Infinity (17 page)

“What?” I looked at him, and he turned to smile at me.

“I was sent here to be the Golden Rose’s Personal Knight,” Jesse said. “To lay down my life to protect hers.”

Bavasama stepped forward. “That’s lovely. Very sweet. The boy who died to save a girl who’ll never love him back. That’s just beautiful. Kill him no—”

The discordant wail of a hunting trumpet split the air, and everyone froze as somewhere outside a lone dragon let out a high-pitched, angry howl.

C
hapter Twenty-two

“No!” Bavasama looked at me, her eyes wide. “No, they can’t be here yet.”

“Wanna bet?” The guard let go of me, stepping backward like he was going to flee, and I moved closer to my aunt, putting myself between her and my friends. “There’s not much a couple of ticked-off dragons, a dryad who’s lost her second family, and my lord general can’t do if you give them enough incentive.”

“That incentive isn’t going to save you,” Bavasama said. “You’re still my prisoner, and when all of this is over and your army is defeated, I’m still going to kill you.”

“I’d love to see you try, Auntie Bav.”

She jerked her arm forward, trying to slap me, but between the judo classes that Mom had insisted I take and years of watching out for Heidi in the halls, I knew something about being prepared for random kicks and punches. Instead of letting her make contact, I ducked and did the one thing I’d never had the guts to do with Heidi: I hauled my own fist back and smashed it into her nose.

“Allie!” Heidi screamed.

“Kind of busy right now,” I said as I lashed out at my aunt again, managing to scrape a couple of my fingernails across her cheek.

“The Fate Maker and that other wizard are getting away,” Heidi said as Bavasama threw herself at me and we toppled to the floor, pulling each other’s hair and clawing at each other.

“You’ve got legs! Go stop them already.” I lifted my face, trying to head butt the woman sitting on top of me.

“Oh, great, I’ll just go take on a wizard, and when that’s done I’ll start bare-knuckle boxing with a couple trolls,” Heidi said. I didn’t bother responding while trying to keep Bavasama from getting in a solid punch.

“I’m going to kill you,” Bavasama said, her face close to mine. “I’m going to kill you, and it’s going to be slow and very, very—”

I managed to get a good grip on her and flipped us over, shutting her up, me on top this time with my knee digging into her stomach.

“Painful,” she said with a grunt and then reached for my hair, trying to rip it out by the roots.

I jerked my head back, away from her, and tried to roll us over so I could bash her head against the floor.

“Guards,” Bavasama yelled from underneath me. “Guards!”

Two big, burly hands wrapped around me, and then I was lifted in the air. Looking around, I saw that all the other nobles had fled and Jesse was pinned in another guard’s grip, squirming to get free.

Bavasama stood up slowly and wiped her hands on her skirts before reaching up to wipe the edge of her mouth. “You think your army is going to stop me?”

“You better believe it,” I snarled back.

“I’m the rightful ruler of this world.”

“You’re a psychopath.”

“I will rule this world,” Bavasama taunted, “and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“And once again, I have to say,
wanna bet
?” I made sure to pop the
b
in a way that I knew would annoy her.

“Of course.” She came closer so that we were nose to nose. “Here’s the bet. If your army defeats me, then you get to kill me and keep my kingdom.”

“Sounds like a good bet to me,” I said, thinking back to what I’d seen in the Orb of Fate. Esmeralda had said that the only thing the Orb could show you was your heart’s deepest desire, but there was some part of me that couldn’t help but think that maybe this time it had shown me what was to come instead.

“But if they fail,” she snarled, “I’m going to march you out onto those walls and cut off your head before throwing your body into my moat and putting your head on a pike for your entire army to see while they kneel in allegiance to me.”

“Not going to happen,” I said confidently.

“Oh, yes, it will. Then I’m going to have your father and your boyfriend the dragon and all your friends brought to me, and I’m going to torture them
all
until they beg to die. Every single one of them. I’m going to break them into itty-bitty pieces, and it’s all because of you. When they die I’m going to make sure they die screaming your name.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You seem to be forgetting one thing, Auntie Bav.” I smirked at her.

“What’s that?”

“I’m the one with the army full of ticked-off creatures who want nothing more than to destroy you and burn your palace to the ground.”

“We’ll see about that,” Bavasama said with a sneer. “We shall just bloody well see.”

She turned to look at one of the free guards and jerked her head toward the doors. “Go and find the maid. Then take her to my dear niece’s room.”

“Yes, Your Graciousness.” The guard nodded and hurried away.

“Take her and the boy away.” Bavasama flicked her fingers at the guard holding me tight against him. “I can’t stand to look at her, and besides, I have an army to crush.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He began to pull me from the room, walking backward the entire way so that his back was never turned to her.

I watched as Bavasama moved to the window. She stared out the window for a moment and then paced back to the throne. When we reached the doorway, I dug in my heels. “Hey, Auntie Bav?” I saw her wince at the name and couldn’t help but smile. “Do me a favor. One queen to another.”

She looked up, and I could see that her eyes were blazing with anger—and most likely more than a little fear.

“When my army comes in here and kicks the crap out of you, don’t die.”

“I don’t plan on it. If anyone’s going to die—”

“Good.” I cut her off and smiled. “I’d sure hate to lose the fun of killing you myself.”

“Take her away,” she said, her eyes simmering with rage. The guard pulled me through the doorway with Jesse and his captor following behind, slamming the door shut behind them.

“You’re risking an awful lot, girl,” the guard holding me said quietly. “She’s got a short fuse on her and a mean temper.”

“Yeah? So do I,” I said and tried to jerk my arm out of his grip. “The difference is I’ve got one heck of an army standing outside your gate, and they very much want to come inside so they can kill anything that moves.”

“I doubt they’re as big as you claim. The people of Nerissette were always weak-willed cowards.”

“Yeah? Well, three different invasions in the past year have taken care of that,” I said as he began to pull me up the stairs, moving too fast for me to actually walk. I was forced to let him drag me along instead, my ankles banging against each and every stair as we went.

“That’s too bad,” the guard snarled. “After all, weak-willed slaves would have been so much easier to break after we marched over the border and conquered them.”

“My people will never be slaves,” I snapped as one guard shoved me into my tower room and the other shoved Jesse in alongside me, knocking us both to the floor before they shut the door, both of them laughing.

“Jesse.” I reached out to grab his hand. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. They didn’t hurt me.” He tangled his fingers through mine and squeezed them tight. “Not that it matters much. I’m not exactly a fabulous example of how to be a crown prince.”

“That’s—”

“I mean, in the end I couldn’t even get the girl. Not that I mind because, well, I always sort of thought that you and Winston would be cool together. I mean, you’re both super-smart, and half the guys on the football team sort of thought you were together and just keeping it secret. Well, they thought Winston was keeping it secret, you know, romancing the nerd and all.”

I grimaced at the easy way he suggested that a guy could want to hide being with me.

“Not that I thought that,” Jesse said quickly. “I don’t think Winston’s like that. He’s too good of a guy. All that military-parent stuff I guess. He was always the guy who did the right thing. He’s…what do you call it?”

“Noble.”

“Yeah. And it’s not like you’re a dog or anything,” Jesse continued as I slunk over to the table and sat on top of it, dropping my head into my hands. “You’re a pretty girl, I just don’t think anyone ever saw it because you were so shy. You let people push you around and overlook you, and so they just kept doing it.”

“I know,” I said softly.

“But you don’t do that anymore.” Jesse came over to sit beside me and nudged my shoulder. “Do you? I mean, you led an army here. You fought the Fate Maker, and soon you’re going to defeat Bavasama, and no one will ever do that to you again.”

He gently shoved my shoulder again, and I looked over at him and swallowed. “I don’t want you to do anything stupid,” I said. “Don’t sacrifice yourself for me.”

He smiled back at me, his eyes sad. “Sometimes you don’t get to choose your fate. Sometimes it chooses you.”

“Then you fight against it. That’s what the dragons always say. My friend Kitsuna…” I trailed off and felt my heart clench as I thought about the wryen and all my other friends currently marching toward us.

“Your friend Kitsuna?”

I cleared my throat. “She said that the dragons believe Fate is something that you fight against. In their stories, Fate isn’t a given that you have to accept. Kitsuna says Fate’s the villain, and you’re supposed to fight her and outsmart her and do whatever it takes so that you get the life you want rather than what she has planned for you.”

“Maybe Fate’s plan isn’t such a bad one for me.” Jesse shrugged. “It’s not like I’m ever going to belong in this world. I’m not a knight; I’m not brave. When the Fate Maker attacked us, do you know what I did?”

I shook my head.

“I tried to hide behind your throne,” Jesse said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I was huddled up behind a chair, crying like a little girl when they found me. I’m a coward.”

“We’ll find a way to get you and Heidi home,” I told him, reaching out to grab his hand.

“I don’t belong there, either. After all that I’ve seen here, I can’t just go back and pretend it’s all the same. I can’t just forget what we’ve seen, what we’ve done. I can’t forget that Winston can turn into a dragon or that Mercedes is green. I can’t pretend that I haven’t seen what war is like.”

“You’ll forget. You’ll go through, and we’ll make sure that you forget—you and Heidi both. You’ll forget you were ever here, and you’ll forget that the rest of us ever existed. You just have to let us get you home.”

“What if I can’t ever really go back?” Jesse asked. “I mean, even if you wipe my memories or something, who knows if they won’t come back later? Maybe there are some things you can’t forget. Things you’re not supposed to forget.”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head and then looked over at him. “But I want you to do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Don’t try to be a hero. It’s—”

“Not my job,” he said quietly. “Fate doesn’t need me to be the knight in shining armor. That’s what Winston is here for after all.”

“No,” I said quietly. “I need you to do something more important than that.”

“What?”

“I remember when we were in ninth-grade English together.”

“So?”

“You were really good at making up stories in the creative writing section. Everyone wanted to listen to what you came up with.”

“Only because I was popular.”

“No.” I took his hand, squeezing it. “You were really, really good. So that’s what I want you to do. If…”

“If?”

“If we fail,” I said quietly, “I want you to stay alive and make your way back to Nerissette. Tell them the truth about what happened here. Tell whoever’s left how I—
how we
—died.”

“You’re not going to—”

The door creaked, and we both watched as it opened slowly, the Fate Maker standing there with Heidi in his arms and his hand tight around her neck and a long scratch down the front of his face that looked like a nail mark.

“Do you remember the first time we had breakfast together?” the Fate Maker asked me, his face contorted into a mask of pure rage.

“Yes.” I swallowed and then stood up, facing him, remembering the day he’d shown me just how far he’d go to stay in power.

“Good,” he said, his eyes blazing. “Because I want you to remember that no matter how tough you think you are, I’ll always be able to get to you and the people you care about.”

I watched as Heidi’s body began to waver in his arms, fading in and out like she was out of sync with the rest of us somehow. She began to shrink, and the air around her just seemed smaller.

“Stop!” I stepped forward, but instead of moving he just opened his arms and smiled as her transition between girl and tiny pink fairy finished.

He reached out and snatched her from the air, throwing her onto the floor and stomping down hard, crushing her miniature body. Just like he’d done to the fairy at the breakfast table.

Chapter Twenty-three

I sat with Jesse’s arms wrapped around my back as we both stared at Heidi’s tiny pink corpse. “I just don’t understand,” I said, my voice cracking on the last word.

“I know.” His own voice was quiet, and he kept moving us back and forth, rocking us. “I know.”

“She had the combs. They should have protected her. My father said that the combs were meant to protect me, so why didn’t they protect her?”

“Maybe they’re only meant to be used by you,” Jesse suggested.

“Maybe but I still don’t understand. He didn’t have any reason to kill her.”

“They don’t need reasons here,” Jesse said as we both kept staring at the body. “They just hurt people and kill people because they can. They do it because they think killing is fun. Magic or not, the people here think of killing as a game.”

I let what he said sink in as we sat there and stared at the crumpled wings and lifeless body of the girl who’d bullied me every single day of our lives together in the World That Is. The girl I’d failed over and over again.

“What should we do with her?” I asked. “We can’t just leave her lying on the floor like some sort of squashed bug.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said, his voice hollow.

“But…”

“I can do it. I should do it. She was my girlfriend, after all. Well, not really anymore since we ended up here, but we used to be together and she’d told me once that she loved me. It’s my job to take care of her now.”

He stood up and then went over to the basin in the far corner. He grabbed the small hand towel that had been left beside it. “She wasn’t always a nice person,” Jesse said as he came over and knelt beside her body. “She could be hateful and mean, and she didn’t always think about others, but deep down she was a good person.”

“I know she was.” I nodded slowly.

“She loved her little brother,” Jesse continued, “and she was nice to animals, and she never once doubted that you would come find us, Allie. She knew you would come. And when they’d let us talk to each other, she’d always tell me that if anyone was stubborn and stupid enough to save us, it would be you. She’d tell me not to give up hope because you were coming.”

“Oh.” I sniffed as he laid out the hand towel and rolled Heidi’s fairy body onto it before covering her with the other half. “We’re going to be okay, Allie,” Jesse said as he put the hand towel on the mantle and let his hand rest on top of it. “And when this is over, we’ll make them pay for what they did to Heidi, and to everyone else.”

“Yes,” I said quietly. He came over to sit next to me on the table, and we both stared into the fire. “We will.”