“No. No more favors. I’m sick of you. I’m sick of your whining and I’m sick of your rule,” the Fate Maker said. “You will take me to the tear, and then I will end this silliness.”
“Then why don’t you untie me and make it a fair fight?”
“And why in the name of Fate would I want to do anything as stupid as that? Last time I ended up trapped. And let me tell you, young lady, you don’t want to know what sort of magic I had to do to find my way home.”
“Yeah?” I sneered at him. “Well, I hope you know some sort of magic that will bring you back to life because when I get out of these ropes I’m going to kill you.”
The Fate Maker cocked his head to the side. “That doesn’t really give me a reason to untie you, does it?”
“But if you don’t untie her,” John of Leavenwald said, his voice low, “I’m going to let the dragon eat you.”
I looked up to see him standing in the clearing, Winston, Rhys, Kitsuna, and Mercedes behind him.
The Fate Maker turned to stare at them. “What?”
“I said, untie her.”
“Men.” The Fate Maker flicked his gaze to the traitors who had joined him. “Seize them.”
Before any of them could obey, Mercedes had raised her hands and vines grew up around their ankles, tying them to the ground. “I don’t think so.”
The Fate Maker wiggled his fingers and the vines around him burst into flames, the fire licking at the grass around my boots. “Did you really think that would work on me?”
“I can come up with other things that might.” Winston stepped forward, his form wavering between teenage boy and black dragon.
I started to scoot closer to him, trying to ignore the way the flames on the vines were licking at my legs.
“How do you think you’ll rule this country if you kill her?” Kitsuna asked. “How do you think you’ll make them follow you?”
“I have an army.”
“But you don’t have the tear,” she pointed out. “You wanted it for a reason. If you kill her you’ll never find it. Never be able to use it.”
“Then all the better,” the Fate Maker said. “Without her, the relics will stay lost, and then the last of the great prophesies cannot be fulfilled and magic will flourish in Nerissette.”
I had gotten close enough that I could lean onto my hands and lift my legs. I pulled them into my chest and kicked them out at the back of the Fate Maker’s knees, pitching him forward. He rolled and brought a fist up, slamming it into my jaw and making my head jerk back. He sat up quickly, grabbing for my throat, and I brought my head forward, hard, slamming my forehead into his nose.
“You—” He flung an arm out, knocking me off him, and then started toward me on his knees. Before he could move any closer, though, Kitsuna threw herself onto him, pinning him while Mercedes held her hands out. Vines shot up from the ground to tie around him, lacing around him like a cocoon.
“Now, you.” John looked at the young woodsmen who had betrayed us. “When she unties you, you’re going to run away. And if I see any of you again your lives are over. Forevermore you are banished from the Leavenwald, your names stricken from the scrolls, and you will be forgotten.”
The vines dropped, and I watched as Eamon’s soldiers bolted for the trees, melting into the forest around them within seconds, leaving his body behind. They didn’t even look back. The cowards.
John was staring at Eamon’s body, his jaw tight. He swallowed and his shoulder tensed before he turned to me, his face betraying nothing. Like finding out his son had died while betraying him was nothing.
“Um, guys?” I tried to sit up from where I’d toppled over, staring up at the trees around us. “Can someone untie me please?”
“On it!” Kitsuna came over and took the knife from my belt, cutting my wrists free before moving to my ankles.
“Do you think this changes anything?” the Fate Maker asked. “Do you think that because you’ve captured me you’ve somehow won this world? You’re still not safe. Even if you kill me that won’t stop your aunt. Or the giants. The monsters. They’ll still come. What will you do then?”
Instead of answering I reached into my shirt and grabbed the necklace, letting it dangle in front of me. “Why did you want this so bad if you claim you weren’t going to send me to the Bleak?”
“The tear,” the Fate Maker breathed.
“Why have you been searching for it?” I asked, my voice hollow, as I dropped the chain against the front of my shirt. “You said something about a prophecy. About the end of magic. What does that have to do with me? Or the tear?”
“Isn’t that obvious? I want the tear so that I can keep you from having it.” He smiled up at me, and his dark eyes glittered. “I had to keep it from you because if you had it, one day you might grow enough of a spine to use it. The prophecy will be fulfilled, and the world of magic will die. Then where would I be?”
“The same place you’ll be when this is all over.” I leaned over so that we were face to face. “Inside the Bleak. Now what do you mean, a prophecy?”
“Are you really going to do it?” he asked. “Lock me inside the Bleak?”
I straightened and turned to walk away from him. “Of course.”
“Really? Are you so cold that you can sentence a man to the space between worlds? A place where there’s nothing? No beginning, no end, a place of eternal nothingness. Can you really condemn someone to that for all time?”
“I think you’d be surprised about what I’m capable of, especially where you’re concerned.”
“So what will you do?” the Fate Maker asked.
“Your Majesty,” John of Leavenwald said, his voice throwing me back to what the Fate Maker had shown to me. John had been sitting on the couch, watching a baseball game in a green T-shirt, with his arms open to me. In the fantasy I’d been offered, we’d never been apart. He’d never missed a birthday and he’d brought me chocolate ice cream the day after they took my tonsils out. He’d let me cry when we put my dog to sleep, and he’d sneaked me cookies when I was sick.
I blinked, and the man from my fantasy was gone. Instead I was face-to-face with a man covered in dirt, his eyes red-rimmed and tired, with his arm bandaged and a nasty bruise turning black on his left cheek.
“No mercy,” I said quietly. “There can be no more mercy. But whatever we do, it needs to be done in public. Where everyone can see.”
“Then follow me,” John said. “I know the quickest route between here and Dramera.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I followed John and Mercedes out of the trees as the sun reached its highest point in the sky, the others following behind us. Winston carrying Eamon’s body draped over his back and Rhys dragging the Fate Maker along behind him. John of Leavenwald’s head was still held high but I could see his shoulders trembling every so often, and every so often Mercedes would reach over and touch his arm. I wanted to go to him, to say something, anything, but I wasn’t sure there was anything I could say that wouldn’t make it worse. When we came to the grassy knoll next to Lake Dramera, I found myself staring at a group of stunned dryads. All of them sat on the ground, their hands buried in the roots of the trees at the edge of the forest as they crooned songs in a language I didn’t understand. They were dirty and tired, but from what I could see they weren’t hurt.
“What? Where?” I tried to take in what I was seeing as soldiers began crowding together along the side of the lake. “How?”
“Queen Allie?” Darinda’s face was covered in smoke, and she had a long, bright-red gash on her arm. Instead of bleeding, though, the cut leaked tree sap and she pressed a pile of leaves against it like a bandage. “Thank the trees you’re alive.”