Apparently, neither could Eucilla.
“So only the True Incarnation can go in and live and going in will prove once and for all that I am the one!” she exclaimed.
Morbain frowned. “Well, yes my pet but I don’t think—”
“I’m the one!” Eucilla shouted, running for the doorway.
I saw at once that the idiot was going to get herself killed, trying to prove a point that wasn’t true. Jumping after her, I barely caught her wrist in one hand as she teetered in the doorway in her ridiculous heels.
“Eucilla wait—this is suicide,” I protested, trying to keep her from crossing the threshold.
“For you, maybe.” She flashed me a look and then surged forward, through the doorway and into the lovely, idyllic garden.
I hung onto her wrist grimly as we went, knowing she could be killed if I let go. Sure enough, since I was touching her, neither one of us were harmed. I could breathe easily and the plants and bushes that brushed us didn’t hurt a bit.
I wished I could go sit on the golden bench and watch the blue water in the little brook ripple and babble and just rest for a minute. It felt like these stupid Trials had been going on for ages and I was tired and hungry, despite the tube of nutripaste Kristoff had made me eat that morning.
But there was no rest while Eucilla was with me. The minute we got into the garden, she began fighting me.
“Let go! Let me go!” she demanded, trying to twist loose of my grip on her wrist.
“No.” I hung on tight. “If I do, you’ll die.”
“You’ll die, you mean,” she hissed. “Since I am the True Incarnation. You’re only holding on to me to save your own miserable life.”
“Eucilla, my dear, you’ve made your point.” Morbain’s voice sounded high and strained. “We can all see that you’ve entered the Garden of Death and no harm has befallen you, so you must be the True Incarnation. You can come back now.”
“She’s only come to no harm because my Lady Charlotte is keeping her from it by staying in contact with her,” Kristoff said sternly. “Without her touch, your candidate would die.”
“Not true! Head Councilor Tannus, I demand that my Lady Eucilla be declared the True Incarnation at once so that this travesty can end!” Morbain exclaimed.
Still fighting with Eucilla, I turned my head to see that the Head Councilor was nodding, as though this actually seemed like a reasonable proposition to him.
What was going on with this guy? Either he was deep in Morbain’s pocket or he was working some agenda of his own.
Kristoff was staring at him and Morbain angrily and the other Councilors were murmuring amongst themselves.
“My Lady Charlotte,” Kristoff said to me, raising his voice to be heard over the babble. “You must release your grip on Eucilla’s arm.”
“No,” I said grimly, thinking of the Hippocratic Oath I’d taken. “First, do no harm.” Well, I would be doing a hell of a lot of harm by letting go of Eucilla. She was a real piece of work but she didn’t deserve to die just for being a delusional idiot.
Kristoff frowned. “My Lady, it is the only way to prove the truth of the matter.”
“I don’t care,” I said, still gripping her arm. “I’m not going to let her die. You don’t understand, Kristoff—she really believes she’s the one.”
It was true—now that I was in firm contact with Eucilla, my touch-sense told me so. She really, honestly believed that she was meant to be the next Goddess-Empress and she refused to let anything change her mind. Also, she was spoiled, entitled, and came from an immensely rich family. But I could have guessed all that without my La-ti-zal powers.
“Let me go!” Eucilla stormed, still trying to twist away from me. “You off-worlder, imposter, piece of commoner trash! Let…Me…GO!”
As she screamed the last word, she stomped down on my bare foot and shoved me with her free hand as hard as she could.
I fell in the grass on the side of the golden gravel path, my toes throbbing and the wind knocked out of me from the fall. Eucilla, meanwhile, stood tall in the garden laughing and doing a little happy-dance of triumph.
“You see?” she shrieked, jumping up and down, which caused the terlings to stand up on their little hind legs and begin chattering angrily. Eucilla paid them no attention. “Do you see?” she yelled, waving her arms wildly. “This proves it! This proves that I and I alone am the…”
Her words ended in a horrible, wracking cough. A panicked expression crossed her once-lovely face and her hands went to her throat. A hoarse gasping sound came from her mouth and she stumbled to her knees and then toppled over into one of the flowering bushes beside the path. Immediately the terlings came rushing over, scampering over her fallen form, scratching her with their sharp little claws.
“Eucilla!” I said, or tried to say, anyway. I had fallen really hard when she hit me and I was still struggling to get some air back in my lungs.
“Ah…gah!” she gasped, her long body fishtailing in the bushes, trying to throw off the jewel-colored chipmunk-creatures. I was horrified to see that the lush, turquoise leaves were cutting her flesh like knives and the flowers were leaving angry red welts over her skin and face. Her dress protected most of her torso and legs but her feet, strapped into their high heels, had landed in the little babbling brook. As I watched, the innocent-looking water began to melt her footwear, which was smoking and letting off an acrid stench like something dissolving in acid.
Grimly, I got to my feet, even though it felt like the foot Eucilla has stomped on might be broken. I tried to walk mainly on my heel, to keep the pressure off my throbbing toes and arch, as I hobbled around to where she lay, stretched on the deadly grass.
“Shoo! Shoo!” I brushed at the terlings and they scampered away, still chattering angrily.
Grabbing Eucilla’s arms, I began to haul her towards the doorway. But though she looked so willowy and thin, she was heavy—really heavy. Also, I was trying to drag her through the thick grass and out of the bushes that seemed to want to hold on to her. It was almost as if the plants were hungry and Eucilla was the only food they’d seen in a long time.
“Uhhh,” I gasped, taking a firmer grip and yanking harder. “Come…on!” But no matter how hard I pulled, she wasn’t budging.
Suddenly, someone was beside me.
I looked up and saw Kristoff, reaching for Eucilla’s limp form. Already welts had formed on his gold-tan skin where some of the branches of the bushes had brushed it and there were cuts on his arms where the leaves had sliced him.
“Kristoff, no!” I gasped. “You’ll die!”
“Not if you let go of her and hold on to me,” he said grimly.
I saw at once what he meant and reached for his muscular bicep. The moment my skin touched his, he drew a deep breath and the tight, strained look left his face.
“Ahh—that’s better. Don’t lose your hold on me, my Lady,” he said, taking a firm grip on Eucilla’s arms.
“I won’t,” I promised.
I think Kristoff wanted to pick Eucilla up and carry her, as he had done for me so many times. But as I had noticed earlier, the hungry branches of the bushes she had fallen into did not want to give up their prey. In the end, he had to drag her out by her arms, as I had been trying to do. Luckily, being so much stronger than me, he was actually able to do it. After what felt like forever, we were able to pull Eucilla out of the deadly garden.
As soon as she was out, I had Kristoff lay her out on the floor and felt for a pulse.
Nothing. No breathing either. I wished desperately that I was back home in the Pit where I could call for a crash cart. But I had to do the best I could.
“You,” I said pointing to the Head Councilor, “Go get a healer now. Well, don’t just stand there!” I yelled when he just stared at me like I had grown a second head. “This woman needs medical attention. Get me a healer who has the antidote to this poison!”
After another look at me that was half angry, half frighten
ed, he finally scurried off to do as I said.
“What can I do, my Lady?” Kristoff was kneeling beside me on the cold, black marble floor.
“Chest compressions,” I told him. “Straddle her and position your hands one on top of the other. But first find the xiphoid process and go up two fingers…shit—do you people even have a xiphoid process? Never mind—I’ll find out myself.”
As it turned out, Majorans do have a xiphoid process, which is that little nubbin of bone that sticks off the end of your sternum. Under my direction, Kristoff started doing chest compressions while I did rescue breathing, tilting Eucilla’s head back to open her airway and checking every few cycles to see if we were getting back breathing or a pulse.
We weren’t.
Finally, a female Majoran in a long, white robe appeared. She had a business-like air of efficiency and her long, dark blue hair was tied back in an approximation of my own pony-tail back home. She was carrying what looked like a sleek, silver suitcase which I hoped had a defibrillator and plenty of meds inside.
“Move please.” She brushed me and Kristoff aside and I let her because I could tell she knew what she was doing. Still, I couldn’t help filling her in.
“Patient is an adult female who breathed in known poisonous fumes in the, uh, Garden of Death.” I still felt ridiculous saying it. “She also fell into the grass and shrubbery which resulted in cuts and abrasions, as well as chemical burns along her face and arms.”
“How long was she inside?” The Majoran doctor looked up at me briefly.
“I don’t know,” I said miserably. “Maybe five minutes? But for some of that time I still had hold of her, so she wasn’t hurt. It was only after she got away from me that the poison began to take effect.”
“So you went in too? And survived?” Her eyes widened and went yellow briefly—the color of surprise? I didn’t know.
“This is Lady Charlotte of Earth, the True Incarnation of the Goddess-Empress, Sundalla the 1000th,” Kristoff told her. “The Garden of Death could not harm her.”
“Your Majesty!” The healer was already kneeling but she bowed as low as she was able.
“Never mind about me,” I said irritably. “What about her? Can you save her? Do you have the antidote to the poison she breathed and touched?”
“I do.” She popped open her silver suitcase and got out a vial of blue liquid which she proceeded to load into some kind of hand-held device with a lot of tiny, short needles attached, which I assumed was some kind of hypodermic. But before she could administer it, Kristoff touched my arm.
“My Lady—look.”
“What is it?” I looked down at the spot he was pointing to—or rather, spots. There were two bright blue fang marks on the inside of Eucilla’s arm, just beside her right elbow. I’d missed them before because I was too busy trying to do CPR and get her heart started again to check her over like I should have.
“Heartburst bite,” the Majoran doctor said quietly. She felt again for Eucilla’s pulse, shook her head, and began to dismantle her elaborate looking hypodermic.
“Heartburst? What the hell is—” I began, and then I remembered what one of the Councilors had been telling me, about the deadly snake creature that lived in the garden whose venom was the most toxic of the known galaxy.
“I’m sorry, your Majesty,” the doctor said somberly. “If I had gotten here at once, I might have been able to help. But as long as it’s been, I’m afraid her heart has already burst within her.”
I sat back on my heels wearily and swiped a hand over my forehead.
“No wonder CPR didn’t help,” I said, half to myself. “We were trying to restart her heart but there was no heart to start again.”
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said again. “It is, of course, your Majesty’s right to punish me for not getting here quicker.”
“Punish you?” I looked up at her in disbelief. “Of course I’m not going to punish you for losing a patient—I lost her too. If anything, this is on me. I should never have lost my grip on her. I should have tried harder to drag her out.”
“Charlotte,” Kristoff said in a low voice. “You can’t blame yourself for this. You did everything you could.”
“No.” I straightened up, lifting my chin. “No, you’re right, Kristoff, I’m not entirely to blame.” I rose to my full height—which wasn’t easy since the foot Eucilla had stomped on was throbbing—and rounded on Morbain. “This is your fault,” I said, pointing one trembling finger at him. “You filled this poor girl’s head with nonsense about how she was the next Empress. You told her from the time she was a child that she would grow up and rule the whole galaxy when what you really wanted was to rule through her!”
A shocked gasp went up from everyone assembled and from the corner of my eye, I could see Kristoff shaking his head as though trying to get me to stop. But I was so angry I couldn’t stop—didn’t want to stop. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me—I just wanted to let Morbain know exactly what I thought of him.
“You’re the reason she’s dead,” I said, my voice shaking with rage. “You killed her as surely as if you’d put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger yourself! You are a murderer!”
There was another shocked gasp and I saw that Morbain’s face was red and twisted but not with sorrow—with rage.
“Why you…” His mustache quivered and little white dents appeared on either side of his generous nose. “You…you little…”
“I believe the word you’re looking for is your Majesty,” Kristoff said in a low, menacing voice. He had risen smoothly to his feet to stand beside me. His sword was out and naked in his hand. “For Lady Charlotte is the True Incarnation of the Goddess-Empress,” he went on, glaring at everyone assembled, including Head Councilor Tannus who was back and looking very angry. “And as such, I demand that we hold the Ceremony of Investiture here and now.”
“What?” the Head Councilor exclaimed. “But that is most irregular! We cannot hold the ceremony anywhere but in the Council Room proper.”
“I don’t think so,” Kristoff growled. “Too much could happen between this part of the palace and the Council Room. You know as well as I, Head Councilor Tannus, that the ceremony mostly consists of you conferring the title upon the worthy candidate and declaring to the Goddess and everyone present that she is indeed the True Incarnation.”
“But…but I…” Clearly the Head Councilor felt backed into a corner and just as clearly, Kristoff didn’t care.
“Can you deny that Charlotte is the True Incarnation?” he demanded. “She has passed through all four of the Trials of Ascendancy and lived, while her competitor has not.”
He nodded down at Eucilla’s body, which was being quickly and quietly removed by several of the Imperial Guards to my mingled relief and regret. I hate losing a patient—even a bitchy, bratty, entitled one with delusions of grandeur like Eucilla had been.
Morbain’s mouth worked under his pointed pirate mustache, as though he wanted to say something and the Head Councilor had a sour look on his face but apparently neither one of them could refute Kristoff’s claim.
“All right,” Councilor Tannus finally said. “Let me confer with the Council of Wisdom.”
“Do not confer too long,” Kristoff said, frowning. “My Lady is weary and in need of rest and aid—see that you do not keep your Empress waiting.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Charlotte
I don’t know if it was Kristoff’s words or the way he was glaring at them, but the Council of Wisdom didn’t take long to confer. Almost before I knew it, I was standing surrounded by a circle of men—the High Council at my front, and my honor guard and Kristoff at my back.
“Charlotte of Earth,” High Councilor Tannus said, giving me the nastiest look possible. “By the power invested in me by the Goddess of Mercy, she who gave the seeds of life to the Ancient Ones and bid them fill the galaxy with all living things, I do now pronounce that you are, in fact, the Goddess-Empress, Su
ndalla the 1000th and Invest you with all the titles, rights, and privileges attached to that designation. Long may your Majesty live.”
At the moment he spoke the words, something very strange happened. I felt a rush of power go through me—like a warm, electrical wind that made every part of me tingle. It was the same kind of rush I’d felt when Kristoff made his vow to me, what seemed like a hundred years ago back on Earth. Only this was even more intense—as though something bigger than myself was filling me up, like water in a cup.
“Oh!” I gasped and put my hand to my head, wondering if my hair was all standing on end—it certainly felt like it.
“My Lady, are you well?” Kristoff murmured in my ear.
“Is she all right?” I heard one of the other guards ask—it was T’zorin, I thought dimly, the one who had warned us that the Trials had been moved up. The one Kristoff trusted. “I was at the other end of the hall—couldn’t see what was going on. What happened? Is the Empress all right?”
“I…I’m fine,” I whispered, taking the arm Kristoff reached out to steady me with. The moment we touched, I felt the same, electrical sizzle I’d experienced the first time I touched his skin. Only this was a hundred—a thousand times more intense.
I shivered as a deep wave of needing washed over me. Need that was bigger than me overwhelmed me—filled me. My nipples were suddenly tight, tender points at the tips of my breasts and between my thighs I was wet and swollen and ready.
“Kristoff,” I moaned, turning to look at him. “I…I need…”
His eyes grew wide and he shook his head, a desperate signal to be silent. Somehow I managed to keep the words inside me but I couldn’t control the need the pulsed through me like a heartbeat—throbbing and pounding and growing with every breath.
The Goddess’s need, whispered a voice in my head. You are filled with the Goddess and her needs are not small.
“The True Incarnation has been Invested,” someone shouted—it might have been the Majoran doctor, who was still there in the crowded small hallway of the Trials. “Long live the new Goddess-Empress! Long live Sundalla the 1000th!”
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