The Reluctant Queen
Page 38
Alet’s body was wrapped in white linens and lay in a red cedar coffin. She wouldn’t be buried in the forests of Aratay—she would be returned to her sister in Semo to rest in the mountains.
Daleina wasn’t certain how she felt about that. After all, it was Merecot’s fault that Alet had killed and therefore her fault that she’d died.
She could forgive Alet.
She couldn’t forgive Merecot. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But Alet deserved to find whatever peace she could, amongst the remains of her own people. Even Daleina’s anger couldn’t refuse her that.
Each of them took turns speaking, sharing a memory of Alet. Even the children. Erian spoke about how Alet had taught her to punch, and Llor said he’d heard her laugh once and it was a nice laugh. Ven spoke of her skill and her confidence. Naelin told of the regret in Alet’s eyes and all the conversations with the oblique warnings that only now made sense.
Daleina went last. There was so much they hadn’t known about Alet, including the fact that Merecot was her sister, or that Merecot even had a sister. But today that paled in importance next to what they did know: who they thought she was. “Captain Alet was more than my guard. She was the one who filled the hole left behind when the heirs died, when I lost my friends. She was the friend I talked to, relied on, trusted, and loved, as a new queen who felt so alone.”
Hamon took her hand in his. “You were never alone, Daleina.”
“And you’re not alone now,” Naelin said. She took Daleina’s other hand, and Erian took hers, then Llor hers, then Ven his, until they were all in a circle around Alet’s body, holding hands.
The petals began to fall. And Daleina felt at peace.
Epilogue
Queen Merecot of Semo stood in front of her window and watched her spirits rip apart a mountain. Two earth spirits, each a hundred feet tall, hurled chunks of rock at each other. Air spirits caught the rocks and propelled them higher and higher, then dropped them so they impacted like meteors on the soft dirt below. Fire spirits blackened the earth, and water spirits loosened the soil until the face of the mountain slid away in mudslides that thundered toward the valley below.
Concentrating, she diverted the rushing mud from the village in the valley by using tiny earth spirits, and she steered the falling rocks away from her people with blasts of freezing wind from ice spirits.
She could keep her people safe.
For now.
But for how much longer? There were too many spirits in Semo, and it was only a matter of time before they tore her country to shreds. And then, how long before the rest of Renthia suffered the same fate? Everything they’d built, all that their people had created, would be destroyed. Their cities would fall. Their lives would be extinguished. Renthia would become worse than the untamed lands.
Damn Daleina. And damn that woman Naelin.
And damn herself too.
“I failed,” Merecot said.
“You did,” the old woman behind her said. “You allowed your emotions to cloud your judgment. When I was queen, there was no softness in me. I showed no mercy.”
Merecot clenched her fists, then unclenched them as she commandeered an air spirit to deflect a boulder away from the castle. It crashed into one of the giant earth spirits. “My sister is dead. I have been the opposite of soft and weak. Indeed, I have sacrificed too much.”
“How much is too much when the world is at stake?” The old queen rose and tottered to join Merecot at the window. She smelled of dried apples, and her face was as shriveled as rotten fruit. “You have a chance to do what I could not do: make all of this right. Make this stop. Yes, you have had a setback, but you must let it harden you in your purpose.”
“The price is too high.” She thought of Alet—so very brave. Alet had always been that way, the younger sister watching out for the older, reckless one. When they were little kids, it was a five-year-old Alet who scared away a tree spirit that a six-year-old Merecot had summoned to play with. It was Alet who had taught herself to swim and then insisted Merecot learn. Alet who had stayed behind when their father was dying, who was strong enough to feed him and bathe him and wipe away his tears and his vomit and his filth while Merecot fled first to the academy and then to Semo. And it was Alet whom Merecot had turned to when she realized she’d become queen of a doomed country.
The old queen snorted. “No price is too high. You must be the hero that Renthia doesn’t know it needs. You alone have the power, so you alone bear the responsibility. You must embrace your destiny.”
“Quit talking like you’re some kind of wise old prophet,” Merecot said. The former queen of Semo was neither wise nor a prophet; she was merely old. And she was becoming increasingly more annoying. It would do her well to remember she lived only because of Merecot’s protection. “You could have done it—you had the power once—but you failed far worse than I. Instead, you allowed this to happen.” She waved her hand at the window, at the spirits whose rage could be slaked only by destruction.
The old queen was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer and kinder. “You’re right—I am not wise. But I do have the benefit of hindsight that you, in your youth, do not. I see in you a chance to right old wrongs, to undo past mistakes, not only those done by me, but those done by every queen of Renthia that has come before. You can make the world a better place, if you dare.”
Outside, lightning struck, and a field caught fire. Merecot instantly forced the water spirits to make it rain, extinguishing the flames. She then flung yet another boulder back at the earth spirits. We can’t survive like this. If I can fix the world . . . then I must. “I dare.”
The old queen patted Merecot’s arm in approval, and Merecot felt a rush of warmth. Her own mother had never quite approved of her. It was nice to have someone notice that Merecot made the right choices, the difficult choices.
Her resolve strengthened, Merecot reached out with her will and forced the warring spirits to turn away from one another. They’d had enough playtime for one day. It was time to let the frightened people come out of their homes and live their lives. She’d let the spirits spend more of their rage tomorrow. “So that’s it then? I try again, but this time to remove two queens of Aratay?”
The old queen smiled. “It will not be difficult now. The spirits will not stand for two queens of the same land. Soon they will see. All you must do is remove the queens’ protector.”
She was startled. She hadn’t thought Champion Ven was that much of a threat. He had surprised her in the grove, of course, but now that she knew to watch for him, he would not be a threat twice. “You mean the champion?”
The old queen laughed. “Oh, my sweet, innocent child, no.”
“Then who?”
“I should think it obvious. You must kill the wolf.”
In the heart of Aratay, within the palace, the wolf called Bayn padded into Queen Naelin’s bedchamber. She was sleeping soundly, with her children tucked on either side of her. The boy had dropped his stuffed squirrel toy on the floor. It lay in a pool of moonlight.
Gently, Bayn picked up the toy in his jaws and placed it next to the boy. He then circled the bed and nudged the girl’s arm back onto the mattress. She murmured in her sleep and curled up tighter against her mother.
There were more of the soft, strange humans to protect now, but that was good. It was better to have a pack. Before this, he had been alone too long.
In truth, his memory of what came “before” was fuzzy. He was aware that he wasn’t like other wolves. In fact, he wasn’t certain he’d always been a wolf, but that didn’t bother him. He knew his purpose now:
Keep them safe. At all costs.
Acknowledgments
A couple years ago, I was at a writing retreat in the woods, and I was marveling at how the light hit the tangle of trees . . . and I tripped over my own feet, fell on my face, and cut my lip. In that moment, Renthia, with all its bloodthirsty nature spirits, was born. Trees + bl
ood = this book.
So I’d like to thank those trees for the somewhat painful inspiration.
I’d also like to thank my magnificent agent Andrea Somberg, who has believed in me from the start, my amazing editor David Pomerico, and my fantastic publicist Caroline Perny, as well as Jennifer Brehl, Priyanka Krishnan, Pam Jaffee, Angela Craft, Shawn Nicholls, Amanda Rountree, Virginia Stanley, Chris Connolly, and all the other wonderful people at HarperCollins who helped bring Renthia to life.
And thank you with all my heart to my husband, my children, and all my family and friends. You are all magic, and I love you so much.
About the Author
Sarah Beth Durst is the author of thirteen fantasy books for adults, teens, and children, including The Queen of Blood, Drink Slay Love, and Journey Across the Hidden Islands. She won an ALA Alex Award and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and has been a finalist for SFWA’s Andre Norton Award three times. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, her children, and her ill-mannered cat. Visit her at www.sarahbethdurst.com.
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The Queen of Blood
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
the reluctant queen. Copyright © 2017 by Sarah Beth Durst. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Harper Voyager and design are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers LLC.
first edition
Map illustration by Ashley P. Halsey
Cover design by Richard L. Aquan
Cover illustration © Stephan Martiniere
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Durst, Sarah Beth, author.
Title: The reluctant queen / Sarah Beth Durst.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Harper Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2017] | Series: The queens of Renthia ; Book 2
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038530| ISBN 9780062413352 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062413376 (ebook)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3604.U7578 R45 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038530
Digital Edition JULY 2017 ISBN 978-0-06-241337-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-241335-2
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