Evanescent (5 page)

Chapter Five

I entered the main foyer two hours later, ready to do the whole ball thing. But then I reached for the reassuring weight of my sword and my hand froze halfway to my hip. I wasn’t wearing my sword. Apparently it wasn’t considered
polite
to go to a ball armed inside my own castle. I brought my hand up to touch my crown’s delicately worked golden leaves, making sure that it was in place, and then glanced down to make sure that my full, white-and-gold satin skirt wasn’t creased before I made my way into the ballroom.

“Allie?” My best friend, Mercedes, stepped forward from her place near the door with Darinda, head of the Dryad Order, at her side. She was fidgeting, twisting her fingers in her skirt, and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Mercedes?” I admired her long, bark-colored dress, with silver leaves embroidered into the skirt. “What’s wrong?”

“I needed to talk to you.”

My stomach churned. I’d watched enough romantic comedies to know that nothing good could come from that sentence, even when it was coming from your best friend. “Sure, what’s up? Did something bad happen?”

“Yes. Well, no. Something’s happened, but it’s not bad.”

“Okay… So what happened? ”

“Oh.” She smiled and started to twist her fingers together. “I’ve, um, well I’ve found my tree.”

“Your what?” I looked at her confused.

“My tree,” she said, stressing the last word. “I’m a dryad. I have a tree. We’re two halves of the same whole. Me and my tree. Like Siamese twins but not. I protect it and nurture it and in return the tree acts as a sort living magical wand that lets me control my powers. Except I don’t have to touch it since me and the tree will have a psychic link.”

“You’ve got a psychic link with a tree?”

“Yes, I know it sounds weird, but it’s a dryad thing. We each have a tree. That’s why I’m here—well, besides the fact that there’s a ball and I had to get dressed up for that so I could dance with Rhys and stuff.” She shook her head.

“And you’ve found your tree magic wand thingy?” I asked slowly.

“Yes, and I need your official blessing before me and my tree bond. It’s just a temporary thing until we find a way back home, but it is my tree. So is it all right if I claim it?”

“Of course, you should bond if you want to bond. So, is finding your tree like a major thing?”

“It’s a bit major,” she agreed. “Temporary but major.”

Darinda coughed, and when I looked up her eyes were on mine. She shook her head once, quickly, and I knew that we were both going to ignore the fact that my best friend was still in denial about our lives here.

It wouldn’t do any good to fight with her about the fact that we weren’t going home. We just weren’t. I’d accepted it. Win had accepted it. Rhys had accepted it before any of the rest of us had even come through the mirror. Mercedes, though? Not so much.

“Okay. So what am I supposed to do? No one has explained to me what to do with dryad tree findings? Should I congratulate you? Throw a party? Give you a birdhouse? ’Cause I don’t have a birdhouse, but if you want one I’ll find you one. A really nice one. A pretty one. The best birdhouse in all of Nerissette.”

“Well, congratulations would be nice.” Mercedes twisted her fingers together inside the folds of her skirt, and I knew she was still nervous about something.

“Then congratulations! This is really cool. My best friend, the dryad, has her tree. Let’s go inside and tell everyone. Then we’ll celebrate.” I tried to focus on her good news instead of her persistent denial. I threw my arms around her and gave her a tight hug.

“Don’t you want to know where it’s at?”

“Isn’t it in the forest with all the other trees?” I asked, confused.

“There are many trees in our forest, Your Majesty,” Darinda said quietly. “But the Sapling’s home is not with us anymore.”

What? Could her tree be in some other forest? Oh man, she wasn’t going to have to move, was she? I didn’t know if I could handle it if her tree wasn’t nearby. Besides, what if it wasn’t in a safe neighborhood, or whatever they had in forests? A bad stand of trees? What if the other dryads in the area were creeps? Was I going to have to send the army to deal with a bunch of bully dryads?

“Our sapling is quite blessed in her selection,” Darinda said, cutting my brain off mid-rant. “She has been chosen to protect the Silver Leaf Tree.”

“The what?” I asked.

“The silver maple in the back garden. The one next to the mermaids’ labyrinth,” Rhys said as he emerged from the shadows that led to the back of the palace.

“The tree in the backyard next to the maze? The one with the funny-looking silver leaves?” I looked at Darinda for confirmation.

Darinda nodded. “That would be the royal Silver Leaf Tree. Given to the first Golden Rose by Dentras, the original head of the Dryad Order. The tree that binds the people of Nerissette to the dryads. The symbol of our everlasting friendship.”

“So it’s an important tree?” I asked.

“A very important tree,” Darinda confirmed. “We were all very surprised when the sapling’s instincts pulled her toward the Silver Leaf and then, when the tree began to sing to her, we knew that it was fated.”

“The tree sang to you? Like actually sang?” I ignored the whole bit about Fate to focus on my best friend and her apparently awesome life change instead.

“It was really cool.” Mercedes’s nose scrunched up. “The tree, my tree, started to hum and then to sort of vibrate and then music started pouring out of the leaves.”

“The ceremony was an exceptionally interesting display,” Darinda admitted. “But that isn’t what we’re here to discuss.”

“So what do we need to talk about?” I asked. “Besides the fact that
you can make trees sing
?”

“Our sapling needs to stay near her tree,” Darinda said. “Inside the palace grounds. If that pleases you, Your Majesty.”

“Really?” I turned to look at Mercedes, excited at the prospect of having my best friend close by again instead of living in the forest. “You’re going to camp out in my backyard to be with your tree?”

“Well, I need to persuade the tree to let me make my home with it.” She shrugged and smiled at me. “But yeah, I’m going to be living in your backyard. Is that okay?”

“You’re going to be living here. That’s great! Wait. Hold up. Where are you going to stay until the tree decides to get with the program and let you move in? You can’t sleep outside. You hate camping. Or at least you did, you know
, before
.”

“Weeeelllll.” Mercedes drew the word out. “It’s not really so bad, camping, but I was sort of thinking I could stay with you.”

“You want to sleep over? Really? And that’s cool with the rest of the dryads?” I asked, sort of stunned because most of the time the tree nymphs kept to themselves, shunning those of us they called iron lovers.

“I really need to bond with my tree. Otherwise it might not bloom properly again in the spring and, since it’s supposed to be the symbol of the eternal bond between the throne of Nerissette and the dryads, that could be bad.”

“Bad how?” I asked.

“If the Silver Leaf Tree, which the prophesies say is the Tree of Perpetual Life, were to not bloom again in the spring it would be very bad indeed,” Darinda said.

“The Tree of Perpetual Life?” I asked. “Like the Tree of Life itself? You’re saying that the Tree of Life is in my back garden? My best friend is now the guardian of the Tree of Life? The actual
Tree of Life
?”

“That would be the tree we’re talking about, yes,” Darinda said.

“Yeah, okay. I can see why we’d want that particular tree to stay alive.”

“So does that mean I can stay over?” Mercedes asked and we both turned to look at Darinda.

“It’s okay with me as long as it’s okay with the Golden Rose,” Darinda said.

“Do I have to sleep in the killer bed?” Mercedes asked and we both laughed, remembering how my bed—my magical bed—had trapped poor Heidi in a mattress sandwich our first day in Nerissette.

“Shut up.” I nudged her. “Of course you don’t get to sleep in my bed. You have to sleep on the floor.”

“Least I’ll make it through the night without becoming a midnight mattress snack.”

I snorted on a giggle and I could see her shoulders shaking. “My poor bed. It tries to eat one cheerleader, and everyone’s afraid of her.”

“No, we just all believe in staying alive.”

I smacked her arm lightly. “I promise not to let the bed eat you. So do you want to sleep in my tower or are you camping out in the cold and the dark, sleeping in the dirt, all by yourself?”

“Me and the Golden Rose of Nerissette, ruler of all the light touches?” Mercedes asked. “It depends. Is anyone going to stop us from raiding the fridge at 2:00 a.m.?”

“Nope.” I pointed to myself. “Queen.”

“Then consider me in.”

“Yay!” I threw my arms around her and squeezed, ecstatic about the idea of having my best friend around again. Sure, she’d only been in the forest less than a half an hour’s hike away, but we’d both been busy figuring out our new lives and hadn’t spent as much time together as we could have.

“As great as this is,” Rhys said to me, “do you think we should go inside now? An entire ballroom of people is waiting on you.”

“Yeah, probably,” I said, letting go of Mercedes.

Rhys smiled and shifted his attention to my friend. “Sapling, you are the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.” Rhys bowed low in front of her and held out a hand. “May I escort you inside, please?”

“Oh.” Mercedes looked between Rhys and Darinda. “Is that…”

“Go,” Darinda said, and waved a hand at them. “But if I catch the two of you kissing again, I will thump you both with my stick.”

Once Rhys had taken Mercedes’s hand and led her away, Darinda turned to me and shook her head. “Every time our sapling and the iron lover are together they seem to be attached at the lips.”

“They’re cute.” I smirked. “I’m just glad that she’s found a way to be happy here. With Rhys and the kissing and the whole guarding the Tree of Life thing. I was afraid she was going to hate me, you know.”

“Why would the sapling hate you?” Darinda asked.

I felt my stomach knot. “I destroyed our only way of getting home.”

“You saved Nerissette from an evil wizard and prevented him from killing us all before marching into your world and killing your families.”

“It sounds more heroic than it actually was when you put it that way.”

“It was heroic.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I said. My mind instantly went back to that day in the Fate Maker’s tower when I had been searching for anything I could find to stop him and stay alive.

“We will have to agree to disagree then, Your Majesty,” Darinda said quietly.

“I wanted to ask you something, though,” I said, desperate to change the subject away from the Fate Maker and all the horrible things that had happened at my coronation. “Could you send a few dryads to the village of Sorcastia, near Lake Wevlyn? A farmer there lost his wheat when a dragon fledgling sneezed and set fire to his fields.”

“I’ll arrange something in the morning,” Darinda said with a faint smile. “Is that all?”

“No, just one other thing before we go in. It’s nothing big. I’ve just got something I’m curious about.”

“What is it, Your Majesty?”

“The flowers you planted at the memorial. John of Leavenwald told me and the new ambassador that they were war roses, and the ambassador looked at him all weird. Why?”

“There is a superstition about war roses, Queen Alicia. It is said they only truly bloom when they are planted in soil that’s been drenched in blood.”

“That’s—” I swallowed.

“Nothing more than a story,” Darinda said. “In the end, they are nothing more than a red rose that takes longer to wilt than most other breeds. No blood required.”

“Oh. Okay, good. So we aren’t going to have to go kill someone to make them bloom each year. That’s good.”

“They’ll be fine without.” Darinda smiled at me. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go in, and then you can make your grand entrance. I’m sure the nobles are anxiously awaiting your arrival.”

“Yeah, mainly so they can all come up with an excuse to nag me for something, most likely each other’s land.”

“Then I recommend you keep your crown prince dancing as much as you can, so you won’t have to talk with any land-grabbing nobles.”

Before I could answer she slipped into the shadows and walked away. Knowing Darinda, she’d go in through a side door and skirt through the crowd until she found the rest of the members of the Nymphiad—the nymph ruling council—and they’d spend the night ignoring the rest of us as they talked about nature. Not that I blamed her. If I had my choice I wouldn’t hang out with most of these people, either.

I took a deep breath and ran my hands over my skirt one more time to make sure it wasn’t wrinkled. “Here goes nothing.”

“You’re a vision,” Timbago said from his position by the ballroom’s main doors. “Are you ready, Your Majesty?”

“Nope.”

“As I told you before your first ball here in Nerissette: back straight, chin up, smile. You are the queen here and anyone who acts like you are not will have their food poisoned by me. That includes Her Majesty, the Empress Bavasama’s ambassador.”

“Right. I’ll be happy if I manage to not to step on someone’s foot and start a war.” I quirked my brow at him. “What do you say?”

“You’ll be grand.” Timbago waved both of his hands in front of the doors, and they began to move with a loud, rumbling groan.

“Do you really believe that?” I asked. “About me being beautiful and grand and all of that?”

“With all my heart,” Timbago said. “Now, come on, it’s time to go dazzle some nobles.”

The music inside the throne room died out and everyone fell silent as the doors parted. I found myself once again standing at the threshold, staring at a room packed to the brim with people in fancy clothes.

“Her grace and glory, queen of all the light touches, the Golden Rose of Nerissette, Queen Alicia the First,” Timbago said loudly, his voice echoing around the room. “Long may she reign.”

I held back a sigh as everyone bowed. I’d tried to pass a law against bowing, I really had, but it hadn’t taken, and now every time I entered a room all I got was a view of the top of everyone else’s head. Which was incredibly boring to say the least. Instead of fighting it, though, I lifted the front of my skirts enough that I could walk and started toward my throne. When I reached the dais, Winston stood and offered me his hand.