The Firas were a tribal people. They’d moved from place to place on the backs of enormous beasts that looked like a cross between a camel and a wooly mammoth except their fur was a brilliant purple instead of the usual matte brown of animals from my world. Their soothsayers were known as Fire Dancers—mystics who claimed to speak with the Pleiades on behalf of men and kings through rituals that they kept secret.
“Just those seven,” he reiterated.
“So what do we do then? What do I say?”
“I don’t know,” he said as he led me toward the house. “I don’t know what you say. I think—” He stopped. “I think you simply have to be kind. Now, come on, let’s get breakfast.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I want to see Melchiam. I need to tell him I’m sorry for what happened to his people.”
We’d reached the back of the ruined palace by then, and I nodded to one of the guards standing watch. “Could you please ask the Rache of the Firas to meet me in what’s left of the throne room?”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” The young man snapped his heels together and then bowed his head sharply before he hurried away.
“Allie—”
“Bavasama won’t stop doing evil just because I’m having breakfast,” I said quietly. “She’s not resting, and we shouldn’t be, either.”
He sighed, but instead of arguing, he just followed me into the large room where I’d once heard royal audiences. It now acted as a communal bedroom for all the nobles and other refugees that were now calling the palace home.
The dais, along with my throne, was still in place, the area behind it curtained off as a sort of locker room where people could bathe and change their clothes with some sort of illusion of privacy. I pushed the curtain back and made my way into the changing area, snagging the tiny hand mirror one of the new maids—a woman from the city of Neris—had given me when she realized the sad state of my personal possessions.
I glared at myself in the mirror and used a free hand to push back the few locks of hair that had managed to work free from my braid. “Just be kind,” I said to my reflection. I took a deep breath before setting the mirror down and running a hand over my stiff, dirt-smudged tunic and filthy brown trousers.
I stepped back out from behind the curtain and climbed onto the dais. Once I was standing there, I put my hands behind my back so that no one could see my fidgeting while I waited.
Within minutes, the room began to fill with army commanders and nobles and the leaders of the various races within Nerissette.
“Your Majesty,” Arianna of the Veldt said. I held a hand up, silencing her.
I watched as a tall, thin man with long, dark hair, wearing a plain black robe with a high neck and long, billowing sleeves came slowly into the room, his head down. Melchiam, Last Great Rache of the Firas Nation.
Instead of waiting for him to make it all the way into the room, I started down the stairs toward him. “Melchiam.” I took his hands in mine when I reached him, and he looked up at me with sunken black eyes.
“Your Majesty.” He bowed his head slightly, and I could see his shoulders trembling.
“I—” I sniffled as tears built up in my eyes.
“Your Majesty?” He looked up at me again, and I could see that he was trying not to cry as well. One tear slipped out of his left eye and made a lonely trail down his cheek.
“I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.” I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed, trying to give him a comforting hug, like the ones my mom had always given me when I’d had a really bad day.
“Oh, Your Majesty,” he sobbed softly.
“Come now,” Tevian, the head of the Dragos Council, said. He came forward, wrapping his strong arms around Melchiam and letting the taller man sob on his shoulder.
“Come now and dry your eyes, both of you. We’ll cry when the war is won. Once there is peace, the entire world will mourn those we’ve lost but not now. Not when there are battles yet to fight.”
“Right.” I let go of Melchiam and started back up the aisle, wiping my eyes with my shirtsleeves as the nobles stepped out of my way and Tevian led the Rache of the Firas away.
“Your Majesty,” Rhys said as he moved forward to help me to my throne. “Your army has assembled. Or at least as much of your army as we could get. The rest will join us on the road.”
“Good.” I let go of his hand when I reached the top of the dais and turned to stare at the assembled nobles. “How many?”
“Every man in Nerissette who is able to hold a sword on his own and every woman who doesn’t have a child at home that needs her care.”
“The women, too? We didn’t have that many women soldiers when we fought the Fate Maker the last two times. They stayed behind to take care of the crops and protect the villages.”
“Everyone who can fight”—he looked at me, his eyes flat—“will fight. We’ll protect the villages by pushing our way into Bathune and not giving Bavasama’s army the chance to set foot in Nerissette again.”
“How many soldiers?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
“What?” My eyebrows raised in shock. Nerissette wasn’t that big of a country. I didn’t think we had more than a half million people in it if you counted every man, woman, and child.
“You have an army of two hundred thousand swords ready to fight in your name, Your Majesty. Everyone over the age of sixteen that can hold a sword has volunteered. Your army is five times the size of the largest army that has ever been raised in this world—and that army is one that only exists in legend.”
“So we’re ready?” I swallowed and tried to picture two hundred thousand people in my head and realized that I couldn’t actually do it.
“Not even close,” Rhys said. “We’ll take the soldiers we have, and if we’re lucky, the rest will join up before your aunt attacks us again.”
“But—” I started.
“If we wait,” he said, his voice even, “we leave ourselves open to another attack like the one last night. If we’re going to fight back, we have to strike now.”
I nodded.
“All we need is the final Council vote,” John said.
The Council of Nobles was allowed to cast a vote about whether or not they wanted to go to war. In the end it wouldn’t matter if they voted against me—I didn’t have to do what they said—but if they all voted no, then any of them could refuse me their troops. But, if I won by even a single vote, then all of them had to commit whether they liked it or not.
“People of Nerissette.” I stepped forward as Rhys stepped back, away from me. “My Council of Nobles.” I bowed my head toward the huddled mass of people in the center of the room.
“Woodsmen of the Leavenwald.” I nodded at my father. “Distinguished members of the Nymphiad, my friends on the Dragos Council, Melchiam—Rache of the Firas.” I stopped as they all stared at me. What was I supposed to do now? I mean, surely they didn’t need me to persuade them to keep us all alive? Did they?
“Vote.” I held my hands out to my sides. “All those in favor?”
“But shouldn’t we discuss—” one of the nobles began. I squinted and thought I recognized him as Thurston of Drazzletop, one of the minor lords of the Veldt.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked as I clenched my hands into fists and put them on my hips. “Do I think Bavasama will continue to come over the mountains and burn your homes and kill your families until she has turned our world to ash? Yes. Do I think she won’t stop until she has eaten the entire world? Again—yes. There is nothing left to discuss. There is war, or there is waiting here for death. Now, vote.
“All those in favor of taking our army across the White Mountains to reclaim the kingdom of Bathune, imprison Bavasama, and burn the Palace of Night to the ground?” I asked.
“Aye.” The room seemed to shake with the echo of a hundred voices all screaming their answer together.
“All opposed say ‘nay,’” I said quietly.
�
��Nay,” Thurston of Drazzletop said, his voice clear and strong. “I am sick of war, Your Majesty. I am sick of fighting and dirt and death. I would go home to my books and the deer that live in my forests. I would live at peace with all who seek peace with me.”
“When we’re safe,” I said quietly, “I’ll be the first to join you in your search for peace. But not now. I choose peace today…”
Thurston bowed his head low before me. “When the time comes, Your Majesty, I will be happy to help you find the peace we both desire. Now, since everyone else has voted for war, I need to go and prepare my men.”
He turned his back on me and started toward the door, the room so silent that we could all hear the click of his shoes against the scarred marble floor. There was a creak as he pushed the door open and then a dull thump when he closed it behind him.
“Queen Allie?” Rhys asked. I looked over at him and my father who raised an eyebrow at me. “The Council of Nobles has voted in favor of war. Ninety-nine to one.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
Had I told Thurston of Drazzletop the truth? Was there some other option to save our world without an army? Without war? Was there a peaceful solution to our current situation, or was there only this? I couldn’t see a different way to handle my aunt, but maybe I didn’t want to look for one, either. All I knew was I couldn’t let any more people die.
“Okay?” Rhys asked. I locked eyes with my father once more before turning to Rhys.
“So what do we do?” Arianna asked. “What’s our strategy?”
“Our strategy?” I asked. “We march into Bathune, and we burn it to the ground. When we get to the Palace of Night, we drag my aunt outside, we take her prisoner, and then we turn her palace into dust. How’s that for strategy?”
“It certainly sends a message,” Rhys said.
“Yeah, the message that we aren’t going to let ourselves get kicked around anymore,” I said. “Tomorrow morning we march to war.”
Rhys turned back to the assembled mass and pulled his sword. All through the room, the men who wore swords did the same. Those that were carrying staffs beat them against the floor while the rest of the men and women present stomped their feet, a low, thumping sound like a heartbeat vibrating off the walls.
“To war!” Rhys yelled.
“To war!” the assembled nobles howled back as the chaos around me got louder, my people working themselves into a frenzy.
I stared at my father—the only other person in the room who was just standing there, watching as the world around us fell apart.
Chapter Thirteen
Early the next morning, I opened the door to the remains of the West Tower—the only one of the four towers on my palace that had managed to survive the earlier battles unscathed—and stared at the dusty room where I’d first entered Nerissette. I bit my lip as I stared at the black, withered vines that surrounded the wooden rafters above my head. They had been Mercedes’s first attempt at wielding her powers, and she’d overdone it a bit that day. She’d turned the Fate Maker’s tower into a garden with just a single touch. It had been amazing.
I stepped into the room and ran my hand over the mantelpiece, letting my fingers trail through the dust until they reached the spot where a skull sat. I picked the bones up and turned them over in my hands. “Who were you?”
Of course, it wasn’t going to answer. Even in Nerissette death was permanent. I set the skull back in its resting place and walked deeper into the room. In the corner was the table our classmates Heidi and Jesse had hid behind the first time Winston shifted into his dragon form. I ran my hand over it and sighed as I thought about the first two people I’d lost. I should have sent them back that very first day. I should have forced the Fate Maker to send them back home no matter what the cost had been. There hadn’t been a place for them here in Nerissette, and I should have made sure they got home safely.
I took a step forward and accidentally kicked something. I looked down and saw the Orb of Fate, still caked with dried blood from my first battle with the Fate Maker a year ago. I knelt down and picked it up, testing the weight in my hands.
The first time the Fate Maker had attacked me, I’d tried to use the Orb as a weapon. I’d smashed it against the wizard’s head and tried to escape. It hadn’t worked, and the glass ball had rolled under the table and been forgotten in the aftermath.
I wiped the sleeve of my shirt over the Orb and peered into it. “Show me what I desire most in the world,” I whispered. The glass ball began to hum.
The sphere was supposed to show people their fate, but Esmeralda had once told me it was all a trick. The sphere didn’t show you fate because fate was something you had to decide for yourself. What the ball showed you was the fate that you wanted so that you could act on it.
The ball clouded with blue smoke and then cleared. Inside of it pictures flickered, twisting around one another, and I moved my face closer to it, trying to see what it was that I wanted most in the world.
The first picture showed my mother, sitting on the Rose Throne with John of Leavenwald sitting beside her, crowns on both their heads. Right, Mom and John getting their happily ever after, that was a pretty obvious thing to want. The picture faded out and another took its place. This time I watched as Winston and I wandered through a grassy fields, our fingers linked together, and he leaned down to kiss me.
“I love you,” the Winston in the Orb whispered.
Okay, so happy family and a loving boyfriend—those were all no-brainers.
The picture flickered again, and Winston and I were joined by Mercedes, Rhys, and Kitsuna, all of us wandering through a field. Not holding hands, because that would have been a bit too creepy even for a vision, but looking blissful.
“It’s time,” the Kitsuna in the Orb announced.
I watched as the picture shifted again, and now the five of us were standing in the clearing that had been the labyrinth, the mermaid’s pool once again filled with water and swimming mermaids. I saw Talia sitting on her throne, her pink tail flicking back and forth as she stared at my image in the Orb.
“This changes nothing,” she said. “The Pleiades can’t trade evil for good.”
“The roses won’t grow without sacrifice.” Mercedes’s voice was stern. “If you want to make the roses grow, you must give them what they crave.”
The vision me stepped forward and bowed to her parents, now standing together in the clearing with their arms wrapped around each other, and I watched as the picture tilted oddly. Eamon stepped into the frame and handed my form a sword, bowing his head low as he backed away. Vision me turned, and I watched as she stepped toward two people who were kneeling, their arms bound behind their backs and their heads resting on wooden boxes.
“Please.” Bavasama lifted her head from one of the boxes and looked up at vision me, tears running down her face. “I’ll never do it again. Please. I’m begging you. Please show me mercy.”
“What about you?” Vision me lifted the sword to jab it into the other person’s shoulders. “Are you going to plead for mercy as well?”
“Why would I?” The Fate Maker’s voice was almost deafening as it poured from the Orb of Fate. “After all, I knew your fate before you did. I chose you for a reason, didn’t I?”
Instead of answering, vision me lifted her sword, and I grimaced as it arced through the air, the wind seeming to whistle in my ears as it came down hard against the back of Bavasama’s neck.
The Orb filled with red smoke, and I felt my stomach lurch. According to the Orb, the one thing I wanted the most was to be a murderer. Not a warrior. A killer. An executioner.
“There now,” the Fate Maker crooned from inside the Orb as the smoke cleared. “I knew one of these days you’d become a queen who was worthy of my respect.”
“I don’t need your respect,” vision me answered coldly as she lifted the sword again. I flinched as she started to bring it down and then closed my eyes, unable to watch her kill another person.
“Just your power,” the voice of vision me was sharp, remorseless.
I opened my eyes and stared at the Orb again, watching as the picture shifted. I stared into it at a crowd of people, all of them watching vision me, all of them kneeling, bent so their heads rested in the dirt. Vision me tossed her sword to the ground and walked away, not bothering to acknowledge any of them as they trembled in fear in front of her.
I dropped the Orb and scooted away from it, my hands in front of my mouth as I tried to breathe. That couldn’t be right. I mean I knew it wasn’t my fate or anything, but I couldn’t want that. I couldn’t want to hurt anyone that way. I wasn’t that person. I wasn’t…
“Allie?” I turned to look at Winston as he stood in the doorway, staring at me with a concerned expression. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I nodded quickly, trying to compose myself. The Orb was wrong. I didn’t want to kill anyone. I didn’t want to be a cruel queen. “I’m glad you’re back. I was worried about you. What happened in Dramera?” I kept asking questions, hoping that I could distract him.
“Your aunt’s army burned it.” He didn’t meet my eyes.
“What?” I turned to him, forgetting the Orb as I saw the pain in his eyes.
“By the time I got there.” His jaw tightened.
“Win?” I stepped closer and reached for him.
“There was nothing there. Just smoking rubble. They burned everything.” He turned his head so that he wasn’t looking at me and stepped back, wrapping his hands around his own waist, holding himself up.
Oh crap. I swallowed. They’d destroyed the capital city of the dragons? “What about the dragons who were in Dramera?” I felt my heart sinking into my toes. Had it been like Sorcastia and everywhere else? Had my aunt’s troops massacred them as well?
“They escaped,” Winston said softly, his eyes fixed on the floor. “All of them. According to some, the dragons that attacked the city let them escape. They didn’t chase them or anything. They let our dragons fly off and then they just set everything on fire. Then they left.”
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