Evanescent (16 page)

“I don’t know.” I let my hand come up to tug on the crystal of the Dragon’s Tear. “I really, really don’t know.”

…

As the sun went down over the forest I heard the snap of a branch. Mercedes and I just kept staring into the fading daylight, waiting. Somehow I was pretty sure whoever was coming up on us wasn’t with the Boy Scouts, but right now I couldn’t find it in me to care.

“Oh my God and all the stars,” Rhys said as he came into the clearing and found the remains of the burning lawn illuminating the horror in front of us.

“Rhys?” Mercedes struggled to her feet and then helped me up. “Oh, God, Rhys.”

“What happened to you?” He wrapped his arms around both of us, holding us to his broad chest. “Are you okay?”

“No.” My heart clenched and my stomach heaved as I started to sob again, deep, aching cries that scratched the back of my throat as my shoulders started to shake. I didn’t want to believe what I’d seen. I didn’t want it to be true, but I knew it was. I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. “They’re gone.”

“Everyone?” His voice was soft as he clung to us, holding me up as my knees shook and I buried my head in his shoulder and cried. “Surely not all of them? Someone must have gotten away. They would have followed the army into the forest, retreated. Someone—”

“We don’t know if it’s everyone. But anyone who stayed to defend the palace—he killed them. He killed them all. Every single one of them.” Mercedes’s voice cracked on the last words and I looked up to see that she’d buried her head in his shoulder.

“In the name of the Pleiades,” he said, his eyes fixed on the carnage in front of us.

“All of them?” He looked at me, his eyes wide. “What about the mermaids?”

“We don’t know. None of the…” Mercedes lifted her head and her eyes lingered on the field in front of us. “There are no mermaids—their pool is empty.”

“The maze was on fire when we showed up,” I said, trying to keep from losing it right here in the middle of the still-smoldering field. “There was no way that any creature, even the mermaids, could have survived that kind of fire.”

“They were under ice, though,” Mercedes said. “They froze the pond. So maybe they were protected. They could be safe.”

I shook my head. “How? There’s no more water. They had nowhere to go.”

“I’ll go check. Just in case.” Rhys turned away from the two of us, striding off toward the embers, kicking them out of his way as he went. He stopped at the lip of the pool, staring into it with his hands clasped behind him. He stood there for another moment and shook his head before turning and returning to us.

“They aren’t there,” he said. “No sign of them having had been there, even. If they had been trapped inside the pool when it was on fire, there would be ashes or something. And there’s a rune on Talia’s throne. Maybe they used it to get away.”

“Where would they go?” I asked. “They’re mermaids, they couldn’t exactly run through the forest.”

“I don’t know where they’d go, but you can’t give up hope.” Rhys sat next to Mercedes, and I crumpled beside them, pulling my knees to my chest. He wrapped one hand around mine and snaked his other arm around Mercedes. “All we know is that there are no bodies and no ashes. And for now that means no mermaids. But we’ll find them.”

“Or they could have burned beyond all recognition. Their ashes could have blown away. The wizards could have taken them somewhere.”

“Don’t think like that.” Rhys squeezed my hand. “Wherever they are, we’ll find them. You can’t give up hope.”

“You said that already! But look around you!” I pulled my hand away from his and threw my arms in the air. “What here tells you we should hope? Everyone is dead, Rhys. They’re dead! They stayed here when I ran so that they could protect me, so they could protect a stupid house, and they died. For what?”

“Allie.” The calm in his voice just made me angrier.

“They died to protect what? This?” I waved my hand at the palace grounds, still smoldering around us. “Me? What? What sort of choice did I make that led to this? Tell me!”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head and looked at the burning hillside below us. “We chose to fight an evil wizard, and this is one of the consequences.”

“People died because of what we did today. We killed them. The choices
I
made killed them.”

“So what do you want to do?” Rhys asked. “Do you want to stop? To surrender? Because let me tell you—if you surrender, more people will die. Lots more people. Is that what you want?”

My entire body trembled as tears slipped down my cheeks. “No.”

“Good.” Rhys nodded, his jaw tight. “Then get a hold of yourself and remember that you’re supposed to be a queen.”

“Rhys,” Mercedes said, her voice dripping with warning.

“No.” He turned to glare at her and then back at me. “They stayed to give you time to get away. Timbago stayed to give you time to escape with the tear. They died protecting you because they believed in you
.
”

I swallowed and clutched the cool pendant. “I know.”

“So we finish this,” Rhys said, his voice low, almost a growl. He stood and threw a rock at the still-burning embers. “We bury our friends, and then we go back to Dramera, regroup our army, and we make the Fate Maker pay for what he did. Do you hear me, Allie? We make
him
pay for this.”

I nodded as he reached to help me up and gave my shoulder a brief squeeze. “We hunt him down and we end this.
I
end this. Once and for all.”

He kept his eyes on mine and nodded slowly as I reached up to touch the Dragon’s Tear. Timbago had told me generally what to do, but first I had to finish taking care of my friends. “We need to get shovels.”

“No, we don’t.” Mercedes said, her voice soft. “I can handle it.”

“It’s my…”

“I can handle it. Just… Rhys, keep her back turned.”

“I don’t need to keep my back turned.”

“Do it for me,” she said.

Instead of saying anything I lowered my head, resigned, and let Rhys turn me away from my best friend and the horror that would always be tattooed inside my mind.

“I’m so sorry,” Mercedes said. I could hear the world around me start to cry out a horrible heartbreaking song, the ground itself trembling like it was weeping. “I feel your pain, my sisters. I am so sorry.”

“What?” I tried to turn, but Rhys kept a tight hold on me, not letting me move.

“Come on,” Mercedes said as she wrapped her arm around my waist, and the two of them half carried, half dragged me up the hill and away from the maze. When we reached the top I stopped and shook myself loose, turning around.

Long vines had burst out of the ground, snaked across the grass, and covered the field, twined over anything and everything that lay in their paths. The field was now covered in dark-green leaves. It was like the vines had swallowed the field whole, eating it, destroying it. Like, if the vines were left alone, they would swallow the entire world.

Maybe it would be better if we let the vines take everything. For us to let the world itself destroy us all and save ourselves from the pain of watching the Fate Maker do it anyway. That way it would at least be our own choice.

“Mercedes,” I said quietly. “We should just burn it. Everything. We should destroy it all. That way the Fate Maker won’t be able to take it from us.”

“We’re not going to let him take it. Not on my life. Or yours for that matter,” she muttered as we reached the soot-blackened trunk of the Silver Leaf Tree. There at the bottom, barely visible under the soot, was a rune carved into its bark.

Mercedes kept her hand in mine and reached down to brush her fingers against the carving. “Come on. Let’s finish this. Then we can come back and give them the memorial they deserve.”

“You’re right.” I pushed away from her slightly, standing on my own. “No one will ever forget what they gave up for the rest of us.”

“No.” Mercedes shook her head. “We’ll make sure that no one ever forgets how
brave
they were. I promise. You and me, together, we’ll make sure that they’re remembered. Forever.”

“Right.” I nodded.

Rhys took Mercedes’s free hand, and I clung to her fingers in mine. Then I bent down and touched the rune.

“Take me to Dramera. Take me to Dramera so I can find my army and end this once and for all.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Your Majesty!” Kitsuna yelled, and I sat up, turning toward the sound of her voice through the forest.

“I’m here.” I pushed myself up and saw that Mercedes and Rhys were getting to their feet as well. “We’re all here.”

“Go.” Mercedes pushed me forward.

I ran in the direction of Kit’s voice, still calling for me, and put my hand up to knock branches and leaves out of my way. I didn’t take too much of a beating before we found each other.

“Oh, thank the Pleiades,” Kitsuna said as we broke from the edge of the forest and reached the field behind the red dragon clan’s lodge house. “You’re not hurt. Thank goodness none of you are hurt.”

“Forget about us.” I hurried over to her and took her face in my hands, grimacing at the sight of the deep gash on the side of her face and the dried blood around her nose. “What happened to you? And Winston. Where is he? Is he safe?”

“He’s fine. We’re fine,” Kitsuna reassured me, and then her face crumpled as tears started to flow. “I just set fire to my clan’s lodge house, burned half my village, battled a wizard who was intent on killing me, and almost lost the queen I’d sworn my life to protect. It’s—”

“It’s okay.” I tried my best to sound like my mother always had when I’d come to her with my problems. “Everything is okay. As long as everyone is safe then we’re all okay.”

Instead of helping that only made Kitsuna cry harder, and I hugged her. I closed my eyes, remembering that for right now we were safe and that had to count for something.

“Your Majesty,” Rhys said quietly. “We’re going to go find the rest of the army.”

“Do you want us to—” I squeezed Kit again, breathing in the smell of dragon and sweat that came from her hair.

“You can find us when you’re done here.” He led Mercedes away as I turned back to comfort Kitsuna.

When her sobs slowed I lifted my head and looked at the destruction in front of me. Half the rooftops in Dramera were smoking, and patches of air existed where once thatched roofs had been. It looked as bad as my palace had. Trying to save all that was good in our world had led to us burning it to the ground. Nothing was safe unless we’d turned it into ashes first.

“We can rebuild it,” I said as the walls of a nearby half building croaked. Three large, male dragons circled it, and the largest blasted one of the walls with a fireball, and the other two beat at the house with their wings. A moment later the house groaned and another fireball caused it to collapse on itself. “We will rebuild it. Bigger. Stronger. Fire-resistant.”

“They’ll never forgive me,” she whispered. “The others, they won’t forgive me.”

“Yes, they will.” I patted her back. “We’ll all pitch in to rebuild the lodge house and the rest of the village. Everything will be fine. No one will blame you.”

“They will.” She sniffled.

“No, they won’t.” I stepped back from her and gave her shoulders a quick shake. “You fought a wizard all on your own. That was incredibly brave. You saved all of us. You saved me. When we were faced with a wizard you did what needed to be done. If anyone doesn’t like it you tell them to come see me.”

“To come see you?” Kitsuna asked weakly.

“That’s right. I’m the Golden Rose of Nerissette, and I’m saying you did the right thing. And if anyone else doesn’t like it, they can deal with me.”

“What are you going to do? Scold them?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “But you did the right thing, and no one is going to punish you for that. If they try, I’ll…I’ll banish them. I’ll banish them into Bathune, and they can try life out there living under my aunt’s rule.”

Kitsuna sniffled, her eyes bright with tears, before she laughed, her voice high-pitched and slightly hysterical. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” I gave her shoulders another shake before pulling her close. “I was so worried about you. Don’t ever do something as stupid as saving my life ever again, do you hear me?”

“Or what?” She trembled against me, and when I looked down I could see that the brat was actually laughing.

My own lips twitched upward and a panicky, freaked-out giggle slipped free. “Or I’ll banish you along with all the people who think I should banish you for fighting a wizard single-handedly to protect me.”

“Where are we supposed to go?” Kitsuna giggled. “All these people you’re going to banish. You can’t send us all over the White Mountains. The dragons in Bavasama’s kingdom won’t allow us to just take over their hunting grounds. So if you’re banishing us, where are we supposed to go?”

I laughed harder, my brain going a bit fuzzy as the nerves from the past few hours started to unwind. The adrenaline coursing through me made me slaphappy and I realized that, for at least right now, I was safe.

“There’s got to be a crappy part of this world. I’ll send all of you there, and if it’s not crappy enough I’ll find a portal and send you into my world. I can make you settle somewhere that sucks enough for you to realize that I’m right.”

“You’re going to banish us to your world?” Kitsuna giggled again, and I felt my knees weaken with relief. “But I thought this whole war was to keep the Fate Maker from going back to your world? Remember, find the relics, destroy them, and stop the Fate Maker before he destroys us all?”

“Okay, so maybe I’ll wait to banish you until we’ve gotten all that done, but I swear if you ever do something that stupid again I will banish you. Somewhere really crappy.
Really, really crappy.
”

“Sure you will.” She pulled away from me a little bit and smiled. “Okay, come on.” She wiped the tears from her face. “Time to go find Winston and everyone else. We’ve got a battle to plan.”

“Right.” I felt my good mood evaporate at the mention of battle. The Fate Maker was trying to take over our world, and it was time that we stopped him. “And as soon as that’s done, I’m going to find that portal and that crappy place to banish you.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Just you wait.” I tugged her braid as we started toward the square. “Oh, and Kit?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for saving me and Mercedes. It means a lot to me.”

“That?” Kit scoffed. “That was nothing. What any honorable dragon would do for someone they call a friend. Not to mention, what any soldier should be willing to do for their queen.”

“Somehow,” I said quietly as we turned down another street, “I doubt that everyone else sees it the same way.”