Infinity

“Would have what? Left the woods and found a way to save us? That’s great. Really. But the thing is, you left us alone, and when the Fate Maker tried to murder Mom, she was alone. All alone.”

“Sweetheart,” John started.

“No. She was alone. I wasn’t even there with her—I was at swim practice, and right now she’s still alone. If we die—if I die—then she’ll be trapped in that hospital, in a coma, all alone. No one will be there to take care of her.”

“You’re not going to die. I won’t allow it.”

“Why should I believe you? You left me alone. All on my own, Dad.” I spat the last word out hatefully. “Do you get that? I had no one but some stranger who agreed to take me in off the street. Where were you then? Where were you when I had nowhere else to go?”

“I thought your mother had left to protect you. To keep you safe. I didn’t know she’d been forced through the Mirror of Nerissette.” His shoulders slumped.

“Then you should have fought to make this world safe so that she could come back. So that I could come back instead of being trapped in the World That Is.”

“I never thought you would lose her over there, that you would end up alone. I never wanted to let you go, but I wanted you to be safe more. I know that I’ll never make up for all those years I missed but—”

“Don’t. Don’t tell me you want to make this right. If you wanted to make it right, you wouldn’t have taken off on me for the past ten months. You’d have been here, trying to be my dad instead of hiding in the Borderlands.”

“Allie—”

“You couldn’t leave the sieges and the peace negotiations to someone else?” I asked. “You didn’t think that I would need you? That I would need my father while I was trapped in the middle of a war in a world that isn’t even supposed to exist?”

“I was trying to secure you a kingdom,” he protested.

“Yeah? Well, great job with that. Turns out you suck just as much at negotiating a peace treaty as you do with getting to know your only daughter.”

I saw the latch on the painting he’d been talking about before and pressed it, watching as it swung open. Instead of waiting for him to say anything else, I slipped out of the library and closed the hidden door behind me.

I spotted the rune carved into the brick at the end of the hall and stomped toward it, my shoulders tense. All I wanted to do was use it to transport back to my room, so I could sleep and try to forget about the fact that this wasn’t a really bad dream.

I knelt down and brushed my finger over the portal key. “All I want is my bed,” I said. A curl of smoke enveloped me, and I felt myself being taken apart.

The world reassembled itself just outside my only half-finished tower, and I took a deep breath in, trying to shake off the sloshiness that came from being ripped apart at a cellular level and then being put back together somewhere else a split second later. Right. Time to find my pallet and try to pretend that this day hadn’t happened.

I made my way into the bedroom and wound through the various clusters of stuff that had been stored there during the renovations as I made my way to the small area in the back that we’d sectioned off. I needed some privacy while the goblins were still rebuilding the rest of the tower. I pushed the curtain back and stepped into the tiny cubby, my eyes focusing on the low fire in the fireplace and my two best girlfriends curled up in front of it, Kitsuna’s arms wrapped around Mercedes’s shoulders.

“I think she may finally be sleeping. She didn’t think she would, but she was so exhausted she couldn’t keep her eyes open,” Kitsuna said as she sat up and untangled herself from the dryad next to her. “Then again, the sleeping powder I gave her may have helped a bit.”

“You drugged her?”

“She needs to sleep.” Kitsuna stood and brushed her hands against the legs of her pants as I moved to the window, staring out at the back garden and the aerie beyond.

“Do you think she’ll ever be able to do it on her own? Sleep, I mean? Sleep and not remember?”

“No, she’ll always remember what happened this morning. Every day she’ll feel the loss of her sisters, but every day it will get easier for her to cope.”

“You think so?” I swallowed and then turned to look at Mercedes sleeping on a tattered blue cushion next to the fire. “That it will get better eventually?”

“We’ll win this war.” Kitsuna came over and grabbed my hand, squeezing it tight. “Then the fighting will stop. You’ll rule everything that both day and night touches, and we’ll have peace. Once that happens, she’ll cry and she’ll feel alone, but she’ll go on. And then one day it won’t be so bad and every day after that will get better.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s the way it has to be. None of us could keep fighting if we didn’t believe that somehow, one day, it’s going to start getting better. That’s what the dragons believe the Pleiades are for, to remind us that things get better. That Fate doesn’t control our destinies.”

“The dragons don’t believe in Fate?”

“No, we believe in Fate, but we don’t give her as much power as the others do.”

“Why?”

“Because the Pleiades don’t always shine constantly. They move and they shift, and sometimes they change. Stars are born, and then they die. And sometimes, if you’re very lucky, your stars will change.”

I turned to look back out the window at the very stars she was telling me about. The place where the people of Nerissette—my people—believed paradise resided. The stars were supposed to be the home of godlike watchers who would come to keep us safe. Not that any of them had ever bothered with that, except for Esmeralda. Then again, who knows what a sorceress turned into a cat was good for except catching mice and trapping us here in this alternate universe with no idea what we were supposed to do.

“Dragons believe that the stars aren’t meant to show us that our fates can’t be changed. Stars are meant to show you that they can. In dragon stories, it’s not Fate that you root for—you root for the guy trying to beat her.”

“I think I might like dragon stories,” I said.

“You will be the grandest of them all. One of these days, centuries from now, children will pretend to be us, and they’ll fight for who get to play you.”

“Nah, they’ll all want to be the brave wryen who took down a wizard all on her own and set fire to her own house to keep a queen safe. If this were make-believe, I’d want to be that girl—the most fearsome dragon warrior our world has ever seen.”

“I want to be that girl, too,” Kitsuna said. “The one who fought with honor beside the queen she was lucky enough to call a friend.”

“What if something happens and you get hurt? Taken prisoner? Bavasama knows how close we are. She’ll hurt you just to prove to me that she can.”

“If your aunt captures me, then I’ll fight my way free and have adventures all the way back here to Nerissette,” Kitsuna said, her voice quiet. “They’ll tell stories about my adventures for centuries. Besides, every hero has to have a black moment.”

“I’d rather let someone else have those sorts of black moments,” I said. “I’ll find you a nice, fluffy kitten to fight instead.”

“That wouldn’t make for a very exciting saga,” Mercedes cut in from behind us. We both turned to look at her, sitting in front of the fire, staring at us.

“You’re supposed to be asleep.” I glanced over at Kitsuna. “I thought you said you gave her something to make her sleep.”

“I did.” Kitsuna looked over at our friend, wide-eyed. “I gave her the strongest sleeping draught I could find.”

“A powdered infusion of griffin’s breath plant mixed with daffodil root?” Mercedes snorted. “Please, I’m a dryad. Plant-based potions don’t work on us. You’d have been better off trying some of the powdered emery fish