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.”