by Mary Weber
“It is not for me to say, only for you to find.” She turns her head to gaze out the window as if she’s heard something.
I open my mouth, then shut it. I’m done with this.
I turn to go, but her voice rises. “The internal bleeding set in around the torn organs and then, after my questioning of Eogan, the entry point on his neck. As I said, it may have even been able to heal given time for his ability to work. However . . .” Her eyes bore into my chest so profoundly that I follow her gaze down to my sliced, stained dress. “In gifting you his strength for healing on the airship, he became weakened past even what his power can fix.”
I narrow my eyes and peel back a piece of the material to see what she’s staring at.
It’s only then I’m struck by the realization that my chest hasn’t ached in hours, since just before we crashed the airship. Not only that, but somehow the wounds that oozed the blood are gone. I pull more of the cloth away from my chest and poke gently where only last night my flesh was torn open. It’s smooth. It’s soft. My skin is whole.
She nods.
“How—?”
“You assume his gift is blocking others’ abilities. Considering you love him, I find it curious you know so little of him.” She tilts her head and drifts her gaze over me.
Whatever words were in my mouth are sliding back into my throat. What is she talking about? “Is that what you told him?” My mind flashes to an hour ago in the room with Eogan, when he seemed so hesitant. “What did you say to him? What’s his ability and what will help him?”
“What another asks of me is not for you to know. Nor is the answer given them. You should be less concerned with that and more with getting him to the Valley.” Her head snaps to the window again. “Even now Draewulf draws closer.”
I bat a hand toward the sky and light it up as if this is of little concern. “So come with us. Help me save Eogan, your people, and the Hidden Lands.”
Her eyes harden. “I’ve already said I will not leave my people. Draewulf will try to take me, yes. And if he succeeds, that is my destiny.”
“If he succeeds?” How can her Luminescent sight see so much and yet leave so much to fate? And how can she not know what he will do—what he’s capable of? “I believe we make our own destiny. We make our own choices.”
“Then you can choose to respect mine.”
“Even though it will cost your daughter’s life as well?”
She tips her head as if to shrug, but not before I see the tightening of her throat. “If she is meant to survive, then she will.”
I give a harsh laugh as I pull away from the guard’s knife that’s now annoying me. “Are you insane? Of course she’s meant to survive—we all are!”
“Then perhaps you should help her do so. But as I said, respect my decision.”
“Respect your choice to endanger the entire Hidden Lands because you’ll only protect your own people—but not your own daughter? Forgive me, but I’ve seen your defenses. You can’t protect your city!”
The same irritation I had toward Rasha bubbles up into my mind before I can stop it. Was it destiny that caused the murder of my Elemental race? Or simply the decision on Cashlin’s and Tulla’s parts to care only about themselves?
Her gaze snaps. “We have our reasons.”
“Yes, Rasha mentioned as much. Too bad she’d no idea how little care for her you have.”
“Careful,” the guard behind me growls.
“She does not always see eye to eye with those reasons,” the queen says. “But the safety of our people has always come first.”
I allow the words I spoke to Rasha not four days ago to emerge in my head—that my Elemental kind has spent the last hundred years being slaughtered while Cashlin has protected its own.
“Ah, but you did not know your people as I did. If so, you might feel differently. They were arrogant and too powerful for their own good. Lucky for your kingdom at the time, none of the Elementals were as powerful as you, nor could they bear working together—plus, there were other kinds of Uathúils to control them. Had your people been more unified, they might’ve overcome the Uathúils hired to confine them in their internment camps before those same Uathúils began to be hunted themselves.”
I step toward her, my stomach churning and my hand clenching. The guard and her blade are right on my heels, but I don’t care. “And that’s your excuse for letting them die?”
“Oh, they put up a good fight and slaughtered their fair share of Faelenians. As I said, had they been more numerous and humble enough to combine forces, they would’ve succeeded. You should thank hulls they didn’t.”
I open my mouth just as her voice softens. “Nym, it is arrogance that brought them down just as much as Draewulf’s truce. I know you often believe your Elemental ability is a curse, but they used it as one. And, for that matter, you should understand I have often believed the same of my ability. That it is a curse. Imagine knowing how almost every decision of those you come in contact with will likely result. It’s a burden.”
Her eyes moisten, and in that moment it’s a kick of guilt to my chest. I’ve never thought of that. Either for her or for Rasha. Nearby, the lake water ripples, followed by the honk of a swan.
“Your kind made their own choice. Perhaps it was their destiny, or perhaps it was just foolhardy. However, just because I can see a possible ending doesn’t mean I’m obligated to act upon it. Then or now.”
I don’t want to talk about this anymore. “You admit you could’ve seen what would happen to the Elementals. Just as I suspect you can see what will happen to us. So tell me—what will happen to us now?”
“I know you and my daughter are quite close, and I’m aware of the burden you carry for her and the Tullan people. While you may have hurried Draewulf to my door, it is neither your fault that he is on the move, nor that you could not defend all of them.”
Why is she telling me this? “Just answer the question.”
“I am. Because what I know is—this time, this path before the Hidden Lands is not mine to decide.” The queen drops her voice. “It is yours.”
“Mine?” I frown. “To decide what?”
“All of it,” she whispers. And suddenly her eyes are hardening. As if willing me to make the right choice. As if assuming I know what in hulls she’s referring to.
“Just as even now you still feel the effects of the poisoned power that will always scratch at you. Because the choices we make have lasting consequences. You were lucky with that one. Because what you decide for the future of Faelen will be a choice of such magnitude, the consequences are beyond imagining.”
I glare at her. I have no idea what to do with this. “And what am I supposed to decide?”
Her lips twitch. “Come here, child.”
I narrow my gaze even more and flip a look at the guard to make sure I’m not going to get a knife in my gut. Then I step near her. As I do, the scent of frozen death invades my nostrils, invoking a fear I didn’t know was there. Good hulls.
She stares at my hand, as if curling her mind around my gimpy fingers, and it’s all I can do not to yank away as her icy gaze cuts into me. She closes her eyes and waits. Until her breathing gets heavier and the only thing interrupting the silence is my heart beating and her breathing and the honk honk honk of those swans getting closer behind us.
“You have three choices in front of you.” Her voice sounds old and thin now, like brittle blades on paper. “The first is to run with Eogan to the Valley of Origin and hope you arrive in time. If he’s healed, you’ll escape with him to hide in Drust.” Her eyes flare open and stare at me. How she knew this was on my
mind scares me. I haven’t even fully formed the thought of running and hiding with him yet, but now that she says it . . . “In which case you both will survive for a time.”
“And the Hidden Lands?” I swallow. “Will they survive if Draewulf can’t find me?”
“There is a chance he won’t find you for a while but could continue to wage his war, morphing humanity into his wraiths. At least until there is hardly a world left to take over. Or . . . your second option is to leave now with Eogan for the Valley, then prepare for war in Faelen. In which case, I should warn you that whether Eogan survives long enough to be healed or not, you’ll still need to get to the Valley of Origin if you wish to have a chance at beating the beast. As the last Elemental, it is your responsibility to call forth the rest.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The other Uathúils. Faelen is your land, Nym. The Valley is your birthright.”
She sighs and murmurs something about what they’re teaching in Faelen these days.
“Just like each of the Uathúil kings’ blood is tied to sacred spaces in their lands, yours is tied to the Valley. And that is where you will call them because your true capabilities are not just in controlling the weather, they are in calling what once was into existence again.”
She suddenly twists her neck around to look at the sky. Then jerks her head back toward me. I see it. The moving lights in the distance that are too colorful and too fast. Draewulf’s ships. The red in her eyes flares. “You need to leave.”
I plant my feet firmly beside her chair and lean in. “Not until I know what you’re talking about.”
Her eyes snap and the guard behind me shifts. “Hope. And Uathúils. Both of which are the only chance at saving this world from Draewulf.”
“And these Uathúils—how am I supposed to call them?”
“I cannot say.”
I wave an arm in the air. “What in litches can you say?”
Her eyes flash red and harden.
I narrow mine. “In that case, what’s the third option?”
She turns her head toward the lake and the swans that are getting closer.
I lift my knife and hear the slide of a footstep behind me. But the Luminescent guard must read my intentions because she doesn’t cut me.
Queen Laiha’s gaze swerves back to mine, however, and the spark there says if she could get up from her chair and slap me herself she would. Instead she tips her head toward the edge of the lake. “Touch it.”
“Pardon?” I frown and turn. The water is crystal clear and rippling gently on the white-sand shore.
“Touch the water with your boot, and then back up.”
I walk the four paces over and, scowling, tap my foot on the water.
There’s an instant honking and commotion, and I barely have time to look up when the five snake-swans are charging toward me. I jump backward as they rush the shoreline, writhing their necks and pecking at the water as if I’ve thrown in food.
“Not food,” the queen whispers behind me. “A threat. Before I took them in, they’d been abused by man. Because of that, they now sense any disturbance of their territory to be a threat. And to a certain degree they are right. You could be a danger to them if you wanted to.”
The blind snake-swans are growing more and more agitated. Suddenly one lifts its head higher than the rest and throws itself on the sand. Flopping violently. What the—?
My gut twists in horror as the other four descend on it and rip into its wings with their razor teeth until the poor thing’s shredded and bleeding and dying. It gives one final, feeble honk and the others race away to the center of the glittering lake.
“And yet,” whispers the queen with a note of sadness, “these types of animals have such a bond that when all else fails in the face of danger, one will ultimately sacrifice itself for the sake of the others. If you truly had been a threat, you would’ve taken this one as an easy kill and left the others alone. In that way, the sacrifice of one may save the many.”
I turn and stare at her and the guard.
Then peer back over at the limp swan as my throat tightens. What she’s suggesting pricks my shoulder blades. “You’re suggesting I sacrifice myself.”
“That is the third option, yes. Because without your blood, Draewulf cannot ever fully succeed. He will stay mortal and thus can eventually be killed.”
“By an Elemental who no longer exists because I’m the last of my race.”
“Maybe. Or perhaps in sacrificing yourself, you will destroy him too.”
“Well, which is it?”
She shakes her head.
“Are you saying I should kill myself?”
“Not in the least—I would never condone such a thing. I’m saying you can run or fight, but when the time comes—and it will—you may have to fall at the hand of another before Draewulf takes you. No one escapes this life, nor do they escape war, unscathed. And in this case you are the piece that will make all the difference. So hold it all lightly, Nym.”
The words from the Inters slip through my head: I wasn’t supposed to survive.
A sharp throat clearing comes from the Cashlin guard. “Your Majesty, three of Draewulf’s airships are nearly here.”
My legs are frozen, my head is frozen, and my voice has gone to litches. Eogan’s dying and this is all a hull’s nest.
“Your Majesty,” the female guard says, more insistent.
“Just tell me.” I swallow. “If it comes down to such a thing, will my sacrifice guarantee Draewulf’s defeat and my people’s freedom?”
The queen’s face grows gray. “I cannot answer that other than to say freedom comes in many forms. But it always comes at a price.”
“And what if I run? Will that at least slow his defeat?”
“It will.”
“In that case, if the people will die no matter what, then why spend their last few weeks leading them to a violent end?”
“I think the question is, can you justify not trying to defeat him?”
“I can if you’re wrong.”
The guard slips her hand onto my arm.
“Again, I cannot tell you for certain.”
“Because you don’t know, or you refuse?”
“As I said, ultimately the choice is yours to make. Now leave. The time has drawn short for Eogan, and his death will be at your feet if you willingly stay.”
The drone of an airship rattles the domed glass ceiling as I stare at her. Knowing that what I choose now will set the course for not just the Hidden Lands’ destiny, but her destiny as well.
And that is a weight I don’t want anything to do with.
She nods at me, as if already knowing what my choice will be.
“Take that there,” she says calmly, and with a tip of her head indicates a letter slid into the Luminescent guard’s pocket. “Give it to King Sedric.” She pauses, then, as if on second thought, says, “Tell him from what I can see, you have roughly ten days.”
“Until what?”
“Until Draewulf is finished with Cashlin.”
Wait—ten? I grab the letter just as the Luminescent jumps toward the queen and grabs the handles on her chair.
“I must see to Her Majesty. Show yourself—” The guard’s words are drowned out in an explosion that blasts just beyond the window behind the queen, sending the sound of shattering glass through the room as a burst of heat and fire and screams billows up from a section of city wall in the distance.
The bombing shakes the entire Castle. It’s so violent and loud.
I drop to a crouch while the guard hovers over the queen as we wait for the sky to fall. Except Queen Laiha’s expression doesn’t seem concerned, and after a moment the shaking stops and the garden room stays intact.
I rise and tuck King Sedric’s letter into my dress top.
“Go!” the guard says.
“The sooner, the better,” the queen adds. “For all of us.”
I’m racing up the crystal stairs to the bridge when her voice calls after me, “You should know, though, that the one called Lord Myles stands on the edge of a decision as well. One choice will send him over a precipice and turn him into a lesser Draewulf. The other will most likely cost his life but will help the Hidden Lands survive. Help him if you can. But should he decide wrong, destroy him. And, Nym!”
I barely turn.
“If you can . . .” Her voice cracks, and for a second I hear my own mother’s tone coming through. It’s as if all her crazy, hardened veneer has just peeled off and exposed who she truly is—with the heart of a mother’s love—behind it. “Help Rasha. She will need you and . . . you will need her if Draewulf truly takes me.”
What in hulls? I swallow. She’s finally mentioning that now? And then I don’t care because I’m running for the door. With a final glance at the snake-swans, I push out of the room just as the queen’s call of “Hold it lightly, Nym!” is cut off by another bomb and the sound ricochets through the palace.
CHAPTER 11
THE PALACE STAYS STANDING AS I PLOW DOWN the hallways and past frantically moving Cashlins who’ve emerged from hulls knows where toward the room where I left Eogan. I’ve almost reached it when the young male guard, Kenan, Kel, and Eogan appear.
I stall for a half second as they head toward me.
“You’re—”
“Whatever they did to me worked.” Eogan steps forward, still weak looking but coherent.
I frown at the bags beneath his eyes.
“We have to get out of here. Kenan said you went for Queen Laiha.”
“She’s staying, but she’s released us to take our airships and go.”
