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.”
Chapter Twenty-four
The light outside faded; soon it was pitch black. I heard men in the darkness and saw the brief flare of torches being lit along the outer walls, the shadows of the crackling flames writing on the far side.
There was a dull
I heard a long, low howl and then a distant shriek of dragons roaring to one another.
“What is that?” Jesse asked, standing up and hurrying over to the window.
“The dragon warriors,” I said, my head bowed. I didn’t even bother to lift my eyes. “They sound scary, and they look really scary, and well, long story short they’re pretty scary all the way around unless they like you.”
“And they like you?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I hope they like me…. They fight for me, at least. But because of me, their entire town was destroyed, not once but twice. The first time we only burned down a part of the town, but the second time—the second time it was entirely destroyed.”
“What?” Jesse asked.
“It’s a long, not very nice story,” I said. “Let’s just go with it’s been a very long year and leave it at that.”
“It’s going to be okay, Allie,” he said. “It will. I promise.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Maybe not,” he said, his voice soft. “But what I do know is that none of us is going to quit fighting until this world is safe again.”
The door creaked, and Jesse grabbed my hand, linking us together to face whatever was about to come. The door slowly opened, and I watched as Bavasama stepped into the room, two of her henchmen behind her.
“Hello, darling. Time to go meet your army and arrange their surrender.”
“I don’t care what you do.” I stood up and glared at her. “We’re not surrendering.”
“We’ll see about that.” My aunt smiled cruelly at me and then turned to her men.
“Seize her,” Bavasama said. They stepped forward, not giving me the chance to run before one of them grabbed me and the other went for Jesse.
“I’m coming.” The guy who used to be the most popular boy at Bethel Park High School held his hands up in front of him. “You don’t have to go grabbing me and crap. I’ll go along with you—just don’t make me smell your pits again.”
“Whatever.” Bavasama sniffed, and instead of pulling Jesse into a chokehold, the guard just clamped down on his arm and dragged him along behind us.
“Where are we going?” I asked, spitting the words out through clenched teeth.
“The place with the best view, of course,” Bavasama said, her voice high and cackling. “I thought you would want to make sure you could see everything.”
She glided up the stairs, and when we reached the top, I saw Rannock and the Fate Maker standing there waiting for us.
“Ah, Piotr.” She reached up to pat the Fate Maker on the cheek. “Are you excited to watch your little country fall? I’m sure you’re ready to return to ruling it. Aren’t you?”
He bowed his head before her. “Nothing would please me more.”
