Her vision swam again as the black blots popped like bubbles.
On an ordinary morning, Llor would have been calling for help with tying the drawstring on his pants, and Erian would be trying to slip past her without brushing her hair. Erian hated to brush her hair and would avoid it for days if allowed to, at which point it would be more snarled than a bird’s nest. Naelin would then have to brush it out strand by strand, joking about how many birds were living on Erian’s head.
Consumed by her chaotic thoughts, Naelin didn’t realize she was pushing harder and harder against the mirror until she knocked the glass out of its frame. Lunging forward, she tried to catch it, but it hit the wall and shattered in her hands.
She pulled her hands back. A shard had sliced one of her palms. Blood welled up in the cut, and she stared at it fascinated at the brilliant red against her skin. It didn’t hurt, not at first, but then it did.
Holding her wounded hand in the air, she walked to the kitchen, turned on the water, and winced as the cold hit the cut. Blood mixed with the water and pooled in the bottom of the sink. She wrapped a towel tight around her hand and tied it off, one-handed. The cut wasn’t deep but it was long. She looked back across the kitchen to the bedroom and saw the drops of blood that she’d left in a trail. Getting to her knees, she scrubbed it with another towel.
She again lost track of who she was and why she was here.
That was how the village leader found the queen of Aratay, on her hands and knees, cleaning his floor with one hand while cradling her other bandaged hand against her.
“Your Majesty!”
She heard the shock in his voice. Didn’t care.
“Are you injured? Let me send for the doctor—”
Naelin stood as memory and awareness slammed back into her. “I’m well.”
That was a lie, though. And not because of the cut.
I will never be “well” again. I endangered my children. All of this is my fault. If I weren’t queen, they’d never have been taken. “Champion Ven and I will be returning to the capital shortly,” she said. “I thank you for your hospitality.”
She stared at the towel in her hand, wondering what she’d been doing—cleaning when she should be on her way to Mittriel. She was wasting precious time while Erian and Llor were in danger. But it was so hard to think through the throbbing in her head.
“The villagers . . . That is, we wish to hold a memorial service for your children, if you would like that. We are a small village, and it could not be anything fancy, like in Mittriel, but we wish to show our respect for your loss—”
“No.”
He looked lost. “Forgive me, Your Majesty—”
“They aren’t dead.”
“Of course.” She could tell from his voice that he didn’t believe her, but he also feared angering her. “Please, we meant no disrespect—”
Naelin brushed past him, unable to summon the strength to be polite. She stepped out of his home and into the village center. Already it was bustling with people going about their daily lives as if it were a mere ordinary day, and she felt as if she’d stepped into a bizarre dream. How could they live their lives like normal when her children were missing? How could the sun shine, the wind blow, life continue? She felt so much anger and fear and guilt and pain churning inside her that she thought it must be radiating out of her, staining everything.
Pausing, the people watched her as she passed. She heard them, distantly, as if they were speaking to her underwater. Deepest sympathy. Express our condolences. Such a tragedy. We know how you feel. We have lost—
Children.
Fathers.
Mothers.
Brothers.
Sisters.
Friends.
We have lost too. Time will help. Time heals all wounds. You must celebrate their lives. You are lucky to have had them for as long as you had. They’ll always be a part of you. Be strong. Everything happens for a reason. All things must pass.
She didn’t acknowledge them, not even to tell them they were wrong—her children weren’t dead! But she was too focused on the task ahead to care what they thought or said. First, find Ven, and then we’ll leave, return to the capital, and plot out the best way to rescue my children from Semo. She’d welcome all the help she could get—when she struck at Merecot, she wanted to be certain she would not fail.
I failed my children when it mattered most; I won’t fail them again. I will save them from Merecot, no matter what it takes.
A man stood in her path.
He looked familiar—one of the villagers she’d spoken to before? “I know why you said no,” he said. “You were afraid. Because of your kids. You didn’t want to draw spirits to your kids, and so you didn’t use your power. Fear made you say no. But you lost them anyway, because life is cruel like that, and no matter how careful we are, sometimes bad things happen. Can’t stop the bad things, no matter how much you hide.”
“Why are you saying this?” He wasn’t spouting the typical sympathetic drivel that all the other villagers had been spewing. In fact, he sounded almost hostile, on the verge of insulting her.
“Because you don’t have anything more to lose. So you might as well use your power. We heard—we all heard—what you did. Sending the spirits to their death in Semo, making more barren areas. You clearly aren’t afraid of doing harm anymore, so you shouldn’t be afraid of doing good. You’re supposed to be the Mother of Aratay, you know, not just a mother of two.”
Before he could say anything more, other villagers swarmed around them, shushing him, apologizing to her, and bowing deeply as they pulled him away. She stood, staring, as he was shepherded into one of the shops, out of sight.
How dare he? she thought.
He’s right, she also thought.
Not about the library, of course—the callousness of using her emotions to get such a trivial thing made her want to tear the man’s eyes out. But about her power in general . . .
Until Erian and Llor are back with me, I have nothing. And so, I have nothing to lose. No one can hurt me, because I am hurt beyond repair. No one can kill me, for without them, I am already dead.
Holding on to that concept like Llor held Boo-Boo, she closed her eyes and called to the spirits. She felt . . . not rage . . . but fear, their fear of her, and it tasted like copper on the back of her throat. She swallowed it down, consumed it, and wrapped it in her own fear for her children. The spirits drew closer to her.
They didn’t want to be afraid of her, their chosen queen, she sensed, but they’d felt her last command, felt the deaths of their brethren as they clashed with the spirits of Semo. She could feel the spirits straining, torn between the need to hide and the need to fly and run and build and destroy. Come, she told them. Build. She guided them in, toward the heart of the village, and then she pushed an image into their minds: a library with soaring turrets, spiral stairs with curled railings, shelf after shelf all engraved with images of vines and roses. She picked the most fanciful library she could imagine, a castle of a library, high in the trees, the kind that would have seen Erian squeal with joy and Llor ask to climb to the tippiest-top, and she thrust the command into the minds of the spirits.