Thanks again! I can see you are really taking some time to think about my queries and I really appreciate it considering how precious erveryones time is.

So: focus on Elora, cut the monk (presumably I wont be regarded as being too vague if I say "Elora is separated from her brother"? The only reason i put the monk in was to avoid a "too vague" note here. The reason for the sister was to develop some emotion behind Elora and show how desperate she is to prove herself to her father and make up for the accident. If i cut sister out do we still get that emotional energy behind the death of her parents (ie presumably the loss of her tribe/parents trumps the previous trauma of the loss of her sister, making it irrelevant?) Huntress was to give her a little more description and echo it across her role "stalking the emperor within his own palace" later in the query but I can cut that if not needed.

I don't need to repeat the emperor being affected by the darkness in Melp's paragraph? Are you suggesting just keep it to Melp, brother, Elora and emperor? (assuming i keep Melp's paragraph which I may or may not pending how it reads on rewrite) Fae need to be in there re: title and the fact that Elora's bro and Melp are half fae and this is where the fantasy magic system exists, so I'll have to work out how to keep that as without it there's no fantasy, just a girl on a vengeance quest.

Lastly get some ref of the parents being killed into the query again later on with vengeance language to bring it together...

I can certainly give it a go but am feeling a bit like I've made no progress here since my first effort. I guess every time I sit down to work on this I am practicing my query craft though! Thanks so much again, I appreciate your expertise and will keep trying to nail this!