Infinity (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-one

I didn’t bother to move from my spot on the table. There was no bed in the room—just a fireplace, a chair, and a table. Oh, and a nasty-looking brown blanket in one corner and a bucket in another. Obviously, one was supposed to be my not-really-a-bed-to-sleep-in and the other was Bavasama’s idea of a toilet.

I briefly considered finding some way to prop the bucket on top of my door so that it tipped over on the next person who came in, but I couldn’t be sure it was going to be Bavasama or the Fate Maker so it didn’t really seem worth it. I mean, after all, dumping a bucket full of crap on one of the maids would just be mean. They hadn’t been the ones to take me hostage.

“Open,” I heard someone command on the other side of the door. I looked up from contemplating the bucket and heard the bolt slide back. The door creaked once, loudly, before opening.

I looked up and found myself staring at Rannock, my aunt’s Grand Vizier. My uncle? I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to call the guy who was helping my aunt depose me so that she could take my throne.

“Your aunt requests your presence for dinner,” he said.

“Tell her I’m not hungry,” I retorted.

He smiled bitterly at me. “I thought you might say that,” he said quietly. “But the thing is I wasn’t asking.” He stepped aside and then motioned out into the hallway. My doorway filled with large men dressed in rough tunics, all of them wearing the broken crown of Bathune on their chests. “Take her.”

I pushed myself up and started to back away as the three men came into the room, the one at the front rubbing his palms together like hurting me was something he was looking forward to.

“I’m not leaving this room without a fight,” I said.

“That’s what we were hoping for,” one of the men in the back said as they maneuvered so I was pressed into the corner.

The first man stepped toward me, and darted his hand out to grab me. I tried to duck under his arm. The one on the left was quicker than me, though, and snatched me by the back of my collar, lifting me into the air. I swung at him, but he held me far enough away from his body that my fist only grazed his nose. He drew me forward and then slammed his head into mine, his forehead bashing against my nose. I saw stars as blood began to pour down my face.

He let go of me, and I crashed to the floor, my knees giving out as I cradled my face in my hands, trying to stop the bleeding.

“Get up.” The first man clamped his hand down on my wrist. He jerked me to my feet again. “You’re not going to keep Her Majesty the Empress waiting.”

The guards dragged me from the room, one holding on to each arm as the other prodded me from behind. I stumbled down the stairs, the three of them pushing hard enough to make me stumble. Once we reached the main floor, they dragged me across a large stone anteroom before they stopped in front of a set of black double doors with pictures painted on them in gold. The guards pushed me forward, and I saw that the images showed people being tortured in various ways. Near the handle was a man being burned alive and even higher was a scene where a man was being eaten by a large dragon, his mouth hanging open as his body dangled from the creature’s jaws.

“The Golden Rose of Nerissette,” the man who had head butted me said to a small green goblin in red livery who was posted next to the door.

The goblin nodded once and then waved his fingers. The doors creaked open, and I stood in the center of the doorway, my hair matted and my clothes still smeared with mud, reeking like fish, with a guard holding me up on each side and another jabbing a sword into my back from behind.

They shoved me into the long dining room, and I glanced around as they marched me into the center of the room. The walls were a dark blood red, and black candelabras hung from the walls with matching black candles inside. I looked up to see heavy wooden chandeliers with what looked like skulls acting as candleholders as wax dripped down their foreheads and along the sides of the bones.

“Oh, Allie. There you are. What do you think?” Bavasama stood at the head of a long black table loaded down with the roasted carcasses of various beasts. Men and women in black flanked the sides of the table, and I could see that all of them were staring at me in ill-concealed curiosity.

“I think you may have overdone it on the Goth theme. And the welcoming committee.” I jerked my head toward the guard on my right, trying to ignore the way my nose was throbbing in pain.

“Let her go,” Bavasama said to my guards. “But stay close, just in case my niece needs another lesson in manners.”

“What?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “You worried I might kill you if you don’t keep a guard on me?”

“Not in the slightest,” she sneered. “But I’d rather not murder you before I’ve had dessert. It might put my weaker-willed nobles off their dinners.”

“Like your dungeon-style dining room hasn’t put everyone off already?” I looked around pointedly.

“Perhaps.” She shook her head and gave me what I thought was supposed to be her “disappointed” face. “Of course you are like Perfect Preethana in this way, too—all goodness and light.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a girl who gets into skulls much outside of Halloween. Although, now that you’ve brought up my mom, I guess I can see what you were trying to do with this place,” I taunted, rubbing my wrists with my hands.

“What do you mean?” Bavasama’s tone was flat, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “What was I trying to do?”

“No, no, I get it.” I held my hands out in front of me like I was trying to calm her instead of rile her up. “My best friend Mercedes used to do the same thing.”

“I highly doubt that I have anything in common with a simple teenage girl.”

“You’d be surprised.” I smirked at her. “I mean, both of you go to extremes to get people to pay attention to you. Of course, she used to just dye her hair or get a fake nose ring instead of doing her room up to look like a haunted house, but you know what they say—to each her own.”

“I did not do this to compete with your twit of a mother,” Bavasama said, her voice little more than a snarl.

“Oh, please.” I gave her my most Heidi-like smile, knowing that it would drive her insane. “Your entire life revolves around trying to best the ghost of a woman locked in the World That Is. No matter what you do, you always wonder if people are still comparing you to her. Your baby sister. The rightful queen of this world.”

I looked over and saw that everyone was staring at us, eyes wide. One of the women on the far side leaned her blond head toward the man next to her and began to whisper in his ear. As soon as she moved, it was like a sign for everyone else to do the same. All of them whispering and staring at Bavasama and me as we faced off.

“
I
am the rightful queen,” Bavasama snarled.

“Really?” I smirked at her. “Because it seems to me that I’m the one wearing the Rose Crown.”

“Not for long,” Bavasama said, rage pouring off her in waves. “Guards! Seize her.”

I watched, warily, as two of the guards from earlier stepped toward me. One of the men grabbed my left wrist and pulled me closer, twisting my wrist behind me, and then he grabbed my right arm, pulling it behind my back as well, holding them both tight.

“Now we’ll see what that crown’s worth to you,” Bavasama said as we stood there glaring at each other. “Kneel.”

“As if,” I snapped.

The guard behind me twisted his free arm up around my neck, squeezing, before he tugged on my wrists, pulling them higher behind my back. He put one of his booted feet into the back of my knee and stepped down, forcing me to kneel while he let his hand slip free of my neck.

“That’s better,” Bavasama said. I narrowed my eyes at her. “Don’t you think that’s better, Piotr?” She turned to smile at the Fate Maker. “Little Allie, right where she belongs, kneeling to her betters.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” he said. I could see that he was gritting his teeth. “Although I’ve never been a fan of the brute force method. Magic is a much more elegant way to handle your enemies. If you can control it, that is.”

“Possibly.” Bavasama nodded. “But there’s something to be said for the power of pain. Besides, magic is only as strong as the wizard who uses it.

“That’s always been your problem, Piotr. You’re weak. You let your emotions blind you to what needed to be done. Your love for my sister kept you from doing what needed to be done. You kept her alive, even though you should have killed her. Your weakness forced me to trap her in the World That Is, a loose end that came back to test us.”

“There was no reason—” he started.

“You left a loose end when you prevented me from killing my sister, and now here we are, forced to fight a child for a throne that should have been mine years ago.”

“Do you think I wanted her here?” the Fate Maker asked.

“She’s here, isn’t she?”

“That’s not my fault,” the Fate Maker snapped. “Esmeralda brought—”

“I don’t care what that stupid enchantress did,” Bavasama shrieked. “You were supposed to be in charge of Nerissette, running things for me until we could find a way to travel to the World That Is and kill my sister and her brat so I could take back my crown.”

“I was—” the Fate Maker began.

“You were supposed to be keeping things under control, but you couldn’t,” Bavasama raged. “You let the girl come through, and then you lost control of her, just like you did her mother.”

“There was no way I could control Esmeralda,” the Fate Maker said angrily. “And the girl had reached legal age; she was the heiress to the throne. Once she’d reached her Five Thousandth day, there was no choice. Besides, it’s easier to kill her here than take the risk of traveling through the Bleak to get to her and kill her in the World That Is.”

“It would have been,” Bavasama said, her lips curling upward in a snarl. I—along with everyone else in the dining hall—watched as the two of them kept slinging verbal assaults. “Except for the fact that you didn’t actually manage to kill her and my crown is still on my niece’s head.”

“That would be because it’s
my crown
,” I chimed in.

She turned to glare at me. “Not for long. After all, you’re nothing but a prisoner in my castle.”

“Yeah, but you seem to forget that I’m a prisoner with an army marching toward you, and I have one very temperamental dragon for a boyfriend. You even think about trying to hurt me and I guarantee you he will hunt you down and kill you. It won’t matter where you go; there is no world that you can run to that’s far enough away that he’ll stop looking.”

“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Bavasama smiled at me, her white teeth gleaming like knives.

“Nope, but I have all the faith in this world and my own when it comes to him.”

The door at the end of the dining hall creaked open, and my aunt stepped back from me. We both looked over, and I watched as two guards carried Heidi and Jesse into the room, my friends draped over their shoulders. They marched to the front of the room and dropped the two of them onto the floor in a heap. I heard Heidi grunt in pain.

“Allie?” Jesse sat up and looked at me, stunned. “What are you doing here?”

“Um…”

“It’s sort of a long story and not really all that interesting,” Bavasama said. “So let’s just cut to the chase. She’s here, you’re here, you’re all prisoners, and one of you is going to die.”

I looked up at Bavasama and then over at her silent audience of nobles still sitting around the dining table, all of them staring at us.

“Since only one of you is royal—and I’ve always had a soft spot for family,” Bavasama said, “I’m going to let my darling niece here choose. Who’s it to be Allie?”

“No.” I ground my teeth together, my eyes fixed on my aunt’s.

“Choose,” Bavasama said. “One of the three of you dies. Who will it be? Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for one of them? The girl, perhaps?”

I swallowed but kept my mouth shut.

“No.” Bavasama shook her head. “I’ve heard about how she treated you. Seen it, too. You see, I have a mirror of my own. Not as nice as the Mirror of Nerissette, of course. Mine only allows you to look between worlds, not travel between them, but it still let me keep an eye on you and Preethana. Did you know that?”

I just glared at her, not saying anything, refusing to give her the pleasure of knowing that she was getting to me.

“I watched your entire childhood, just planning for the day when I got to kill you. But in the meantime I watched as this maid tormented you. She called you Fish Girl. Shoved you around. Treated you like nothing. So why should you give your life for hers?” She looked over at Jesse and pursed her lips. “What about the boy? He’s handsome enough. Not very bright. Cowardly. But you would never have to doubt his loyalty if you spared his life.”

I stayed silent, still glaring.

“No? Well, someone has to die, and you have to choose. Otherwise, I kill all three of you, and that’s a bit of a letdown. So come along. Which one lives? The girl who tormented you or the boy you were supposed to fall in love with? Come, come, not like it matters. You thought they were dead anyway. This just corrects the mistake. Choose.”

“I’ll do it.” Jesse coughed and then tried to stand, wobbling because of his bound ankles. “If you leave Allie and Heidi alone, you can have me.”

“Oh, how noble,” Bavasama said sarcastically. “How chivalrous. In the end the boy who was supposed to be your Crown Prince is willing to die for you. Although, it could be a trick. He could be hoping that his offer will persuade you to choose her to die instead.”

“No,” Jesse said, louder this time. “Don’t choose, Allie. I don’t want you to choose. I’m volunteering. She can take me.”

“Jesse…” I turned my head to stare at him.

“It’s okay.” He smiled at me. “It’s my fate after all.”

“There’s no such—”

“You.” He turned to the Fate Maker. “You said I was an accident. That I wasn’t supposed to come through to this world. You said that I was a spare.”

The Fate Maker nodded. “You were.”

“But I’m not.” Jesse kept his eyes locked on the Fate Maker. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot. All of us have a purpose here. The cat didn’t just pull us through for no reason. I must have a purpose, and this is it.”