“Greetings, my most loyal of minions!” the Evil Emperor boomed as his cape flapped in the wind.

Oh no. Oh no. The Evil Emperor still thought of Definitely Bad Guy as his Mage Advisor! He didn’t know that the Mage was secretly working for the Exiled Prince and Exiled Princess!

Sencha Bard and Sexy Screamy Spider Lady wrenched around to look at Definitely Bad Guy, who’d gone white. Qube frantically waved her hands at the pair, trying to get their attention so they wouldn’t attack the Mage over such a simple misunderstanding.

They just had to trust Definitely Bad Guy.

“That’s right!” the Evil Emperor threw back his head and gave a very Evil laugh. “Your pet Mage has secretly been working for me the entire time! He’s been feeding me information about your movements, and has directed me to the very location where you have stored the other gems! You have been fooled, pathetic, false Hero!”

Qube mentally scoffed. As if the Evil Emperor had needed Definitely Bad Guy to lead him to the gems! The precious items needed to save the kingdom were in the exact same inn as last time, which Qube was rapidly realising how bad an idea that had been, and the Evil Emperor was just lying to try and sow discord amongst the party.

“My liege,” Definitely Bad Guy said, and knelt before the man who’d slaughtered Qube’s village. The Mage looked at Qube, an apology in his eyes.

A very sincere-looking apology.

“This was not a conversation I wished to have in public,” Definitely Bad Guy continued, still watching Qube. “I had meant to meet you later in your castle.”

“You fiend!” Sencha Bard cried, drawing his rapier. “You betrayed us for this monster?”

“Why?” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady asked in an anguished voice.

Definitely Bad Guy continued to look at Qube. Just her.

“I have always been loyal to the Evil Emperor,” he said. “And all those who work for him. But, my liege,” he finally broke away from Qube to look at the Evil Emperor, who had followed his minion’s gaze and now seemed stuck staring at Qube, “I have recently begun to have… doubts.”

“You seek to betray me?” the Evil Emperor shouted, pointing at the kneeling Mage while still staring at a frozen Qube.

“No, never that,” Definitely Bad Guy said earnestly. “But your concubine and I have come to the conclusion that—”

“His what?” the Chosen One spluttered.

“My concubine?” the Evil Emperor asked, his voice losing its edge of booming power.

“Who’s that?” Qube asked, totally lost.

The Mage blinked as he looked back at her.

Qube looked at him.

“Wait, you thought she was the Evil Emperor’s concubine?” the Chosen One exclaimed, catching the exchanged stares. “How the [fiddle] did you come to that conclusion?”

“My apologies,” Definitely Bad Guy said, bowing his head at Qube. “I was unsure if you had told him and did not wish to reveal your secret without authorisation. I had been waiting for a chance for us to break away from the group and speak to him about our doubts. I had hoped he would see reason.”

“I mean, Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, sure, she’s got the whole ‘sultry and mysterious’ thing going on; I could see how you’d think that, but Qube as a concubine?” the Chosen One continued ranting. “She’s got the sexuality of a-a-a a [fiddling] potato, nevermind that fact that you thought she was hooking up with the guy who—” the Chosen One abruptly cut himself off. “He killed her whole village,” he finished in a slower, much more serious tone.

“My precious sweet would never sully herself so,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said indignantly. “Nor, I would like to add, would I,” she added, glaring at the Chosen One. Sencha Bard nodded.

“Even with her naive innocence, she would never fall victim to the lures of one as foul as the Evil Emperor,” the Bard stated emphatically.

Definitely Bad Guy’s jaw tightened as he continued observing Qube.

Qube said nothing.

“We believe,” the Mage said, ignoring the protests of his party, “that the Chosen One and his people are not threats to your overall quest for ultimate power. They are mostly sensible beings, willing to fight against the true menace to our world. To kill them would no longer be right.”

How had she missed this? A part of her clung to the belief that this was all still a ruse, that Definitely Bad Guy was merely playing along with the Evil Emperor so that the ruler wouldn’t realise he was secretly Good. That if she just had enough faith in the power of their friendship, this would somehow all work out.

But the rest of her was frantically scanning her memories, searching for a single clue that Definitely Bad Guy had been anything other than Good. There hadn’t been any hints!

Sure, he’d tortured a bunch of people for research, and the rest of the party had originally hated him, and he could admittedly be, as the Chosen One would say ‘‘kinda creepy” sometimes, but he’d risked his life several times for them, and had been kind to Squiggles even when she was misbehaving, and he’d even sworn to protect her the very first time he’d seen her…

Oh.

Her mind thoughtfully conjured up the memories of that first fateful meeting, where she’d accidentally caused him to be ejected from his Wizard’s Tower and he’d fallen from a great height. Where she’d [Heal]ed him, ripping away the Evil Emperor’s curse, and then said Evil Emperor had happened to walk onto his castle ramparts and looked at her.

And then the Mage had said he understood. And that he would protect her. And he’d talked a lot, since then, about loyalty.

It turned out, there’d been a bunch of hints. She just hadn’t wanted to see them. Hadn’t wanted to think that her friend was… Evil.

Qube felt stupid.

She looked at Definitely Bad Guy, who was still staring at her. She searched his expression and saw doubt lurking there.

The doubt is what convinced her, and gave her the final clue she needed.

“A part of you wasn’t sure,” she said at last. “That’s why you were always so careful when talking about him.”

Definitely Bad Guy nodded, and Qube realised that, even now, she hadn’t specified whom he was. Yet the Mage had agreed, without asking for clarification.

Perhaps they were both stupid.

“Well, messed-up thinking about Qube being a concubine aside, he’s on our side,” the Chosen One said casually to the figure towering over them all. “Obvious double-cross averted, character arc complete, take your stupid gems and [fiddle] off.”

The Chosen One knew. That “joke” he’d made in the Wizard’s Academy hadn’t actually been a joke at all. More than that, he’d thought she knew; otherwise he’d never have been so casual about it. He hadn’t even noticed that she was just standing there; instead he was easing himself in between Definitely Bad Guy and the Evil Emperor.

Double-cross averted?

An awful numbness was spreading through her.

“I see you have remained loyal to me,” the Evil Emperor declared, then, nonsensically, added: “You have been lured in by the promise of friendship. You have betrayed your master.”

Betrayed.

Yes, that was the word everyone kept using.

The Chosen One had betrayed her once, by lying about what had happened at the village, and how her childhood friend was gone. But he, at least, had been trying to protect her, in his own, clumsy way. He’d lied to her, yes, and she’d felt betrayed by him but this… this was actual betrayal against their entire quest. Against the freedom of the kingdom. Against everything they’d worked, fought and bled for.

This was treason.

That anger, the howling ice that dwelt on the other side of her, swept through her soul, replacing the creeping numbness with active rage. She felt as if her other self, her inner self, was right beside her, screaming incoherently at the unfairness of it all.

She wanted to reach into the space between realms and fix this. She didn’t know how to access it without a special item from a Temple, but still she reached out into the other realm.

The Evil Emperor took a single step towards her. The terrible pressure he was exerting on her made her head feel like it was going to split open. He was staring at her, the black pits of his eyes pulling her in.

“You—” he said, and the Chosen One jolted.

“Wait, you can actually see her?” he asked incredulously, despite the fact that the Evil Emperor had been staring at Qube for practically this entire meeting, as he had the last few times, which was also highly irrelevant to what was happening right now. Even now the Chosen One was, as per usual, focusing on the wrong thing.

The cold fury within her burned, swirling, seeking release.

“You are not his…lover?” Definitely Bad Guy asked Qube, still on his knees.

The anger found a focal point. It unleashed.

“I’m nobody’s lover!” she nearly screamed at the Mage. “Not you, not the Chosen One, and never, ever, the Evil Emperor!” Her head snapped over to the Evil Emperor, who was still fixated on her.

“And you,” she continued with a snarl, “you killed my whole village. You murdered everyone I’d ever known. They were kind, and gentle, and sometimes annoying, but they were my family and you slaughtered them. And for what? To teach a stupid lesson to some s-stupid Hero? He didn’t even care! Only I cared!”

Qube had started crying. She furiously swiped away her tears, made only angrier by the fact she was displaying weakness in front of her greatest enemy.

“I hate you,” she told the Evil Emperor passionately. “I hate you for what you’ve done, and I don’t want to save you, and I hate that you’ve ruined my friend and made him Evil just like you and I hope one day you become special so you can realise just how horrible you are and die!”

Qube stood panting and messily crying in front of the man who’d massacred countless people. A man so powerful he could kill her in an instant. A man they needed all the gems from all the Temples to defeat. Gems of which they currently had… none.

If she’d been less angry, Qube would have been horrified at herself. All the times she’d told the Chosen One to be careful when speaking to authority figures, and she’d just told one so Evil it was in his very title that she hoped he died. If any of her logic skills had been functioning, she would have immediately hidden behind the Chosen One.

But her reasonable self had clearly given control to her curse-loving self, so instead she jerked around in the direction of Definitely Bad Guy and glared at him.

“Tell me,” she ground out at the kneeling Mage. Her hope clung to the doubt he’d shown, to the friendship they’d had. At the pain in his expression. “Are you loyal to the Chosen One, or to the Evil Emperor?”

The Mage looked at her.

“I believe we can work together to—” he started to say.

“Never,” Qube interrupted him. “Choose. The Chosen One, or the Evil Emperor?”

The traitor looked at her.

The future hung in the balance.

“You,” he said softly. “I give my loyalty… to you.”

The fury bled away from Qube. She looked at him. There was a quiet simplicity to his words that she couldn’t even begin to process. The Chosen One was looking at the pair, frowning in confusion.

“You have failed me for the last time, worm,” the Evil Emperor said to his former Mage Advisor. Not shouted, or boomed, or even accompanied by so much as a cackle. Just said in a normal speaking voice, for all the world like he wasn’t a maniacal ruler. He sounded, if anything, just the tiniest bit confused.

“Wait!” the Chosen One said, throwing up a hand as if to ward off the Evil Emperor. “I don’t like that line. Just take the gems and go.”

The tattoos on Definitely Bad Guy’s chest began to glow.

“When you joined my service, I knew the day might come when you would turn against me,” the Evil Emperor continued at the same, normal volume. He took a step back from Qube, and returned to his original position. “You have outlived your usefulness.”

“No-no-no,” the Chosen One said hurriedly, yanking at Definitely Bad Guy, trying to get him to stand up. “Hey, Evil Emperor, look at me, hey, I’m talking to you, lock on to me, get stuck in some dialogue, hey!” He yanked harder at the Mage. “Get up!” he hissed. “Run!”

The Evil Emperor reached out a hand, and slowly clenched his fist. Definitely Bad Guy’s tattoos seemed to constrict, crushing his chest.

“[Heal]!” Qube managed, trying to offset the damage being done to Definitely Bad Guy. She was mad at him, but she couldn’t stand to see him in pain. Sexy Screamy Spider Lady shot a crossbow bolt at the Evil Emperor, which stopped dead on some invisible shield around him and fell to the floor.

“Cover your ears!” Sencha Bard cried, unslinging his lute.

Definitely Bad Guy, the man once known as Sebastian, convulsed.

“Time for you to be rewarded as a traitor deserves,” the Evil Emperor said almost wistfully. “[Traitor’s Curse].”

“I’m not having you kill him with such a cliche line!” the Chosen One said, trying to grab the Evil Emperor and running into the same invisible wall that had hindered their Hunter.

“All right, that’s it!” he shouted as Definitely Bad Guy fell to the ground. Before Qube could cast [Revive], the Hero reached out and swiped in front of himself, making a strange, complicated gesture Qube vaguely recognised.

“Save scum attack!” he said, as if he was performing a powerful spell, and everything warped.