murderer.”
“No.” He put a hand on each side of my face and brushed his lips against mine. “It showed you Talia. It showed you the woman, the queen, you respect most trying to stop you.”
“But—”
“I don’t know a lot about magic”—Winston kissed me again—“but even I know it’s never straightforward, especially the stuff Esmeralda comes up with. What her spell showed you is what you want, but it may not be in the way you wanted to see it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“All you’ve got to understand is that when this is all over, no matter what happens, I promise that I’ll pull you back from that edge,” Winston said.
“Win, it’s not—”
“I promise you that when the time comes, I’ll be there.” He tightened his grip on my waist and pulled me close enough that his lips were against my ear. “I won’t let you become that person.”
“Thank you,” I said softly into his hair.
There was the rough cough of a man clearing his throat, and I pulled away from Winston and looked at my father standing in the door to the tower.
“Dreary place to sneak away to, isn’t it?” He kept his voice light. “Or did you think I wouldn’t come up here and catch you kissing?”
“I was just…”
“This is where we came through the book,” Winston said. “When we came to Nerissette, this is where the Fate Maker brought us.”
John nodded. “This is where he used to bring me to watch you and your mother going about your lives.”
“He did?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“Oh, yes.” My father shifted from one foot to another. “Used to let me watch you to my heart’s content as long as I didn’t oppose him in the Council of Nobles. If I protested one of his edicts, then he kept me away. He used to have this glass ball, the Orb of Fate—he’d never let me near it, though.”
“Why? I thought everyone was supposed to touch the Orb of Fate. That’s how he could see what you were supposed to be.”
“People are only meant to touch the Orb once,” he said. “One touch to see your fate and then never again.”
“What did you see?” Winston asked.
John kept his eyes on me. “Kissing your mother.”
“What did the Fate Maker do then? I mean, when he saw you kissing the woman he’d claimed Fate had meant for him?”
“He banished me to the farthest reaches of the Leavenwald.” John smirked. “I didn’t go, though. The Orb had declared that Fate wanted me to kiss your mother, and so that’s what I did. I snuck back to the palace and climbed in her window. I kissed her just like the orb had shown, and that was that. Fate sealed.”
“The Orb doesn’t actually—” I started.
“Do you want to touch it again?” Winston interrupted.
“What?” John and I asked at the same time.
“Here.” Winston pulled away from me and reached for the Orb. He snagged it in one hand and stood up before handing it to my father. “Look into it, and tell me what you see.”
“Show me the will of the Pleiades,” John said, his eyes fixed on the blue smoke filling the ball. “Show me the will of Fate.”
“What do you see?” Winston asked.
“Allie.” John smiled then and looked up at me. “Very, very old and still sitting on the Rose Throne, the most beloved and celebrated Golden Rose that Nerissette has ever seen. The people in the throne room are celebrating because she’s brought our country a hundred years of peace. I see you very old and very happy, and it’s the most beautiful thing.”
“I-I-I…” I stammered as Winston reached over to grab my hand, lacing our fingers together. I had seen myself as a monster, and my father had seen me as a savior. Whose version of queen would I end up being? I hoped that somehow my father’s vision was right and mine was wrong, that I would be the queen my people deserved.
“That sounds like a fate worth fighting for,” Winston said as John pulled his gaze away from the ball and handed it back to Winston.
“It does.” I squeezed Winston’s fingers. “As long as we’re doing it together.”
“Always,” he mouthed.
I looked over to see my father staring at us, his lips quirked up in a smile. “I did not see you in my vision.” John waved a finger at Winston’s nose. “It may be because I killed you, but I’m not sure yet.”
“Nah.” Winston smiled. “I was probably just going for punch or something. No worries.”
“I’d worry less if I’d shot you the first time I saw you,” John muttered.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Be nice.”
“I am nice.” My father held his hands out to his sides. “I didn’t even bring a bow with me. I left it with the horses instead.”
“The horses?” I asked, my stomach clenching.
“Yes.” He nodded slowly. “The men and the beasts are ready, Allie. It’s time.”
“Well, then.” I swallowed. “After you, I guess.”
Chapter Fourteen
I followed my father and Winston down the stairs from the West Tower, bypassing the portal stones that would take me directly outside so that I could stall for time and get my head together. We reached the main hallway, and Winston glanced back and offered me his hand.
“Are you ready?”
“No.” I took his hand in mine and squeezed it. “But we have to go anyway. Don’t we?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, and then we started down one of the halls. I remembered my first time there, hopelessly lost and trying to figure out how to get around. Everything had looked the same then. The same walls, the same carpets, but now, knowing the palace like I did, I knew it wasn’t the same anymore.
The hallway beneath the West Tower was filled with portraits of mythological creatures, and the corridor closest to the main entry hall full of family portraits of various Golden Roses and their successors. My favorite was one that showed the grandmother I’d never met fitting a tiara on my mother’s head as they both stared in the mirror that had once been in my tower.
My mother had looked so indescribably lovely that every time I saw it I wanted to cry. I couldn’t meet her eyes in the portrait because all I could think was that she looked so young and alive that it hurt to know how it would all end.
This palace should have been my home from the start. It
I trailed my fingers along the banister of the grand staircase and thought about the night of my first ball. I had been dressed in a formal gown, nervous that I was going to fall down the stairs and make a fool of myself. I’d been gripping the banister so tightly that the raised part of the wood had made an impression in my hand. At the bottom of the stairs had been a different boy than the one walking in front of me.
