Lorelai frowned. It was Gabril’s voice, but it wasn’t like anything he’d ever say to her. And he was talking to Ada, the woman he’d mentioned when he’d been out of his mind with fever. Was he feverish again?
The queen will be coming. I know it. What do I do?
He sounded desperate. Lorelai tried to lift her hand to lay on his shoulder, but her body didn’t want to obey her yet. She settled for saying, “Gabril.”
Gabril slowly raised his head. “You’re awake.” His voice shook with relief.
How do I save her, Ada?
“Who’s Ada?” Lorelai asked seconds before an image of a beautiful black woman with two boys who looked remarkably like Gabril filled her head.
Lorelai’s mouth dropped open, and she shook her head in rapid denial as Gabril’s eyes widened in horror. She hadn’t been hearing him speak. She’d been hearing his thoughts.
“Oh no. I sent magic into you, and now I can hear your thoughts like I can with Sasha.” Her voice trembled. “I don’t want to be inside your head.”
His mouth tightened, and suddenly where his thoughts had been there was a blank wall of nothing. A frown pinched her brows together as she pushed to feel the connection between their minds and came up with nothing.
“Better?” he asked quietly.
“How did you do that?”
“I don’t know if you remember the Morcantian mountain woman we stayed with for a few weeks after we left the castle. I’d met her a few times before when I accompanied the king to Morcant. She gave me a rudimentary understanding of your magic and taught me how to block a mardushka from using a mental bond in case the magic Irina used to bespell me had given her the ability to hear my thoughts.”
“A bond is only created when a mardushka sends her magic into you and commands your heart,” Lorelai said. “Like what happened when I healed Sasha. I don’t think Irina would dare create a mental bond because it works both ways. She’d never let anyone know what she’s really thinking.”
“Better safe than dead.” His dark eyes studied her intently. “You’ve been asleep for two days. Thirsty?”
She accepted the water he offered.
“Leo . . .” Her voice, husky from disuse, cracked over her brother’s name, and then she was in Gabril’s arms sobbing.
“He’s dead?” Gabril’s voice wavered. Tears gathered in his eyes as she nodded.
“How?” he asked, and the edge in his tone promised terrible things for the one who’d killed his prince.
“Irina.” Her eyelids were already drooping again, and weariness that was half grief and half weakness from having had to overpower Gabril’s implacable will to heal him turned her thoughts to wisps of smoke.
“Sleep,” he said softly. “We need to leave first thing in the morning. You can tell me about it then.”
By morning, Lorelai was strong enough to get up and eat breakfast without help. Gabril boiled a small pot of beans and sliced the last of the apples they’d stolen from the queen’s garrison. She ate the beans but ignored the apples.
After seeing the villagers eat Irina’s rotten apples in Nordenberg, Lorelai wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to eat the fruit again.
Hunt but don’t bring your meal back to share with me. Lorelai pushed the thought at Sasha and watched the gyrfalcon spiral into the sky and disappear from view.
Gabril eased himself down beside her, his hand massaging his aching left leg in the early morning chill. He peered at her half-eaten breakfast, his expression inscrutable.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Her stomach churned, and her voice was hollow as she told Gabril about Nordenberg. The grief that had consumed her from the moment she realized she couldn’t save Leo was a burning in her chest. A wound that swallowed the words she still thought to say to him before once again remembering that he was gone.
She leaned against Gabril as he held her, and then he said gently, “Better finish eating. We need to leave. We’ll figure out what to do next once we put some distance between us and this part of the mountain.”
She looked at her boots, at the worn toe on the left one where she used it to push off walls or tree trunks to propel herself upward, and took another bite of beans. The food tasted like ashes in her mouth, and her stomach rebelled at the thought of eating, but she didn’t have the luxury of allowing her grief to make her weak. She chewed viciously, magic threading through her veins and stinging her palms as the terrible grief within her focused on its target.
She had a queen to destroy.
She remained silent while she ate, her thoughts a tangle she had to unknot so she could make a plan. Irina was a master at using her magic like a weapon, and she knew where to find Lorelai. That was a significant disadvantage. Plus, Lorelai was used to being part of a team—Leo dreamed bold and big, while Lorelai planned down to the smallest detail to keep them both safe.
But Leo hadn’t been safe. She shoved another bite into her mouth and forced herself to focus on the task in front of her.
Lorelai swallowed her last mouthful of beans and something hard and bright filled her chest as a plan came to her. The plan was bold and daring, like Leo, but used the battle strategy that came naturally to Lorelai. She’d send the kind of dramatic message that would have put a sparkle in Leo’s eyes, but she’d plan down to the last detail to make sure every single risk she took brought Irina one step closer to total destruction.
And at the end of it, Lorelai would pit her will—her heart—against the heart of Ravenspire’s queen, and only one of them would survive.
Minutes later, they were ready to leave. Gabril turned east, but Lorelai put a hand on his arm.
“We’re going to the far northwest mountain.”
He frowned. “That’s Duchess Waldina’s land. She’s loyal to Irina.”
“I’m counting on it.” Lorelai’s voice was cold.
“I thought we had another six months of working our way through the mountain villages, robbing the queen’s treasury offices and building loyalty by giving it back to the people.”
“I’m done being cautious and safe, Gabril. Irina has destroyed my family and my kingdom. It’s time I repaid the favor.”
A fierce light burned in his eyes. “Agreed. How does Duchess Waldina factor into your plan?”
“She’s loyal to Irina and often stays at the castle. I need to know the gossip. The rumors. Anything that will show me a weakness I can use against Irina as I form a battle strategy for taking her down.”
“I’m not sure the duchess will be willing to give you that information.”
Lorelai’s jaw clenched until her teeth ached. “She’d better rethink that position before I get there.” Flexing her gloved hands, she said, “Once I have what I need, I’m going after Irina. No waiting. No hiding. Just a full-force attack that will end with one of us dead. It will be dangerous. Risky even by Leo’s standards.” Her voice broke, and she made herself look away so he wouldn’t see how desperately she wanted him to ignore her next words. “You don’t have to come with me. You’ve already risked so much. I release you from your service.”
He took two steps forward and pulled her against his chest. “You aren’t releasing me from anything. Where you go, I go.” She gripped his coat with desperate hands as relief warmed the pit of ice that had been forming in her stomach at the thought of facing the rest of her journey alone.
“What about Ada?” she asked as she released him and stepped back. “I didn’t mean to pry into your thoughts, but . . . is she your wife? Were those your boys?”
The loneliness that clung to him when he didn’t think she was watching filled his eyes, but his voice was composed. “Yes, that’s my family.”
“You never told us about them.” She tried hard not to make it sound like an accusation.
“Because you’d just lost everything. My choices, my grief, weren’t yours to bear.”
“Where are they? Do you ever see them?”
“They’re
still in the capital. I got a message to her as I fled with you and Leo, and we’ve managed to exchange a few messages since then, but, no, I don’t see them. She buried me—the entrance hall collapsed on all the guards who were on duty that night. She simply claimed that I had died along with the others and held a funeral. Irina attended. I’ve stayed away because as long as Irina believes I’m dead, Ada and the boys are safe.”
Lorelai’s hands curled into fists. “You should have your family back.”
“So should you,” he said gently.
Her eyes burned with unshed tears, but she lifted her chin. “It’s too late for mine, but it isn’t too late for yours. Let’s get moving. We have a lot of ground to cover, and I have a lot of planning to do if I want to have a chance against Irina.”
“Oh, you have more than a chance.” He picked up her travel pack and handed it to her. “Do you know why I’m willing to follow you into this battle without hesitation?”
“Because I’m Arlen’s oldest child, and that makes the throne of Ravenspire rightfully mine.”
“Wrong.” He held her gaze, his eyes fierce. “Bloodlines and birthrights don’t make someone worth following. Neither does the appearance of power. I follow you because you have the courage of a true warrior.”
“I don’t feel courageous.” She turned toward the west. “I just see what needs to be done, and there’s no one else to do it. No one else who can fight Irina with the weapon she’s used to destroy Ravenspire. It has to be me. That doesn’t make me a warrior. That just makes me the best tool for a necessary job.”
As they left the campsite behind and moved through a grove of trees with crumbling trunks and bare, shriveled branches, Gabril said, “A warrior doesn’t focus on the odds stacked against her. She focuses on her heart, on her will to face the evil in her world and defeat it, and then she finds a way to do it.”
Lorelai grabbed his arm to help him over a fallen evergreen. She should’ve healed his leg when she healed his sickness, but she hadn’t been thinking clearly.
She was thinking clearly now. The first order of business when they stopped for lunch would be restoring his left leg. She refused to hear an argument from him over it, either. His heart would submit to hers to make the cost of magic light enough to easily bear, or . . . well, she didn’t know what she’d do to overpower the will of the man who’d been like a father to her for the past nine years, but she’d think of something.
“I want to tell you a story.” Gabril reached for her gloved hand, and she held on to him while the morning sun filtered in past the bare branches and hung in the air like pale gold dust.
“Once upon a time, there was a princess who was unlike any other princess.”
She made a sound of disbelief, and he glared at her. “You may be my queen, but I can still assign you an hour of land sprints if you aren’t paying attention.”
She gave him her full attention.
“Other princesses were raised in castles with maids to clean up after them, cooks to bake their favorite treats, closets full of fancy dresses, and parents to watch over them and love them.”
Lorelai’s heart began to ache, thrumming in the hollow space that grief had carved into her. Other princesses also had brothers who were teasing them or starting arguments or defending them at any cost. She drew in a sharp breath and focused on Gabril’s words before the empty space inside could consume her.
“Those princesses had soft hands and peaceful sleep. They had the luxury of knowing what every day would look like, since every day was the same as the one before it, and of knowing what their future would hold. They would grow up, dance at balls, flirt at royal functions, and then marry into another kingdom or assume the crown and rule their own.”
“Sounds very exciting,” Lorelai said in a tone that implied the exact opposite.
“We’ll pity those other princesses and send them our condolences for their boring, ball-filled lives later.” Gabril pressed a fist against his left leg as they began to climb the steep incline that would bring them back to the road that dipped and curved around the Falkrains, joining the eastern edge of the range with the lands in the west.
“Now, the princess in our story didn’t live in a castle anymore. She’d lost her home, her family, and her kingdom to a wicked queen who wanted the world at her feet more than she wanted anything else. This wicked queen destroyed the princess’s life and broke her heart. For some princesses, all that pain, all that loss, would break their strength of will.”
The ache in Lorelai’s chest spread, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
Gabril leaned forward and captured her gaze with his. “Not this princess. For you see, it was the princess’s extraordinary strength of will that had first caught the attention of the wicked queen. The queen thought to bend that will to her own. To tempt that will into believing a lie. But the princess was not so easily deceived, even when everyone else was. Though she was a child, and though she had no allies, no one to help her face the evil queen, she found the strength to do so on her own.”
Lorelai bent her head and studied the leaf-covered ground as she walked.
“She almost succeeded, and that terrified the wicked queen, for nothing scares the wicked so much as the realization that someone has chosen not to surrender, even when the cost of defiance is almost too much to bear.”
“The cost was too much for others to bear too,” Lorelai whispered.
“Who is telling this story?” Gabril demanded.
“You.”
“That’s right. Now, as I was saying, the wicked queen was terrified of the princess’s strength, and she did everything she could to break the princess’s will, but the princess refused to be broken. She stood up to the queen, revealed her for what she really was, and escaped the castle—”
“Because you helped her.”
“Interrupt me one more time, and you will have both cooking and cleanup duty for a month.”
Lorelai pressed her lips closed.
“The princess could’ve let her grief turn into bitterness, but she turned it into kindness instead. She could’ve let her terror turn into paralysis, but she used it to fuel her courage. She learned how to climb walls, how to fall without being injured, how to disguise herself, how to sprint through the forest without leaving a sign—she learned how to survive, but she never allowed her own survival to mean more to her than the survival of others.”
His voice grew husky. “She’d been trained to flee at the first sign of trouble, but instead, she stayed. She fought an entire group of soldiers because she didn’t look at her odds of winning, she looked at her reasons for fighting. She trekked through the forest to Nordenberg with her brother even though the entire northern army was looking for her because she didn’t look at the reasons not to risk the trip. She looked at her reasons for going.”
Lorelai flinched at the mention of Nordenberg.
“And when the princess realized that she and her brother were in terrible danger, she didn’t freeze. She didn’t surrender. She fought to save her him, leaving herself open to attack.”
Lorelai’s pulse pounded, and her palms burned as the wound where the vine had sunk its teeth into her chest throbbed faintly.
“And when tragedy struck once again, the princess didn’t wallow in it. Didn’t let it break her. No, she came back to her mentor, saw that he was about to die, and”—his voice broke, and he cleared his throat—“she disobeyed his most important rule, knowing it might bring the wicked queen straight to her to finish what she’d tried to do nine years ago. The princess healed her mentor, at great cost to herself, because she didn’t look at her odds of survival. She looked at his.”
Slowly Lorelai looked up to meet Gabril’s gaze.
“Now you tell me, Lorelai Rosalinde Tatiyana Diederich, does that sound like a courageous warrior to you?”
She couldn’t speak.
He took her hand again as they neared the top of the steep rise. “Thank you for saving my life, L
orelai.”
“You’re welcome.” Her voice was small. The spot beside her that Leo would’ve filled with joking about what costumes they’d wear as they took the fight to Irina or with congratulating himself on surviving the seriousness of Gabril and Lorelai was achingly silent.
Gabril’s voice was strong and sure. “I believe in you, and I’ve fought for you, because in a world full of people who crumble before an evil too terrifying to comprehend, you put up your fists and fight.”
Before she could reply, a strange sound shook the forest—a steady thump-thump that reverberated from the air above and caused the trees to shiver. A shadow blocked the sun, and Lorelai looked up to see Irina’s red and gold dragon—longer than a horse-drawn carriage and twice as tall—fly over the top of the hill and plunge straight toward her.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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SEVENTEEN
“DOWN!” LORELAI SHOVED Gabril to the right and took off running in the opposite direction. “Chase me. Come on, chase me,” she whispered as she dove between two thick-trunked pines and sprinted down the hill. Her heart thundered in her ears and a vise squeezed her chest as visions of Gabril being consumed by dragon’s fire or crushed between the creature’s monstrous jaws filled her mind.
Branches exploded into the air, and a tree crashed to the ground and tumbled past her to disintegrate into chunks of debris at the bottom of the hill.
She risked a glance over her shoulder as she tossed her travel pack to the ground and leaped between another pair of trees.
The dragon had flown past Gabril, who was struggling to his feet, his face a mask of terrified fury. The beast was heading straight for her, its enormous wings shattering treetops as it came.
“Run, Lorelai!” Gabril yelled.
She was running—flat out sprinting faster than she’d ever gone—and the dragon was closing the gap between them like it was nothing.