The Crown of Embers (31 page)

Leaf sprawls, his knee bent at an unnatural angle. “Ah, broke that leg again,” he says, as if it’s hardly worth his notice. “But no healing for me this time.” He cocks his head at me. “Would you like to be my replacement?”

I take a step back. “Er, no thank you.”

“I thought as much. You are a queen, after all. Things to do, things to do, yes? Also, I probably could not make you, living stone that you have. No matter. I’ll take this little mouse, weak as he is.” Leaf reaches out with a spindly hand and splays his fingers across Storm’s horrified face. “And now, my weak prince, all the power you’ve ever wanted is yours.”

“No!” I shout, grasping for more of the
zafira
. I sling tendrils of light toward Storm to pull him away, even as the manacles around Leaf’s ankles dissipate into fog.

Storm begins sliding toward me, but it doesn’t matter. Shadows form around his ankles, darkening until they are as hard and true as iron.

Leaf sways; then his cheek hits the ground, hard. He gasps in the dirt, a smile on his face. “Free!” he whispers. “You’ll put my stone into the wall, yes? With the others?”

His face caves in on itself until he is little more than a grinning skeleton. His hair turns black as he shrinks, dissolving into a cloud of dust. The dust coalesces in the air, then rains to the ground, forming an ashy pile. A single glittering Godstone winks from the pile’s center.

“I’ll be here forever,” Storm whispers. “Forever.”

I tear my gaze from the pile of dust that used to be Leaf and say, “No. We’ll find a way to free you. Maybe an ax? I’m sure Captain Felix has a blacksmith in his crew.”

Storm’s face falls into his hands. “The chains are formed by magic. No blacksmith can break them.”

“Maybe I can—”

“You can only do creation magic, remember? You can’t destroy these chains.”

“I’m very good at figuring things out.”

He clambers to his feet, and his features suddenly calm with resignation. “Majesty, go. Leave me here. Even if you could figure out a way to free me, you won’t do it. The
zafira
connected with you. I saw it. You’ll be able to call on its power forevermore. No matter where in the world you are. Just like the animagi of old, when we had our full strength. You truly are the chosen one.”

He’s right. Even now, I hum with strength, like I can do anything. It’s wonderful to feel such breathtaking power. I’m almost dizzy with it.

“But the
zafira
needs a living sacrifice, a conduit,” he says. “Without a gatekeeper, it’s useless to you.”

All I do is walk away from this place, and I become the most powerful sovereign who ever lived. “Storm, I never meant—”

“You told me you would choose your own life over mine, remember? So do it. Choose now and leave me alone. You know I prefer to be alone than in your miserable company.”

Tears prick at my eyes, and I suck in air through my nose to keep steady. “Will you . . . How will you . . . ?”

“The
zafira
will sustain me. Even now it heals my burns. Just promise me that when you face Invierne—and you will face them—that you’ll tell them about me.”

“What do you want me to say?” I ask in a small voice.

“Tell them that the man who failed as an animagi, who failed as a prince, and who failed as an ambassador, found the
zafira
and restored his honor by becoming its living sacrifice. Will you do that?”

“You never cared about honor! You’ve been content to live without it, so long as it meant you could
live
.”

“It’s all that’s left to me. Please?”

I nod, voiceless.

He lowers himself to the ground, crosses his legs, and closes his eyes. “Go now, Elisa. Go be the queen you couldn’t be on your own.”

I turn away, even as his words bore into my chest, twisting like barbs.
Go be the queen you couldn’t be on your own.
I have what I came for. Power beyond imagining.

Why then, with it coursing though me, filling me to overflowing, do I feel like a hollow shell of a girl?

I have passed through the doorway, and my foot is on the first step leading out of the cavern when I freeze.

Channeling all the magic of the world is no different from choosing a regent or making a desperate marriage alliance. It’s just an instrument. A crutch.

Hector’s voice, low and intimate, echoes in my head.
If you were like this, with this kind of confidence, this clarity of thought, no one would dare challenge your rule.

The
zafira
is not what I need.

What I need is to be a better queen.

Chapter 29

I
turn back around. My heart flutters and my knees tremble at what I might do.
Is this the right choice?
But there is no response, or if there is, it is so overwhelmed by the rush of the
zafira
that I can’t detect it. I must make a choice wholly independent from God’s voice, from his stone, from his power.

I take a deep breath. “Storm.”

His head whips up.

“Come with me.”

“What?”

“To the surface. Now, before I change my mind.”

He bolts to his feet and hobbles toward me as quickly as his manacles will allow. “How will you get the chains off? And if you do, the
zafira
will be lost to you forever. To all of us. What if—”

“Do you
want
to stay here for thousands of years?”

“No.”

“Then shut up and follow me.”

Before we enter the archway, I cast my gaze around for one last look at this catacomb of Godstones. So beautiful. So much history and remembrance and even worship, so much magic.

Think like a sorcerer,
Storm said. But what I need to do is think like a queen.

And as the stones shine brighter than the brightest sapphire, I think:
so much
value.

Quickly I pry a Godstone out of the wall. It comes loose with a soft
plink,
and I shove it into my pocket. I grab a few more, until my pocket bulges.

“Let’s go.” Together, chains clanking behind us, we spiral up the steps and into the sunshine.

“Now what?” he asks, gasping for breath.

I look around the tiny clearing. The trees are very close.

“Keep still,” I order.

I gather power into myself until my muscles thrum with it. I cast my awareness into the earth, to everything growing there—tiny grass roots, a colony of ants milling about in oddly organized industry, a worm. I feel them all, as if they’re an extension of myself. With the
zafira
coursing through me, perhaps they are.

There. A mass of cypress roots, twisting together like a nest of snakes, perfectly sized.

I coax them toward us. They writhe through the ground, poke out of the grass, weave through the links of Storm’s chains. I shove them hard, and their widening girths strain the links. Something groans like a dying animal as I torque them mercilessly.

The links snap.

“Run!” I yell. I have no idea if the chains will reform, if the
zafira
will grab him back with a relentless light tentacle.

Storm sprints away, and I dash to keep up. His manacles rattle with each step, dangling lengths of broken chain that threaten to catch in the foliage and yank him down.

For the first time since entering this valley, my Godstone turns to ice. The earth begins to rumble, and Storm freezes, but I shove him on. “Just go!” I hope I have not broken the world.

We scramble up the footholds toward the entrance to the cavern, chased by the sounds of grinding rocks and splitting earth. I tell myself not to look back, to concentrate on moving forward, but when we gain the top, I can’t help it. I turn around and gasp.

Trees slowly lean toward the center of the valley like they’re bowing to God. Then a series of massive
pop
s echoes all around as roots rip from their moorings and the trees topple over. Clouds of dust explode into the air.

The valley is caving in on itself, forming a giant sinkhole where Leaf’s tower used to be.

I press shaking fingers to my lips.
What have I done?

A stream diverts, collides with another in a thunderous spray of water and mud. Their joined force is relentless as it sweeps boulders and uprooted trees into the gaping sinkhole.

My teeth rattle in my jaw as the valley booms, again and again. No, it’s not just the valley. The sound comes from above too. The mountain is about to tumble down on us.

“We need to move,” Storm says. “Fast.”

His words spur me to action, and I sprint toward the cavern. It gapes darkly before us. “We need light!” We don’t have time to feel our way down the dark stairs. But by traveling in haste, we will surely fall to our deaths. “Do you see night bloomers? Anywhere?”

“Just the ones we discarded. Nearly dead.”

“They’ll do.” I grab the wilting vines from where I dropped them. Drawing on the
zafira,
I reach inside their stems and coax them to life. But the power bleeds away from me even as their leaves straighten with health, as the petals unfurl. By the time their stamens have brightened into a steady glow, the power is gone.

I allow myself the tiniest moment of grief. I brush the night bloomers against my cheeks, breathing in their honeysucklelike scent. Then I step into the booming mountain.

Dust and pebbles rain down on us, urging us on as we descend. Our way becomes slick with mud. Twice I slip on my heel, but Storm is quick at my elbow, shoring me up with a strength that belies his delicate frame.

We dare not stop when we reach the waterfall, for we are still too close to the shaking mountain. Dusk has fallen, and as we clamber across the boulders lining the lake I find it nearly impossible to distinguish between cracks and sinkholes and shadows.

It is nearly full dark when we reach the stream, and living night bloomers unfurl in the trees all around us. The noise of the collapsing valley fades, and I dare to hope that we are safe.

We stop to catch our breath. Storm bends over, hands on his knees, heaving for air. His face and robe are covered in drying mud, tinged gruesomely blue in the night bloomers’ light. I imagine I look the same. “Why?” he manages between gasps. “Why did you save me? My own people would not have done so much. Stupid queen. You are powerless now.”

“You are my loyal subject.”

He stares at me.

“But I’m not powerless.” I continue. “I’ve always had my Godstone and its minor magic. I healed Hector in Brisadulce, you know, so there are things I can still do just by reaching through the skin of the earth.” It would be useless to tell him that I’m done sacrificing other people for my own gain. I won’t whip innocent kitchen workers, I won’t burn down buildings, I won’t ask anyone to give up an inheritance for me, and I certainly won’t leave a friend at the mercy of a mysterious magical force—merely for the sake of my own power. I press my fingers to the stone at my navel, taking comfort in its familiar pulsing. What I tell him is, “And I have me.
I
will be enough.”

The camp is silent and somber and half emptied when Storm and I step from the trees. Mara sits alone near the fire pit. She holds up a steaming fish speared on a stick and is about to take a bite, but she sees us and lets it drop into the embers, jumping to her feet. “Elisa?” she whispers, and then she’s running toward me, wrapping me in her arms. “Oh, God, I knew you had probably gone off alone, that you weren’t
taken,
but when I heard all that rumbling a bit ago, I thought that . . . I thought maybe . . .”

I return her hug fiercely. “I’m sorry,” I say.

She steps back. “Did you find it?”

“Yes.”

“And what happened? Did you . . .” she makes a vague gesture with her hand.

“Can I tell you about that a little later, maybe? I need to . . . think.”

Her eyes drift to Storm’s shackles, then back to my face. “All right,” she says, but her gaze is troubled, maybe a little bit wounded.

“Where is everyone?” I ask, though I think I know.

“Looking for you. Hector is sick with worry.”

I wince, dreading the moment I will face him. I say, “I need to walk. I’ll be at the beach.”

“Do you want something to eat first?”

“No, thank you.” I feel her puzzled gaze at my back as I step away.

The half moon sends ripples of gold across the water. In the distance floats the black, battered shape of the
Aracely,
her main sail hanging limp in the windless night. The air is hot, the water calm.

On impulse, I shuck my filthy boots and blouse. Wearing nothing but my linen pants and a sleeveless undershirt, I wade out into the warm water.

A strange thing happens. Where the water touches me, it glows, Godstone blue. I lie back and float, waving my arms experimentally. The glow is like a shield wrapping around my body, a clinging aura of power. I laugh, delighted, thinking about all the things I’ve seen lately that glow in this way: my Godstone, when I’m about to release its power. The river of energy. The night bloomers. And now this luminescing bay.

And I realize that the
zafira
is everywhere. I may have destroyed access to its purest form, but it leaks out all over the world.

I see movement along the shore. A dark shape materializes out of the trees, and I catch my breath. I know him from so far away, just by the way he walks. I’m suddenly desperate to see him up close, to look into his eyes, to hear his low, soft voice, even though I know whatever we say to each other next cannot end well.

I swim toward shore until my feet touch bottom; then I walk from the glowing water to meet him.

He stares at me as I approach, his face unreadable to me again, the way it used to be. When he is only an arm’s length away, I say, “Hector, I’m sorry.”

He studies me thoughtfully. Then my whole body goes hot as his gaze travels—slowly, deliberately—from my neck, to my breasts, my hips, down to my feet, and all the way up again. My clothes cling to me like a second skin, leaving little to the imagination.

At last he says, “Sorry for what, exactly?” and his voice is cold, cold, cold.

I swallow hard. “For leaving without telling you.”

“A queen need never apologize to a mere guard.” He makes it sound like an insult, and I gasp from the pain of it.

“Still, I should have—”

“You’re my queen, Elisa. You can do whatever you want. You never owe me an explanation.”

He is reminding me, with patient and lethal efficiency, of how much power I have over him, of why we could never be together.

“Now, if we were
lovers,
” he says, “I might feel angry that you demanded my honesty but refused me yours. I might feel insulted that you slinked away to do something dangerous knowing full well that the most important thing I do is protect you. And I might feel perplexed that you lacked the courage to face me, when all you had to do was give the order.”

I’ve never felt so contemptible and small. Part of me wants to flee, to escape his ruthless gaze. Another part wants to wrap my arms around him and beg forgiveness, for there can be no doubt that I have hurt him deeply.

He can’t help adding, “It’s a good thing, then, that we are not lovers, yes?”

It’s like a dagger to the gut. He means it to be his final rejection. He means to hurt me, and maybe to grasp on to some power of his own. It’s cruel of him, and unworthy of the Hector I’ve come to know. And yet the anger melts out of me as quickly as it forms.

I reach up and cup his face with one hand. It shocks some feeling into his eyes, and I watch carefully as he considers whether or not to recoil from my touch. He doesn’t.

I say, “What I did was weak. Cowardly. Unqueenly. But I learned some things about power when I went to the
zafira,
and you were right. About everything.” I brush across his cheek, memorizing the texture of his skin, the feel of slight stubble against the pad of my thumb. “I do have power. Enough that I don’t need you. But I will miss you awfully.”

He lurches away, and my heart aches to see the torment on his face. He looks everywhere but at me, running his hands through his hair as if to keep them busy. He says, “How do you
do
that? You always disarm me. You have from the day I . . . And I hate it. I truly hate it.”

From a place of knowledge as old as the
zafira
itself, from the depths of a feminine power I’m only beginning to understand, I say with conviction: “No, you don’t.”

I want to tell him how much I love him. He deserves to know. But it would be too perilous in this moment. It would sound like I was begging, or saying what he wanted to hear just to diffuse his anger.

So I leave him alone with his thoughts. I return to camp, resolved to face Mara and tell her everything, hoping I can salvage at least one friendship.