Infinity

I needed to come up with a plan. When the army attacked, I needed a way to get not only myself free but Heidi and Jesse as well. While the army was distracted, we’d need to find a way out, a way past those soldiers in the courtyard.

My shoulders slumped, and I shoved my hands in my pockets, staring at the room around me. If only I had a sword, I thought to myself. Or the Relics. Anything that would help me fight back from inside the palace. Not that the Relics had turned out to be much good so far. The Dragon’s Tear imprisoned my enemy in the in-between, but it was a worthless trick if the dragons that were supposed to be guarding the prisoners were so easily bribed.

I slumped over to the table and sat down on top of it, dropping my head into my hands. Everything I’d done to keep my people safe, all the people I’d let die, and we were worse off now than when we’d started. My people were suffering more now than they ever had under the Fate Maker’s rule.

I should have stayed here, never agreed to take the throne. I should have just given up and let the Fate Maker continue to run things. Forced him to find a way to send me and my friends home again. At least then no one would be dead. Half of Nerissette wouldn’t have been reduced to ashes.

I closed my eyes and thought about the life I should have had, the life I was meant to have before we were sucked into this mess. Swim team. College. Maybe I’d have become a teacher like Gran Mosely had been. I could have been a good teacher. I liked kids after all—even if I wasn’t all that good with them. I could have met a nice boy—or more likely, realized that there was a nice boy right next door and fallen in love with Winston. Except that I would have been a teacher and not a queen, and Winston wouldn’t have been able to turn himself into a big black dragon.

We could have lived a nice, safe, boring life. One where the only princesses we ever saw were in picture books and the knights were always brave and good always triumphed over evil. Instead, I picked up a copy of The Chronicles of Nerissette that day in the library, and we’d all ended up here.

Because of me we’d all ended up in a place where queens were trapped inside mirrors, locked away from the kingdom against their will. Where evil sisters could steal your face and lock you in a tower to rot. A place where brave knights were kidnapped and kept away from their families and even the princesses could start killing people at any moment.

“I wish my mother were here,” I said to myself.

“Why?” a sharp, feline voice snapped out from the fireplace, and I turned to stare as flames burst up where there hadn’t been any before. “What good do you think a woman in a coma is going to be when you’ve got a war to fight?”

“Esmeralda?” I gasped as the cat’s form took shape.

“In the flames.” The cat sat down delicately in the fireplace and flicked the tip of her tail, sparks crackling with the movement. “I’m not really here, of course.”

“And?” I hopped off the table and hurried over to kneel beside her, smiling. “What else is new?”

“The Relics,” she said. “Do you have them?”

“I have the First Leaf,” I said.

“And the others?”

“They’re in my crown box with the Orb of the Dryads, hidden inside one of the supply wagons. John of Leavenwald is guarding them. Not that it matters—the things are absolutely useless.”

“They are not!”

“They are so,” I retorted. “It’s a prison that you can bribe your way out of, a crown to keep me alive when the last thing Bavasama wants to do is kill me, and a portal between worlds that no longer does anything more than show you the place you want to go. They’re worthless.”

“That’s only because you don’t know how to use them,” Esmeralda scolded.

“So how do I use them?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“What? You mean, you don’t know?”

“Of course I know.” Esmeralda sniffed. “I just can’t tell you. All I can say is that if you plan to protect Nerissette, you must be prepared to sacrifice.”

“I’ve already sacrificed.”

“Not like this,” she said quietly and then began to fade away as I knelt there, staring at her.

“What will I have to sacrifice?” I demanded.

“The one thing that you’ve spent all this time trying to protect,” she whispered, nothing but a pair of brilliant emerald eyes now.

Chapter Twenty-one

I didn’t bother to move from my spot on the table. There was no bed in the room—just a fireplace, a chair, and a table. Oh, and a nasty-looking brown blanket in one corner and a bucket in another. Obviously, one was supposed to be my not-really-a-bed-to-sleep-in and the other was Bavasama’s idea of a toilet.

I briefly considered finding some way to prop the bucket on top of my door so that it tipped over on the next person who came in, but I couldn’t be sure it was going to be Bavasama or the Fate Maker so it didn’t really seem worth it. I mean, after all, dumping a bucket full of crap on one of the maids would just be mean. They hadn’t been the ones to take me hostage.

“Open,” I heard someone command on the other side of the door. I looked up from contemplating the bucket and heard the bolt slide back. The door creaked once, loudly, before opening.

I looked up and found myself staring at Rannock, my aunt’s Grand Vizier. My uncle? I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to call the guy who was helping my aunt depose me so that she could take my throne.

“Your aunt requests your presence for dinner,” he said.

“Tell her I’m not hungry,” I retorted.

He smiled bitterly at me. “I thought you might say that,” he said quietly. “But the thing is I wasn’t asking.” He stepped aside and then motioned out into the hallway. My doorway filled with large men dressed in rough tunics, all of them wearing the broken crown of Bathune on their chests. “Take her.”

I pushed myself up and started to back away as the three men came into the room, the one at the front rubbing his palms together like hurting me was something he was looking forward to.

“I’m not leaving this room without a fight,” I said.

“That’s what we were hoping for,” one of the men in the back said as they maneuvered so I was pressed into the corner.

The first man stepped toward me, and darted his hand out to grab me. I tried to duck under his arm. The one on the left was quicker than me, though, and snatched me by the back of my collar, lifting me into the air. I swung at him, but he held me far enough away from his body that my fist only grazed his nose. He drew me forward and then slammed his head into mine, his forehead bashing against my nose. I saw stars as blood began to pour down my face.

He let go of me, and I crashed to the floor, my knees giving out as I cradled my face in my hands, trying to stop the bleeding.

“Get up.” The first man clamped his hand down on my wrist. He jerked me to my feet again. “You’re not going to keep Her Majesty the Empress waiting.”

The guards dragged me from the room, one holding on to each arm as the other prodded me from behind. I stumbled down the stairs, the three of them pushing hard enough to make me stumble. Once we reached the main floor, they dragged me across a large stone anteroom before they stopped in front of a set of black double doors with pictures painted on them in gold. The guards pushed me forward, and I saw that the images showed people being tortured in various ways. Near the handle was a man being burned alive and even higher was a scene where a man was being eaten by a large dragon, his mouth hanging open as his body dangled from the creature’s jaws.

“The Golden Rose of Nerissette,” the man who had head butted me said to a small green goblin in red livery who was posted next to the door.