Infinity tcon-3

by Andria Buchanan

  He gently shoved my shoulder again, and I looked over at him and swallowed. “I don’t want you to do anything stupid,” I said. “Don’t sacrifice yourself for me.”

  He smiled back at me, his eyes sad. “Sometimes you don’t get to choose your fate. Sometimes it chooses you.”

  “Then you fight against it. That’s what the dragons always say. My friend Kitsuna…” I trailed off and felt my heart clench as I thought about the wryen and all my other friends currently marching toward us.

  “Your friend Kitsuna?”

  I cleared my throat. “She said that the dragons believe Fate is something that you fight against. In their stories, Fate isn’t a given that you have to accept. Kitsuna says Fate’s the villain, and you’re supposed to fight her and outsmart her and do whatever it takes so that you get the life you want rather than what she has planned for you.”

  “Maybe Fate’s plan isn’t such a bad one for me.” Jesse shrugged. “It’s not like I’m ever going to belong in this world. I’m not a knight; I’m not brave. When the Fate Maker attacked us, do you know what I did?”

  I shook my head.

  “I tried to hide behind your throne,” Jesse said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I was huddled up behind a chair, crying like a little girl when they found me. I’m a coward.”

  “We’ll find a way to get you and Heidi home,” I told him, reaching out to grab his hand.

  “I don’t belong there, either. After all that I’ve seen here, I can’t just go back and pretend it’s all the same. I can’t just forget what we’ve seen, what we’ve done. I can’t forget that Winston can turn into a dragon or that Mercedes is green. I can’t pretend that I haven’t seen what war is like.”

  “You’ll forget. You’ll go through, and we’ll make sure that you forget—you and Heidi both. You’ll forget you were ever here, and you’ll forget that the rest of us ever existed. You just have to let us get you home.”

  “What if I can’t ever really go back?” Jesse asked. “I mean, even if you wipe my memories or something, who knows if they won’t come back later? Maybe there are some things you can’t forget. Things you’re not supposed to forget.”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head and then looked over at him. “But I want you to do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t try to be a hero. It’s—”

  “Not my job,” he said quietly. “Fate doesn’t need me to be the knight in shining armor. That’s what Winston is here for after all.”

  “No,” I said quietly. “I need you to do something more important than that.”

  “What?”

  “I remember when we were in ninth-grade English together.”

  “So?”

  “You were really good at making up stories in the creative writing section. Everyone wanted to listen to what you came up with.”

  “Only because I was popular.”

  “No.” I took his hand, squeezing it. “You were really, really good. So that’s what I want you to do. If…”

  “If?”

  “If we fail,” I said quietly, “I want you to stay alive and make your way back to Nerissette. Tell them the truth about what happened here. Tell whoever’s left how I—how we—died.”

  “You’re not going to—”

  The door creaked, and we both watched as it opened slowly, the Fate Maker standing there with Heidi in his arms and his hand tight around her neck and a long scratch down the front of his face that looked like a nail mark.

  “Do you remember the first time we had breakfast together?” the Fate Maker asked me, his face contorted into a mask of pure rage.

  “Yes.” I swallowed and then stood up, facing him, remembering the day he’d shown me just how far he’d go to stay in power.

  “Good,” he said, his eyes blazing. “Because I want you to remember that no matter how tough you think you are, I’ll always be able to get to you and the people you care about.”

  I watched as Heidi’s body began to waver in his arms, fading in and out like she was out of sync with the rest of us somehow. She began to shrink, and the air around her just seemed smaller.

  “Stop!” I stepped forward, but instead of moving he just opened his arms and smiled as her transition between girl and tiny pink fairy finished.

  He reached out and snatched her from the air, throwing her onto the floor and stomping down hard, crushing her miniature body. Just like he’d done to the fairy at the breakfast table.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I sat with Jesse’s arms wrapped around my back as we both stared at Heidi’s tiny pink corpse. “I just don’t understand,” I said, my voice cracking on the last word.

  “I know.” His own voice was quiet, and he kept moving us back and forth, rocking us. “I know.”

  “She had the combs. They should have protected her. My father said that the combs were meant to protect me, so why didn’t they protect her?”

  “Maybe they’re only meant to be used by you,” Jesse suggested.

  “Maybe but I still don’t understand. He didn’t have any reason to kill her.”

  “They don’t need reasons here,” Jesse said as we both kept staring at the body. “They just hurt people and kill people because they can. They do it because they think killing is fun. Magic or not, the people here think of killing as a game.”

  I let what he said sink in as we sat there and stared at the crumpled wings and lifeless body of the girl who’d bullied me every single day of our lives together in the World That Is. The girl I’d failed over and over again.

  “What should we do with her?” I asked. “We can’t just leave her lying on the floor like some sort of squashed bug.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said, his voice hollow.

  “But…”

  “I can do it. I should do it. She was my girlfriend, after all. Well, not really anymore since we ended up here, but we used to be together and she’d told me once that she loved me. It’s my job to take care of her now.”

  He stood up and then went over to the basin in the far corner. He grabbed the small hand towel that had been left beside it. “She wasn’t always a nice person,” Jesse said as he came over and knelt beside her body. “She could be hateful and mean, and she didn’t always think about others, but deep down she was a good person.”

  “I know she was.” I nodded slowly.

  “She loved her little brother,” Jesse continued, “and she was nice to animals, and she never once doubted that you would come find us, Allie. She knew you would come. And when they’d let us talk to each other, she’d always tell me that if anyone was stubborn and stupid enough to save us, it would be you. She’d tell me not to give up hope because you were coming.”

  “Oh.” I sniffed as he laid out the hand towel and rolled Heidi’s fairy body onto it before covering her with the other half. “We’re going to be okay, Allie,” Jesse said as he put the hand towel on the mantle and let his hand rest on top of it. “And when this is over, we’ll make them pay for what they did to Heidi, and to everyone else.”

  “Yes,” I said quietly. He came over to sit next to me on the table, and we both stared into the fire. “We will.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The light outside faded; soon it was pitch black. I heard men in the darkness and saw the brief flare of torches being lit along the outer walls, the shadows of the crackling flames writing on the far side.

  There was a dull thump of boots, the rumble of wagons and men moving forward. The sound of the army was even louder at night when there was nothing else moving on the other side of the walls.

  I heard a long, low howl and then a distant shriek of dragons roaring to one another.

  “What is that?” Jesse asked, standing up and hurrying over to the window.

  “The dragon warriors,” I said, my head bowed. I didn’t even bother to lift my eyes. “They sound scary, and they look really scary, and well, long story short they’re pretty scary al
l the way around unless they like you.”

  “And they like you?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I hope they like me…. They fight for me, at least. But because of me, their entire town was destroyed, not once but twice. The first time we only burned down a part of the town, but the second time—the second time it was entirely destroyed.”

  “What?” Jesse asked.

  “It’s a long, not very nice story,” I said. “Let’s just go with it’s been a very long year and leave it at that.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Allie,” he said. “It will. I promise.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “Maybe not,” he said, his voice soft. “But what I do know is that none of us is going to quit fighting until this world is safe again.”

  The door creaked, and Jesse grabbed my hand, linking us together to face whatever was about to come. The door slowly opened, and I watched as Bavasama stepped into the room, two of her henchmen behind her.

  “Hello, darling. Time to go meet your army and arrange their surrender.”

  “I don’t care what you do.” I stood up and glared at her. “We’re not surrendering.”

  “We’ll see about that.” My aunt smiled cruelly at me and then turned to her men.

  “Seize her,” Bavasama said. They stepped forward, not giving me the chance to run before one of them grabbed me and the other went for Jesse.

  “I’m coming.” The guy who used to be the most popular boy at Bethel Park High School held his hands up in front of him. “You don’t have to go grabbing me and crap. I’ll go along with you—just don’t make me smell your pits again.”

  “Whatever.” Bavasama sniffed, and instead of pulling Jesse into a chokehold, the guard just clamped down on his arm and dragged him along behind us.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, spitting the words out through clenched teeth.

  “The place with the best view, of course,” Bavasama said, her voice high and cackling. “I thought you would want to make sure you could see everything.”

  She glided up the stairs, and when we reached the top, I saw Rannock and the Fate Maker standing there waiting for us.

  “Ah, Piotr.” She reached up to pat the Fate Maker on the cheek. “Are you excited to watch your little country fall? I’m sure you’re ready to return to ruling it. Aren’t you?”

  He bowed his head before her. “Nothing would please me more.”

  “Oh, I’m sure of that,” she said with a tinkling laugh as Rannock pulled down on a rope hanging nearby. A set of rickety wooden stairs appeared, leading up to the roof of the castle. “Unfortunately for you, once my niece is dead, I won’t need you anymore. I’ll be the legitimate heir to the Rose Throne.”

  “But—” He looked at her, shock covering his face.

  “You’ve been too weak for too long.” Bavasama shook her head and then turned to two more guards posted along the wall. “Seize them. Both of them.”

  “What?” Rannock screeched as one of the guards came forward and grabbed him from behind, another doing the same to the Fate Maker. “But I’m your husband. I love you.”

  “You’re a wizard,” she answered. “The only thing you love is power, and I no longer want to share.”

  “You ungrateful shrew!” he screamed as they dragged him and the silent Fate Maker away, both of them glaring at my aunt. “You wouldn’t even be the empress of this country if it weren’t for me. The wizards would have overthrown you years ago.”

  “And why do you think I’ve arranged to imprison the rest of the wizards beside you once I’ve handled the little problem massing outside my gates?” Bavasama turned to look at me and shook her head. “One piece of advice from me to you,” she said quietly. “Never share your power with a man. None of them can be trusted. Not that it’s going to matter much for you, since I’ll be cutting off your head soon.”

  “You haven’t beaten my army yet,” I said.

  “Not yet,” she said. “But only because I wanted to wait until I had you in the perfect position to watch all of them die.” She motioned to the guard holding me. “Bring her.”

  Bavasama climbed to the top of the ladder and out onto the roof before peering back down at the rest of us. “Come along, Allie dear. Let’s go watch your army march to their death.”

  The guard shoved me forward, and I grabbed the ladder, pulling myself up to stand beside her on the roof. My aunt held her arms out and to the sides, like she was taking it all in, and then turned to smile at me. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

  “Marvelous?” I asked as I looked out over the two armies, thousands of warriors clustered together, armed to the teeth. I heard dragons shrieking in the sky as they flew over my army and the shouted demands coming from the soldiers atop Bavasama’s walls. In the air was the stench of burning oil, and I could feel my arms prickle as magic, coming from both sides, rippled across the night air.

  “All these warriors ready to throw their lives away for a queen that’s already as good as dead,” Bavasama said. “All the blood that will be spilled in vain.”

  “You really are crazy, aren’t you?” I asked. “Not just power hungry. Absolutely crushed-crackers insane.”

  “That’s what my mother thought,” she said, her voice high and excited. “The problem was I just couldn’t make her understand my vision. The beauty of a thousand worlds all wreathed in flame, begging for my mercy. Every world, every reality, bending their heads and swearing allegiance to me as the Golden Rose.”

  “Yep,” Jesse said. “Completely mental.”

  “Shut up, you,” she snarled. “Or I’ll have you thrown off the roof.”

  “Allie,” Jesse said, ignoring her, as he grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry.”

  I turned to him, wide-eyed. “Why?”

  “You’re going to need someone else to write your stories for you.” He launched himself at the guard who had his arm then, dragging the other man closer to the edge of the roof.

  Jesse broke free of the guard’s grip, and one of the dragons screeched, both of them flying faster now, the steady thump thump of their wings speeding up. The guard swung at him with an enraged scream, and Jesse ducked low, dropping his shoulder and tackling the heavier man. The guard stepped back, and the two of them seemed to hang in space for a moment before they both toppled out of sight.

  Jesse had given me a moment of surprise and the chance to keep myself alive. Now I just had to be brave enough to use it to my advantage. It was time to be the sort of queen my mother would have been proud of.

  I stomped down as hard as I could on the inside of the foot of my captor and then jammed my elbow into his side. The guard bent forward with a grunt, and I snatched the back of his shirt before I shifted, digging my hip into his side and throwing him toward the edge with all my strength. He stumbled once and then tripped over his own feet, tottering for just a second before he went over the side with a scream.

  I turned and grabbed my aunt by the hair, pulling as hard as I could, and dragged her to the edge before stomping down hard on her legs, too, forcing her to her knees, my hands still tangled in her hair. She yelped as I jerked her head up so I could look her in the eye.

  The beating of a hundred pair of wings swept through, though, and I looked away, watching as the sky filled with dragons flying toward us in a V formation. I saw the black dragon at the front, and my heart skipped a beat.

  “Remember what I told you about ticking off my boyfriend?” I pulled at my aunt’s hair harder, jerking her chin back so that she was staring at the dragons flying toward us. “You should have listened. Because the dragon at the front? That’s him, and I’m pretty sure he wants to barbecue you.”

  I watched as Winston roared, diving toward the army on my aunt’s walls, flames pouring from his mouth. For a moment no one moved. It was like the entire world was frozen, waiting, and the next instant my army was surging forward, battering at the gates, screaming as they went, the entire world drowned out b
y a single, shrieking wail.

  “Defend that gate,” one of the men below us yelled. But I could hear my army roaring outside as the wood began to splinter and the gate buckled under their assault. They surged through the gate, and roars of approval and anger sounded as the men crowded across the bridge and into the castle. Winston pulled up, and the dragons circled higher again as I stepped closer to the edge to watch, still keeping my aunt immobile.

  He turned toward me and flew higher, moving up into the darkest reaches of the evening sky until he was nothing more than a faint shadow above us, blending in perfectly with the night.

  “Archers to the walls,” someone shouted. But before any of Bavasama’s men could scramble into position, arrows rained over the side of the walls like a swarm of angry bees. Men screamed, and dragons roared as another volley was launched toward us.

  I pulled my aunt’s head back farther and glared down at her. “Your palace is going to fall, and when it does, I am going to kill you.”

  “It hasn’t fallen yet.” She lashed out at me with one arm, her hand curled into a claw.

  “Give it time. Your army is just too stupid to realize the fight is over.” I slammed her head forward, bashing it against the stone ledge that surrounded her walls.

  Bavasama let out a grunt of pain, and I watched as blood poured from a cut above her eye. She brought her elbow back and rammed it into my stomach, knocking the air out of me, and I doubled over, letting her go.

  “This will never be over,” she screamed as she hurled herself forward, tackling me and knocking us both back. “Not until you’re dead and I’m sitting on the Rose Throne.”

  “That is ne—” An arrow whistled through the air and came down hard, burying its point into the roof next to my head. Bavasama and I both looked over, staring at the shaking arrow with its ragged, scarlet feathers on the shaft.