Hamon blinked. “Did you just agree? I’d prepared a list of points as to why including me makes sense.”
Daleina held up her hand. “I don’t need to hear it. But I do want to know, outside of your worries for me, if you think this is a mistake. Do you think Merecot’s plan will work?”Please say yes.She’d wrung agreement from all the champions, and had even received a letter, via spirit, from Ambassador Hanna, but still, she wanted to hear it from Hamon’s lips.
Hamon opened his mouth, shut it, and then opened it again to say slowly, “It sounds possible. But no one has ever tried before. At least, not that I know of.”
“Which is something I keep wondering:Whyhasn’t anyone ever tried this? Spirits have plagued Renthians for generations. Surely someone at some point must have had this idea,” Daleina said. “Has there never been a queen like Merecot before?” She’d heard of plenty of powerful queens in the history books and songs, and she’d felt the incredible reach of Naelin’s power. She found it hard to believe there hadn’t been others equal to Merecot.
Hamon took her hands and raised them to her lips. “Of course there have been powerful queens before, happy to seize whatever power they could in the name of protecting their people.”
He means Fara, Daleina thought.
“But as I understand it, for this to work it requires more than one powerful queen. It requires two: one to take power and one to give it. If this is to succeed, it won’t be because there’s never been another queen like Merecot. It will be because there’s never been a queen likeyou.”
Chapter32
Daleina hadn’t been back to the Queen’s Grove since the day she was crowned and buried her friends. She hadn’t wanted to ever see the place again. Every step into the grove came with another memory, and when she saw that even in autumn, the ground was still blanketed in green with white flowers, the tiny blossoms looking like freshly fallen snowflakes, she wanted to turn and run.
But Daleina didn’t run away. She never did.
She walked to the center of the grove, between the graves, and faced Merecot.
“I used to dream of being crowned here.” Smiling, Merecot held out her hands toward Daleina, waiting for her to take them. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“Tell me this isn’t just ambition,” Daleina said, not moving.
“Ambition isn’t bad when you’re trying to change the world.”
Hamon spoke up. “You need to keep Daleina from being killed. You know what the spirits will do the second she abdicates.” He’d dressed in healer’s robes, and Daleina had watched him cram his bag full of every medicine he had. Garnah carried no bag, but her skirts were full of pockets with powders and potions. Several pouches hung from her belt.
Merecot waved her hand. “You forget—I’ve done this before. With Queen Naelin. And I kept Queen Jastra alive for years, didn’t I? Even though thousands of spirits despised her?”
Garnah snorted. “At least until you had her killed.”
“Yes. Until then.”
If Daleina hadn’t been watching her face so closely, she might not have seen it: a shadow of a frown that looked like regret.She has emotions, Daleina thought.She hides them, but she’s not like Garnah. She’s capable of guilt, regret, mercy, love.“I trust you,” Daleina said.
“And I’m showing my trust in you, by allowing your people here with us,” Merecot said.
Hamon began to object, but Daleina cut him off. “You don’t ‘allow’ me anything. I am queen here, at least for a few minutes more. And this is my choice.” She said it as much for her companions’ benefit as for Merecot’s. “All right, Merecot, my friend. Let’s save the world.”
Closing her eyes, Daleina reached out with her mind and felt the threads that linked her with the spirits of Aratay. She held them gently for a while, feeling the swirling emotions and desires of the spirits, the way they loved the earth and the sky, letting that connection flow through her until she felt as if she were Aratay, within the soil and the wind.
And then she severed the connections, one by one.
Like a scissor cutting a string.
With each, she felt the recoil. Merecot held her hands and did not let go.
Daleina thought she heard words around her, in the grove, but they were distant, as if underwater, and she couldn’t make sense of them. She felt so very alone. She reached out with her mind—but nothing was there.
She didn’t remember feeling this weak before. Or this empty.
Distantly, she heard howls, but not with her ears—they were the howls of the spirits, now free, streaming across Aratay toward the grove, coming for her.
“Tell them to choose,” she heard.
She grabbed on to those words and pushed them outward.
