“Keep it hidden,” Timbago warned me.
“I will.”
“Now.” Timbago grabbed my hand and turned it palm up. “Forget all of this. I’ve healed your hand, and now you can go meet the dragon warriors in the throne room. That’s what I’m doing now. I’m healing your hand.”
“You already—”
“I’ll heal your hand, and we won’t tell anyone about this,” he said, his bright eyes still boring into mine, muddling my mind. “You don’t want them to know about the shard you kept. It’s not time for them to know. Not yet.”
“How did you…?” I tried to focus. “The mirror shard, I’ve kept it hidden. Secret.”
“The shard is secret. Between me and you alone, Your Majesty. Now is not the time for anyone else to know. Not even the dragon.”
My mind cleared suddenly, like I was waking up from a long night’s sleep, and I shook my head, trying to focus. “Timbago? What are you doing here?
Timbago smiled at me. “You’re needed in the throne room, Your Majesty. The dragon scouts have returned.”
“What about Winston? He’s with them, isn’t he?”
“He’s with them, Your Majesty.” Timbago patted my hand gently. “The crown prince is fine. Now, come along. You don’t want to keep the crown prince waiting.”
I nodded. “Let’s go find out what Winston and the others have learned.”
Chapter Thirteen
“The Fate Maker is on the main road,” Winston announced as he met me at the foot of the main staircase. “His forces will be here soon.”
“How?” I rushed into the room, and everyone scurried to get out of my way. I ignored the mass of bowing dragons and stalked to my throne. “If the Fate Maker’s army is at Bekal how did he get them here this fast?”
“They’re using magic,” Ardere said, leaning against the white marble window ledge. “He’ll be here before the sun reaches its highest point at midday. Maybe sooner.”
“How many? How big is his army?”
“Big,” Winston said. “Very big. And he’s got wizards.”
“Including the ambassador from Bathune,” John said. “Ambassador Eriste is gone. He must have fled the palace sometime during the night. Most likely to join the Fate Maker’s army.”
“That—”
“Exactly,” he said, his eyes narrowed.
“And our army? Rhys?” I looked at the young man who was in charge of my troops. “Do you have enough warriors to fight? Have the volunteers all arrived safely?”
“The soldiers have been inside the walls since last night,” Rhys said. “I inspected them already this morning. When the time comes we’ll be ready.”
Loud, panicked bells tolled out in the distance, urging my people to find safety, to hide anywhere that the Fate Maker wasn’t. To run as far away as they could get, as fast as they could get there.
“What about the people who aren’t fighting? The children? The families? Have they evacuated into the forests?” Fear for my people rose in my throat. I didn’t want to take the chance of any innocents dying if I could help it.
“The ones who wanted to flee have gone,” Rhys explained. “The rest have been flooding into the palace, ready to fight. The back garden is filled with volunteer fighters.”
“I don’t care about the back garden. I just want everyone safe. We need to make sure that the Fate Maker doesn’t get to the people hiding in the forest. We have to stop him here so they have the chance to escape.”
“We’ll keep them safe,” Winston assured me with a gentle squeeze of my hand. “I promise.”
“Good,” I said. “So the question is, what do we do now?”
“I get our army into position,” Rhys said. “Then, when his men attack we’ll be ready.”
“Are they ready to fight against the Fate Maker and his monsters?”
“They could be better.” Rhys swallowed and ran a hand up over his face. “Correction: they have been better, but they’ll hold up under attack. For a while, at least.”
“Right. Okay. That’s good. If we can just hold him off long enough, maybe he’ll go—”
A loud whistle shrieked, and all the hair on the back of my arms stood up merely a second before the palace walls shook, a sound like a bomb echoing through the chamber.
“Too late,” Rhys said, all of us covering our heads.
“What was that?” Another explosion shook the room as I spoke, and the marble floors buckled and cracked. I reached for one of the large columns that held up the roof and wrapped my arms around it.
“I’d say we have a group of wizards who have decided to come for a visit,” Rhys said, kneeling on the ground and bracing himself against the wall. “I don’t think they’re going to believe we’re not home.”
“Crap,” I yelled as a third blast hit the palace and plaster rained down on me, chunks of marble from the columns hurtling toward us like hailstones. Win grabbed me around the waist with one arm and pulled me closer to the wall, covering my head and shoulders with his own.
“Your Majesty?” Kitsuna cried out from across the room, huddled near the throne with an empty plate in her hands and food scattered around her on the floor. “What’s going on?”
“The Fate Maker’s trying to bring the palace down around our ears!” I shouted.
“I can see that.” Kitsuna scrambled to her feet and hurried over to us. “The walls probably won’t hold much longer,” she said. I felt Winston nod. “We need to get out of here.”
“Come on.” I waved at Rhys, and he and Ardere managed to get to their feet and follow me, Winston, and Kitsuna out of the throne room. The main doors to the palace had been thrown open, and soldiers ran around the front lawn, grabbing their weapons and hurrying to the walls that surrounded the palace.
I looked from side to side, trying to figure out where the attacks were coming from, where the wizards were hiding to throw their evil, destructive spells at my army. I couldn’t see anything.
“People of Nerissette,” Rhys roared, drawing his sword. All the soldiers outside stopped running and turned to look at the tall, dark-haired boy now standing behind me. “To war!”
“To war!” they yelled back.
“Dragons to the roof,” Winston commanded. Kitsuna’s hand tightened around my wrist as she led me toward a side passage that would lead us directly to the nearest transport rune.
“There.” I pointed at a brick near the floor inside the kitchen. “The rune’s there.”
“Come on then,” Kitsuna said, hustling me toward it. “You’ll want to get to the roof before the dragons take off. Otherwise Winston might leave you on the ground for your own good.”
“He wouldn’t—” I froze. Because the thing is, he would. My sweet, stubborn, noble boyfriend would absolutely leave me behind if he thought it would keep me safe.
“Wait.” Mercedes’s voice came behind us.
I turned to see her running in our direction, huffing for breath.
“Wait for me. I’m not letting you go up there alone.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I thought you’d been assigned to defend the walls.”
“You want me to take the chance of you going head-to-head with some monster holding nothing but a sword? Again?” Mercedes snorted. “Please. You need me up there to help watch your back.”
“You know I have no intention of ending up on the ground again. Right?”
“Yeah, well, let’s not risk it,” Mercedes said as she grabbed my hand and reached for the rune, mere seconds before I got a grip on Kitsuna. “Take us to the roof.”
My body jerked hard, crackling like one of those static electricity balls as my hair stood on end, and as the rune’s magic took hold of us, transporting us from the inside of the palace to the roof, it felt like the world was splitting apart. My skin felt like the magic itself was tearing me apart at the seams, and the minute the pain became too much it was gone, instantly, and the world righted itself again there at the highest point of the palace’s roof, in a small, flat space next to the glass dome. For once, sparkles or colored smoke didn’t decorate the transport, and I realized that even the magic that controlled the palace had a pretty good idea that we were in trouble right now.