I stared at her. “You’re saying that my crown holds the Key to Eternal Life?”
“Yes,” she said. “When you wear your crown, the power of life itself flows through you, protecting you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “But other Roses have died. My grandmother, for one. We don’t have a room full of former queens hidden away inside the Palace. If the crown actually kept us from dying then—”
“The Rose Crown is given to the heir to the throne on her Five Thousandth day. The day you were brought to Nerissette from your world was yours. The crown is passed from the previous Rose to the new one to show her right to rule,” Talia said.
“So what? The previous queen just gives up the job and what? Goes and dies?”
“No.” She smiled at me. “The queen continues to rule until she’s no longer able, teaching the heir how to be a just and kind ruler. Then when her mortal life is at an end, she goes the way of all people of Nerissette and takes her place among the light of the Pleiades.”
“But my mother isn’t—”
“Your mother,” Talia said softly, “is a special case. Trapped in the World That Is, locked in an eternal sleep, she’s not able to rule, and so the throne passes to you even though she still lives.”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said quietly. “All I’ve done is thrown my people into war after war. First with the Fate Maker for my throne and then again for the Tear. When I trapped him in the Bleak, I thought that would end it. I had the Mirror of Nerissette destroyed, and I wear the Dragon’s Tear all the time, hidden under my shirt, just to make sure no one else can find a way to get to it. I thought that would end it, but it hasn’t. The fighting, the killing, it just won’t end.”
“The Mirror was destroyed?” Talia asked. “All of it? Every single piece was ground to dust?”
I swallowed. Should I lie to her? Only a few people knew that I’d kept a shard of the Mirror, that it still existed, hidden in my trouser pocket. A window between this world and The World That Is hidden with the key to this world’s greatest prison.
“Allie?” Talia stared at me, waiting for my answer.
“No.” I shook my head. “I kept a small piece of it. I let them grind the rest to dust, but I kept one small shard.”
“Oh, Allie.” She sighed.
“I had to,” I protested. “I couldn’t just leave her alone in The World That Is and not check on her. If it were your mother and you could see her again—even if you couldn’t save her—”
“I would have done the same thing,” she said quietly. “For even one more day with my mother, one more moment before she met her end, I would have given up the world. My throne. My people. All of it.”
“So what should I do?” I asked.
“When the time comes,” Talia whispered as she brought her hands up to cradle my cheeks. “When your army has marched into Bathune and taken the Palace of Night and you have your aunt kneeling at your feet, you’ll need the relics. All of them.”
“Why?”
“To end the fighting. To heal this world. To make the World of Dreams whole again,” she said.
“And how do I do that?” I asked.
“When the time comes,” Talia said, “you’ll know.”
“But I don’t know,” I said. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“You will,” she said. “You will know. But for right now you have to keep safe. Stay quiet and wait for your army to come so that we can end this once and for all.”
“I will.” I nodded as I pushed myself out of their tiny pool and onto the bank beside it. “You stay safe, too, okay?”
“We will,” she agreed.
I skirted away from the mermaids’ pool and tried to stay close to the high, black stone wall that surrounded the Palace of Night. Guards were posted every few feet on top of it—all of them armed, swords in hand as they watched me making my way through the small courtyard surrounding the mermaid’s prison. I was surprised they were letting me walk around alone like this.
Glancing up at the dark, imposing castle on my other side, I swallowed. If anyone ever needed an explanation of the differences between Nerissette and Bathune, all I’d have to do is show them this place.
The Crystal Palace of Nerissette was nothing more than a very big house with lots of rooms and a glass dome at the top. Before the Fate Maker’s first attack, the architect hadn’t even bothered building walls. The Crystal Palace, the Palace of Light, of Day, had been open to all, shining on the top of a hill.
Meanwhile, the Palace of Night looked like the evil queen’s castle out of a cartoon, with its high walls and twisting towers piercing the sky. All the place needed was a couple of buzzards and some bats flying around and it would have been every villain’s fantasy lair.
I reached a small gate and pushed it open, listening as it creaked and then gave way. It hadn’t even been locked. Obviously, they weren’t concerned about the mermaids getting up and walking away from their pools. Maybe, if I got lucky, we’d be able to use my aunt’s—and her army’s—laziness to our advantage when the time came.
I stepped into the larger, main courtyard at the front of the palace and looked around. Soldiers were wandering about, swords on their hips, and when I glanced up, even more guards were on the walls. But none of them were paying attention to me. They thought I’d been caught, trapped, unable to escape and too broken to even try. Which showed how stupid and arrogant my aunt and her army really were. One of her henchman dropped me out that window, yet he hadn’t even told anyone to keep watch over me?
I glanced around, looking for some sort of weakness—a door, a gate, even a place to hide and wait for someone else to come in so that I could make my escape out. I spotted a break in the stone and hurried toward it. If I could get the gate open and slip out without being noticed, I could get out of here. I knew Winston and Rhys would be moving the army at full speed toward us, so if I just kept moving toward them we were bound to meet up at some point.
“You’ll never get the gate open,” a dry voice announced from behind me. “The bar across it takes three of the empress’s strongest guards to move. You’ll not be able to lift it.”
I straightened up, turning to face a young man with messy black hair and broad shoulders. He looked like he was only a few years older than me. He stood in front of me with his hands shoved in the pockets of his dirt-smudged black trousers.
“Go away.” I looked from side to side, staring at the guards who had all turned to stare at us. I guess they had been expecting me to try and escape, and instead of trying to stop me, they’d decided to wait and watch me humiliate myself.
“If you somehow got past all of us, you could try to climb the wall.” He looked up and narrowed his eyes at the top of the wall. “But it’s been sanded smooth so getting up will be difficult. Even if you did manage to make it to the top, it’s covered in broken glass so there’s no real solution there, either. Not to mention the thirty-foot drop on the other side with nothing but rocks to break your fall.”
“So what do you suggest then?” I asked sarcastically.
“Suggest?” He stepped closer, peering down at me. The sides of his mouth flickered upward, but his eyes were cold, filled with hate.
“Since I can’t open the gate and I can’t climb the wall, what do you think I should do? Just give up? Let my aunt take my throne? Get down on my knees and beg? That isn’t going to happen.”
He reached out for me, and I stepped back, pulling my sword from its scabbard and pointing it at him. “I won’t surrender to her. Or anyone else for that matter.”
“You should put that down before someone gets hurt,” he said, his voice low and even.