The Reluctant Queen

  Trembling, the woman held out her hand, fingers curled shut. Daleina waited while the woman turned her fist over and then opened her fingers. An acorn lay on the palm of her hand.

  Daleina cupped her own hands, and the woman poured the acorn onto them. “Thank you for this gift.” The words of this ritual were simple, even if the action that followed was not. Dropping the formal tone, she pleaded, “Please, would you return to your village? For your own safety.” Go, you trusting fools.

  The woman shook her head. “We will stay, Your Majesty. You will keep us safe.”

  Daleina tried again. “I can’t promise that. You should leave.”

  But the woman only smiled. “We trust your power. And we trust you.” Behind her, all of them bobbed their heads. “You ended the Coronation Massacre.”

  She wanted to argue more, but she couldn’t spare the time or the energy, and she most certainly didn’t wish to talk about Coronation Day, a day that had gone from beautiful ritual to nightmare fodder when, rather than choosing whom to crown queen, the spirits had killed all the other heirs—her friends—and nearly killed her. She closed her eyes briefly to blink away that memory, and opened them up to look at the elders.

  Pure trust shone from the villagers’ eyes, the way babies gaze at their mothers. Telling herself to let their faith fuel her, Daleina knelt, laid the acorn on her lap, and dug her fingers into the soft earth. Come to me, she called. She felt the earth shift and rumble, as if it trembled from an earthquake. Gently, softly, come to me.

  The earth buckled under her, and she saw the men and women topple to their knees. Idiots, she thought, and then she didn’t spare them another thought. This required all her concentration. Gently, softly, come to me, she repeated.

  A mud-covered hand burst out of the ground. Moss peeled away as if it were the peel of an orange, and a small manlike creature pulled himself halfway out of the ground. His voice was the crunch of rock, but she didn’t understand the words. She guessed he was insulting her. She showed him the acorn. Prepare the earth, she told him.

  His face stretched into a toothless smile. Several tongues flicked out. She followed his gaze and saw he was ogling the villagers. This was the most critical time: after a spirit was summoned, when its hatred of humans was freshest.

  Again, she pushed her will firmly at him: Dig, now.

  With a scowl, he dove back into the earth. She stood, knees braced, as the ground rolled beneath her like the sea. He and his kin would soften it beneath, prepare it for the roots that would come. Next, she needed tree spirits. Lots of them. Come, she called to the trees, the bushes, the grasses, the thorns, the flowers. Stepping back, she dropped the acorn into the hole that the earth spirit had left behind. Make it grow, tall and strong.

  Laughing, the tree spirits separated themselves from the shadows of the forest. Tall, lithe, and translucent green, they danced through the grove. Flowers flowed from their hair. Moss flourished in their footprints. Daleina spread her arms wide, welcoming them. She pushed her mind toward them, sharing an image of the acorn, sprouting. The spirits flowed to her, pressed close, and then swirled around the hole.

  Yes! That’s right!

  Her vision split, and she saw through their eyes as they poured their energy into the acorn. The nut split open, and a tendril of green burst from its brown shell. It unfurled. Still laughing, the tree spirits danced faster, a whirl around her. She felt the sprout thicken and grow. More leaves poked out of it, and she felt as if the leaves were poking out of her flesh. Below, the earth spirit softened the soil, and the acorn’s roots shot through the ground, thickening and hardening. The tree shot toward the sky, higher and higher, growing thicker and thicker. Branches stabbed out from it.

  Shape it, she ordered the spirits. She pictured the trunk opening wide to form houses within. The branches were to be stairs, rooms were to be formed and shaped as if carved out of the soft inner wood. She pressed this image out toward the spirits, and they howled—they wanted the tree to be wild and free; she wanted it to be a new home for the villagers who lived on the forest floor, a safe home, above the dangers of the wolves and bears and countless creatures who hunted at night.

  She pressed harder and harder, bearing down on the spirits, filling their minds, and they in turn forced the tree to grow in the shape she pictured. Grow higher, wider, like this . . . She added more rooms and more. This tree would house many. Above, the branches spread into a canopy, blotting out the sun.

  And then, without warning, her mind went dark.

  Sightless, she heard the spirits shrieking and then heard the men and women screaming—for her, for themselves—as she toppled onto the churned dirt.

  Chapter 2

  She woke to blood: on the dirt, on the trees, on her skin. It even seemed to stain the sky, until her mind woke enough to realize that she was seeing her white skirts, billowing in the wind, not the clouds overhead. Around her, she heard shrieking, shrill, mixed with laughter that was as wild as a tornado. The spirits were creating the wind as they swirled through the grove.

  Suddenly, pain shot through her leg, sharp and fast, and she screamed, loud and high. Jerking forward, she clutched at her thigh, and a tree spirit skittered away from her on all fours. Leering, it wiped her blood from its mouth.

  “No!” she shouted. “Stop!”

  There was blood, as if it had been flung from a bucket, in every direction. Her mind took an extra second to understand what she was seeing: the spirits had torn the men and women to pieces and thrown their body parts around the grove. That, there—it wasn’t a root; it was a leg. And that was a torso, cracked open like a shellfish and then shredded. Daleina balled up every bit of her mind that wasn’t screaming and threw it at the spirits. Stop! I am your queen, and I command you, stop now!

  All stilled.

  The spirits hung in the air. All of them stared at her with their blank, translucent eyes. One held the head of a woman. Blood pooled on the ground below and sank into the moss, staining it a deep russet red.

  You will obey me.

  One of them laughed, shrill, and then fell instantly silent as Daleina, forcing away the pain, pushed herself up to sitting and then slowly stood. She felt the blood run down her leg, warm and wet, and her knees shook. But she stayed upright. She reached with her mind toward the one who had laughed.

  Burn, she commanded.

  It twisted and writhed, screamed and cried, but she held her order firmly in her mind. The spirit began to fade, growing more and more faint, and she knew elsewhere in the forest, a great tree burned, wreathed in fire spirits. She’d learned this since she’d become queen: kill a wood spirit and a tree dies, but kill the right tree and a spirit dies. Reaching farther, she called to the water spirits.

  Do not let the fire spread, she told them.

  She watched the fading tree spirit. It continued to contort itself, its face now more childlike. It wept tears of polished amber. In only seconds, the spirit vanished, and all that remained was a pile of yellow jewels.

  Across the forest, the fire died with the tree. Daleina half felt and half saw the water spirits douse the embers, seeing it distorted through their eyes. At last, the ashes were cold, and the spirits danced as if oblivious to the death of their kin.

  She turned then to the others, who held themselves still and silent.

  Build.

  She felt their relief and joy as they flew up toward the branches and wanted to rip that feeling from them. . . . No, I can’t hurt them. Clamping down on her feelings, she let the spirits build, and the tree began to grow again, shaped into the village she had planned. She pivoted slowly, painfully, to face the bodies of the villagers who had come to watch.

  They were all dead.

  Except no, the old woman still breathed. She lay on the ground, unmarked except for a dark wet patch on her stomach. Daleina took a step toward her, and her leg crumpled under her. Gritting her teeth, she crawled the rest of the way. She lay beside the old woman.

  The w
oman opened her tiny eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Daleina said. It’s my fault. They’re dead, and it’s my fault. I was supposed to protect them. They trusted me, and I failed. . . .

  “Kill me,” the woman whispered.

  “I’ll fetch healers . . .” She should have told Hamon to meet her here, or at least let Bayn join her. The wolf could have held some of the spirits off, or also been killed. I should have made them leave. I shouldn’t have come at all.

  “Won’t heal.” The woman moved her gnarled hand to shift the fabric of her shirt. The wound was through her stomach, her organs pierced. A fatal wound. She’d die slowly, painfully, inevitably, poisoned from within.

  “I can’t kill you,” Daleina said, unable to take her eyes off the wound.

  The woman made a sound that could have been a laugh or a cough. “You already have, Your Majesty. Show me the queen’s mercy.” Each word was a forced whisper.

  Daleina held her gaze for a long moment, until the old woman closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” Daleina said again, but she knew the words weren’t enough to make this right, and she didn’t deserve forgiveness. Another massacre, and this time it’s all my fault. Sorrow, guilt, hate, rage . . . all of those emotions rose into Daleina’s throat, and she forced them down into a tight knot deep inside.

  Drawing Ven’s knife from her bodice, Daleina pressed it to the woman’s throat. With one quick hard stroke, she severed her jugular. Bright arterial blood sprayed onto Daleina, covering her hand and arm.

  She turned her head to look at the tree spirits. They’d done her bidding, built the tree village as tall and strong as she might have wished.

  Go, she told them.

  They fled into the forest.

  She wanted to call them back, cause them all to burn, but she knew she shouldn’t. If she destroyed every spirit for following its own nature, she’d destroy her home. The spirits were tied to the land, and the land to them. She could not have one without the other. Revenge against the spirits was pointless; it would hurt the land and not bring these people back. But it was so very, very difficult to hold that truth in her mind.

  She pushed her thoughts toward the earth, summoning the earth spirits. Bury them. Obeying, the earth spirits widened the ground beneath the torn bodies of the villagers. She made herself watch, to feel the responsibility for these deaths, as the ground closed over them. When they finished, she sent the earth spirits back into the ground and called the spirits of water and air, together.

  At her command, rain fell on what was once an open grove and was now a shaded grave. The blood ran into streams and into the earth, washed away. She let the rain fall on her, soaking through her bloody dress, washing her own wound. Pain throbbed in her leg. But she ignored it until the rain had done its work.

  When the spirits were again gone, she tore one of the layers of her skirt and bound her thigh tightly. The tree spirit had merely begun to feast on her flesh. It hadn’t sliced deeper, and for that, she was grateful. Still, she felt weak and dizzy, though she didn’t know if that was from blood loss, shock, or whatever had caused her to black out so completely that her commands were broken.

  This shouldn’t have happened, she thought. She’d been crowned; the spirits shouldn’t have been able to revert to wildness, even with her unconscious. This wasn’t the way it worked. Revi, Linna, Zie . . . they’d lost their lives, but she’d been crowned and that should have kept everyone else safe. The deaths should have ended on that day. I’d promised myself: no more innocents will die. Six months into her reign, she’d broken her promise.

  She looked around the former grove. At least when the other villagers came, they would not find their new home stained with blood. They could begin anew here. Minus their loved ones. Hobbling to the tree, she took out her knife again and carved seven lines, one for each death, so that the villagers would know their kin’s fate.

  Keeping a tight rein on her emotions, Daleina summoned the air spirits. Carry me home. They lifted her into the air and flew her fast over the top of the green. She focused on the horizon ahead, determined to not lose consciousness again. When they burst through the canopy, she heard the cheers of the people in the trees . . . only to hear the cheers die as they saw her, her dress limp and pink with the watery blood.

  The air spirits delivered her to her balcony. She forced herself to stand, and she released the spirits. Spiraling upward, they fled. Leaves and branches shook in their wake.

  Queen Daleina looked out at the trees, at her people. She pitched her voice so it would carry. “Seven are dead. But the tree is grown, and the village will thrive. It is done.” She then pivoted and walked into her chambers without waiting to hear their response.

  Out of sight of the crowd, she fell as her leg gave out. She was caught by familiar arms, and this time, when darkness came, she welcomed it.

  When she opened her eyes, there was no blood. There were no bodies. Only Alet, who sat on one side of her, and Hamon, who sat on the other in his blue Royal Healer robes—he must have been summoned when she collapsed in her room. Daleina lay in her own bed, swaddled in silken sheets and nestled among many pillows. Her wound was dressed in bandages, and she wore a nightgown. She wished she hadn’t woken up, at least not yet, so she wouldn’t have to remember why she lay there. It was too late now, though. Her leg throbbed, but her head was clear.

  “Your Majesty?” Alet asked, a dozen questions in her voice.

  Not ready to speak yet, Daleina gazed up at the colorful lace canopy above her, intricately embroidered with images of the forest at peace: deer drinking from a stream, bluebells blossoming between the trees, leaves dancing in the wind, and she wanted to tear the canopy apart. It lies. The forest is never at peace.

  “Tell us what happened, Your Majesty,” Hamon said, his voice deep and soothing. He’d practiced that voice, she knew. She also knew he wasn’t as calm as he sounded. He didn’t possess Alet’s skill at looking expressionless. He always felt things so deeply that it bubbled up and overflowed—it helped make him such a great healer. Besides, Daleina had known him since she was a candidate. She knew his face better than she knew her own—his spring-green eyes, his midnight-black skin, his sharp chin, his soft mouth, and now the crease in his forehead between his eyebrows that said he was worried. Fleetingly, she wondered if he missed kissing her with those soft lips, and then she pushed that thought to the back of her mind, lumping it with all the guilt and anger and regret that she couldn’t afford to feel right now.

  “You already know,” Daleina told him. Her voice came out as a croak. Alet pressed a cup of water into her hands, and with Hamon and Alet’s help, she was propped up on pillows. She drank and then tried to speak again. “The world went dark, and I lost control of the spirits.”

  “They could have killed you,” Hamon said flatly, and Daleina knew he was fighting back more than worry. There was fear in his eyes. For her? For their people? Both? He’d seen her bloody before. He’d been with her during her training, sewed her skin back together more than once, stanched her wounds, nursed her damaged eyes until they healed.

  “Why didn’t they?” Alet asked.

  Daleina saw Hamon shoot her a dark look. But it was a valid question. “I don’t know.” The spirits might not think like humans, but they did think. Killing the queen would have set them all free, and the bloodbath would have spread beyond the grove to the entire forest. That was what the spirits had tried to achieve after the last queen had died, on Coronation Day, when they’d murdered all the other heirs. “Maybe they didn’t kill me because I wasn’t running away. Or they wanted to save me for dessert.” Or maybe they didn’t want to destroy Aratay. As much as the spirits hated having a queen, they needed one to keep them in balance. To keep them from tearing Aratay apart in their bloodlust.

  “But if they’d killed you without an heir . . .” Alet began.

  “I know,” Daleina cut her off. She knew better than anyone. Closing her eyes, she wished she could stop picturing the blo
od on the moss and on the spirits’ teeth. She wished she could stop seeing the broken bodies from Coronation Day, her friends with the light gone from their eyes and the breath ripped from their lungs.

  “You shouldn’t have taken the risk,” Alet insisted.

  “I had to. I had to buy time.” She opened her eyes, wishing she could will them to understand, the way she could force her will on the spirits.

  Alet was scowling. “Time for what?”

  “Time to cure me.” Daleina touched Alet’s arm, knowing she didn’t want to hear this, but it was pointless to hide it anymore, at least from her. The blackouts had started three weeks earlier and were becoming more frequent. “It’s getting worse, Alet. The blackouts. I can’t predict them. I can’t control them. More will die if this sickness . . . or whatever is wrong with me . . . isn’t stopped. I had to make a grand gesture while I still could.” Shifting on her pillows, she fixed her gaze on Hamon. “You’ve had my blood for days now. Tell me what you have discovered.”

  Hamon shifted his eyes toward Alet, as if he wanted to ask her to leave.

  Daleina felt her insides clench. It’s bad. I know it. He wouldn’t hesitate if it wasn’t serious. She imagined building a wall around her heart. Whatever the news, it won’t break me.

  “You should rest first,” Hamon said, “and then we’ll talk.”

  Alet’s fingers curled around Daleina’s hand, but Daleina shook her away and straightened, sitting upright against the gold headboard. She would be strong on her own. “Don’t worry about Alet, Hamon. Tell me. This is not a request.”

  He took Daleina’s other hand and held it tight, so she would not pull away. “I have run every test twice. Some even more. Every answer has been the same. I’d run them a dozen more, if I thought it would change, if there was a shred of doubt—”

  “Quit dithering, Hamon,” Daleina cut him off. Her heart felt as if it were beating doubly loud, and she thought she heard a roaring in her ears. Placing her other hand on his, she pried his fingers off of hers. She laid both hands freely, calmly on her lap. She wouldn’t let Hamon or Alet see what she felt. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”