The Queen's Choice

  “Thanks for agreeing to come back to Chrior,” I murmured, not sure if the words would be welcome. He rolled his thumb across something he held before him, over the street. When the object caught the light, I recognized it as Evangeline’s locket. He let my expression of gratitude hang unanswered in the air.

  “How was she when you left? The Queen, I mean,” he finally asked, trailing a finger down one of the rusty metal posts.

  My breath seeped out of me, slow and reluctant as an apology. After so much time and conflict, it hadn’t dawned on me that he would, of course, still care. Ubiqua was his mother. He could think he hated her, and choose to leave her, but even those sentiments involved the heart. Indifference was the thing he would never be able to feel toward her. How many memories had risen to the surface for him since Illumina and I had arrived?

  “She was fine. That was almost three months ago, though, during the winter solstice. She didn’t know how quickly to expect death. All she seemed certain of was that she’s going to die.”

  “And you believe it?”

  I readjusted my position, wanting to look him in the eye, but he refused. Instead, he leaned his forehead against the railing, leaving me with no way to decipher the emotions that lurked behind the question.

  “Yes, I do.” I would have taken his hand, but he was examining the locket in earnest. “But, Zabriel, listen. This business with Evernook Island—it’s important, too. The people of Chrior and Warckum need to know what’s happening, and you’re in the best position of anyone to find the answers. I think Ubiqua would want you to investigate.”

  “I’m not doing it for her approval.” Zabriel raised his head to meet my gaze. “Anya, I know what kind of ruler you and my mother think Illumina would be, but she’s been spending a lot of time in human company. I think there’s hope for her, in spite of what happened earlier. She’s only fourteen, after all, and nobody’s ever really given her a chance.”

  I gave a dry, quiet laugh. “What you’re really saying is that you won’t rule. Not under any circumstances.”

  He paused, not wanting to admit it, not wanting to disappoint me. “The Fae wouldn’t follow me, anyway.”

  “Yes, they would,” I fervently contradicted. “Don’t you remember any of the good Fae? What about Ione and Davic and all your mother’s supporters? The people who were your friends? They’re the ones who are waiting to greet you back home. Is that so bad?”

  “No. But my mother pictured me as the ultimate liaison between humans and Fae, and at the moment, the humans consider me a criminal. That is bad, and it does prevent me from ruling like she envisioned. I won’t tell you that I find this state of affairs upsetting, but whether or not it’s convenient for me doesn’t change that it’s true.”

  “But in the Territory, you’re William Wolfram Pyrite. Don the garments and demeanor of a prince, and I doubt they’d ever make the connection. Besides, from what I hear, the average citizen idolizes you. If you want to walk away from the Laura a second time, then do it, but don’t make excuses.”

  Zabriel pulled his hand back through the rail and shoved the locket into his pocket, and I thought he was going to go inside, tired of gnawing on this subject. But he turned and looked me over the way a scientist approaches a specimen—curious, a little apprehensive, but approving, perhaps even fascinated.

  “It really is too bad about your wings, Anya. I have no doubt that out of the three of us cousins, you’re the best choice for ruler.”

  “And I’m the only one who unequivocally can’t rule. But perhaps you don’t understand the extent of the Queen’s objections to Illumina. Before I left Chrior, my father hinted that Ubiqua might have sent Illumina out here to die.”

  I made the grisly statement as fast and unfeelingly as I could, not wanting to think about it and not quite ready to believe it. Zabriel didn’t have such problems.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. The Queen has always been willing to make hard decisions without regret.”

  “She wouldn’t,” I responded automatically, but my exclamation was rhetorical and Zabriel knew it. Was his cynicism designed to make me see things as he did? Why else would he feel the need to sow seeds of doubt? His relationship with Ubiqua had always been different from mine, but our opinions were more disparate now than ever. Being apart from her had permitted him to cultivate his resentment and ignore the good. She was one of the most celebrated rulers in Chrior’s history. More than that, her campaign for peace and integration was in line with his personal values. Mother and son weren’t opposite people, whatever he wanted to believe.

  Aunt Roxy’s cat waddled onto the balcony and jumped to the railing, pacing above our heads in the discomfited silence that had fallen.

  “When did Illumina get to Sheness?” I asked, redirecting the conversation to the subject with which we had started. “I knew she had a good lead on me but you talk like she’s been under surveillance for a while.”

  “I first heard she was asking after me almost three weeks ago.” Zabriel soaked up this simpler topic with pleasure. “I’m not going back on what I said about her having potential, but she is a strange one, I’ll grant you that.”

  “Why? What’s she been up to?”

  “For the most part, she’s been hanging around The Paladin. If she had any intelligence on me, she was probably just following bread crumbs, but...I don’t know.” He laughed with fleeting humor. “Let’s just say she’s a bit too comfortable there.”

  “Do you know how she got here?” I threw the question out as a matter of curiosity, since I was sure she hadn’t come through Oaray. “I don’t think she took the same route I did.”

  “I know she has travel papers like you and me. In this part of the Territory, you can’t go far without having your identity checked by an officer of the law. Or at least without being forced to pay for an officer’s silence.”

  “She couldn’t have papers.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because Spex was working as a documents supplier in Oaray, and he told me he hadn’t seen her. He took over for Deangelo a while ago, though Nature only knows what happened to the old man to clear the post.”

  “Maybe Spex lied.”

  “I don’t think so. He told me he spotted Evangeline.”

  Zabriel cocked an eyebrow. “Well, she made it somehow. I suppose Enerris could have gotten her papers when he was alive.”

  “Maybe,” I allowed, not having entertained that possibility before. “She didn’t say anything about it, though, not to anyone. My father and the Queen are under the impression this is her original Crossing.”

  I found it difficult to conceive that Illumina’s father would have taken her beyond our homeland’s borders, which were protected to the west and south by the Bloody Road and to the north and east by impassible mountains. But in retrospect, anything was possible when it came to Enerris. He had, after all, tried to poison his own nephew with the Queen seated not fifteen paces away. If he had ushered his daughter on a secret and unofficial Crossing, what could have been his purpose? He’d been a human-hater, reviling the Warckum Territory. He’d done everything in his power to keep Illumina’s mind closed and her hatred alive. Providing her with experience in the human world ran counter to that goal. It didn’t make sense to me.

  “Do you feel bad for her?” I asked, the question springing from my own memories of her father, one of the few adults I had feared as a child.

  “Because her father was a madman?”

  “That, and...because she carves herself up. I can’t help worrying about her.”

  “You don’t worry about her,” Zabriel corrected, bringing one leg up beside him so he could face me fully, dark eyes binding me in place. “You worry about what she could do. There’s a difference. When I ran away, I had to come to terms with a lot of things...including more than a few unpleasant tr
uths about myself. My guess about you is that if Illumina died, you would be more relieved than sad.”

  I sat unmoving, letting his assertion sink in. It was a revolting notion and, I realized, more than likely true. Being around Illumina made me nervous. I couldn’t recall ever really enjoying her company. My hopes that she’d stop scarifying herself and that she wouldn’t hurt anyone else didn’t equal love. They equaled distrust and pity. The worst part was that she’d told me time and again, “You’re good to me, Anya. I know you care, Anya,” which had to mean I treated her better than most people did. And yet I wouldn’t be sad at her loss if she died—only sad that she hadn’t had a better life.

  “That doesn’t make you a bad person,” Zabriel resumed. “And you can’t help the way you feel, so you may as well be honest about it. My mother never was. She always acted like Illumina was normal and ignored all the things Enerris did to her. It begs the question, which is more harmful to a little girl, causing her pain or failing to stop it?”

  “Enerris hurt her, then.” It was a statement because I couldn’t justify making it a question. The words scarred into her back that she couldn’t have written herself—belief, strength, power, perseverance—were proof enough. But there were also the messages marring her skin that read more like indoctrination than philosophy, messages like keep silent your screams and never look back.

  A breeze, salty even this deep into the metropolis, tousled my cousin’s silver-blond hair as he nodded.

  “Illumina wasn’t born the way she is. She’s a victim, and not just of her father. My mother should have protected her, only she chose to look the other way.”

  “Are you saying Illumina blames the Queen?”

  “I’m saying I blame the Queen. I don’t think Illumina even knows the extent to which she’s been wronged. I mean, no one’s ever told her she didn’t deserve it.”

  “Somebody must have—”

  “Not if that’s what everybody’s been assuming. Think about it. We can all pass the problem on to someone else, and so on, and so on, until in the end no one does anything.”

  I looked at my hands, bleak and ghostly against the dark rail tinged with rust, feeling my gut was similarly tinged with shame.

  “My mother would have,” I murmured, my voice barely audible. I didn’t know if that was true or if I just wanted to believe it.

  “Your mother was always doing things that other people never thought to do.”

  “Did she for you, too?”

  He smiled despite himself. He could smirk and grin and make light of a hundred situations, but this smile emerged unrestrained and uncalculated. All Fae had elemental connections, but that was my mother’s unique form of magic.

  Though I wanted to keep talking, Zabriel was getting to his feet. There were other things I needed to ask him, I realized with a jolt of desperation, things that deserved attention and conversation. Though the question that rolled out of me deserved an introduction, I couldn’t lose this opportunity. I didn’t know when I would next have him to myself, especially in a divulging mood.

  “Zabriel, I saw your wanted poster in Tairmor.”

  He froze in a crouch, as though he’d almost walked away clean.

  “It said you were a murderer. Is that true?”

  He glanced out over the street. In a rickety house a few blocks down, a light flared, and somewhere in the distance glass broke and dogs barked, neither sound loud enough to wake a soul under Aunt Roxy’s roof.

  “Gwyneth told me how a lot of things you never did have been blamed on you,” I ventured, heart threatening to leap into my throat. “You can say she was right if you want and I won’t ask again.”

  He swiped at the hair that stuck out over his forehead, then knelt beside me.

  “Gwyneth was right, Anya, but not about that. When I left the Faerie Realm, I ended up in Sheness, since that was the farthest I could go from home. After I was here for a while, I found that my skills, so to speak, offered me certain advantages, and so I became a pirate. You wouldn’t really have expected me to become a butcher or a blacksmith, now, would you? The tale might be one of pure adventure if this was a child’s storybook, but in the real world, the best lies and the worst reputations all start with a grain of truth, something nobody can deny.”

  He offered me his hand, and I took it because I wouldn’t have been able to stand without help. I was gripped by fear, already sure of the answer he would give me. I wished I hadn’t asked the question, and whether he was Fae or human, I wanted him to lie.

  “It’s true, Anya. I killed somebody. And that’s the foundation for my reputation, the reason the name Pyrite means what it does.”

  I closed my eyes, dumbstruck by his unflinching honesty, terrified of what it meant if I could look past murder when it came to him. I was either a hypocrite or I had to open my mind to the possibility that murder was forgivable. Would my mother have been able to do that?

  Incarnadine was the one who would have had the answers; she should have ruled Chrior upon Ubiqua’s death, preventing the burden from falling too soon upon my generation. While I wouldn’t generally admit it, we were still children...however capable we were of horrific deeds.

  I walked toward the door, but Zabriel gripped my shoulder. Did he want to explain? I faced him, but instead of elaborating, he wrapped his arms around me, tucking my head under his chin.

  “One of these days, I’ll tell you what I’d be giving up if I became the Prince of Chrior again. In the meantime, I missed you, too, Anya.”

  I squeezed him back. Whatever had happened before and whatever would happen after, at least my cousins and I were together tonight, safe in this little house in the heart of Sheness. The rest could be sorted out another day, by people smarter and more experienced than we.

  We went inside and I lay down on my mattress, staring up at the ceiling. The moon had shifted enough to suggest Zabriel and I had spent a couple of hours together on the balcony. I sighed, no more tired than I’d been before. Catching a slight movement, I spied Zabriel, little more than a shadow pausing by the stairs, reaching into his coat pocket. He withdrew the chain of Evangeline’s necklace, letting it stretch and spin as he brought the pendant into the open once more. His countenance was invisible in the dark, but the token Fi had charged me to give him was eating at him; that couldn’t be denied. Eventually, he collected the chain in his palm, clenched his hand into a fist, and lifted off the ground to float down the steps on Faerie wings, silent as any specter.

  * * *

  I landed on the lip of Illumina’s alcove amidst the lower middle branches of the Redwood, tucking my wings securely against my back. Though my father had offered her a room in our home in the aftermath of Enerris’s banishment, she had refused the invitation. Worried that she might be lonely now that her only living parent was gone, I had adopted the habit of checking on her twice a day.

  There was a flurry of noise from inside, and I listened intently to the bumps, clangs, and rustles. At the sound of something being dragged across the floor, I went in without knocking, both concerned and curious.

  Illumina was surrounded by several large burlap sacks that overflowed with possessions—clothing, knickknacks, letters and other correspondence, and what looked to be the entire contents of the desk in the corner.

  “What’s going on?” I dared to ask.

  My voice startled my young cousin. Her green eyes glowed wildly between the black moss curtains of her hair, and her hand dropped to the dagger at her hip. A stab of panic went through me, accompanied by an image of her pulling her knife to attack. Then recognition came to her and she straightened, arms spreading, welcoming me to take in the scene.

  “I’m removing my father’s belongings,” she explained.

  She was indeed—all of his things, so not a trace of him remained outside of those burlap sacks.


  “Why?” I pressed, more than a little unsettled.

  As far as Illumina knew, her father would be coming back. Queen Ubiqua had couched her decision to exile him in terms of sending him on an assignment to learn more about life in the Warckum Territory. Granted, after Enerris had tempted Zabriel with Sale at the Queen’s birthday, few Fae were dense enough to believe that’s all there was to the story, but we kept up the pretense for his twelve-year-old daughter’s sake. She didn’t need to know the full extent of his punishment. Not yet.

  Illumina brushed her hair away from her face. “I appreciate what you and the others are trying to do, Anya. Especially you. I know you want me to be all right. I won’t forget that. But I’m not stupid.”

  “I never thought you were.”

  I came farther into the room, my gaze never straying from my cousin’s visage. Her incredible intelligence shone brighter than the gold of the royal ring on her finger. Her speech alone, so beyond that of her peers, was enough to give it away, without the sparks her ever-active brain sent into her eyes.

  “My father isn’t coming back,” she continued. “The Queen banished him for trying to kill her son, which was the right thing to do, the only thing to do.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you’ll never see him again. And it certainly doesn’t mean you need to erase the evidence that he existed. He’s only been gone three days, for Nature’s sake.”

  Illumina had already considered this perspective and had an answer at the ready.

  “What my father did was unforgivable. It was idiotic. If Zabriel had died, did he think Faefolk would admire him? No. They would have wept for Ubiqua if not for the Prince himself. If I kept trinkets that belonged to him, they would just be a reminder of his failures. And as for seeing him again...” Illumina gave a wispy smile as she tied the sacks full of memories closed. “Well, cousin, I know my father better than you do. He won’t live among the humans. His dignity won’t stand for it.”