“Good.” I sniffed and tried to ignore the sudden relief I felt. “That’s good.”
“Allie?” Winston asked. “I’m curious about something. Something besides what happened with Eamon.”
“What?”
“What did the Fate Maker offer you earlier?”
I turned back to the lake and tangled my fingers in the grass to keep from fidgeting. I couldn’t tell him the Fate Maker had given me a chance to go home and I’d refused it. That I hadn’t bargained for a way to get us all home. I couldn’t tell him that I’d had that chance and had let it go to get revenge instead.
“Before you sent him to the Bleak, he told you it was your last chance. What did he mean by that? Your last chance for what?”
“Nothing that I want. Or at least nothing I want enough to give up what I already have,” I said, deciding that the truth was always a better than lie, even if it didn’t really answer his question.
“So what are you going to do with it?” He touched the Dragon’s Tear still hanging around my neck.
“Timbago said that when I needed to destroy the tear, I would know how. So I’ll keep it safe until that happens.”
“What are we going to do about your aunt? Her army is still massed at the borders, and several of our warriors said they’d seen her at the palace. She took part in the attack.”
“I know.” I yanked up a tuft of grass and tossed it angrily at the lake. “I saw her, too.”
“She will come for us at some point,” Winston said. “What do we do then?”
I didn’t meet his eyes. “Then we fight. Just like we’ve fought every other time. We fight until we win or we die. We don’t have any other choice.”
“When that day comes, no matter what happens, I’ll be right by your side.”
“Together,” I said and smiled at him.
“Always.”
“Always.” I pressed my lips against his and let the world around us slip away. Tomorrow was soon enough to start worrying about what lay ahead.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I struggled to find a comfortable position to sleep in that night, twisting inside my blankets. I rolled onto my side, facing the window, and then shifted again so that I was facing the rest of the room, my back pressed against the wall.
Mercedes had pulled the blankets over her head, and nothing but her dark hair visible. I watched as she kicked and jerked in her sleep, murmuring under her breath. Kitsuna had fallen asleep on top of her blankets, clutching her sword and still wearing her boots, ready to fight.
I sat up and shook my head, pushing bits of hair that had escaped my braid out of my face. Outside the window a large, bloodred moon hung over Dramera Lake, and I gazed at it for a moment before retrieving the bit of the mirror that I had from my trouser pocket.
“Show me my mother. Show me the last Golden Rose,” I said while touching it.
The mirror went hazy, and my mother’s memories began to play out over the shard. Pink flowers shone and then the mirror cleared, and I could see my mother in her hospital bed.
“I’m sorry.” I traced my hand over her cheek. “I’m so sorry I left you. And I’m sorry that I’ll never be coming back.”
I lifted my eyes from the mirror and glanced up at the moon again. “But don’t worry, Mom. I’ve gotten rid of the Fate Maker, and he’ll never hurt any of us again. I promise you, no matter what, you’ll be safe. He’ll never get near you again.”
I saw her jerk and then still, her head turning toward me, like she was somehow soothed by the sound of my voice. I ran my finger over the glass one last time and put it back in my pocket before lying back and trying to sleep. Tomorrow we were heading back toward Neris to start rebuilding the city and the palace, and I needed all the sleep I could get. We had a lot to do before our home would be livable again.
“One tiny dragon jumping over a fence,” I said quietly. “Two tiny dragons jumping over a fence. Three tiny dragons jumping over a fence and setting the field on fire. Four tiny dragons—” I yawned and let my eyes drift shut.
The world around me was hazy as I slipped into sleep, and I tried not to groan. Not another vision, another nightmare. Not tonight. I really needed a full night’s sleep.
“Allie?” my mother’s soft voice called. What was she doing here? If this was a vision—and it certainly felt like a vision—then it was a vision about something bad, and I didn’t want my mother here for that.
“Allie, sweetheart?”
I rolled onto my back and saw my mother at the foot of the dirty pallet I was using as a bed, dressed as she had been the morning before her accident. I pulled myself up, and she sat down beside me, her hand brushing along the side of my face and trailing into my tangled hair. “Mom?”
She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. “Oh, Allie.”
“Is it really you?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Not really,” I admitted, sinking into her embrace, happy to have my mother again, even if she was just a hallucination brought on by one of my visions.
“Mom?”
She lifted her head and stared at me. “The end is coming,” she whispered, her eyes wide and filled with tears.
“And then what happens?” I asked. “When the end comes, what happens?”
“We’ll find a way to be together again.” She kissed my cheek and then unraveled her arms from around me, fading slowly from sight.
“Mom?” I grabbed for her hand, trying to keep her with me. “Don’t go.”
“We’ll be together again soon,” she said before she disappeared.
“Your time is coming, Your Majesty.” Esmeralda’s voice found my ears, and I turned to see her sitting behind me, my heart breaking at the sight of her. She was a vision, too, just like my mother. A dream that I could only see when my world was getting ready to turn upside down again. A warning signal for the crap that was about to come.
“And when it does, if you are brave and we are triumphant, one day soon the end will come. We will all truly be free. Even you.”
“I’m already free,” I said.
“No, you’re not.” She licked one of her paws and kept her eyes on me. “But, soon, you will be. One way or another.”
“Yeah.” I nodded as she started to fade away, my stomach flip-flopping with dread. “It’s the ‘one way or another’ part that always seems to end up getting people hurt. Usually the people I care about the most.”
Acknowledgments
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—no one ever writes a book alone. There are so many people to thank but the first has to be my lovely daughter Ainsley for asking me to write something that she would be able to read. Here is something for you to read. I hope it meets your expectations.
Thank you as well to my editors at Entangled Teen, Libby Murphy and Danielle Rose Poiesz, as well as all the other hardworking editors, cover artists, publicists, and writers who make every single day that I work with Entangled Publishing a good one. Without all of you I’d still be doing a job I hated instead of one I love.
And finally thank you to my family for putting up with the pixies, the dragons, the wizards, and the frozen pizzas that come with having a mother who spends her days writing stories and living inside her own head instead of doing more interesting things. I love all of you.
Turn the page
for a special look
at the third and final book in
the
Chronicles of Nerissette
trilogy
Infinity
by
Andria Buchanan