Evanescent (18 page)

“You silly girl.” Tevian stood and stepped off the dais, coming toward me. “The tear isn’t a portal.”

“It’s not?” I swallowed as he wrapped his fingers around mine, cupping the crystal.

“No.” He looked down at me and his eyes glittered. “It’s the key to the greatest prison in all of creation. It melts the wall between here and the Bleak and then it allows you to trap your enemies inside the nothingness for all time.”

“That’s why the Fate Maker wants it,” I said. “He wants to imprison me and put Bavasama on the throne.”

“Or…” Tevian smiled at me. “You can trap him.” Timbago’s words echoed through my mind—that’s what he’d told me to do, too. “Now, close your eyes and concentrate. Concentrate on the crystal in your hand and nothing else.”

I closed my eyes and focused everything inside of me on that crystal. The way it felt in my hand. Its smoothness. The coolness of it against my fingers.

“Now,” Tevian whispered. “Melt the wall between this world and the Bleak.”

Melt,
I thought.
Just fade away.

“Oh crap,” Winston muttered behind me, and my eyes flew open.

There, just in front of me, was a square of darkness the size of the door to my old bedroom in the World That Is. Through the blackness all I could feel was…nothing. It was like I knew somewhere deep inside that if I stepped through that door nothing would follow me. Not love or hope or fear or hatred or anything else. On the other side of that black square was a never-ending world of emptiness. The Bleak.

I closed my eyes again and returned all my energy back to the door. I tried to force my mind forward to close it and lock it so that the nothing couldn’t come through. Once I’d pretended to lock the door in my head, my hand began to warm, and I opened my eyes again to find the room the exact same as it had been before. Except for the dragons all staring at me, mouths hanging open and funny, ceremonial hats askew.

“It seems the Golden Rose has, in fact, found the tear,” Ardere said with a cough.

“Yeah, told you so.” I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue. “The question is how do we destroy it? Because I don’t know anything that breathes a fire a million times hotter than what all of you can do.”

“The problem, Your Majesty,” Tevian said as he let go of my hand and stepped away from me, “is that neither do we.”

Chapter Nineteen

“How long has it been since you slept?” Winston asked as we made our way out of the Dragos Council meeting an hour later.

“I…” I tried to think but suddenly just the word sleep had my eyes growing heavy. “The night before the Great Hall. I had a nightmare about Esmeralda.”

“Two days then.” Winston steered me down a side street that hadn’t been damaged.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The black dragons have a guest house on this street,” Winston said. “You can bed down there and get some rest.”

“But the army is coming and we’ll need to get things—”

“Allie.” Win stopped and turned to face me, his hands on my shoulder. “We need sleep.
You
need sleep. Just a few hours.”

“What if something happens while I’m asleep?”

“Then someone will come and get you.”

“And if the wizards attack again?”

“I’ll have guards posted outside the house,” he said. “And I’ll be asleep in the black dragon lodge house, across the street. We’ll both be safe.”

“Okay.” I nodded slowly.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right, I need to sleep.”

“Good. Come on.” He motioned me toward a large, hulking black house with two tall, dark-skinned men standing in front of it.

“Your Majesties,” one of the men said and they bowed their heads.

“Good night.” Winston kissed the top of my head, and I gave him a quick hug.

“Good night.” I started up the steps, and when I reached the top I turned to watch him making his way across the street to the tall house with blue shutters directly across from us.

“Your Majesty?” one of the guards said. His fingers brushed across my sleeve. “If you’ll follow me, please? We’ve got a bed for you. The wryen and the dryad are already inside.”

I followed him through the front door and up the stairs to a large, airy room on the third floor. On the floor were two piles of blankets. Kitsuna had curled up on one and was snoring softly, while Mercedes had splayed herself out, spread-eagled, her mouth hanging open.

“I’ll arrange to have breakfast provided for you when you wake,” the guard said as he backed out of the room, not meeting my eyes.

The minute I was alone with my sleeping friends I let my shoulders slump and exhaustion overtook me. As the last of the adrenaline began to wear off I realized there was nothing left that I could do. I yawned, my jaw cracking.

I quickly made my way over to the blankets that had been set aside for me and toed off my boots. Kitsuna had taken off her sword belt and put it beside her pallet, and I did the same with my own, setting it gently on the floor so that the clatter of the blade wouldn’t wake my friends.

“Right,” I muttered as I climbed between the blankets and closed my eyes. “Time to—” I yawned again and let my eyes drift close.

“Your Majesty.” I heard Timbago’s voice, and when I opened my eyes I was back in the palace and the sun was shining. Instead of trying to wake up I sat at the palace’s kitchen table and waited for the goblin who couldn’t really be there.

“Ah.” He waddled into the kitchen and came to stand beside me. “There you are. I had wondered when we would talk again.”

“You’re—”

“Never far, Your Majesty. Even though you may feel differently from time to time.”

“I’d rather you actually be here and not just some strange appearance in my dreams.”

“So would I,” he said, “but that was not what was meant to be. Now you must be the Golden Rose I’ve always known you can be.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You can be so much more than you believe is possible.” He took my hand in his, and I felt a pinch as he pressed something sharp into my hands. I held it tightly. “You just have to make the choice to act even if you’re afraid. Make the choice, Queen Allie. You know what you have to do.”

“Imprison the Fate Maker inside the Bleak.” I swallowed, my throat thick. My voice box felt like it was clenched in an ogre’s fist.

“Imprison him and then destroy the tear so that he can’t ever come back,” Timbago said.

I shook my head. “According to the Dragos Council there is nothing in Nerissette that burns hot enough to destroy it.”

“There is.” He shook his head at me. “Even if the dragons do not understand what it might be.”

“Then what is it?” I asked.

“You’ll know when the time comes.” He gave me a grim look. “But first you must imprison the Fate Maker and come back to the palace to be the Golden Rose that the people of Nerissette deserve. The Golden Rose that they’ve been waiting for.”

“I will,” I promised him, the pain in my palm stinging as I clenched my fist. “And we’ll find some way to show people what you did. We’ll make a monument so that no one will ever forget how brave you were. How brave all of you were.”

“That won’t be necessary, Your Highness.” He shook his head and reached down to pat my closed fist. “Be glorious and our choice will have been the right one. It will have been worth it.”

“Nothing will ever make it worth it to me…”

“I’ll never be far away,” Timbago said. Then he stepped back, letting go of my hands. “Remember that, my queen. None of us will ever be far away.”

“Timbago?”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“How did Winston get the tear?” I said, finally asking the question that had been niggling at the back of my brain. “On the night of my coronation he put it around my neck, but the Tear was hidden in the palace. You were its guardian. So how did Winston end up with it?”

“Simple, Your Majesty.” The goblin smiled at me. “I gave it to him, just like I gave it to you in your apartments, and then I made him forget.”

“Why?”

“Because the sorceress and I…” Timbago bowed his head. “Each of us had a destiny. A role to play. Her fate was to bring you here. Mine was to keep you safe. And now I have.”

He took another step back, and I could see that he was starting to fade.

“Don’t—” I grabbed for him, but my fingers passed through his reflection instead. “Don’t go.”

“I must.”

“Just one more question. Please.”

“Anything.”

“Did it…” I faltered. “Did it hurt? When you…you know.”

“Not even for a second.” He shook his head. “But it’s time for you to wake up. Wake up, Your Majesty. Wake up.”

“But—”

“Wake up.”

And the next thing I knew he was gone, the palace was gone, and the world was nothing but darkness and someone shaking me.

“Allie! Come on, Allie. Wake up.” Mercedes shook me again, and I groaned. “Wake up or I swear by the trees I will slap you.”

“Don’t,” I moaned. “I’m awake. I’m awake.”

“Your Majesty,” a rough-sounding voice said as I struggled to open my eyes.

I cracked an eyelid open and found myself staring at John of Leavenwald’s haggard, soot-covered face. He had a streak of mud down the side of his left cheek, and I couldn’t help wondering how it had gotten there. The way the sunlight filled the room now, I must have been asleep for hours.

“They’re all dead. Everyone who stayed behind to defend the Crystal Palace.” I peeled back my blankets and stood up. “They’re dead and the mermaids are missing.”

“I know.” He didn’t look at me, his eyes fixed at a point over my right shoulder. “Lord General Sullivan told us when you returned last night, while you were in the meeting with the Dragos Council.”

“The Fate Maker and my aunt, the Empress Bavasama, they killed everyone they could, and now that I have the tear and know how to use it I’m going to make them pay,” I said. “I will make them suffer for every life they took.”

I tightened my hand into a fist and felt a sharp jab in my palm. I ran my thumb along the edge of whatever had poked me and instantly knew what it was that Timbago had given me in the dream. I didn’t know how he’d managed to make it materialize in real life after giving it to me in a dream, but somehow he’d saved the last shard of the Mirror of Nerissette. There was so much I still had left to learn. And I could only do that if I stayed on the throne. I slipped the shard into the pocket of my pants and stared at John of Leavenwald.

“Your Majesty.” He fixed his gray eyes on mine. “If I get the chance I’ll kill him before he ever gets close to you, but if you feel you must get revenge yourself all I ask is that you let me hold your cloak.”

“I don’t wear a cloak.”

“It was a figure of speech, my queen.” He smiled at me. “Now if you’re awake, and we’re done planning your revenge…”

“What?”

“The last of your army has arrived. I offered to come wake you so that we could convene a Council of War.”

Chapter Twenty

“What do we know?” I asked as I followed John to a grassy knoll just above the edge of the lake where a hastily set up white awning held tables inside. I glanced around—all of them were scattered with papers and maps.

“The dragon scouts searched Nerissette last night, and we’ve found the Fate Maker’s army,” Ardere said. “They are near Tahib.”

“What’s that?” I asked, my face growing pink. I didn’t even know my whole kingdom yet, and I’d almost lost it twice.

“Tahib is an oasis where the Firas hold their annual gatherings each year. It empties out during the wet season when the Firas are traveling.”

“And that’s where his army is? Why would they go there?”

“We don’t know,” John said from beside me as he pointed to the map. “It makes no sense. In the time it took for his army to make it to Tahib, they could have reached the Cliffs of Fesir and brought the war to us.”

“They could be resting there, regaining their strength,” Rhys suggested.

“Or waiting there for more troops,” Tevian said, staring at the map, his fingers tracing along the place where the White Mountains curled along our borders. “There, the White Mountains are no more than foothills. It would be easy for Bavasama to send more troops across the border at Tahib.”

“More troops?”

“It is possible, Your Majesty,” John said as Winston put his hand on my back and we leaned over the map.

“So what do you recommend we do? You’re all warriors—if it were you, why would you lead your army into the middle of nowhere?”

“More soldiers,” John of Leavenwald said, the other men nodding in agreement. “They’re waiting for more troops. Fresh troops from Bathune to help them fight against us.

“Right, okay.” I took a deep breath. “They’re adding soldiers to their army. That’s bad. We need to figure out some way to stop them before that happens.”

“So we go out to meet them,” Eamon said. He and his woodsmen guards stood outside our awning, armed to the teeth and staring at us. “We send our troops out and finish their army before the reinforcements arrive. We quit running like weak children and stand and fight.”

Exactly what I was thinking. We needed to go out and meet him. He kept chasing us down, and we were always on the defense, waiting for the Fate Maker and his army to strike and hoping that we could survive it. Now, though, we would attack.

“That’s a bad idea,” Rhys said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Tahib is on a hill.” Rhys pointed at the map. “And the Firas use it for their gatherings because it was once a fortress. One of your fortresses, from a time when our world was less peaceful, a fortress that was made to withstand attacks by dragons.”

“We can lay siege!” Eamon declared. “We’ll starve them out. We can win this war once and for all.”

“If they’re on a hill, inside a fort, they’ll have the advantage,” Winston said. “We could starve them out but that will take time, and while we’re waiting for them to run out of food, they’re on a hill looking down on us, and we’ve got nothing to hide behind.”

“And then we’re sitting ducks,” I said.

“Exactly.” John nodded. “They’ll pick us off one by one.”

“Then let us die like warriors instead of being picked off,” Eamon argued. “We have done nothing but retreat like cowards since these children took control of our world. Instead of looking to them for direction let us, the true people of Nerissette, fight for it. Let us live and die as the warriors we’re meant to be.”

“And die is what you’ll do,” Rhys snapped. “All of you.”

“It’s better to die than—”

“He’s right.” John cut in. “If we attack, we’ll die.”

“But—” Eamon started

“And as I am still head of the woodsmen,” John continued, “I say that we find a plan of attack that doesn’t leave all of us to be slaughtered like animals.”

“This is weakness. Cowardice.” Eamon sneered as he flipped over the table that our maps were sitting on and then stormed out of the tent, his men following behind him.

“John.” I reached for him but he shook my hand off his arm.

“He’s young,” he said as he watched his son go. “One day he’ll learn that when the choice is between survival and glory, only the stupid man chooses glory.”

“So what do you recommend? If we’re not going to take the fight to my aunt and the Fate Maker, what do you, as the generals in charge of my army, think we should do? The cliff plan?” I asked, desperately trying to find a way to change the subject back to the impending battle and off the fracture in the ranks of the woodsmen.

“The cliff plan,” Winston agreed. “It’ll be just like that movie
300
.”

“With the guys in the skirts?” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“We’re skipping that part,” Rhys said darkly as he gazed across the lake.

“But that didn’t work for the Spartans. Did it? They all—” I stopped.

“What?” John looked at me. “What happened to these Spartan warriors?”

“They all died,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, well, that’s why we’re playing the other guys.”

…

I sat on the banks of Dramera Lake watching the sun sink over the horizon that evening. I’d spent the entire day holed up with my generals trying to plan for a battle that could very likely be the slaughter of my entire army if we failed. Now all I wanted to do was be by myself so that I could quietly fall apart for the next few minutes. I was alone except for the young woodsman who was standing guard—well, more sitting, actually—a few feet behind me, staring at the water as it lapped along the shore. I glanced over at my guard, and he immediately looked up from the stick he was sharpening with his knife. I smiled at him, my mind cluttered with dozens of thoughts and ideas and plans, and he smiled back before turning again to his stick, like this was any other afternoon.

I turned my back a little so he couldn’t see my face and looked down at the new pair of hunting pants that one of the black dragons had found me this morning—too long, and more than a little baggy, but definitely
cleaner
than the ones I’d been wearing for the past two days. I reached into my pocket and carefully pulled out the mirror shard that Timbago had given me in my dream. “Show me the former queen,” I whispered as I brushed my hand over the glass.

Smoke filled the mirror, and when it cleared I was looking down at my mother, lying motionless in her hospital bed. Her eyes were closed, and she was sweating. Her hair was damp, and her face flushed. She jerked, her shoulders twitching, and as the mirror moved down the length of her body I could see her legs shifting, almost like she was trying to run in her sleep.

“What are you running from?” I asked. “What is it that you see? Who is it?”

Tears welled up in my eyes, and I scrubbed the palm of my free hand against my cheeks. I didn’t have time for this. My mother was too far gone; nothing I did could bring her back. She was trapped—alone—on the other side of the mirror, and I wasn’t sure I could protect her. I was a queen, leading an army, and I couldn’t even keep my own mother safe.

The dull sound of boots moving through the grass caught my attention, but I didn’t bother to turn around. Instead I stared at my mother and wished there were some way to make her wake up. I wanted her to be my mom again and tell me what to do.

“Allie?” Win touched my shoulder as he came over and sat beside me. “Are you okay? I mean, well, you know what I mean. Is there anything you need? Anything I can do?”

“No.” I shook my head and rubbed at my cheeks again before leaning my head against his shoulder. “No, I don’t need anything.”

“Are you sure?” He took my hand in his and squeezed. “I know you’re freaked out right now about what happened at the palace. We haven’t really talked about it, but I can’t imagine what it was like finding those bodies.”

I laced our fingers together and tried to ignore the way my hands were trembling. “Don’t imagine it. I don’t want you to ever know what that’s like.”

“If there were some way to make it better, you know I would.”

“I know.” I took a deep breath in and blew it out. “But you can’t—none of us can. They’re dead, and even in Nerissette they don’t have any kind of magic that can bring them back. All we can do now is finish this.”

I shoved the fragment of the mirror back into my pocket and turned to smile at him, even though I knew that the edges of my lips were quivering as I tried to keep my emotions in check.

“It’s okay if you’re scared.” Winston let go of my hand and wrapped me in his arms, pulling me into a reassuring hug. “I am, too.”

“I know you are, and I can never tell you how sorry I am about that. How sorry I am about a lot of things. I never wanted this to happen. If I had a choice…”

“I know.” He lowered his face so that his forehead tilted against mine.

A roar came from the east, and we turned toward the town square. Ardere and a phalanx of gold dragons launched themselves into the air and circled Dramera, standing—well, flying—guard.

I turned my back on them and stared out at the lake, trying to pretend that my spine was made out of steel instead of Jell-O. I was the Golden Rose of Nerissette. I was the leader, and I was the Fate Maker’s target. I was the one he wanted. He’d murdered so many people for a chance to get to me. He’d destroyed so many lives, and all I’d done was run and hide as he’d chased after me, bringing destruction along with him.

Well, I was done running from him. I was done running. Period. I’d run my entire life from people like Heidi and Dawn Thompson in second grade who’d called me Stinky Allie the Alley Cat. Now people were dead—Heidi and Jesse and Timbago and all the people who worked in the castle—and I was never going to run again. They deserved better from me than that.

I looked out over the lake and closed my eyes, willing Talia and the other twenty-three merpeople to appear. I wasn’t ready to admit that everyone was gone. I wasn’t ready to give up hope of seeing Talia again. Not yet. After everything else, I wasn’t ready to let them go that easily.

I wasn’t ready to lose anyone else. No matter what the reason was.

“Allie?” Winston’s voice was soft against my hair.

“I’m sorry.” I pulled out the fragment of the mirror and held it up for him to see. “I lied to you, and I’m sorry.”

“Is that what I think it is?” His voice was low and breathy, like someone had just sucker-punched him.

“I’m so sorry. So,
so
sorry.”

“You’ve had this the entire time? You had it and didn’t tell anyone? Why?”

I stared at the small sliver of glass. “I kept thinking, hoping, there had to be some way to use it to get home. If I could just find a way to get us, you, home, then it wouldn’t matter that I’d kept it. You wouldn’t care that I kept it secret if I could make it work in the end.”

“And did you? Find a way to use it?” he asked, his voice hopeful.

“No.” I shook my head. “I can see through it, but I can’t use it as a portal. I just…”

“You just…?” Winston asked.

“I wanted to be able to see my mom. I wanted to make sure she was safe.”

“I understand.”

My jaw dropped open at the completely calm way he’d said it, like it was no big deal that I’d kept something like this a secret from him. “What?”

“I would have kept it, too,” Winston said. “Even though it put everyone else at risk, I would have kept it. I wouldn’t have been able to give up the chance to at least make sure my parents were okay.”

“Wait, what? But I lied to you. I kept this a secret. And now, the Fate Maker could use it against us if we aren’t careful. Aren’t you even going to yell at me?”

“Allie.” He grabbed my shoulders and turned me out toward the lake before he pointed in the direction of my now-ruined palace. “I can fight you or I can fight the horde of scary monsters that the Fate Maker has in his army. Which would you like to spend your time on? Us or scary monsters?”

“Scary monsters.”

“Right.” Winston spun me back around so that we were eye to eye. “So what are we going to do about the shard?”

“What I should have done in the first place.” I dropped the fragment of glass and lifted my boot to step on it.

“Wait!” Winston grabbed my arm.

I turned to look at him, my foot still raised. “What?”

“Did you have this the entire time? I mean, since we left the castle have you been carrying it?”

“No, Timbago came to me last night in a vision and gave it to me.”

“When? How?”

“In my dream. Last night, I fell asleep and he was in my dream and he gave me the mirror shard. I don’t know how he did it, but it’s here now.”

“Then don’t destroy it.” Winston pulled me away from the piece of glass.

“You just told me we needed to fix this.”

“That was before I knew that Timbago had given it to you—after he died. A dead goblin brought you a shard from the Mirror of Nerissette in a dream.”

“Yeah?”

“I think that’s a pretty big sign that you’re probably going to need that shard for something.”

“For what?”

“No idea, but if Timbago went to all the trouble of
coming back from the dead
to give you a shard of the mirror then you need to keep it.”

“Okay, but if it doesn’t work as a portal anymore, I don’t—” I sighed and turned over the mirror fragment in my hand. I knew Winston was right. “Okay. So we hang on to the shard just in case. Now we just have to wait for the Fate Maker to show up so that we can use it.”

Great. Just what I loved doing most in the world. Waiting around for someone else to make the first move.

“The good news is that most of the army has arrived, and the dragon scouts are watching the remaining stragglers. It looks like everyone will be here by dinner.”

“So we have an army?”

“We have an army,” he said. He picked up a stone and skipped it across the lake. “And now we just…wait.”

“That sounds like fun,” I huffed and picked up my own stone.

“We could play I Spy?”

I didn’t even answer, just rolled my eyes. Then I looked down at the shard of glass in my hand. “Do you want to see?”

“I don’t know.” His voice shook, and he kept his eyes fixed on the lake. “If I look—”