Infinity (10 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Early the next morning, I opened the door to the remains of the West Tower—the only one of the four towers on my palace that had managed to survive the earlier battles unscathed—and stared at the dusty room where I’d first entered Nerissette. I bit my lip as I stared at the black, withered vines that surrounded the wooden rafters above my head. They had been Mercedes’s first attempt at wielding her powers, and she’d overdone it a bit that day. She’d turned the Fate Maker’s tower into a garden with just a single touch. It had been amazing.

I stepped into the room and ran my hand over the mantelpiece, letting my fingers trail through the dust until they reached the spot where a skull sat. I picked the bones up and turned them over in my hands. “Who were you?”

Of course, it wasn’t going to answer. Even in Nerissette death was permanent. I set the skull back in its resting place and walked deeper into the room. In the corner was the table our classmates Heidi and Jesse had hid behind the first time Winston shifted into his dragon form. I ran my hand over it and sighed as I thought about the first two people I’d lost. I should have sent them back that very first day. I should have forced the Fate Maker to send them back home no matter what the cost had been. There hadn’t been a place for them here in Nerissette, and I should have made sure they got home safely.

I took a step forward and accidentally kicked something. I looked down and saw the Orb of Fate, still caked with dried blood from my first battle with the Fate Maker a year ago. I knelt down and picked it up, testing the weight in my hands.

The first time the Fate Maker had attacked me, I’d tried to use the Orb as a weapon. I’d smashed it against the wizard’s head and tried to escape. It hadn’t worked, and the glass ball had rolled under the table and been forgotten in the aftermath.

I wiped the sleeve of my shirt over the Orb and peered into it. “Show me what I desire most in the world,” I whispered. The glass ball began to hum.

The sphere was supposed to show people their fate, but Esmeralda had once told me it was all a trick. The sphere didn’t show you fate because fate was something you had to decide for yourself. What the ball showed you was the fate that you
wanted
so that you could act on it.

The ball clouded with blue smoke and then cleared. Inside of it pictures flickered, twisting around one another, and I moved my face closer to it, trying to see what it was that I wanted most in the world.

The first picture showed my mother, sitting on the Rose Throne with John of Leavenwald sitting beside her, crowns on both their heads. Right, Mom and John getting their happily ever after, that was a pretty obvious thing to want. The picture faded out and another took its place. This time I watched as Winston and I wandered through a grassy fields, our fingers linked together, and he leaned down to kiss me.

“I love you,” the Winston in the Orb whispered.

Okay, so happy family and a loving boyfriend—those were all no-brainers.

The picture flickered again, and Winston and I were joined by Mercedes, Rhys, and Kitsuna, all of us wandering through a field. Not holding hands, because that would have been a bit too creepy even for a vision, but looking blissful.

“It’s time,” the Kitsuna in the Orb announced.

I watched as the picture shifted again, and now the five of us were standing in the clearing that had been the labyrinth, the mermaid’s pool once again filled with water and swimming mermaids. I saw Talia sitting on her throne, her pink tail flicking back and forth as she stared at my image in the Orb.

“This changes nothing,” she said. “The Pleiades can’t trade evil for good.”

“The roses won’t grow without sacrifice.” Mercedes’s voice was stern. “If you want to make the roses grow, you must give them what they crave.”

The vision me stepped forward and bowed to her parents, now standing together in the clearing with their arms wrapped around each other, and I watched as the picture tilted oddly. Eamon stepped into the frame and handed my form a sword, bowing his head low as he backed away. Vision me turned, and I watched as she stepped toward two people who were kneeling, their arms bound behind their backs and their heads resting on wooden boxes.

“Please.” Bavasama lifted her head from one of the boxes and looked up at vision me, tears running down her face. “I’ll never do it again. Please. I’m begging you. Please show me mercy.”

“What about you?” Vision me lifted the sword to jab it into the other person’s shoulders. “Are you going to plead for mercy as well?”

“Why would I?” The Fate Maker’s voice was almost deafening as it poured from the Orb of Fate. “After all, I knew your fate before you did. I chose you for a reason, didn’t I?”

Instead of answering, vision me lifted her sword, and I grimaced as it arced through the air, the wind seeming to whistle in my ears as it came down hard against the back of Bavasama’s neck.

The Orb filled with red smoke, and I felt my stomach lurch. According to the Orb, the one thing I wanted the most was to be a murderer. Not a warrior. A killer. An executioner.

“There now,” the Fate Maker crooned from inside the Orb as the smoke cleared. “I knew one of these days you’d become a queen who was worthy of my respect.”

“I don’t need your respect,” vision me answered coldly as she lifted the sword again. I flinched as she started to bring it down and then closed my eyes, unable to watch her kill another person.

“Just your power,” the voice of vision me was sharp, remorseless.

I opened my eyes and stared at the Orb again, watching as the picture shifted. I stared into it at a crowd of people, all of them watching vision me, all of them kneeling, bent so their heads rested in the dirt. Vision me tossed her sword to the ground and walked away, not bothering to acknowledge any of them as they trembled in fear in front of her.

I dropped the Orb and scooted away from it, my hands in front of my mouth as I tried to breathe. That couldn’t be right. I mean I knew it wasn’t my fate or anything, but I couldn’t
want
that. I couldn’t want to hurt anyone that way. I wasn’t that person. I wasn’t…

“Allie?” I turned to look at Winston as he stood in the doorway, staring at me with a concerned expression. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I nodded quickly, trying to compose myself. The Orb was wrong. I didn’t want to kill anyone. I didn’t want to be a cruel queen. “I’m glad you’re back. I was worried about you. What happened in Dramera?” I kept asking questions, hoping that I could distract him.

“Your aunt’s army burned it.” He didn’t meet my eyes.

“What?” I turned to him, forgetting the Orb as I saw the pain in his eyes.

“By the time I got there.” His jaw tightened.

“Win?” I stepped closer and reached for him.

“There was nothing there. Just smoking rubble. They burned everything.” He turned his head so that he wasn’t looking at me and stepped back, wrapping his hands around his own waist, holding himself up.

Oh crap. I swallowed. They’d destroyed the capital city of the dragons? “What about the dragons who were in Dramera?” I felt my heart sinking into my toes. Had it been like Sorcastia and everywhere else? Had my aunt’s troops massacred them as well?

“They escaped,” Winston said softly, his eyes fixed on the floor. “All of them. According to some, the dragons that attacked the city let them escape. They didn’t chase them or anything. They let our dragons fly off and then they just set everything on fire. Then they left.”

“So what are they going to do? The dragons that were burned out?”

“I brought them here,” he said. “They’ll stay at the aerie.”

“Good.” I swallowed again and reached for him. “That’s good. Not the whole burning of Dramera but that they’re here now. That they’re safe.”

“It is.” Winston pulled me close and buried his head in my neck. “Now are you sure you’re okay? You looked like you’d seen your own ghost when I came in here.”

“Yeah, yep, I mean, yes. I’m fine, just nervous.” I was talking too fast, and I knew it. Winston pulled back and narrowed his eyes at me. “Going into battle and that sort of thing.”

“Allie.” His voice was soft as he reached out to wrap his arms around me. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” And it wasn’t. When I compared one scary vision in a glass ball to what he’d found at Dramera then the vision was nothing. Just a bad dream trapped inside a crystal ball.

“Allie?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’ve never lied to me before. You’ve kept things from me, but you’ve never actually
lied
. So don’t do it now. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

“Have you ever wanted something that you know is wrong? Even though you know it’s bad and that you shouldn’t want it, have you still wanted it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever wanted revenge?” I asked. “I mean, for everything that’s been done to us. The stuff that’s been done to Nerissette. Have you ever wanted to just get even? Forget right and wrong and what’s best for the people here. Have you ever wanted to get back at the people who have caused us all this pain?”

“Every day,” Winston said as he pushed my head gently down to rest against his shoulder. “Every time I see you sitting on that throne, trying to figure out the right thing to do, I want to scream and howl and hurt someone. Every time I see ruined fields and refugees, I want to turn into a dragon and burn the whole world to the ground. I want revenge for all the things that have been done to us. I want to dredge the Fate Maker up out of his prison in the Bleak and come up with new ways to hurt him.”

“You do?”

“Of course I do. This isn’t meant to be our life. We’re supposed to be worrying about things like prom and college applications and who’s throwing a party this weekend. Not ogres, wizards, or crazy queens.”

“I know.”

“I love you, Allie, and every time I see you hurt or upset, I just want to destroy the people that hurt you.”

“I love you, too,” I said as he pulled me tighter against his chest.

“Then trust me. Talk to me.”

“I looked into the Orb of Fate.”

“So what’s your fate besides being the most beloved warrior queen Nerissette has ever seen? Are you going to figure out trigonometry next?”

“I killed the Fate Maker and Bavasama. I took out a sword and chopped off their heads. Everyone was there, watching, and Talia told me it didn’t change anything, but Mercedes told me the roses needed a sacrifice. So I did it. Bavasama—she begged me for mercy, but I cut off her head instead.”

“It’s okay,” Winston said quietly in my ear, still holding me close.

“Then I went to, you know, cut off the Fate Maker’s head next, and he looked up at me and told me I was the Rose he’d always wanted me to be. I was going to cut off his head, and he was proud of me. People were terrified of me, and I was going to kill him, and he was proud. He was proud of the woman I’d become. Of the queen I was going to be. I was a monster…and he was
proud
.”

“Allie—”

“The Orb of Fate shows you the future you most desire, and in mine, I was a killer. I wanted to be a 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.