“Finish the empress and fulfill your destiny. I’ll be waiting.” Abandoning both Griz and me to play out the rest of the story, the Mimicman loped out the side entrance. With him out of sight, the spell he had on Kato broke and the current Beast King bounded after the old.
“You fool,” Griz cursed, then realized her mistake in drawing my attention to her again.
The longer the emerald flames danced in my hands, the harder it was to remember why I didn’t want to use them. Rexi’s body still lay at my feet, so I really wanted to use them.
“One down, one left.”
“Wait. You still need me. I have what you want.” Griz reached into the pouch at her side. Out came the vial in one hand and the Book of Making in the other. “What you want more than anything in the world—your parents. They might have been erased from this story, but they are still alive in another world.”
The dream came back to me, the one I’d had by the lake, the picture of my parents on the gold-leaf page. As my flames went out, my sanity returned.
Griz ran a drop from the spring along the binding of the book, and the red engraved cover flew open, finally unlocked. She released the book from her hand and floated it closer to me in a flurry of pages. When it finally settled, the pictures moved across the paper, animated like Blanc’s story had been earlier. My parents were wearing strange clothing and sitting in rocking thrones on a porch. Dad wore blue pants with something like pinafore top with buttons, and a big straw hat. Mom had her hair in a disarray like I’d never seen, and it was gray. She wore an ugly floral skirt and a white top that had the letter I, then a picture of a heart, and then the word Kansas. Whatever that was. A little animal ran around their feet. Not a demon puppy, but a small little black dog about the size Kato the chimera had started out as.
I reached out to touch the image, but Griz snapped the book closed. “They’re in the world of the Makers. If you join my sister and I, we could show you how to draw out the power in your blood and bring them back from the realm of Kansas.” The book dropped to the ground with a clatter, just out of my reach. “But without us, you’ll never see them again.” She held the vial over the open pages.
Verte approached with a shuffle shuffle. There was no thunk without her emerald staff. Looking up at her, I longed for home more than ever, to go back to the garden before any of this had ever happened. With the loss of the star, that was impossible now, but I could have at least one thing back.
“Is she telling the truth?” I asked Verte.
She twitched her nose as if trying to sniff out the truth. “Good chance of that.”
“What should I do?” I asked quietly.
The emerald eye in her belt clouded over. “You will make a choice and someone will lose.” The eye returned to normal and winked at me. Verte hunched over with a groan, a hand protecting her back. “But I already told you that. The rest has to come from you.”
Once again, my thoughts went back to the courtyard garden. How much had she seen back then under the harvest moon?
Verte was doing her best impression of a stone wall, and I knew I would get no further help from her. What would my mother do if she were here instead of me?
A memory popped into my mind, something I hadn’t thought of in years. I was seven and it was my birthday. The only thing I’d asked for was to spend the entire day with my mother. I planned the whole thing out—a fashion show with my dolls, a tea party, and a mother-daughter sleepover in the palace gardens. But that morning, there had been raiding and a land dispute in some part of the Emerald Kingdom. Instead of being with me, my mother spent my birthday hearing the people, settling disputes, and arranging aid to the village that was pillaged.
I spent the whole day crying in Verte’s lap, furious at my mother. She was the queen. She could do whatever she wanted, and she’d preferred to spend the day dealing with other people’s problems instead of being with me. That night, when my mom came to say good night, I rolled over and refused to speak to her. She kissed the back of my head and said, “It’s not about who I want to be; it’s about who I need to be.”
I never forgave her. I held that and many more things against her for years to come. She had made her choice: power first and being my mother somewhere way down the line.
I understood her choice much better now; it wasn’t power she chose but duty. I wanted to be the loving daughter and do what it took to bring my parents home, but I needed to be the princess that would keep the land safe from Griz and Blanc.
I had made my choice, and I was the one who was going to lose.