at something.

The Queen sat on the near side. Very still. The kind of still that looked like calm but was actually calculation — the difference between a lake at rest and a lake that was frozen, and if you knew the Queen at all, you knew which one this was.

Emma sat down across from her, then realized that was wrong, and moved to sit beside her instead.

She studied the board for a long time. Longer than she'd ever studied anything that wasn't a snack or a suspicion. The pieces were mid-game — not the beginning, not the end, but the part in the middle where everything looks like a mess unless you know what you're looking at.

Emma did not know what she was looking at.

Across the board, the other chair was occupied by its absence. No one sat there. But the pieces on that side were still moving. Emma was sure of it. She'd looked away for a second and something had shifted, and when she looked back, she couldn't prove it, but she knew.

"I don't understand the rules," Emma said.

The Queen did not look up.

She was watching the board the way she watched everything — not the pieces, but the spaces between them. Not the moves, but the weight of the moves. Where the board bent. Where it breathed. Where it was about to break.

"Watch," the Queen said.

A long breath. The kind that holds a door open.

"They'll show you."

Somewhere else, in another room, Velin looked up and smiled. He could swear he just heard a drumbeat.

Bunny's margin note, in petty blue ink: She already ended the game and you're just beginning.