"That was all I'd gotten to in the book," Paul finished, his voice hollow in the vast silence.

Catrina pulled the silk dress tighter around herself, a futile gesture against the encroaching dread. "Is there anything else? Do you remember any towns? Any armies that opposed the sorcerer? A place we could go for help?"

Paul's face scrunched in concentration. "There was a map... a little one drawn on a page. From what I can remember, there's a city to the northwest, away from the river. It was a fortress city, I think. Maybe... maybe there's still someone there. Help, or at least food."

The conversation lulled, the fire crackling between them. The unspoken horrors of the last few days hung in the air. Catrina was reluctant to broach the subject of the soldier, but Paul seemed to read her mind.

"I keep thinking about it," he said, his voice low. "About him... hurting you. Seeing you like that." He looked at his hands. "It made something inside me just... break. And then, when I killed him... I thought I'd feel sick forever. But the part of me that saw him on you... that part doesn't regret it."

Tears welled in Catrina's eyes. "Oh, Paul, I am so sorry you had to see that. It wasn't right. No son should ever see his mother that way." She reached out and touched his arm. "I am so proud of you for saving me. I love you so much. You've been so strong."

Her words opened a floodgate. "I wasn't strong," he scoffed. "I dropped out of college. Dad was so disappointed. He just looked at me like I was a failure."

"He's always been disappointed in anything that wasn't his own way," Catrina said, a bitter edge to her voice. "He's all but abandoned us to that house. Do you know how lonely I've been? And then you came home, and I didn't know how to talk to you. I was so proud of the man you were becoming, and then I felt like I was losing you again."

"I know," Paul said softly. "It was weird being back. I just... I don't know what I'm doing. With girls, with anything." He looked into the fire, his cheeks flushing. "I've never even... I mean, Kylie and Melody... that was just... fooling around. I've never actually... you know." He let the sentence hang, the accidental confession hanging in the air.

Catrina's breath hitched. She was shocked, but she fought to keep her face neutral, to offer him the comfort he needed. "That's nothing to be ashamed of, Paul. It's special when you find someone you really love." She smiled faintly, a sad, distant look in her eyes. "My first time was with your father. We were so young. It felt like the world was ours." She looked at him, her expression softening. "It will be special for you, too, when you find the right person."

All the while Paul's eyes drifted, tracing the form of his mother. He luxuriated in the sight of her matronly hips, the way the silk clung to them. She shared his facial features, the same curly brown hair, though hers was streaked with distinguished gray. She had the same ice-blue eyes he did, the very eyes she had given him. And now, those same eyes were slowly, languidly tracing their way up and down her body. She felt it, a physical caress, and a warmth bloomed in her belly, spreading downwards. Those unwanted sensations returned. Her nipples hardened, poking through the thin silk, and she saw his eyes linger there, his gaze darkening.

Their conversation shifted, drifting into the dangerous territory of her own loneliness. "A woman has... needs," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "Things she can't find in a marriage that's become a business arrangement. It's been so long since I've felt... desired."

They had drawn closer without realizing it. Her breath was warm on his cheek, his arm was around her shoulder. Her eyes were boring into his, past the surface and into his soul. He leaned in and kissed her cheek, his lips landing too close to the corner of her mouth. She responded by kissing his cheek back, her own lips brushing against his, catching a part of his lower lip.

They froze, staring at each other, stunned. The air crackled. They inched closer, their breaths mingling in the space between them, a warm, intimate cloud. Her mouth was open, as was his, as if to catch the words from each other's lips. The world shrank to the inches that separated them, a chasm they were terrifyingly close to crossing.

Then, as if a switch had been flipped, Catrina flinched back. The shock of what was happening hit her like a physical blow. "No," she breathed, shaking her head. "We can't."

Paul recoiled as if he'd been burned, the spell broken. "You're right. I'm... I'm sorry."

"We should..." she stammered, scrambling to her feet and putting distance between them. "We should find separate rooms to sleep in. In the royal chambers. There are plenty."

He just nodded, unable to speak, his heart hammering against his ribs. They retreated into the labyrinthine, silent rooms of the dead king's palace, each finding a cold, empty chamber to be alone with their thoughts.

Her eyes were drawn to a large, lifelike painting of the room's owner. The woman's face and eyes were beautiful, if not a bit alien... human-like, but more. Something queer in the elegant length of her nose, the delicate points of her ears and eyebrows. The effect made her surprisingly more regal. Catrina, by comparison, felt frumpy and dumpy. She was just a 38-year-old mother, stuck in a dead-end job with a husband that hadn't loved her since Obama was president. She instinctively pulled the velvet gown tighter, trying to hide her curvy form from... who? There was no one here but her.

Her mind went back to the moment in the throne room with Paul. The heat of his body, the scent of his sweat. How could she have let herself get that far? Was she that lonely? Was she such a wicked, lonely person to let herself almost... with her son... almost what? What was she really about to do? Had she lost her mind when they were sucked through that rift in her son's room?

Her eyes fell upon a gleaming book wrapped in gold and leather, laying on a beautiful ebony table. She lit a torch next to it, the flame casting dancing, writhing shadows, and sat in an amazingly comfortable chair, opening the cover. The letters were strange, like some kind of cuneiform, but she could read it as if it were her native tongue. It was a diary! The diary of the former queen. Mother to the Dragon Queen and... it can't be! she couldn't be reading this right... mother to the current queen and grandmother to the king! That would mean that her daughter married her own... wait, she couldn't finish the thought. She closed the book and walked hurriedly away from it to the large, comfortable bed. She lay down, looking up at a magnificent painting of a dragon on the ceiling.

The Mother of the queen and grandmother of the king? she thought about the awkward moment she'd shared with Paul, the long, hungry glances he had made to her naked body throughout their travel through the forest, the awkward... almost what? Almost kiss in the throne room. Her eyes went back to the diary. She couldn't help herself. She got up, grabbed the book from the table, and laid with it on the former queen's bed. She cracked it open and began to read the queen's own words.

The 12th day of the Sun's Height. The Great Hall stank of spilled wine, roasting meat, and the hot, metallic scent of a hundred sweating bodies. But beneath it all was the scent of power, a thick, cloying perfume that made my head swim. I watched my daughter, my beautiful Shatanna, take my grandson, her son, as her husband and King. They stood before the Altar of the Flame, and the firelight licked at their skin, painting them in gold and shadow. Her hand, which once held his as a babe, his tiny fingers wrapped around her thumb, now held his as his consort, their fingers interlaced, a knot of flesh and bone. When he leaned in to kiss her, it was not the chaste peck of ceremony. It was a slow, possessive devouring. I saw his jaw work, saw the muscles in his throat tighten as he claimed her, his mouth, which had once suckled at her breast, now crushing her lips with the authority of a king and the raw, aching hunger of a lover. I saw his tongue delve, saw her shudder against him, her body melting into his, and the pride that surged in me was a terrifying, magnificent thing. It was a feeling so pure and potent it felt like a sin. In him, I see my son, my husband, and now my great-grandson all at once. Our line is a serpent eating its own tail, eternal and pure, and today, I watched it swallow itself whole.

Catrina's stomach churned, a sour, hot taste rising in her throat. She flipped the pages back, her fingers trembling, to an earlier entry, the ink faded with age.

The 3rd cycle of the Healing Sun. The number feels like a stone in my gut, heavy and cold. Fifty years. Fifty years since my husband, the King, lost his mind to the Shadow Sickness. I do not dream of fire and screams. Those are too loud, too honest. I dream of the silence. The terrible, beautiful silence of the villages as his ice dragon, Glacius, passed over them, leaving behind glittering, silent tombs of ice. I can still see the frozen faces of children, their mouths open in a scream that never came, their eyes wide with a terror that would never fade. My son, my brave, foolish Titus, stood against him. I watched them battle in the frozen north, a storm of fire and ice against a sky the color of a fresh bruise. I saw Glacius, that monster of ice and shadow, rip the heart from Titus's dragon, my own beloved Solaris, and I heard my son's scream of agony, a sound that echoed in my soul, and I thought my world had ended. But my son lived. I dragged his broken, bleeding body from the frozen wastes, across the sea to the Summer Isles, to our southern cousins.

For months, my world was the scent of his healing flesh, the coppery tang of his blood, the bitter herbs in the poultices I laid on his skin. I would bathe him, my hands tracing the new, hard lines of his body, the map of scars that told the story of his near-death. The boy who had laughed at my jests was gone, burned away by fever and fire. In his place was this quiet, intense stranger, and the space between us in the humid, jasmine-scented nights began to thrum with a current that was both terrifying and intoxicating. I would watch him sleep, the slow, deep rhythm of his chest a metronome counting down to something I dared not name. A heat would begin low in my belly, a coiling serpent of want that was maternal pride and woman's need, twisted together until I could not tell them apart. I was sick with it, with the forbidden bloom of my own desire.

The Southern Queen, old NKada, she saw it. Her eyes, ancient amber chips, missed nothing. She saw how my hands would tremble as I fed him, how our eyes would linger a moment too long across the fire. One evening, as the sun bled into the ocean in a riot of orange and purple, she approached me. "Your love is a rare and dangerous flower, my sister," she said, her voice like honey and smoke. "In the south, we give it sacred soil to grow in. Let me marry you."

That night, the air was thick with the promise of a storm. He came to me, his movements fluid and predatory, no longer the wounded boy. He took my hands, and his touch was a brand, a grounding, possessive heat that seeped directly into my bones. "Mother," he whispered, and the word was a prayer and a blasphemy on his lips. "This feeling... it is eating me alive. I look at you, and I do not see a mother. I see the sun. I cannot breathe without you."

My last defense crumbled. I leaned in, and our lips met. It was a collision. The taste of his desperation, the salt of my tears, the metallic tang of his blood. His tongue was not asking; it was taking, claiming the depths of my mouth with an authority that made my knees weak. We sank to the ground, the silks of our gowns a flimsy, frustrating barrier. His hands were everywhere, tearing at my clothes, rediscovering the body that had birthed him with a lover's worshipful, desperate greed. I felt his hardness, thick and insistent, against my thigh, and the emptiness inside me became a physical ache. But I stopped him. "No," I gasped. "Not like this. Our first time must be a sacred fire, for all to see."

The wedding was a fever dream of firelight and chanting. That night, he led me to a secluded glen. He undressed me with a slowness that was its own form of torment, his eyes burning a path over every curve, every scar. He laid me down on a bed of moss, cool and damp against my heated skin. When he entered me, it was a violent, beautiful possession. The stretch of him was a sharp, exquisite pain that gave way to a profound, soul-shattering relief. He moved within me with a slow, powerful rhythm, his body a hammer and my flesh an anvil, forging something new in the heart of the night. My release was a tsunami, a geyser of liquid ecstasy that ripped a scream from my throat and left me shaking, a ruin of bliss.

But joy is shadowed by duty. He left to find a dragon, and for twelve days, I did not know if he lived. He returned, bloodied but glorious, riding a magnificent serpent whose scales shimmered with a thousand rainbows. We flew into the heart of a thunderstorm, the wind and rain a wild caress as we made love, a furious, desperate coupling that was as much a battle cry as it was an act of passion.

He slew his father in this very palace. He took the crown, and then he took me as his wife. That night, he brought me to this bed. The same bed where I had birthed him two centuries ago. And as he entered me again, his king, his husband, his son, I felt the circle close, the serpent of our lineage eating its own tail, eternal and pure and terrifyingly complete.

Catrina's hand had been slowly stroking the velvet of her gown, then it slipped beneath the hem, finding the slick, swollen heat between her legs. As she read the queen's final, triumphant words, she finally came in a massive, shuddering orgasm, a loud, guttural cry escaping her lips that echoed in the silent, ancient chamber. With tears of shame and a terrifying new understanding streaming from her eyes, she fell asleep, the diary open on the bed beside her.