I turned to Mercedes. “Take her. Use her however you think best to assure your sisters’ peace.”
“Dryad,” my father said, stepping toward her and bowing his head. “May I offer you the dirt of our home for your sacrifice?”
She looked up at him and nodded. “I’m grateful for your offering, Woodsmen,” she said quietly. “In return I’ll ask my sisters’ spirits to watch over the forests of the Leavenwald until the sun no longer shines.”
The rest of the Woodsmen clustered behind my father as he reached into the pouch at his waist. He pulled his fist out and uncurled his fingers, dumping dirt onto my aunt’s shoes. “May the light always shine upon you,” he said.
John stepped back and another Woodsman stepped forward, dropping his own dirt on Bavasama’s shoes. “May the light shine upon you.”
The throne room fell silent as, one by one, each of the Woodsmen stepped forward and dumped a handful of dirt at my aunt’s feet, each bowing to Mercedes when they stepped back.
“May the light shine upon you,” the last Woodsman said. He bowed low to Mercedes. “And may you never again feel rain upon your heart.”
“Thank you.” Mercedes bowed her head in return to the knot of Woodsmen and then nodded to me as she took the Orb of the Dryads out of the pouch at her waist.
“It’s not the First Leaf.”
“I know.” She nodded again. “It’s dryad magic. It’s not meant to preserve life. It’s meant to create it. To grow things where before there was nothing.”
She stepped closer to Bavasama and lifted her hands, the Orb cradled in her left as she pressed her right on the deposed queen’s forehead. Mercedes closed her eyes. Green leaves sprouted out of my best friend’s hand and began to tangle in my aunt’s hair.
“Please,” Bavasama wailed as thick, leafy ferns began to wrap around her head, covering her eyes. “Mercy, please.”
“Not a chance,” I said as the vines began to move lower, covering her from the top of her head to her shoulders.
I watched as Bavasama started to sink, the dirt surrounding her feet reaching up to swallow her shoes as more tendrils shot out, wrapping around her legs and holding her upright. The vines moved farther up her body, immobilizing her, but Mercedes kept her hand pressed against Bavasama’s face, her eyes still closed.
The plant kept growing, twisting and turning back on itself as my aunt wailed in horror. It doubled back again, and I watched as Bavasama’s arms were jerked upward and bark began to form along the length of her body, encasing her in wood. Branches began to sprout from her fingers, all of them covered in spring-green leaves, while more began to bloom, a dark russet color where her hair had been. The bark finally reached the vines hiding her face, and I watched as she was covered completely with bark, her face staring out at us woodenly from the center of the tree.
“May you live for a hundred thousand years,” Mercedes said quietly. “And may you know for every one of them that you brought this upon yourself.”
She turned away from my aunt and bowed low to me.
“Take her outside and plant her somewhere,” I said. “Let her be a symbol of what happens when you cross the Rose Throne.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Now…” I turned to the Fate Maker who was staring at the tree that had been my aunt just a few moments before. “It’s time to deal with you.”
“You can’t kill me,” he said, shaking his head back and forth violently as his guards dragged him forward. “You can’t.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I promised Kuolema a soul. If you kill me, then he’ll come to you to collect. He’ll kill you in my place. If I die, then so do you.”
“Then maybe I should give you back to him,” I said. “Except this time I’ll have to make sure he knows not to let you back out again.”
“No.” The Fate Maker’s voice broke. “No. Please. I’ll do whatever you want. I know secrets. Things that no one else knows.”
“Not interested,” I said. I reached into the crown box again.
“No!” The Fate Maker threw up a hand, trying to stop me. “I know how to save your mother.”
“What?” I turned to him.
“I know how to bring your mother back. How to save her from the prison of her own mind. All I need are the Relics and your promise that you won’t give me back to Kuolema. That you’ll send someone else in my place.”
“Tell me how to save my mother,” I said, gripping the armrests of the throne tightly, trying with all my might to shake the answer out of him.
“Promise me that you’ll let me live,” the Fate Maker said.
“Tell me!” I screamed. Pushing myself to my feet, I drew my sword, pointing it at him. “Or I’ll kill you here and worry about your debt to Kuolema later.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Unless I have your word, your binding word, then I won’t tell you anything. You could still betray me.”
“Fine.” I pulled the Dragon’s Tear out from under my tunic and held it up for him to see. “Let’s see exactly what it will take to buy you from Kuolema? What he needs to let me put you to death?”
“No.” The Fate Maker swallowed.
“Hold him.” I motioned to his guards and watched as they came forward and grabbed him.
I wrapped my hand around the Dragon’s Tear and let my eyes slide closed, focusing all my energy on forming a door between this world and the Bleak. I heard people gasping around me and opened my eyes, staring at the blank square of nothingness in the middle of the room.
I stepped forward, the Tear still clutched tightly in my hand, and raised my chin.
“Kuolema,” I called out, trying to remember everything from the stories my mother used to read me about what happened when people summoned the Great Dragons of the Bleak.
“Kuolema,” I called out again. “I, Alicia Munroe, Golden Rose of Nerissette summon you.”
Nothing.
I took a deep breath and tried again. “Kuolema!”
“What?” a raspy voice hissed. Green eyes suddenly peered at me from the darkness.
“Kuolema, Great Dragon of the Bleak, I summon you.”
“Yes, yes.” An enormous black dragon’s head slithered out of the doorway, and I sucked in a breath as he arched his neck up until his head was towering over me, almost scraping the bottom of the chandelier hanging over my head. “I heard you. What is it, Your Majesty?”
“You seem to have lost a soul,” I said with a gesture toward the Fate Maker.
The dragon looked down at the Fate Maker, and he slithered his tongue out, testing the air around him. “He offered me the soul of a queen,” Kuolema said softly. “Told me that if I let him go, he’d conquer this world and give me the flesh of a queen to feast upon.”
“Yeah?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, he didn’t manage it. Now, I need you to give up your claims to him. Wipe the debt he owes you clean.”
“Why?” Kuolema dropped his head and glided forward so we were nose to nose. “Why should I give up my claims?”
“Because I want to put him to death.”
“So be it,” Kuolema said. “Then give me your own soul in return. Just as he promised me.”
“No. Go back to the Bleak and do without. Punishment for failing to keep a banished soul where it belongs.”
The dragon sucked on his teeth and narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps we can come to an agreement.”
“What?”
“All I want is the soul,” Kuolema said. “The body is worthless to me. Give me the soul and you can keep the body.”
“And then what?” I asked. “You want me to kill an empty shell of a body?”
“You have the Relics,” Kuolema said. “Because you were honorable, I’ll help you make a trade. As a gift, from me to you.”
“A trade?”
“The relics are meant to preserve life,” Kuolema said. “People, worlds, entire universes that wouldn’t exist otherwise. The Relics can be used to bring the most
fatally wounded person back from the brink of death. You let me have the Fate Maker’s soul, and I’ll show you how to bring your mother back from the living death she’s trapped inside.”
“My mother…”
“I’ll take the Fate Maker’s soul, and you can sacrifice his body to take your mother’s place in the World That Is. She’ll have all the days of life that he should have had.”
“And she’ll be okay?” I asked. “If we bring her through from the World That Is, she won’t be trapped in a coma, will she?”
“She’ll be alive and well. Just as you remember her. But if you bring her through, it’s not just the Fate Maker that will have to sacrifice. You’ll have to give up the one thing you’ve been fighting for since the day you arrived.”
“Fine.” I nodded. “Let’s do it. You help me bring my mother through the Bleak safely, and we’ll split him. I’ll trap his body in the World That Is, in my mother’s place, and you can have his soul.”
“So be it,” Kuolema said before pulling his head back into the doorway. “Take the Mirror of Nerissette in your left hand and the Dragon’s Tear in your right.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Mirror shard, clutching it in my hand like he’d told me to.
“Now.” Kuolema’s voice came from the darkness. “Think about your mother. Focus entirely on her.”
I closed my eyes again and imagined my mother. The room she was in. The white walls. The single bed sitting in the middle of a gleaming floor. My mother tucked under white blankets, her dark hair fanned out on her pillow.
I heard a gasp and opened my eyes. There, where the doorway had been was my mother, shimmering in the air in front of me. She was so close that it looked like I could reach out and touch her.
“Oh, Pree,” John rasped. I felt my chest start to ache as I reached my hand out and my fingers disappeared through the shimmering air.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Well, now someone needs to go over and pick her up, of course.” Kuolema’s voice echoed around the throne room. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t seal them on the other side while they’re over there.”
“John?” I looked over at him.
He nodded at me, and I watched as he and Rhys both stepped forward. Rhys clapped his hand on my father’s shoulder and led him through the shimmering air. I watched as the two of them carefully unhooked my mother’s machines, moving quickly to shut them off so that the alarms wouldn’t blare, and then wrapped her tightly in her sheet.
“I’ve got her,” John said, his voice broken, as he slid his arms under Mom’s legs and shoulders and cradled her against his chest like a child.
The two men stepped through the space again and back into the throne room. My father knelt slowly, laying Mom gently on the stone floor.
“Step back from her,” I warned him. “Just in case.”
He looked up at me and nodded once before sliding to the side, away from the portal, and standing up near her feet.
“Mercedes?” I looked at my best friend. “This is your chance. Any of you who want to go back to The World That Is, this is the time.”
“I’m the last of my sisterhood,” Mercedes said, shaking her head. “This world needs me. I can’t leave it. Or any of you.”
“Jesse?” I asked.
“I’m staying.”
“Okay.” I nodded and then looked at Kuolema. “So now what?”
“Now your sacrifice takes her place,” Kuolema said.
“What?” The Fate Maker looked between us and shook his head. “No. It won’t work. They’ll know I’m not her.”
“Of course they will,” I said. “But to them, she won’t exist. It’s like you told me before. The mortal mind explains what it sees and forgets what doesn’t make sense. Especially when faced with the magic of other worlds. In their minds they’ll have always been treating Peter Smith or John Doe or whatever they decide to call you, the poor unfortunate victim of a hit-and-run. Ana Munroe will have never existed in their time. Just like the rest of us. They’ll forget all about her, and so will you. Now switch places so we can end this.”
“No.” The Fate Maker tried to back away, but the two guards holding him pushed him forward again.
“I’m not asking as nicely as your queen,” Kuolema said. I watched, horrified, as his head burst through the center of the bed where my mother had been lying the moment before. “I’ve come to collect the soul you owe me.”
The dragon opened its mouth, and the air around the two of them began to glow purple as the Fate Maker gave a silent scream. Black tendrils poured from the wizard’s mouth, and the dragon flicked its tongue down, sucking the darkness into his own gaping maw, his throat working as he swallowed down the Fate Maker’s soul.
The last of the darkness came out of the wizard’s mouth, and Kuolema’s jaw slammed closed with a thundering snap. The body of the Fate Maker slumped, unconscious, between the two guards, hanging limp as a marionette with its strings cut.
Rhys stepped around me to grab the Fate Maker’s shoulders as my father took his feet, and they hauled his body over my mother’s and into the hospital room beyond, laying him in the bed. Rhys and my father stepped back through the portal, and I watched as it faded away, the link between that World That Is and our own disappearing.
“It’s done,” Kuolema said as he slid back through the doorway. “I wish you goodwill, Your Majesty. May your reign be long and peaceful.”
“And may we never meet again,” I said.
“For the sake of your soul,” he agreed. “May I never be forced to hunt you or any you love.”
The door to the Bleak faded away, and I stood, staring down at my mother as the nobles in the room cowered back, watching us both.
As the last of the portal between the two worlds disappeared, my mother sucked in a breath, and I watched as her eyes fluttered open.
“Allie?” she asked, her voice rough.
“Hi, Mom.” I felt tears welling up in my eyes as I knelt down beside her and wrapped my arms around her, helping her sit up.
“Oh, Allie.” She smiled and pulled me close, her arms trembling with the effort.
“It’s okay, Mom. I promise it’s all going to be okay.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Two nights later I found myself standing on the roof of the Palace of Night, staring out at the world below. Someone cleared a throat behind me, and I turned to find Winston leaning against a chimney.
“So.” He started toward me, his hands in the pockets of his black pants. “What do we do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve managed to save the kingdom, defeat the evil queen, almost double the size of your realm, and save your mother. All while getting rid of the wizard who was plotting against you for over a year now. So? You want to go to a movie or something?”
“I thought our first date was supposed to be the Winter Formal?”
“It was.” He chuckled. “Then you got us kidnapped, and we ended up here.” He reached over and pulled me closer, lifting one of my hands in his and wrapping his other arm around my waist, moving back and forth. “But if you want to dance, I guess we can.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Not if I get to do this.” He leaned down and brushed his lips against mine, still swaying to an imaginary beat.
“You can always do that.” I laid my head against his chest.
“Unless your father is around, of course.”
I laughed. “We’ll have to work something out, since he’s taking your job and all. He’s my dad, after all.”
Winston raised an eyebrow and then smiled at me.
My dad. Yeah, I liked the sound of that.
“Hmm. I heard about that.” Winston let go of my hand and wrapped both arms around my waist while I wove my fingers together at his nape. “Your mother is taking back the throne and demoting you to Crown Princess and Heir Apparent?”
“That was the sacrifice I had to make.
Giving up the throne. Not that it’s really mine anyway. After all, she’s the true Golden Rose. The throne belongs to her.”
“She wouldn’t have a throne without you.”
I pressed my cheek closer to the thrum of his heart. “Maybe not. But I’m ready to let her be in charge for a few more…decades? Yeah, decades sound good.”
“Okay.” He stepped back slightly, and I looked up at him. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Good because now that you’re no longer queen, I’m going to take you flying a lot more often.”
“Hey, Winston?” I said, smiling up at him.
“Yeah?”
“I love you. No matter what happens.”
“Even if there are years of unending peace?”
“Especially if there are years of unending peace.”
“I love you, too.”
He leaned down to kiss me, and I let him cradle me in his arms, pulling me close. It wasn’t the Winter Formal in the high school gym, but it still wasn’t a bad place for happily ever after to start. Especially when your Prince Charming happens to be a dragon.
Acknowledgments
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—no one ever writes a book alone. There are so many people to thank, but the first has to be my lovely daughter Ainsley for asking me to write something that she would be able to read. Here is something for you to read. I hope it meets your expectations. Thank you as well to my editors at Entangled Teen, Libby Murphy and Danielle Rose Poiesz, as well as all the other hardworking editors, cover artists, publicists, and writers who make every single day that I work with Entangled Publishing a good one. Without all of you I’d still be doing a job I hated instead of one I love. And finally thank you to my family for putting up with the pixies, the dragons, the wizards, and the frozen pizzas that come with having a mother who spends her days writing stories and living inside her own head instead of doing more interesting things. I love all of you.
Everlast
Infinity (Chronicles of Nerissette) Page 19
