“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.
“Allie.” John smiled then and looked up at me. “Very, very old and still sitting on the Rose Throne, the most beloved and celebrated Golden Rose that Nerissette has ever seen. The people in the throne room are celebrating because she’s brought our country a hundred years of peace. I see you very old and very happy, and it’s the most beautiful thing.”
“I-I-I…” I stammered as Winston reached over to grab my hand, lacing our fingers together. I had seen myself as a monster, and my father had seen me as a savior. Whose version of queen would I end up being? I hoped that somehow my father’s vision was right and mine was wrong, that I would be the queen my people deserved.
“That sounds like a fate worth fighting for,” Winston said as John pulled his gaze away from the ball and handed it back to Winston.
“It does.” I squeezed Winston’s fingers. “As long as we’re doing it together.”
“Always,” he mouthed.
I looked over to see my father staring at us, his lips quirked up in a smile. “I did not see you in my vision.” John waved a finger at Winston’s nose. “It may be because I killed you, but I’m not sure yet.”
“Nah.” Winston smiled. “I was probably just going for punch or something. No worries.”
“I’d worry less if I’d shot you the first time I saw you,” John muttered.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Be nice.”
“I am nice.” My father held his hands out to his sides. “I didn’t even bring a bow with me. I left it with the horses instead.”
“The horses?” I asked, my stomach clenching.
“Yes.” He nodded slowly. “The men and the beasts are ready, Allie. It’s time.”
“Well, then.” I swallowed. “After you, I guess.”
Chapter Fourteen
I followed my father and Winston down the stairs from the West Tower, bypassing the portal stones that would take me directly outside so that I could stall for time and get my head together. We reached the main hallway, and Winston glanced back and offered me his hand.
“Are you ready?”
“No.” I took his hand in mine and squeezed it. “But we have to go anyway. Don’t we?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, and then we started down one of the halls. I remembered my first time there, hopelessly lost and trying to figure out how to get around. Everything had looked the same then. The same walls, the same carpets, but now, knowing the palace like I did, I knew it wasn’t the same anymore.
The hallway beneath the West Tower was filled with portraits of mythological creatures, and the corridor closest to the main entry hall full of family portraits of various Golden Roses and their successors. My favorite was one that showed the grandmother I’d never met fitting a tiara on my mother’s head as they both stared in the mirror that had once been in my tower.
My mother had looked so indescribably lovely that every time I saw it I wanted to cry. I couldn’t meet her eyes in the portrait because all I could think was that she looked so young and alive that it hurt to know how it would all end.
This palace should have been my home from the start. It was my home. More than any other place that Mom and I had floated through, this was my home, the one place where I belonged. I was terrified to walk away again. What if we never came back?
I trailed my fingers along the banister of the grand staircase and thought about the night of my first ball. I had been dressed in a formal gown, nervous that I was going to fall down the stairs and make a fool of myself. I’d been gripping the banister so tightly that the raised part of the wood had made an impression in my hand. At the bottom of the stairs had been a different boy than the one walking in front of me.
Jesse. I swallowed. He’d looked amazing standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting like a fairy-tale prince as I came down the stairs to meet him. He’d been dressed in a white-and-gold jacket, and he’d been gorgeous. So handsome I’d thought I wouldn’t be able to breathe even though he’d never been my type before that.
Then, suddenly, there’d been Winston, dressed all in black, his dark skin gleaming and his eyes bright. Jesse’s sunny features had been shrouded in Winston’s otherworldly beauty. It was like everything had finally clicked into place in that moment, and all I had been able to think was, Oh, there you are.
“Allie?” Winston interrupted my thoughts, and I looked up and realized that I’d been standing halfway down the stairs, running my fingertips over the banister, lost in my own head.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about the night of our first ball. We met at the stairs that night, right there.” I pointed at the spot where the two of us had stood.
“I remember,” he whispered, coming over to wrap an arm around my shoulders and lead me down the stairs. “You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
John cleared his throat, and I could see that he was doing his best not to glare.
“I don’t want to go,” I whispered.
“Neither do I.” Winston let go of my shoulders and grabbed my hand, pulling me close.
“This is our home,” I said.
“I know, and that’s why we’re going to finish this war, and then we’re coming back here—me and you and everyone else. We’re going to come back here, and this is going to be our home forever.”
“Can you promise me that?”
“I promise, it will be just like John saw in the Orb of Fate. We’ll get old, and you’ll be Nerissette’s most beloved queen. They’ll tell stories about us, about you, one day. Stories about a wise and beautiful queen who fell through a book and saved the world. It’ll be a fairy tale.”
“Just so you know, I hate fairy tales. I always have. Even before Mr. Brinnegar made us start researching them for that group project. They’re totally unreasonable, and they lead to nothing but trouble. Fairy tales are nothing more than something to get girls to sit around pretending to be a princess while they wait for a man to save them.”