Infinity (6 page)

“Allie—”

“No!” I threw my hands up between us. “No! I’m doing this. I’m ending this now.”

“But—”

“I’m ending this because I’m sick of it, of her. I’m fed up. Done with spending my nights pacing the floors, waiting to hear that you died. That Mercedes was killed or you were attacked and I was never going to see one of you again. I am done being afraid of losing the only people I have left. So I’m taking my army across that border, and I’m going to let my aunt feel what it’s like, the fear and the worry of knowing your people are under attack. The dread that comes from waiting to hear that the people you love are never coming home to you.

“I’m going to surround the Palace of Night, and when it finally falls, I’m going to take her crown, and I’m going to drag her to the top of the tallest tower and make her watch as her lands
burn
. Then I’m going to lock her in the nothingness between worlds and watch as Kuolema and the rest of the Dragons of the Bleak rip the flesh from her bones.” I paused for a beat. “You want to know something else?”

“What?” His voice was deep, and he flicked his eyes up to stare at me, not bothering to hide his sadness.

“I’m going to enjoy every single second of it.”

Chapter Six

Later that night, long after an almost silent dinner where we all barely ate, I found my best friend sitting in the back of the formal gardens next to the large Silver Leaf Maple that she’d bonded with. She was cradling the Orb of the Dryads in her hands, staring into it, her head back against the tree’s still-scorched trunk. “Mercedes?”

“Yeah?” She looked up at me.

“Are you—” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t ask if she was okay because none of us were okay. There was no way to be okay anymore; I didn’t know if we ever would be again.

“There’s nothing.” She rubbed her forehead back and forth against the blackened bark and didn’t look at me, letting her hands cord through the grass underneath her fingers, taking it from parched and wilted to a vibrant green with nothing more than a touch.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s nothing there, in my mind. Before, there was always this, this
knowing
feeling at the back of my skull.” Mercedes pulled her fingers from the grass, and it withered again.

“A feeling? You mean like telepathy or something?”

“I couldn’t read the other dryads minds—I didn’t
want
to read their minds—but I knew they were there, that they existed. We were linked together, and we could touch everything, anything that was alive was open to us, its thoughts, its feelings, and the things that made it sing.”

“And now?”

“Now there’s nothing. There’s emptiness in my mind. I’m alone in my own thoughts, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“We’ll figure it out.” I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to my side. “I don’t know how we’ll figure it out, but we will. Maybe there are dryads across the border. Once the invasion is over—”

“No.” She pulled away from me, and I could see tears running down her cheeks.

“Mer—”

“No. I don’t want to bond with another tribe over the border in Bathune. I don’t want to give up my connection with my tree. This is my home, and they were”—she let out a small sob—“they were my second chance at a family.”

“I know.” I looked down at my own hands, helplessly clasped together in my lap, unsure what to say. A new family—that’s what we’d made here in Nerissette. Mercedes, Winston, Rhys, Timbago, John, Talia, the dryads, and all the rest of the people of Nerissette. We’d made ourselves a family, and now outsiders were trying to tear us apart. They were picking us off one by one.

“I don’t know what to do. I mean, I thought we were safe with the Fate Maker gone. I thought we were finally going to get a chance to just, I don’t know what… But whatever we were going to become, it was supposed to be better than this.”

“It will be better.” I rested my head against her shoulder, taking comfort from the way her tree warmed in my presence. “I’m going to make it right.”

“How?”

“We’re raising an army, and when they’re ready, I’m taking them over the mountains to confront my aunt face-to-face. I promise, I won’t let anyone ever hurt you again. I can’t help Darinda and the rest of your sisters, but I promise you, Bavasama will never hurt anyone else that way. I’ll kill her before I let do that again.”

“You can’t kill them all. You can’t destroy an entire kingdom over me.”

“Why? Why can’t I do the same thing to them that they’ve been doing to us since we got here?”

“Because we aren’t them, and we can’t become them, either. We shouldn’t
want
to become them. You weren’t there. You didn’t see them. You didn’t see what they were like.”

“Winston and I found Bavasama’s soldiers when we were looking for you. I saw her men in the mountains, hurrying across the border, trying to escape.”

“In the forest.” She turned to look at me. “You didn’t see them in the forest, Al. They were laughing. They had us trapped, and all they could do was laugh and point. How evil do you have to be to know you’re going to kill people and laugh at them first? To them we weren’t even real. We were things. Animals.”

“You’re not an animal!”

“No, I’m not. I’m Mercedes Garcia, second daughter of Joseph and Rosalie Garcia, last Sapling of the Dryad Order of Nerissette. I’m best friends with a queen, I once dyed my hair green on accident, and I used to get my term papers on famous Olympians for gym class by copying from Wikipedia because I knew Coach Wilkie wouldn’t catch on.”

“I know you’re—”

“I’m not an animal,” she said forcefully, “but today—in that clearing—all I was to them was a creature they’d been sent to hunt down. You can’t do that, Allie. You can’t become the type of person who’s so twisted inside that you can do those sorts of things. We can’t become those people. You want to know why?”

“Why?” I muttered.

“Because I refuse to be the type of monster that rounds up strangers and kills them for no reason, laughing the entire time, and I refuse to let you become that type of person, either. You’re my best friend, and I won’t lose you to that kind of darkness. I don’t care if you are a queen, you’re my best friend first, and it’s my job to protect you from that.”

“What are we supposed to do then? Wait for them to invade us? Hope that they decide to stop killing people? That we’ll be safe somehow?”

“No. We can’t be those people, either. We can’t pretend that we don’t see what’s coming. That would be worse because then it would be our people who were murdered in the meantime. We can’t pretend that nothing bad is ever going to happen. We just have to go out and meet it, and when we’re face-to-face with it, we have to be brave enough to be better than they are.”

“You think that’s going to win us a war? Being good? Being merciful toward our enemies?” I sniffled, feeling tears prickling at the back of my eyes.

“Aquella told me today that the Nymphiad can no longer sit back and watch as the world burns. We have to go out and face evil so that we can stop it, but the only way we could do that was if we didn’t become evil ourselves in the process.”

“What did Boreas say?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head silently. “He didn’t say anything at all.”

“So what am I supposed to do then? March the army to the border and then sit there? To lay siege to her border and just wait again?”

“No.” Mercedes lifted her head from the bark and stared, her silver eyes piercing me. “No siege. Take the army to Bavasama. March across the border and take the army directly to the Palace of Night. Tell her we’re not going to put up with her crap anymore, and if she doesn’t knock it off, you’ve got an army to stop her. A big army, full of lots of very angry soldiers.”

“Okay, how’s that different from my plan?”

“Before you give the order to attack the Palace of Night, give her the chance to surrender. No matter how angry she makes you, Allie, give her the chance to surrender to you peacefully. Make her give up her crown, if you want. Put her in her own dungeons. But before you attack, give her a chance to save her soldiers’ lives.”

“She won’t.”

“That doesn’t matter.” Mercedes grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re not giving her the chance because she’ll take it. You’re the queen who holds the Great Relics of Nerissette. You can afford to be merciful. And if that’s not enough, give her the chance because it’s
who you are
.”

“I don’t know who I am anymore.” I leaned my head against her shoulder and tried not to cry. Sure, I was able to destroy the Mirror that gave a direct path into the World That Is, and I used the Dragon’s Tear to trap the Fate Maker in the Bleak—things that couldn’t happen if I weren’t the rightful queen—but that was just a title.

“You’re my best friend, who also happens to be a queen.”

“I’m not a very good queen, though, am I? Ever since I took the throne, all anyone has done is try to overthrow me somehow.”

“So what?” Mercedes bumped her shoulder against mine. “I’m green. Nothing you can come up with will ever top that. According to Dryad legends, I’m part
plant
. So take your whole, ‘poor me, everyone keeps invading my kingdom, and my boyfriend turns into a big, gorgeous dragon to protect me’ and stuff it. I’m a plant woman. You can’t beat me in the freakstakes after that.”

“Well, at least you’re a pretty shade of green,” I said, nudging her shoulder. “Sort of a minty color.”

“Spring leaf,” she corrected. “I am spring-leaf green.”

“Whatever, at least you’re not the color of pond scum.”

“Yeah, thank the trees for small mercies, huh?”

“Yeah.” I leaned our foreheads together.

“Allie?”

“What?”

“I miss home. I miss Mr. Brinnegar and his stupid assignments that have no bearing on the real world, and biology class on dissection days when the cheerleaders would whine about how gross cutting something open was while you tried not to pass out or barf. I even miss gym class.”

“Me, too.” I pulled my best friend closer, staring out into the dark nothingness of the night surrounding us. “I miss it, too. Well, I don’t miss gym class, but the rest of it I miss. No one who ever actually had to play field hockey in gym class could miss that.”

“Are you really going to find some way to get us back home?”

“I’m going to try.” I squeezed her tighter. “Did you really copy all your gym class reports from Wikipedia?”

“Every single one.”

There was a crunch of leaves to our left, and I instinctively reached for the sword I’d gotten used to wearing at my hip after so many months of war. I wrapped my hand around the hilt, and shifted my weight, putting my body between Mercedes and whoever—or whatever—was coming toward us.

“Your Majesty?” Kitsuna called out a moment before the red-haired wryen, the daughter of two different types of dragons, melted out of the shadows. She’d been acting as my fiercest bodyguard this past year, even though she didn’t possess the ability to transform into the dragon inside her.

“Hey, Kit.” I took my hand off the sword and patted the ground beside me. “Come hang out with us.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head. “You’re needed.”

“Why?”

“Your Royal Council of War has arrived. The army is mobilizing, and the Town Watch for Neris has sent all their spare men to help guard the castle.” I watched as she shifted from foot to foot, not meeting my eyes. “You need to come.”

“That’s not all, is it?” I asked, my stomach filling with dread.

“Allie.” Her shoulders slumped.

“It wasn’t just the Forest of Ananth,” Mercedes said, her voice low. It wasn’t a question, and my heart clenched. “Bavasama’s troops, they didn’t just raid the border at the Forest of Ananth. That’s why the members of the War Council all came so quickly to Allie’s summons. Bavasama’s army didn’t just stop with us. They invaded somewhere else…. Didn’t they?”

“You need to come now,” Kitsuna said, her voice hollow.

Chapter Seven

In the ten minutes it took for me to get to the throne room from the back garden, the palace had filled with people. It sounded like a dozen high school pep rallies being blared through fifty-foot speakers at the same time.

“Everyone, please!” Rhys yelled over the screaming and the arguing and the general noise pouring out of the room. “Let’s all just settle down and talk about this!”

“There were ravens over Meridoc. They were carrying fire wizards. Meridoc is burning, and you want us to be calm?” Lady Arianna, steward of the Veldt, snapped, her face red and her normally sleek, blond hair standing up in tufts all over her head.

“The desert near Caradocia has ogres amassed on their borders,” Melchiam, the Rache of the Firas, said, his maroon robes rumpled and his long black hair hanging loose against his shoulders instead of tied back like it normally was. “We’ve had to strike our camps and go in search of water elsewhere. Lands we’ve held since the First Rose are no longer in our control.”

“We can address all of this—” John of Leavenwald began from near the throne.

“Shut up!” I yelled, letting my voice carry across the room as I swept out of the main doorway and through the rapidly parting crowd, trying to project my faux queenly confidence. I made my way to the huge, intricately worked throne. “All of you. That’s an order. I need all of you to just shut up for five minutes.”

“Your Majesty—” one of the men started and tried to reach for my arm. Instead of letting him grab me, I picked up my pace and kept moving.

“No bowing.” I stalked up the three steps to my throne and turned to plop down on it. “You all know how I feel about the bowing that takes place around here. We get nothing done if you spend the next half an hour bowing and
‘if you please, Your Majesty’
-ing me. Now, someone—
someone calm
—tell me what we know. Where have there been attacks?”

Everyone looked at me, and then the room filled with a flood of noise. They’d decided to talk at once, and instead of listening to one another and going from there, they talked over one another.

“Wait.” I held my hands up in front of me. “Stop. Stop all of you. We won’t get anywhere like this. So, first, Rhys, have you heard anything from the troops we have stationed at the White Mountains?”

“There have been attacks all along the border. Our troops fought back where they could, but we only have a small force there, since we’re supposed to be at peace with Bathune now. They could only do so much.”

“Call them back to the palace,” I said. “We need to re-form the entire army. Volunteers and professional soldiers both.”

“I issued orders this afternoon for troops to come to the palace,” Rhys said.

“And how is that going?” I asked.

“Thirty thousand men are on their way to Neris to pledge their swords to the Golden Rose and the Rose Throne of Nerissette. Every noble family has sworn their troops to our use. Between the noble armies and the village militias, almost every able-bodied man in Nerissette will march with us,” he said.

“How long until they arrive?”

“They should all be here within two days. Most of the nobles brought their troops with them, and we’re sending dragons to ferry the volunteers who live farther away. By next week you’ll have the largest fighting force this world has ever seen, my queen.”

“Good.” I turned to stare at my father, trying to keep my voice calm. “John of Leavenwald?”

“The Woodsmen have all received the call, Your Majesty.” He bowed his head to me. “Our men are scouring every forest in Nerissette. If there is food there, it will be found and brought to the army. The first of the supply wagons have already left the Leavenwald and should be here in the morning.”

“Right. Winston, you’re next.”

“The Dragos Council has met. Our warriors will arrive in the morning with recruits from the villages near Dramera. The aerie is prepared for war. We’ve already begun flying patrols.”

“And what have the dragons seen from the sky?” I kept my eyes focused on him.

“The Borderlands is burning,” Winston said softly. “Bavasama has set fire to the White Mountains and any other land that wasn’t inhabited on our side of the border.”

“What about the places where there were people?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer even as I asked the question.

“Six villages and the two largest Firas encampments have been invaded.” Winston turned to stare at Melchiam. “The encampments of the Lumeve and the Candelliere are gone. From what we can see, the people tried to flee from their campgrounds but didn’t have time.”

“Gone?” I asked a second before Melchiam let out a high-pitched wail, sinking to his knees with his head in his hands. Everyone turned silently to watch as the man dropped his head onto the floor and began to scream, long, terrible screams that sounded like a fire engine on a too-cold winter night. It was raw and primal, and it made the little slivers left of my heart feel like they’d been kicked by a bully in steel-toed boots.

“You mean they’re dead?” I asked, my eyes wide as I turned away from the screaming man and back to Winston. “
All
of them?”

“Yes.” He nodded, his eyes not meeting mine. “Everyone. They’re gone. I’m sorry. We were too late to reach them. We were lucky we escaped when we did today, Your Majesty.”

“No.” I shook my head as an all-consuming dread filled my stomach. “No, they didn’t…”

“The village of Sorcastia is gone, too,” Rhys said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Salvachio, the stupid farmer who’d been worried about the field of wheat that Dravak had accidentally burned last year, was dead. He’d been sure that someone would take over the village. He swore that the dragons would try to conquer them. He’d told me once that the dragons wanted to burn the world around them.

Now, it turned out he’d been right. Not about the dragons, of course, the dragons were on our side, but what was coming for our world. Someone was trying to burn it down around us.

“Why is the Empress Bavasama doing this?” Arianna asked. “Why, when we’ve signed a peace treaty, is she attacking us? Is it because you have control of the Relics?”

“No.” I shook my head. “This has nothing to do with the Great Relics. Not directly. This is about the throne. I have it, and she wants it. The Relics go along with that, but I don’t think that’s her primary goal.”

“So what do we do?” another man asked from the back of the throne room. “Your Majesty, what are we going to do? They’ll come here next. They’ll come here, and we’ll have nowhere to run. They’ll burn us out and—”

“Where are they? Bavasama’s troops?” I asked, my voice sharp as I tried to hide my own worry from the nobles staring back at me. “Where are they now?”

“Back over the border,” Rhys said. “They burned everything they could on our side and then retreated over the White Mountains, setting fire to the forests there to prevent us from following.” Rhys kept his eyes on mine, and I could see that his entire face was tense.

“So this was what?” I asked, staring at the sea of scared faces in front of me. “Bavasama’s version of the pregame show? She just wanted to show us that she could do this and we couldn’t stop her?”

“She wanted revenge,” Winston snapped. “This isn’t about magic artifacts or thrones or anything else. You humiliated her, and this is how she got revenge. She attacked our borders to punish you.”

“Yeah,” I said with a snort of derision, “well, I can’t wait to see what she does when I march my army into her country and do the same thing to her that she did to my mother.”

“What?” John asked, his eyes wide. “What do you mean what she did to your mother?”

“Bavasama.” I swallowed. “She took my mother hostage and then disguised herself to look like my mom so she could sit on the Rose Throne. Then, when she thought she might be caught, she used the Great Relics to force my mother through the Mirror so the Fate Maker could rule Nerissette as regent.”

“By the stars.” John’s face paled. “How long? How long did she pretend to be your mother?”

“I don’t know,” I said, then shook my head. “But what I do know is that after these attacks, her days on the throne of Bathune are numbered.”

“Your aunt must have been willing to take the risk,” John said. “She tried this in the hopes that our behavior at the peace treaty signing was all an act, that in reality you were sick of war but just didn’t want to appear weak.”

If that’s what Bavasama thought, then she was right. I
was
sick of war. I was sick of blood and battles and the smell of the dead burning. I was really sick of that stupid, hollow feeling in my chest that came from watching my friends suffer and die. I was sick of feeling weak every time I was forced to make a decision that led to someone else dying.

What I was really sick of most of all, though? I was really,
really
freaking sick of people thinking that we were just going to lie down and die so that life could be more convenient for them.
That
was going to stop today. Right now, in fact. I was sick of being walked on.

“So what do we do?” a white-skinned nymph on the right called out. “What will the allies of the Aurae do to stop these attacks?”

“Aquella?” I searched for her in the crowd, and the blue-skinned naiad stepped forward from the cluster of nymphs near the windows on the left side of the room.

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Can you stop the fires? If we send you out with dragon scouts, can you stop the fire in the White Mountains and make it safe for our army to travel?”

“We can bring storms that will make the Pleiades tremble,” Aquella said, her pale blue eyes fixed on mine. “Darinda and her Order will feel the rains we bring here even inside the Summer Lands.”

The Summer Lands. The nymph version of Heaven. The place where the souls of those we lost were said to wait for us to come and find them again at the end of our own time in this realm.

“How long until it’s safe for the army to move through the forests and into the White Mountains?”

“Give us three days,” Aquella said cautiously. I could see the fear in her eyes at sending her people out to face a fire that had already killed all but one of the dryads.

“When will the army be ready, Rhys? Not just here, but ready to march. How long?” I asked.

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Five days, a week at most. In one week we can make you an army the likes of which this world has never seen, an army that would make our own world tremble.”

“Do you think we can spare a week?” I asked. I could hear everyone in the room draw in a breath, waiting for his answer. Did we have seven more days before war came to Nerissette?

“If we can find a way to stall Bavasama from taking more action, it may give us enough time.” Winston cleared his throat. “Send her a message. Ask for terms. Apologize for how you treated her.”

“No. I’m not apologizing to that woman. She killed Darinda.” I turned and narrowed my eyes at him, gripping the handles of my chair. He had to be insane if he thought I was just going to send someone to her and try to negotiate more peace after what she’d done.

“We lie,” Winston said. “We send a fake ambassador to Bavasama and let her think we’re trying to prevent a war while, in reality, we’re preparing to march an army over her border.”

“If we send an ambassador, there’s a very good chance she would kill said ambassador. In fact, I’d expect her to. I won’t throw away someone’s life that way.”

“I’ll do it,” Gunter of the Veldt said from the back of the hall. Everyone fell silent, turning to look at the next Steward of the Veldt, his blond hair cropped short and the left sleeve of his jacket pinned up where his hand had once been. “I’ll go.”

His mother, Arianna—Stewardess of the Veldt—reached for his arm, tears in her eyes. “You can’t. You’re still wounded. If something—“

He pulled away from her and lifted his chin higher. “I can do this, Your Majesty.”

“No.” I shook my head. He’d already lost enough in battle last time. I couldn’t ask him to risk his life in a fake-out plan.

“Your Majesty.” He came forward, his chin held high, and kept his eyes fixed on me.

“I said, no. She’ll kill you.”

“My life is a worthy sacrifice if it keeps you safe for even a minute longer. I can no longer fight, but I can do this. I can do my part to keep our home safe—to protect my queen, my lands,
my people
.”

“Gunter.” I swallowed.

“Let me act as your messenger, my queen,” he said quietly. “Let me do my part and buy you the time you need to raise an army.”

“Your Majesty—” John started.

“Fine.” I couldn’t meet Gunter’s eyes. “Stall her as much as you can while still staying safe. We’ll bring the army to you.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Gunter said and then stepped back.

“Meanwhile, the rest of you, start preparing your troops. Plus, anyone who needs to evacuate the Borderlands, tell them to go to the keeps of their nearest noble. I’ll expect all of your households to make the refugees welcome.”

“Your Majesty, the cost,” Arianna said, her eyes wide.

“Keep track of it. I’ll deduct it from your taxes. Now, we’re done talking about expenses and negotiations and fake ambassadors. From here on out the only thing I want to hear is how we’re going to go about conquering Bathune. Everything else is on hold until that’s over.”

“Your Majesty,” a high-pitched voice called out, and I watched as an older woman in blue silk hobbled forward. “The army is not the way to solve this. We have angered the Pleiades by rejecting the will of Fate. We must make amends. We must make offerings and beg for their forgiveness.”

“I intend to make amends. I mean to make amends to every person who gave their lives to keep us safe. Everyone who died today.” I narrowed my eyes at her before turning to look at all the other people in the room, my knees knocking together even though I was sitting down. What if they refused to fight? What if they wanted to surrender instead? What if they wanted to go back to letting the wizards run their lives for them?

Stop
, I reminded myself.
You’re the queen of this land. You are the Golden Rose of Nerissette, Queen Alicia, First of Her Name. That makes you responsible for these people—all of them. You’re the royal version of a parent, and like Mom always used to say, “Sometimes as your mom I get to ask what you think, but sometimes I have to tell you what to do, and then it’s just going to have to be my way, whether you like it or not.”