“Mer…” I swallowed and kept my face forward, not looking at her.
“No.” I could hear her sniffle behind me, and I reached back with one hand to wrap my arm around her waist, despite the awkward angle, trying to find a way to comfort her. She buried her head in my shoulder and started to sob. “No, no, no, no, no.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears begin leaking out the sides of my eyes. “If I’d known Bavasama was going to send troops out, I’d have never sent your sisterhood to Sorcastia. I wouldn’t have let you get so close to the border. I’d have kept you inside the palace. It’s—”
“You didn’t know.” Mercedes’s voice sounded hollow, and she sniffled again. “You signed a peace treaty. You couldn’t have known she was going to start another war with you the minute she was back over the border.”
“I should have known.” I felt my stomach starting to knot with anger and guilt. “I should have known that she would try this instead.”
I knew that my aunt had something up her sleeve—she’d made that clear before her departure. She hadn’t meant a single one of the promises that she’d agreed to in our treaty. I just didn’t know what she was going to do about it—and I definitely didn’t think she’d act so soon. She wanted to become Golden Rose, be queen of the world we lived in and everything that it encompassed, empress of the lands of both light and dark.
I swallowed my rage as I thought about how easily she must have believed we’d be destroyed. How she thought she could just take my kingdom like it was nothing. That we’d be so unprepared that she could just send an army in and take us over less than a week after our truce.
Winston swooped low as he let himself glide across the back garden, narrowly avoiding the goblin workers who were relandscaping parts of my back garden before he reached the flat, green clearing near the aerie that the dragons used as their own sort of landing strip. Some of the other dragons raced toward us in their human forms.
“Come on.” I swung my leg over Win’s shoulders and grabbed hold of Mercedes’s hand, hoping to get her head off my shoulder long enough for us to get down. Instead of responding verbally, she let go of me and brought her legs together next to mine. She slid down Winston’s flank and into the waiting arms of Dravak, the youngest of the trainee dragon warriors that made their home at the aerie. Once she was on the ground and had moved out of the way so I could get down, I pressed myself close to Winston’s side before slipping down to join her.
Small, tentative hands grabbed my waist as Dravak moved to help me, and my feet hit the ground harder than they would have normally. Not bad enough to hurt but enough to know that the young dragon still wasn’t strong enough to handle even my weight.
Once I was free, Winston lumbered off to find somewhere more private to shift from his dragon to his human form. If it had just been him and his clanmates around, he’d have shifted where he stood, but he, and the rest of the dragons, was much more modest when non-dragons were nearby.
“Your Majesty?” Dravak asked. “What happened? We saw smoke in the far forest, and then one of the dragons flying patrol brought a message that the Forest of Ananth was burning.”
“Summon the elders for me,” I said quickly. “Tell them to send a messenger to Dramera. We need the entire Dragos War Council here as soon as possible.”
“Your Majesty?” Tietsien, a gold-and-red dragon hybrid whose hair—and scales—changed color in the sun, ran out of the aerie toward us. “What’s happening? The messenger—”
“Bavasama’s army attacked the dryads in the Forest of Ananth,” I said. “Everything between Lake Wevlyn and the White Mountains is burning.”
“By the stars.” He brought his hand to his mouth, his eyes wide with horror.
“Send someone to get the Dragos War Council,” I said. “I need them. Now. We’re mobilizing for war.”
“I’ll go myself. Dravak and I will both go. We can say that we heard the summons directly from the mouth of the Rose and that they should come to you immediately. The minute the Prince Consort has returned, we’ll leave.”
“We’re fine.” I said. “Go now.”
Tietsien raised an eyebrow at me. “But—”
“Mercedes and I can take care of ourselves. What we can’t do is summon the Council. Now, go.”
“Allie?” John of Leavenwald’s scream hit my ears, and I turned away from Tietsien to see my father racing across the backyard, Rhys hot on his heels. Boreas and Aquella—the heads of the Aurae, the wind nymphs, and the Naiads, the water nymphs—were following closely.
“We’re okay!” I held my hands up to show him, and Mercedes did the same. “We’re both okay.”
“Oh, thank the stars,” John said as he slid to a stop in front of me and pulled me into his arms, crushing my body against his chest and lifting me up so that he could bury his head in my hair. “We’d had a messenger about the fire, and—”
“We’re okay,” I repeated as he kissed both of my cheeks and pulled me close again. He let go of me with one arm and immediately grabbed Mercedes, pulling her into a three-sided hug with us. I looked up and saw that Rhys was crowded close to Mercedes’s back, his nose burrowed into her hair.
“I was so worried about both of you girls,” John whispered, dropping his forehead down to meet mine. “I knew the dryad’s were in the forest and that you wouldn’t leave without her. I thought we’d lose you both—and the dragon.”
I reached around to pat his back as he just squeezed us tighter. “We’re both okay. Winston’s fine, too. We’re all back safe.”
“Thank the Pleiades,” he murmured into my hair.
“John?” Rhys asked. When I looked over, I could see that he’d melded himself against Mercedes’s back now, his arms tight around her waist as if to assure himself that she was still there—and alive—in front of him. Rhys tilted his head toward Boreas.
“While I agree with your gratitude, Leader of the Woodsmen”—the man cleared his throat—“there are other things we must be concerned about now. The first being the remaining dryads.”
I looked over at the silver-skinned man and swallowed. “Boreas, in the fire…”
“Yes?”
“Darinda didn’t make it out. None of them made it out. Mercedes is the only one left.”
His pale face turned almost translucent, the edges of it green as his eyes widened. “All…?”
“That can’t be,” Aquella said, her own sea-colored skin paling as well. “You can’t mean that they’re all…
“How?” Boreas asked, his shoulders hunched and his hands pressed to his stomach like I’d punched him. “How could the leader of the Dryad Order—”
“Bavasama’s army was waiting for us in the forests,” Mercedes said in a quiet interruption, her voice trembling. “We’d left Sorcastia an hour before, and we were hiking toward the resting grounds inside the Forest of Ananth. We’d spent the day coaxing life into one of the fields near Lake Wevlyn, and we were tired, so we decided to stop and camp for the night.”
“Mer—” I grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly.
“We weren’t going far from the road, just to a place we could rest with our trees and be protected.”
“You don’t have to…” Rhys lowered his face down to the top of her head as John wrapped his arms tighter around me.
“They came out of nowhere,” she said, her voice cracking. “We didn’t know what happened. One minute we were walking and the next they were there. And they brought iron. Swords and spears. They brought iron into the forest, and they surrounded us.”
Rhys let out a choked noise, and I knew the lord general of my army was sickened at the idea that anyone had brought exposed weapons into the forest. Even though he was always armed, when he was near the dryads, he took extra precautions to keep the iron parts covered so no one would accidentally be harmed if he brushed against them.
Aquella gasped, and both she and Boreas looked ill.
“They drove us into a circle, poking at us with the weapons. They forced us back-to-back and then…” Mercedes shuddered.
“Mercedes, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” I whispered.
“They brought out torches,” she continued like I hadn’t said anything, like none of us were even there.
“They had torches and iron, and they set fire to the trees around us. They stood there and set fire to our
