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worse. It would have been easier, she realized, if
her entire face had been disfigured—then she could remember nothing of her
former looks.
    Volusia recalled
her stunning good looks, the root of her power, which had carried her through
every event in life, which had allowed her to manipulate men and women alike,
to bring men to their knees with a single glance. Now, all that was gone. Now,
she was just another seventeen-year-old girl—and worse, half-monster. She could
not stand the sight of her own face.
    In a burst of
rage and desperation, Volusia flung the looking glass down and watched as it
smashed to pieces on the pristine streets of the capital. All of her advisors
stood there, silent, looking away, all knowing better than to talk to her at
this moment. It was also clear to her, as she surveyed their faces, that none
of them wanted to look at her, to see the horror that was now her face.
    Volusia looked
around for the Volks, eager to tear them apart—but they were already gone,
having disappeared as soon as they had cast that awful spell on her. She’d been
warned not to join forces with them, and now she realized all the warnings had
been right. She had paid the price dearly for it. A price that could never be
turned back.
    Volusia wanted
to let her rage out on someone, and her eyes fell on Brin, her new commander, a
statuesque warrior just a few years older than her, who had been courting her
for moons. Young, tall, muscular, he had stunning good looks and had lusted
after her the entire time she had known him. Yet now, to her fury, he would not
even meet her gaze.
    “You,” Volusia
hissed at him, barely able to contain herself. “Will you now not even look at
me?”
    Volusia flushed
as he looked up but would not meet her eyes. This was her destiny now, for the
rest of her life, she knew, to be viewed as a freak.
    “Am I disgusting
to you now?” she asked, her voice breaking in desperation.
    He hung his head
low, but did not respond.
    “Very well,” she
said finally, after a long silence, determined to exact vengeance on someone,
“then I command you: you will gaze at the face which you hate the most.
You will prove to me that I am beautiful. You will sleep with me.”
    The commander
looked up and met her eyes for the first time, fear and horror in his
expression.
    “Goddess?” he
asked, his voice cracking, terrified, knowing he would face death if he defied
her command.
    Volusia smiled
wide, happy for the first time, realizing that would be the perfect revenge: to
sleep with the man who found her most loathsome.
    “After you,” she
said, stepping aside and gesturing toward her chamber.
    *
    Volusia stood
before the tall arched, open-air window on the top floor of the palace of the
Empire capital, and as the early morning suns rose, the drapes billowing in her
face, she cried quietly. She could feel her teardrops trickling down the good
side of her face but not the other, the side melted away. It was numb.
    A light snoring
punctuated the air, and Volusia glanced over her shoulder to see Brin lying
there, still asleep, his face bunched up in an expression of disgust, even in
sleep. He had hated every moment he had lain with her, she knew, and that had
brought her some small revenge. Yet still she did not feel satisfied. She could
not let it out on the Volks, and she still felt a need for vengeance.
    It was a weak
bit of vengeance, hardly the one she craved. The Volks, after all, had
disappeared, while here she was, the next morning, still alive, still stuck
with herself, as she would have to be for the rest of her life. Stuck with
these looks, this disfigured face, which even she could not bear.
    Volusia wiped
back the tears and looked out, beyond the city line, beyond the capital walls,
deep on the horizon. As the suns rose, she began to see the faintest trace of
the armies of the Knights of the Seven, their black banners lining the horizon.
They were camped out there, and their armies were mounting.