“It will all be fine,” Talia said as she patted my head again. “Your army will come and save us, and we’ll all be home before you know it.”
“No, we won’t,” I said. “My aunt is going to kill me. She said that she’s going to use me as a bargaining chip to keep her throne, but I’m not stupid. She can’t risk me raising another army against her. She’ll kill me to keep from losing the throne. Just like she should have done with my mother.”
“She tried,” Talia said. “To kill your mother… But it didn’t work. Just like it won’t work if she tries to kill you.”
I looked at her, wide-eyed. “What?”
“You are the Golden Rose of Nerissette. You wear the crown. Life flows through you. From you. You are the reason this world blooms again, and the magic of this world won’t let her kill you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, stunned.
“Haven’t you ever been curious?” she asked. “Fallen off the back of a dragon, faced the Fate Maker, and yet you’ve managed to survive with little more than a scratch. Don’t you wonder how you keep surviving things that would kill other people?”
“I…” I swallowed as I stared at her.
“You are the guardian of the First Leaf,” Talia explained.
“What?” I gaped at her. “But that’s the missing Relic…”
“Yes. The First Leaf, the key to perpetual life. You are its guardian.”
“No, I’m not. I mean, I have the leafy orb thingy…or I did. Bavasama gave it to me, and I gave it to Mercedes and she brought it with us, along with the rest of the relics, but there’s no magic in it. I mean”—I swallowed—“there’s obviously magic in it, but it’s like the Orb of Fate. It’s an illusion. It’s not like the Dragon’s Tear or the Mirror of Nerissette. There’s no magic there that I can touch, or use.”
“That’s because the First Leaf isn’t inside the Orb of the Dryads,” Talia said softly.
“What?” I asked. “But if the Orb of the Dryads—”
“Your crown,” Talia whispered, brushing her fingers over my forehead, just underneath the silver leaf at its center. “The Pleiades hid the First Leaf inside your crown.”
“My—”
“Then they locked that crown in a box that could only be opened in your presence. A Relic that only the rightful Golden Rose could touch.”
I stared at her. “You’re saying that my crown holds the Key to Eternal Life?”
“Yes,” she said. “When you wear your crown, the power of life itself flows through you, protecting you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “But other Roses have died. My grandmother, for one. We don’t have a room full of former queens hidden away inside the Palace. If the crown actually kept us from dying then—”
“The Rose Crown is given to the heir to the throne on her Five Thousandth day. The day you were brought to Nerissette from your world was yours. The crown is passed from the previous Rose to the new one to show her right to rule,” Talia said.
“So what? The previous queen just gives up the job and what? Goes and dies?”
“No.” She smiled at me. “The queen continues to rule until she’s no longer able, teaching the heir how to be a just and kind ruler. Then when her mortal life is at an end, she goes the way of all people of Nerissette and takes her place among the light of the Pleiades.”
“But my mother isn’t—”
“Your mother,” Talia said softly, “is a special case. Trapped in the World That Is, locked in an eternal sleep, she’s not able to rule, and so the throne passes to you even though she still lives.”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said quietly. “All I’ve done is thrown my people into war after war. First with the Fate Maker for my throne and then again for the Tear. When I trapped him in the Bleak, I thought that would end it. I had the Mirror of Nerissette destroyed, and I wear the Dragon’s Tear all the time, hidden under my shirt, just to make sure no one else can find a way to get to it. I thought that would end it, but it hasn’t. The fighting, the killing, it just won’t end.”
“The Mirror was destroyed?” Talia asked. “All of it? Every single piece was ground to dust?”
I swallowed. Should I lie to her? Only a few people knew that I’d kept a shard of the Mirror, that it still existed, hidden in my trouser pocket. A window between this world and The World That Is hidden with the key to this world’s greatest prison.
“Allie?” Talia stared at me, waiting for my answer.
“No.” I shook my head. “I kept a small piece of it. I let them grind the rest to dust, but I kept one small shard.”
“Oh, Allie.” She sighed.
“I had to,” I protested. “I couldn’t just leave her alone in The World That Is and not check on her. If it were your mother and you could see her again—even if you couldn’t save her—”
“I would have done the same thing,” she said quietly. “For even one more day with my mother, one more moment before she met her end, I would have given up the world. My throne. My people. All of it.”
“So what should I do?” I asked.
“When the time comes,” Talia whispered as she brought her hands up to cradle my cheeks. “When your army has marched into Bathune and taken the Palace of Night and you have your aunt kneeling at your feet, you’ll need the relics. All of them.”
“Why?”
“To end the fighting. To heal this world. To make the World of Dreams whole again,” she said.
“And how do I do that?” I asked.
“When the time comes,” Talia said, “you’ll know.”
“But I don’t know,” I said. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“You will,” she said. “You will know. But for right now you have to keep safe. Stay quiet and wait for your army to come so that we can end this once and for all.”
“I will.” I nodded as I pushed myself out of their tiny pool and onto the bank beside it. “You stay safe, too, okay?”
“We will,” she agreed.
I skirted away from the mermaids’ pool and tried to stay close to the high, black stone wall that surrounded the Palace of Night. Guards were posted every few feet on top of it—all of them armed, swords in hand as they watched me making my way through the small courtyard surrounding the mermaid’s prison. I was surprised they were letting me walk around alone like this.
Glancing up at the dark, imposing castle on my other side, I swallowed. If anyone ever needed an explanation of the differences between Nerissette and Bathune, all I’d have to do is show them this place.
The Crystal Palace of Nerissette was nothing more than a very big house with lots of rooms and a glass dome at the top. Before the Fate Maker’s first attack, the architect hadn’t even bothered building walls. The Crystal Palace, the Palace of Light, of Day, had been open to all, shining on the top of a hill.
Meanwhile, the Palace of Night looked like the evil queen’s castle out of a cartoon, with its high walls and twisting towers piercing the sky. All the place needed was a couple of buzzards and some bats flying around and it would have been every villain’s fantasy lair.
I reached a small gate and pushed it open, listening as it creaked and then gave way. It hadn’t even been locked. Obviously, they weren’t concerned about the mermaids getting up and walking away from their pools. Maybe, if I got lucky, we’d be able to use my aunt’s—and her army’s—laziness to our advantage when the time came.
I stepped into the larger, main courtyard at the front of the palace and looked around. Soldiers were wandering about, swords on their hips, and when I glanced up, even more guards were on the walls. But none of them were paying attention to me. They thought I’d been caught, trapped, unable to escape and too broken to even try. Which showed how stupid and arrogant my aunt and her army really were. One of her henchman dropped me out that window, yet he hadn’t even told anyone to keep watch over me?
I glanced around, looking for some sort of weakness—a door, a gate, even a place to hide and wait for someone else to come in so that I could make my escape out. I spotted a break in the stone and hurried toward it. If I could get the gate open and slip out without being noticed, I could get out of here. I knew Winston and Rhys
