The Reluctant Queen

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “You’re welcome. Thank you for distracting her.” He smiled back at her, and it felt like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. She felt as though she should hear singing. She suddenly and inexplicably wanted to laugh.

  She sent her spirits to disperse the smoke and squelch the remnants of the fire. The spirits of Semo rustled at the edges of the grove—hemmed in by the spirits of Aratay. She felt the spirits of Aratay holding the spirits of Semo throughout the city.

  Closing her eyes, she reached out—she felt/saw Daleina rise and summon air spirits. All of them climbed on: Daleina, Hamon, Erian, Llor, and the wolf Bayn, and they flew. Come, Naelin sent the thought to them. To the Queen’s Grove.

  We come, Daleina answered back. The words reverberated through the spirits. Naelin couldn’t see into Daleina’s mind, but she could hear her through the spirits. She could hear her because the spirits could.

  “The queen . . . she’s not dead,” Naelin said. Her throat hurt as she spoke, but she said the words anyway. “Erian and Llor . . . they’re alive. We’re alive.” In two steps, she reached Ven. He wrapped his arms around her, tight, and she wound hers around him.

  They were kissing when the air spirits arrived.

  Queen Daleina had tree spirits wrap Merecot in vines. She was still unconscious, but Hamon said she would wake soon. Bind her tight, Daleina thought.

  Bayn sat next to Merecot, his heavy paws on the queen’s stomach, holding her down. When the spirits finished, she nodded her thanks to them and the wolf, and then looked up at the others. Ven stood beside Naelin—he’d been displaced by her children but still hovered close to her. “You’re alive and using your power,” Ven said to Daleina. “Does this mean . . . Are you . . .”

  “She’s healed,” Hamon confirmed. “My mother made that antidote. She doesn’t make mistakes. I will test the queen’s blood as soon as this is all over, but I have no doubt.” His voice was filled with all his old confidence.

  Sagging, Ven exhaled. Relief was etched on his face, and Daleina noticed how tired he looked. He looked far older than he was, as if the last few hours had squeezed him like a dishrag. She felt the same way, but she refused to show it.

  This wasn’t over yet.

  “Your Majesty,” Naelin said. “I never intended to take your crown.” She tried to curtsy but couldn’t. Her children were clinging to her, draped around her neck like heavy necklaces. She looked battered from the battle she’d faced in the grove, but whole.

  “You did not take it,” Daleina said. “The spirits still acknowledge me. They have embraced us both as their queen.” She managed a smile, despite the fact that her old friend lay bound at her feet, despite the fact that another friend had betrayed her and died for it.

  “No country has ever had two queens. I’ll abdicate immediately.”

  “No,” Ven said. “You’ll be killed.”

  Her children began to wail. Daleina couldn’t remember their names, but she knew that sound. She’d heard it in her palace, in the city, as she’d woken from the False Death. She would hear it in her dreams. Consoling her children, Naelin said, “She can use her power again. She can keep me safe.”

  “Until someone tries to kill her again,” Ven said.

  Daleina saw Naelin hesitate—uncertainty was written clearly on her face. Her arms were tight around her children’s shoulders. Both children had quieted and were still clinging, whimpering softly, to their mother.

  “Don’t abdicate. Not yet,” Daleina said. “Aratay may still need you.”

  “You mean because of her.” Naelin nodded at Merecot.

  Lying there, she looked so much like the friend Daleina remembered. A few years older. But her face was the same. Not the face of a killer. Oh, Merecot. “She had me poisoned.” Daleina tried to understand how she could have done it, how anyone could kill a friend. “She’d always been ambitious, but I never thought . . . I never suspected . . .”

  “You could eliminate the threat,” Hamon said softly. “Now and forever. It could be painless. She’d never need to wake.”

  “If you kill her, her people will suffer,” Naelin warned.

  That was true. The spirits of Semo would go rogue, and then everyone would suffer. “I’m not going to kill her,” Daleina said. I don’t kill friends. “Her spirits are in our land. I don’t want them going rogue here, and I don’t want her crown.” It was hard enough to be responsible for all of Aratay. The last thing she wanted was more lives on her conscience.

  “You could take it,” Ven said to Naelin. “Give up Aratay and take control of Semo. I could kill her for you. Daleina, you would not have to watch.” There was a look in his eyes that belied his words. He looked as if his words were poison on his tongue. He doesn’t want to kill her, Daleina thought. But he would, if his queens asked.

  The little boy gasped. “Killing’s wrong!”

  “Shh,” the little girl said. And then she hugged her brother.

  Daleina looked down at Merecot, who was beginning to stir. Her head rocked to the side, and she groaned. She’d caused so much damage, both through her sister, Alet, and with her army. Daleina knew she should be angry. But she only felt sad. “The boy’s right.”

  “Daleina, she tried to kill you,” Hamon said. His voice was still soft, but she heard the anger in it. Anger and fear. “She did kill others. She could kill again.”

  “A healer advocating death?” Daleina fixed her eyes on him and noticed how worn he looked, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks, as if he’d spent every waking moment worrying and working . . . He had, she thought. For me. “That’s your mother talking.” She said it gently but firmly.

  He blanched and fell silent.

  “No,” Daleina said, decided. “I won’t kill another queen. We will find a different way.” She raised her eyes to look at Naelin. Queen Naelin. It suits her, Daleina thought. Mother of Aratay. “There’s been enough death.”

  Naelin was silent for a moment—Daleina felt as if she was being evaluated, all her flaws tallied up and slated for correction, all her strengths recognized and catalogued—before Naelin said, “Yes.”

  At Daleina’s feet, Merecot groaned and tried to roll to the side, but the vines held her firm. The tree spirits chittered and tugged tighter on the vines. Bayn growled. Daleina knelt beside her old friend. Merecot’s eyes fluttered open, and Daleina felt a pang—sorrow? Anger? She didn’t know. Pity, maybe.

  “You’re alive,” Merecot said.

  “Yes.”

  Merecot struggled once against the tree spirits and then lay still. “I heard you were ill. I knew Aratay would need a new queen. I came to help—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Merecot,” Daleina said. “I know what you did, and I am sorry to inform you that your sister, Alet, is dead. And that it’s your fault.” The words felt like broken glass in her throat. It hurt to say them. Daleina thought of her own sister. The spirits had confirmed she was alive and well. Safe again, for now.

  “Alet . . .” Merecot’s eyes filled with tears.

  Daleina couldn’t tell if the tears were real or not. She hoped they were, for Alet’s sake.

  Naelin spoke from behind Daleina. “Tell your spirits to stop fighting. Or ours will tear them apart, and Semo will be destroyed. Your mountains won’t survive the death of your spirits.” Her tone brooked no argument. Mother of the world, Daleina thought.

  Merecot stared first at Naelin and then at Daleina. “You’re both . . . Oh, how very clever. And complicated. I don’t believe it’s ever been done before. However will you rule with two queens?”

  “That’s not your concern,” Daleina told her.

  “But Semo is my concern,” Merecot said, straining to sit upright. Even prone and tied, she commanded attention as if she were on a throne. She was born to be a queen. “We cannot survive as we are. We are overrun with spirits. There simply isn’t enough land to support them all. They’ll tear my land apart. Leave my people homeless. Helpless.”

  “Then why didn’t you ask f
or help?” Daleina asked. “Why do this?”

  Merecot snorted. “What would you have done if I’d come to you? Given me your country if only I’d said please?”

  Merecot was every bit as infuriating as Daleina remembered. She wanted to shake her. Or scream. Or cry. All of this could have been avoided! If only Merecot had trusted her, tried to work together, done anything but this! “I don’t know! But we could have found a better solution, together.”

  Kneeling next to Daleina, Naelin addressed Merecot. “We still can. It’s not too late. You’re going to go back home, with your spirits, and you’re going to send emissaries, in good faith. We will find an equitable solution through diplomacy that suits both our lands.”

  “A solution that doesn’t involve murder,” Daleina said. “Merecot, how could you? Attempting to assassinate one of your only friends? And using your sister to do it?” She knew she was shouting but didn’t care.

  Shackled by tree spirits, Merecot was a strange mix of haughty and pathetic, with her dress stained with dirt and blood and her crown askew on her head. Her black hair had slithered out of its elaborate braids. “I had no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice,” Naelin said, and Daleina heard her hesitate before she added, “Granted, sometimes the only choices are bad.”

  Merecot nodded as if she’d found an ally. “I faced a terrible choice: I could either be a good friend or a good queen, but I couldn’t be both. I was trying to save my people! You have to see that.”

  “You can’t trust her,” Hamon said quietly.

  “I don’t trust her,” Daleina told him. “But I do know her.” Merecot wanted to keep her throne. She wanted Semo strong and safe. She could be trusted to act in her own best interest.

  “Daleina, please believe that I am sorry,” Merecot said. “I didn’t want—”

  Daleina cut her off. “Here’s what is going to happen: you are going to take your spirits and go north. You are going to repair as much damage as you can on the way, and then you are going to cross the border and stay there. When you’re done licking your wounds, you are going to send emissaries, exactly as Queen Naelin said, and we are going to discuss Semo’s problem like civilized people.” She leaned forward. “And Merecot? Don’t confuse mercy for forgiveness.”

  She ordered the tree spirits to release her, even as ideas started whirling in her head about what to do in Semo.

  Linked through the spirits, Queen Daleina and Queen Naelin watched Queen Merecot as she flew on the backs of air spirits, instructing her spirits to restore the earth. Streams flowed again. Trees grew. And Aratay began to heal.

  Naelin—Queen Naelin—positioned her son on her lap and her daughter next to her, tucked up against her, as she leaned against the trunk of one of the trees in the Queen’s Grove. Erian was breathing evenly, already asleep, and Llor was close to sleep. Naelin could feel Daleina guiding the spirits northward. Stretching her thoughts out, Naelin scooted them along as well, ordering them to assist in the cleanup. It wouldn’t be perfect. New trees could be grown, but old ones couldn’t be restored. Lost lives couldn’t be returned. But at least it felt good to be fixing things.

  “This could be a mistake,” Ven said quietly. He was sitting at her back, on a root. She felt the warmth of his breath on her neck.

  “It could be,” Naelin agreed. Merecot could simply try again. Send more assassins. Invade again. She could feel desperate now that her plan had failed. Or maybe she’d be smart and realize they could help. Together, they could find a better, less bloody solution. There had to be one.

  “You don’t think it is.” It wasn’t a question. “If Daleina had decided to kill her . . . If I had agreed . . .” He sounded as if he already knew her answer before he even formed the words.

  “Yes, I would have stopped you.” Leaning over her daughter, she pressed her lips to her sleeping daughter’s hair. It smelled a bit like smoke and a lot like dust. Erian’s hands and arms were streaked with dirt, and her palms were red. So were Llor’s. Later, she’d ask them all about what they’d seen and heard and did. For now, it was enough that they were together. A sudden thought occurred to her. “But you knew that. You knew that when you offered to kill her, didn’t you?” Twisting around as far as she could without disturbing her children, she met Ven’s eyes.

  He caressed her cheek. “Yes.”

  She smiled. “I’m that predictable?”

  “You’re that good. You will be a good queen.”

  Naelin looked across the grove toward Daleina. The queen of Aratay was standing beside her healer, and all her attention was focused northward. She hadn’t collapsed again, despite how much she was using her power. “Aratay already has a good queen.”

  “And now it has two,” Ven said. “Doubly lucky. Like I am, for having found you.” He moved closer, leaning against her.

  Llor shifted in her lap. “And me,” he said sleepily.

  Ven laughed softly, a rumble that she felt through her back. “Triply lucky, for having found you, Erian, and Llor.”

  “And the nice doggie too,” Llor said.

  “Yes, Bayn too.”

  The wolf raised his head and regarded them with his yellow eyes. He then scooted closer and lay his head across Naelin’s feet, as if he agreed with Ven and Llor.

  Naelin hadn’t thought of it as luck, and she’d certainly never considered it good luck. Fate maybe? Or simply the convergence of many people’s choices, bringing them all to this grove, together.

  Maybe it didn’t matter what they called it, chance or choice, as long as they were together.

  She pulled Erian and Llor closer, feeling their warmth. She felt Ven behind her and Bayn at her feet—all of them, cocooning her, believing in her. And despite everything, she felt, for the first time in a long while, safe.

  Chapter 38

  White blossoms fell on fresh graves so often that the sweet smell wafted across Mittriel with the evening breeze, becoming as familiar as the scent of bread from the bakeries and sweat from the workers who were repairing the city.

  Two days after Queen Merecot’s retreat to Semo, Queen Daleina presided over the funerals for Champion Piriandra and the other champions and candidates who had fallen. She spoke of their dedication and bravery and sacrifice, and she called to the spirits to cover the earth and fill the air with white flowers. A day later, she attended the funerals for the city and palace guards, as well as the caretakers and courtiers who had been killed by spirits. Again, more flowers. Then at the ruins of Northeast Academy, where Headmistress Hanna, who’d lost the use of her legs while defending her students, led a ceremony for the fallen students, teachers, and staff. After that, there was the memorial for the men, women, and children of Aratay—each family had their own private funeral, but Daleina wanted to honor her people and all their losses. At this, the petals were as plentiful as snow in a winter storm.

  By the end of it, she was sick of death, sick of pain, and sick of tears. Grief and guilt felt like rain that had permeated every inch of her skin. She could not escape it. And still there was one more to be buried: Captain Alet.

  No one wanted a funeral for Alet.

  Except Daleina. And, to her surprise, Naelin. The other queen joined Daleina while she was arguing with a knot of chancellors in the Amber Throne Room.

  All the chancellors bowed when Queen Naelin entered. She was followed closely by the seneschal, and Daleina was certain he had brought her here—he was intent on doing his duty to both queens. He was the one who had insisted that a second throne be set up on the dais. Borrowed from the Sunrise Room, its pastels were jarring in the somber, rich gold of the Amber Throne Room.

  But then, everything about having two queens was jarring.

  Naelin had yet to sit on her throne.

  “Your Majesty . . .” one of the chancellors began, and then stopped as if uncertain how to continue—it was Chancellor Xanon, who had been pushing the most strenuously for Alet’s body to be shipped back to Semo in an unmarked crate.<
br />
  “You were discussing the funeral for Captain Alet,” Naelin said. She had the skill of making a simple statement sound like a rebuke. Daleina admired that.

  Chancellor Xanon looked, for an instant, like a toddler who had been caught with chocolate smeared on his face; then he composed himself. “She committed high treason. Surely such a criminal cannot be honored, nor mourned. Her death is a victory, not a tragedy.”

  “Every death is a tragedy, Chancellor . . .” She let the name dangle.

  “Xanon,” the chancellor supplied with another bow.

  “She was our friend and our enemy, Chancellor Xanon,” Naelin said. “We will mourn our friend who was killed by our enemy. Surely you understand that a life is more complex than a label. We can love who she was while we hate what she’s done.”

  “Well said,” Daleina murmured. She’d been searching for words like that for the better part of the last hour. She wondered briefly if Naelin was a better queen than she was. It doesn’t matter if she is, she thought. The spirits chose us both.

  “But . . . but the people . . .” Chancellor Xanon stammered.

  It was time to end this argument, as queens together. Daleina caught Naelin’s eye, then deliberately looked at the two thrones. Together, they both swept past the chancellors, climbed up to the dais, and sat side by side.

  “The people can feel what they want to feel,” Daleina declared. “We will bury our friend.”

  There were no more arguments.

  That said, the funeral for Captain Alet was small.

  Only Daleina, Naelin, Ven, and Hamon, plus Naelin’s children and the wolf, Bayn. Arin had offered to come, but Daleina had told her she didn’t have to—Arin had accepted the reprieve with relief. She was ready to move on from all the final farewells and go back to living.

  Daleina couldn’t let go just yet though.