“Yeah, well, I’m not a girl who gets into skulls much outside of Halloween. Although, now that you’ve brought up my mom, I guess I can see what you were trying to do with this place,” I taunted, rubbing my wrists with my hands.
“What do you mean?” Bavasama’s tone was flat, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “What was I trying to do?”
“No, no, I get it.” I held my hands out in front of me like I was trying to calm her instead of rile her up. “My best friend Mercedes used to do the same thing.”
“I highly doubt that I have anything in common with a simple teenage girl.”
“You’d be surprised.” I smirked at her. “I mean, both of you go to extremes to get people to pay attention to you. Of course, she used to just dye her hair or get a fake nose ring instead of doing her room up to look like a haunted house, but you know what they say—to each her own.”
“I did not do this to compete with your twit of a mother,” Bavasama said, her voice little more than a snarl.
“Oh, please.” I gave her my most Heidi-like smile, knowing that it would drive her insane. “Your entire life revolves around trying to best the ghost of a woman locked in the World That Is. No matter what you do, you always wonder if people are still comparing you to her. Your baby sister. The rightful queen of this world.”
I looked over and saw that everyone was staring at us, eyes wide. One of the women on the far side leaned her blond head toward the man next to her and began to whisper in his ear. As soon as she moved, it was like a sign for everyone else to do the same. All of them whispering and staring at Bavasama and me as we faced off.
“I am the rightful queen,” Bavasama snarled.
“Really?” I smirked at her. “Because it seems to me that I’m the one wearing the Rose Crown.”
“Not for long,” Bavasama said, rage pouring off her in waves. “Guards! Seize her.”
I watched, warily, as two of the guards from earlier stepped toward me. One of the men grabbed my left wrist and pulled me closer, twisting my wrist behind me, and then he grabbed my right arm, pulling it behind my back as well, holding them both tight.
“Now we’ll see what that crown’s worth to you,” Bavasama said as we stood there glaring at each other. “Kneel.”
“As if,” I snapped.
The guard behind me twisted his free arm up around my neck, squeezing, before he tugged on my wrists, pulling them higher behind my back. He put one of his booted feet into the back of my knee and stepped down, forcing me to kneel while he let his hand slip free of my neck.
“That’s better,” Bavasama said. I narrowed my eyes at her. “Don’t you think that’s better, Piotr?” She turned to smile at the Fate Maker. “Little Allie, right where she belongs, kneeling to her betters.”
“Of course, Your Highness,” he said. I could see that he was gritting his teeth. “Although I’ve never been a fan of the brute force method. Magic is a much more elegant way to handle your enemies. If you can control it, that is.”
“Possibly.” Bavasama nodded. “But there’s something to be said for the power of pain. Besides, magic is only as strong as the wizard who uses it.
“That’s always been your problem, Piotr. You’re weak. You let your emotions blind you to what needed to be done. Your love for my sister kept you from doing what needed to be done. You kept her alive, even though you should have killed her. Your weakness forced me to trap her in the World That Is, a loose end that came back to test us.”
“There was no reason—” he started.
“You left a loose end when you prevented me from killing my sister, and now here we are, forced to fight a child for a throne that should have been mine years ago.”
“Do you think I wanted her here?” the Fate Maker asked.
“She’s here, isn’t she?”
“That’s not my fault,” the Fate Maker snapped. “Esmeralda brought—”
“I don’t care what that stupid enchantress did,” Bavasama shrieked. “You were supposed to be in charge of Nerissette, running things for me until we could find a way to travel to the World That Is and kill my sister and her brat so I could take back my crown.”
“I was—” the Fate Maker began.
“You were supposed to be keeping things under control, but you couldn’t,” Bavasama raged. “You let the girl come through, and then you lost control of her, just like you did her mother.”
“There was no way I could control Esmeralda,” the Fate Maker said angrily. “And the girl had reached legal age; she was the heiress to the throne. Once she’d reached her Five Thousandth day, there was no choice. Besides, it’s easier to kill her here than take the risk of traveling through the Bleak to get to her and kill her in the World That Is.”
“It would have been,” Bavasama said, her lips curling upward in a snarl. I—along with everyone else in the dining hall—watched as the two of them kept slinging verbal assaults. “Except for the fact that you didn’t actually manage to kill her and my crown is still on my niece’s head.”
“That would be because it’s my crown,” I chimed in.
She turned to glare at me. “Not for long. After all, you’re nothing but a prisoner in my castle.”
“Yeah, but you seem to forget that I’m a prisoner with an army marching toward you, and I have one very temperamental dragon for a boyfriend. You even think about trying to hurt me and I guarantee you he will hunt you down and kill you. It won’t matter where you go; there is no world that you can run to that’s far enough away that he’ll stop looking.”
“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Bavasama smiled at me, her white teeth gleaming like knives.
“Nope, but I have all the faith in this world and my own when it comes to him.”
The door at the end of the dining hall creaked open, and my aunt stepped back from me. We both looked over, and I watched as two guards carried Heidi and Jesse into the room, my friends draped over their shoulders. They marched to the front of the room and dropped the two of them onto the floor in a heap. I heard Heidi grunt in pain.
“Allie?” Jesse sat up and looked at me, stunned. “What are you doing here?”
“Um…”
“It’s sort of a long story and not really all that interesting,” Bavasama said. “So let’s just cut to the chase. She’s here, you’re here, you’re all prisoners, and one of you is going to die.”
I looked up at Bavasama and then over at her silent audience of nobles still sitting around the dining table, all of them staring at us.
“Since only one of you is royal—and I’ve always had a soft spot for family,” Bavasama said, “I’m going to let my darling niece here choose. Who’s it to be Allie?”
“No.” I ground my teeth together, my eyes fixed on my aunt’s.
“Choose,” Bavasama said. “One of the three of you dies. Who will it be? Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for one of them? The girl, perhaps?”
I swallowed but kept my mouth shut.
“No.” Bavasama shook her head. “I’ve heard about how she treated you. Seen it, too. You see, I have a mirror of my own. Not as nice as the Mirror of Nerissette, of course. Mine only allows you to look between worlds, not travel between them, but it still let me keep an eye on you and Preethana. Did you know that?”
I just glared at her, not saying anything, refusing to give her the pleasure of knowing that she was getting to me.
“I watched your entire childhood, just planning for the day when I got to kill you. But in the meantime I watched as this maid tormented you. She called you Fish Girl. Shoved you around. Treated you like nothing. So why should you give your life for hers?” She looked over at Jesse and pursed her lips. “What about the boy? He’s handsome enough. Not very bright. Cowardly. But you would never have to doubt his loyalty if you spared his life.”