The rest of the Woodsmen clustered behind my father as he reached into the pouch at his waist. He pulled his fist out and uncurled his fingers, dumping dirt onto my aunt’s shoes. “May the light always shine upon you,” he said.
John stepped back and another Woodsman stepped forward, dropping his own dirt on Bavasama’s shoes. “May the light shine upon you.”
The throne room fell silent as, one by one, each of the Woodsmen stepped forward and dumped a handful of dirt at my aunt’s feet, each bowing to Mercedes when they stepped back.
“May the light shine upon you,” the last Woodsman said. He bowed low to Mercedes. “And may you never again feel rain upon your heart.”
“Thank you.” Mercedes bowed her head in return to the knot of Woodsmen and then nodded to me as she took the Orb of the Dryads out of the pouch at her waist.
“It’s not the First Leaf.”
“I know.” She nodded again. “It’s dryad magic. It’s not meant to preserve life. It’s meant to create it. To grow things where before there was nothing.”
She stepped closer to Bavasama and lifted her hands, the Orb cradled in her left as she pressed her right on the deposed queen’s forehead. Mercedes closed her eyes. Green leaves sprouted out of my best friend’s hand and began to tangle in my aunt’s hair.
“Please,” Bavasama wailed as thick, leafy ferns began to wrap around her head, covering her eyes. “Mercy, please.”
“Not a chance,” I said as the vines began to move lower, covering her from the top of her head to her shoulders.
I watched as Bavasama started to sink, the dirt surrounding her feet reaching up to swallow her shoes as more tendrils shot out, wrapping around her legs and holding her upright. The vines moved farther up her body, immobilizing her, but Mercedes kept her hand pressed against Bavasama’s face, her eyes still closed.
The plant kept growing, twisting and turning back on itself as my aunt wailed in horror. It doubled back again, and I watched as Bavasama’s arms were jerked upward and bark began to form along the length of her body, encasing her in wood. Branches began to sprout from her fingers, all of them covered in spring-green leaves, while more began to bloom, a dark russet color where her hair had been. The bark finally reached the vines hiding her face, and I watched as she was covered completely with bark, her face staring out at us woodenly from the center of the tree.
“May you live for a hundred thousand years,” Mercedes said quietly. “And may you know for every one of them that you brought this upon yourself.”
She turned away from my aunt and bowed low to me.
“Take her outside and plant her somewhere,” I said. “Let her be a symbol of what happens when you cross the Rose Throne.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Now…” I turned to the Fate Maker who was staring at the tree that had been my aunt just a few moments before. “It’s time to deal with you.”
“You can’t kill me,” he said, shaking his head back and forth violently as his guards dragged him forward. “You can’t.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I promised Kuolema a soul. If you kill me, then he’ll come to you to collect. He’ll kill you in my place. If I die, then so do you.”
“Then maybe I should give you back to him,” I said. “Except this time I’ll have to make sure he knows not to let you back out again.”
“No.” The Fate Maker’s voice broke. “No. Please. I’ll do whatever you want. I know secrets. Things that no one else knows.”
“Not interested,” I said. I reached into the crown box again.
“No!” The Fate Maker threw up a hand, trying to stop me. “I know how to save your mother.”
“What?” I turned to him.
“I know how to bring your mother back. How to save her from the prison of her own mind. All I need are the Relics and your promise that you won’t give me back to Kuolema. That you’ll send someone else in my place.”
“Tell me how to save my mother,” I said, gripping the armrests of the throne tightly, trying with all my might to shake the answer out of him.
“Promise me that you’ll let me live,” the Fate Maker said.
“Tell me!” I screamed. Pushing myself to my feet, I drew my sword, pointing it at him. “Or I’ll kill you here and worry about your debt to Kuolema later.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Unless I have your word, your binding word, then I won’t tell you anything. You could still betray me.”
“Fine.” I pulled the Dragon’s Tear out from under my tunic and held it up for him to see. “Let’s see exactly what it will take to buy you from Kuolema? What he needs to let me put you to death?”
“No.” The Fate Maker swallowed.
“Hold him.” I motioned to his guards and watched as they came forward and grabbed him.
I wrapped my hand around the Dragon’s Tear and let my eyes slide closed, focusing all my energy on forming a door between this world and the Bleak. I heard people gasping around me and opened my eyes, staring at the blank square of nothingness in the middle of the room.
I stepped forward, the Tear still clutched tightly in my hand, and raised my chin.
“Kuolema,” I called out, trying to remember everything from the stories my mother used to read me about what happened when people summoned the Great Dragons of the Bleak.
“Kuolema,” I called out again. “I, Alicia Munroe, Golden Rose of Nerissette summon you.”
Nothing.
I took a deep breath and tried again. “Kuolema!”
“What?” a raspy voice hissed. Green eyes suddenly peered at me from the darkness.
“Kuolema, Great Dragon of the Bleak, I summon you.”
“Yes, yes.” An enormous black dragon’s head slithered out of the doorway, and I sucked in a breath as he arched his neck up until his head was towering over me, almost scraping the bottom of the chandelier hanging over my head. “I heard you. What is it, Your Majesty?”
“You seem to have lost a soul,” I said with a gesture toward the Fate Maker.
The dragon looked down at the Fate Maker, and he slithered his tongue out, testing the air around him. “He offered me the soul of a queen,” Kuolema said softly. “Told me that if I let him go, he’d conquer this world and give me the flesh of a queen to feast upon.”
“Yeah?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, he didn’t manage it. Now, I need you to give up your claims to him. Wipe the debt he owes you clean.”
“Why?” Kuolema dropped his head and glided forward so we were nose to nose. “Why should I give up my claims?”
“Because I want to put him to death.”
“So be it,” Kuolema said. “Then give me your own soul in return. Just as he promised me.”
“No. Go back to the Bleak and do without. Punishment for failing to keep a banished soul where it belongs.”
The dragon sucked on his teeth and narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps we can come to an agreement.”
“What?”
“All I want is the soul,” Kuolema said. “The body is worthless to me. Give me the soul and you can keep the body.”
“And then what?” I asked. “You want me to kill an empty shell of a body?”
“You have the Relics,” Kuolema said. “Because you were honorable, I’ll help you make a trade. As a gift, from me to you.”
“A trade?”
“The relics are meant to preserve life,” Kuolema said. “People, worlds, entire universes that wouldn’t exist otherwise. The Relics can be used to bring the most fatally wounded person back from the brink of death. You let me have the Fate Maker’s soul, and I’ll show you how to bring your mother back from the living death she’s trapped inside.”
“My mother…”
“I’ll take the Fate Maker’s soul, and you can sacrifice his body to take your mother’s place in the World That Is. She’ll have all the days of life that he should have had.”