“I’d say that magic has never been a very subtle force of nature,” Kitsuna agreed.
I stared at her and we both started to laugh as she hugged me tightly and I clung to her in relief.
Chapter Nine
We hurried down the stairs and into the main part of the library. “We’ve found something,” I called to the others.
Darinda looked up at us. “What?”
“This.” I held the book out to her and she took it. “According to the photo caption, this Golden Rose has the relics. That means they’re in this picture.”
“And?” Aquella asked, coming toward me. “Does anything in the picture look like the relic?”
I pointed to the picture, lingering on the necklace that I’d worn. The crystal on it seemed to call to me, but the necklace wasn’t lost. I’d had it the whole time and besides, Esmeralda had said specifically that the relics had been hidden inside the palace. Winston and the dragons had brought me the necklace from Dramera. Whatever weird magic was drawing me to it had to be trying to play a trick. To distract me from what I was really looking for. To keep the tear hidden for just a bit longer.
I put my finger directly under the bracelet that I’d never seen before. A piece of the crown jewels that was lost. It was the Dragon’s Tear. It had to be. “That.”
“Are you sure?” Darinda asked.
“That’s it. I don’t know how, I know but I do. That bracelet has to be the Dragon’s Tear.”
“Okay.” Darinda nodded. “What I want you to do is go to your rooms and start searching for it. The bracelet is part of your royal jewels. It has to be in the Rose’s Tower.”
“And what will you do?” I asked.
“We’ll keep searching for a way to destroy the tear while you find it.”
“And if it’s not in my jewelry box?” I asked. “What do we do then?”
“Then search the other rooms,” Darinda said. “It might be tucked away in another closet, or a wardrobe, or even hidden inside a vase. It’s in this palace and we need to find it. My guess is that that now that the tear knows you’re looking for it, it’ll make sure that it’s found.”
I raised my eyebrow, unconvinced.
“The relics want to be found,” Darinda said. “They’re magical instruments so they want nothing more than to have magic flowing through them. They need the magic that you can give them. They need to be used like you need air to breathe.”
“So you’re saying that what? The relics are addicted to me?”
“Something like that,” Darinda said. “Only you can provide that magic now that Esmeralda is gone. They’ll be somewhere clever but obvious. The tear will be somewhere that it knows you will find it.”
“Clever?” I asked.
“Somewhere you wouldn’t notice them if you didn’t know what to look for,” Darinda explained. “But still easily found.”
“Then why hasn’t the Fate Maker found them before now? Why does he need me?”
“Because”—Darinda smiled at me—“when your mother was trapped on the other side of the mirror, your tower locked itself. If the cat was clever…”
“What? What happens if Esmeralda was clever?”
“The Rose’s Tower can only be opened by the Golden Rose. Without a Golden Rose, the doors won’t open. The cat could have specified in the spell that she cast that the relics were to hide themselves someplace only you could find.”
It hit me hard then. “She hid them in my tower, the one place he couldn’t go.”
“Yes.” She nodded, her eyes wide. “The rest of us thought they were legend. Myth. We’d have never even thought to look for them. Never noticed that they were gone.”
“But the Fate Maker, who knew they existed…”
“Couldn’t get to them without the rightful heir. He needs you to bring him the relics because he can’t get them on his own. The Rose’s Tower itself has protected them for you.”
I swallowed and looked over at Kitsuna. “Well then, let’s go find the tear and finish this. What do you say?”
“If a couple of doors are strong enough to stand up to the greatest wizard in the World of Dreams then so am I.” She nodded at me. “Let’s find the tear and end this. Right here and right now.”
“You find it and we’ll keep looking for ways to destroy the tear,” Aquella said. “When you find the relics we’ll have a way to get rid of it. I promise you that, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you.”
I heard a faint sob from somewhere inside the shelves of books, and my shoulders hunched as I recognized the sound of my best friend crying. We were going to find the tear, and we were going to have to destroy it, and with it we were going to destroy another chance to go home. All I could hope was that once the Fate Maker had been beaten back there would be something left to take us home. Some piece of magic that we hadn’t been forced to destroy.
“Come on.” I nudged Kitsuna and tried to ignore the way Mercedes’s sadness made my stomach clench. “We’ve got a Tear to find.”
Kit followed me out of the room and instead of using the runes in the hallways to teleport as Esmeralda had taught me, like I would if I were on my own, we started up the stairs to my bedroom. We remained silent until we reached my tower, and the doors to my room creaked open, warming slightly under my touch.
“So,” Kitsuna said as I sat down at my dressing table and set the box of jewelry on top of it. “Where should I look?”
I swallowed. My rooms were huge. What if the tear wasn’t here? What if Darinda was wrong? What if we were on the wrong track? What if we didn’t find it?
“Your Majesty?” Kitsuna asked.
I shook my head and tried to focus. “I’ll do the jewelry box, and you start going through my wardrobe.”
“And what will you do about Mercedes?”
“Mercedes?” I asked.
“How will you make it up to her when you destroy the tear? It will break her heart.”
“I know. But I don’t have a choice. It has to be destroyed.”
I pushed down the lump in my throat and tried to ignore the sting of tears filling my eyes. I was going to ruin my best friend’s life. Destroy another possible route home. I didn’t have a choice, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still suck that my best friend was downstairs, crying her eyes out in the library. “It does, but perhaps you could use it first? You could send her back.”
“Could I?” I asked. “I’ve never opened a portal before. What if it went wrong? What if I sent her to the wrong place? Or she was trapped in the Bleak? What if she goes back and they don’t remember her? Our families are under a spell that makes them forget us. What if I send her back and it doesn’t break the spell?”
“I don’t know.” Kitsuna shook her head.
“Neither do I,” I said quietly. “All I know is that if I send her through and something goes wrong then she’s alone and we might not be able to get her back. There I can’t make sure she’s safe.”
“And you can do that here?” Kitsuna asked. “Guarantee her safety?”
“No.” I shook my head. “But if she’s here then I have a chance and that’s more than I’ve got with her on one side of the Bleak and us on the other. Besides, if I use the tear and it goes wrong, then I’m the one who killed my best friend.”
“If it makes you feel any better, Your Majesty,” Kitsuna said as she opened my closet door, “Mercedes’s last real chance to go home died the minute, the very second, that you decided to declare war on the Fate Maker. Even before that, really, because no one who comes here ever goes back. The minute you fell through the portal between the World That Is and Nerissette you were all doomed to stay. There was never a safe way for you to get home. ”