“I’m surprised you came,” he said, opening with a soft chuckle. “You were always a careful strategist, taking only calculated risks that were in your favor to win. Surely you realize you’re not leaving this camp alive, even if you are permitted an audience with Aurora.”
“I did not come to speak with you, Greenwood. The earth clan and your play at politics are of no interest to me. Take me to Aurora. She will want to hear what I have to say.”
Greenwood took a wary step backward as I rose, eyeing me with a new caution. I showed no fear despite the fact that my heart was pounding like a thing gone mad in my chest, and my stomach was twisting into knots. Six naturi surrounded me in the immediate vicinity, but I could sense another dozen waiting in the shadows of the trees. I didn’t have much of a chance against these odds. Even if I took straight to the sky, there was a good chance they would shoot me down before I got far. But given my reputation, the naturi watching me now were afraid to be the first to strike. I had to use that fear to my advantage.
After a long silence, Greenwood let out a low chuckle that sounded strained and forced to my ears. “Lose the wings and let us bind your hands, then I will have you escorted to Aurora so she can see you killed in person. I’m sure that would bring her some pleasure. Wouldn’t it be a great triumph to carry your head on a pike into battle so it is the first thing Cynnia sees as she faces us?”
I said nothing, focusing on causing my wings to dissolve into black sand that poured like a waterfall down my back to the ground. Putting my hands together in front of me, I kept my face perfectly blank as one pale naturi stepped forward and roughly bound my wrists behind my back with a thick piece of rope. At the same time, a second naturi stepped forward and patted me down, removing my two knives.
The naturi that bound my hands gave me a hard kick that sent me stumbling forward. “Get moving,” he ordered with a laugh.
The walk to Aurora’s camp was one of the longest in my entire memory. It seemed as if all the naturi that rallied around her banner had come out to see me, jeering, spitting, and stabbing me. While most of the wounds were relatively superficial in nature, I was bruised, bloody, and covered in dirt when I was finally brought to Aurora’s pristine white tent. Beside it, there was a somewhat less grand green tent, most likely Greenwood’s. It was somewhat reassuring that they were maintaining separate residences for now. If I knew Aurora as well as I thought I did, I suspected she was waiting for him to deliver both Cynnia and me to her feet dead before finally taking him as her consort.
As I came within a dozen feet of the tent, the two sides were parted and Aurora stepped out. It seemed as if a shaft of golden light shot through the trees to shine on her beautiful blond hair and pale skin. She shone before me like a fallen star or a ray of perfect sunlight on a cloudy day. She wore her usual white robes, but now with a breastplate made of polished, gleaming gold. I knew, however, it was merely a ceremonial piece in an effort to more closely align herself with the army that she would soon order to their death.
My older sister looked down on me and smiled smugly. She didn’t care that she would never have been able to accomplish this if I hadn’t willingly turned myself over to her. Her only care was that she had me bound and battered, striking a blow against the traitors rising up against her.
“The first of the traitors has come to meet their fate!” she exclaimed to the crowd that had gathered before her. A loud cheer went up, causing the tree limbs to tremble. A shiver ran through me as I listened to those bloodthirsty voices. It sounded as if she had acquired a greater army than I initially thought she would. I knew all the naturi would not flock to her side. Some had rallied around Cynnia’s banner, while another group remained as far from the two sides as they could, hoping to remain unnoticed until the fighting finally blew over.
“I’ve come to talk,” I sharply said as the cheering died down.
“You lost the opportunity to talk your way out of your execution a long time ago,” Aurora smirked at me.
“You never gave me that opportunity. You proclaimed me to be a traitor and then ordered my execution before I could plead my case to you,” I growled, taking a step forward. As I did, a pair of swords points dug were pointed at my throat, keeping me from moving any closer. “But I’ve not come to plead for mercy from you. I’ve come to offer you a chance at preserving your own life. It will be your one and only chance. I wouldn’t turn my back on it.”
“My life?” Aurora laughed, tossing her blond locks away from her face. “If you’ve not figured it out by now, we are the ones that are going to destroy Cynnia and her little army. We are the ones that are going to restore order to the planet and save the Great Mother.”
“That would be hard to accomplish without the Great Mother on your side. Is she listening to you now?” Aurora’s face twisted with rage. I was questioning her connection to the earth, something that should have been absolute, since she was the queen of the naturi. But I knew better. During her time in the cage, she had lost her connection with the earth, and I had a feeling it was the reason for the madness that now claimed her fragile mind and spirit.
“How dare you question me?” she screamed, pointing one quivering finger at me.
“In all the years that you have known me, have I ever lied to you?” I demanded. She knew that I had never told her a falsehood in the all the time I’d served her. She would know if I were lying to her. “Just a quick meeting to discuss the future of the naturi people. Isn’t that what’s best for both sides? What’s best for the earth?”
Aurora stared at me for more than a minute in silence, her arms stubbornly crossed over her chest as if to protect herself from my words. She wasn’t happy, but she was turning over my words in the back of her mind. I was willing to bet that she was hoping to get some valuable information out of me regarding Cynnia’s forces before she killed me, but then I had hoped to gather the same. I just needed to think of a way to escape again so I could get the information back to Cynnia.
“Bring her into the tent,” Aurora snapped before turning in a swirl of robes and reentering it. The swords at my throat were lowered and I was shoved forward. My escort took me to the center of the tent, where I was pushed down to my knees on a bearskin rug in front of Aurora, who was now seated in a golden throne with plush pillows of deep green.
“Leave us alone,” Aurora ordered. The guards hesitated, glancing at each other and then back at Greenwood, who had entered the tent behind me. “Leave us, I said! Do you think I cannot handle my own sister, who has already been bound and beaten?”
“Me as well?” Greenwood inquired.
“Leave us alone!” Aurora screamed, tightly gripping both arms of the chair so she nearly came out of her seat again. No one hesitated. They all quickly scrambled to leave her sight and close the tent door behind them.
I watched as Aurora sank back in the chair and took a deep breath, as if to calm her frazzled nerves. In the shadows of the tent, I could see the lines of worry starting to extend from her eyes, and long, deep furrows at the corners of her mouth, which was perpetually pulled into a frown. Returning to earth should have rejuvenated my older sister, but it seems the healing powers of the earth were not reaching her. For some reason I had yet to understand, she had truly lost her connection with the earth. A part of me wondered if I could restore it the same way I had for Rowe, but I knew she would not see it as the gift that it was, but a power that I had over her, which would only get me killed faster.