“No,” Daleina said, decided. “I won’t kill another queen. We will find a different way.” She raised her eyes to look at Naelin. Queen Naelin. It suits her, Daleina thought. Mother of Aratay. “There’s been enough death.”
Naelin was silent for a moment—Daleina felt as if she was being evaluated, all her flaws tallied up and slated for correction, all her strengths recognized and catalogued—before Naelin said, “Yes.”
At Daleina’s feet, Merecot groaned and tried to roll to the side, but the vines held her firm. The tree spirits chittered and tugged tighter on the vines. Bayn growled. Daleina knelt beside her old friend. Merecot’s eyes fluttered open, and Daleina felt a pang—sorrow? Anger? She didn’t know. Pity, maybe.
“You’re alive,” Merecot said.
“Yes.”
Merecot struggled once against the tree spirits and then lay still. “I heard you were ill. I knew Aratay would need a new queen. I came to help—”
“Don’t lie to me, Merecot,” Daleina said. “I know what you did, and I am sorry to inform you that your sister, Alet, is dead. And that it’s your fault.” The words felt like broken glass in her throat. It hurt to say them. Daleina thought of her own sister. The spirits had confirmed she was alive and well. Safe again, for now.
“Alet . . .” Merecot’s eyes filled with tears.
Daleina couldn’t tell if the tears were real or not. She hoped they were, for Alet’s sake.
Naelin spoke from behind Daleina. “Tell your spirits to stop fighting. Or ours will tear them apart, and Semo will be destroyed. Your mountains won’t survive the death of your spirits.” Her tone brooked no argument. Mother of the world, Daleina thought.
Merecot stared first at Naelin and then at Daleina. “You’re both . . . Oh, how very clever. And complicated. I don’t believe it’s ever been done before. However will you rule with two queens?”
“That’s not your concern,” Daleina told her.
“But Semo is my concern,” Merecot said, straining to sit upright. Even prone and tied, she commanded attention as if she were on a throne. She was born to be a queen. “We cannot survive as we are. We are overrun with spirits. There simply isn’t enough land to support them all. They’ll tear my land apart. Leave my people homeless. Helpless.”
“Then why didn’t you ask for help?” Daleina asked. “Why do this?”
Merecot snorted. “What would you have done if I’d come to you? Given me your country if only I’d said please?”
Merecot was every bit as infuriating as Daleina remembered. She wanted to shake her. Or scream. Or cry. All of this could have been avoided! If only Merecot had trusted her, tried to work together, done anything but this! “I don’t know! But we could have found a better solution, together.”
Kneeling next to Daleina, Naelin addressed Merecot. “We still can. It’s not too late. You’re going to go back home, with your spirits, and you’re going to send emissaries, in good faith. We will find an equitable solution through diplomacy that suits both our lands.”
“A solution that doesn’t involve murder,” Daleina said. “Merecot, how could you? Attempting to assassinate one of your only friends? And using your sister to do it?” She knew she was shouting but didn’t care.
Shackled by tree spirits, Merecot was a strange mix of haughty and pathetic, with her dress stained with dirt and blood and her crown askew on her head. Her black hair had slithered out of its elaborate braids. “I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Naelin said, and Daleina heard her hesitate before she added, “Granted, sometimes the only choices are bad.”
Merecot nodded as if she’d found an ally. “I faced a terrible choice: I could either be a good friend or a good queen, but I couldn’t be both. I was trying to save my people! You have to see that.”
“You can’t trust her,” Hamon said quietly.
“I don’t trust her,” Daleina told him. “But I do know her.” Merecot wanted to keep her throne. She wanted Semo strong and safe. She could be trusted to act in her own best interest.
“Daleina, please believe that I am sorry,” Merecot said. “I didn’t want—”
Daleina cut her off. “Here’s what is going to happen: you are going to take your spirits and go north. You are going to repair as much damage as you can on the way, and then you are going to cross the border and stay there. When you’re done licking your wounds, you are going to send emissaries, exactly as Queen Naelin said, and we are going to discuss Semo’s problem like civilized people.” She leaned forward. “And Merecot? Don’t confuse mercy for forgiveness.”
She ordered the tree spirits to release her, even as ideas started whirling in her head about what to do in Semo.
Linked through the spirits, Queen Daleina and Queen Naelin watched Queen Merecot as she flew on the backs of air spirits, instructing her spirits to restore the earth. Streams flowed again. Trees grew. And Aratay began to heal.
Naelin—Queen Naelin—positioned her son on her lap and her daughter next to her, tucked up against her, as she leaned against the trunk of one of the trees in the Queen’s Grove. Erian was breathing evenly, already asleep, and Llor was close to sleep. Naelin could feel Daleina guiding the spirits northward. Stretching her thoughts out, Naelin scooted them along as well, ordering them to assist in the cleanup. It wouldn’t be perfect. New trees could be grown, but old ones couldn’t be restored. Lost lives couldn’t be returned. But at least it felt good to be fixing things.
“This could be a mistake,” Ven said quietly. He was sitting at her back, on a root. She felt the warmth of his breath on her neck.
“It could be,” Naelin agreed. Merecot could simply try again. Send more assassins. Invade again. She could feel desperate now that her plan had failed. Or maybe she’d be smart and realize they could help. Together, they could find a better, less bloody solution. There had to be one.
“You don’t think it is.” It wasn’t a question. “If Daleina had decided to kill her . . . If I had agreed . . .” He sounded as if he already knew her answer before he even formed the words.
“Yes, I would have stopped you.” Leaning over her daughter, she pressed her lips to her sleeping daughter’s hair. It smelled a bit like smoke and a lot like dust. Erian’s hands and arms were streaked with dirt, and her palms were red. So were Llor’s. Later, she’d ask them all about what they’d seen and heard and did. For now, it was enough that they were together. A sudden thought occurred to her. “But you knew that. You knew that when you offered to kill her, didn’t you?” Twisting around as far as she could without disturbing her children, she met Ven’s eyes.
He caressed her cheek. “Yes.”
She smiled. “I’m that predictable?”
“You’re that good. You will be a good queen.”
Naelin looked across the grove toward Daleina. The queen of Aratay was standing beside her healer, and all her attention was focused northward. She hadn’t collapsed again, despite how much she was using her power. “Aratay already has a good queen.”
“And now it has two,” Ven said. “Doubly lucky. Like I am, for having found you.” He moved closer, leaning against her.