“Mother?” I shook my head to clear the fog from my mind, glancing around the sitting room and wondering how I got here.
“Alithea, my darling, you’ve returned.” The frail queen broke into a fit of coughing where she lay on the settee in a stifling hot room. Servants flew around the room gathering blankets, food, watered wine, and hot tea while they waited for the palace surgeon to arrive.
My mother looked as though she were on death’s door, but I couldn’t make myself go to her.
“Don’t strain yourself, Brenna.” Astrid crouched beside her, grasping her sister’s fragile hands. “Take whatever power you need from me, sister.”
“I’m not sure I can.” Brenna couldn’t seem to take her eyes off me, like she thought I might disappear.
Vague memories of the last hours floated through my mind, but they felt like someone else’s memories. Like I had just been a passenger, a witness of the events that freed my mother from her prison. A prison she’d endured because of me.
I thought I might collapse from the weight of my mother’s stare, so full of love and forgiveness, I couldn’t stand it. The shame that had plagued me since I returned was too much. Like a coward, I lurched from my chair and fled the room. I couldn’t handle the way everyone looked to me in expectation, like their savior had finally arrived to fix everything when I didn’t have a clue how to do it.
They’d all told me Mother wasn’t strong enough to rule again, but I hadn’t believed them. In some small corner of my mind I’d seen a future with Queen Brenna restored to her throne. A future where I might have to be the Queen Heir, but I wouldn’t have to rule. But the frail woman in that room would never recover. That couldn’t have been my mother.
I ran up the grand staircase of the Citadel, charging along hallways and around corners. Muscle memory took over as I burst through the glass doors to the grand terrace overlooking the Citadel park. I’d spent most of my childhood years playing in the park with the children of the noble houses, sent to become the young princesses’ playmates.
Filled with tall trees and fragrant flowers, the park was a maze of pathways and fountains, a place of beauty no matter the season. A blanket of snow covered the ground now. In my memory the pathways were always clear of snow in the winter and bright flowers bloomed in shades of black, red, and purple—chrysanthemums, poinsettias, and winter cactus. The gurgling fountains of spring were replaced with the most spectacular ice sculptures. Fir trees covered in fairy lights lined the paths and the bare branches of the tallest trees swayed in the breeze.
All that was a distant memory now. Staring at the barren garden below, I tried to comprehend what I saw. The trees were all gone. The stone pathways erased. No flowers. No winter wonderland. Blocks of dark, tilled soil sat empty nearest the terrace steps. Cows and goats bleated behind ramshackle pens. Chickens roamed freely around a coop constructed from bales of hay.
Men and women came and went. Nobility and servants alike trudged along the muddy trails to the tents in the distance. Some cared for the animals, others shoveled snow and manure from the muddy fields.
“Greenhouses,” I murmured, my gaze settling on my sister’s golden dreadlocks as she issued orders to those around her. Sylvi bent to shovel dried manure into a waiting cart.
Acrid smoke billowed from the mud chimneys behind the greenhouses. Rows and rows of them. During the years of the siege, they’d transformed the gardens into a thriving farm. The greenhouses were their source of food for the winter months while their spring fields lay fallow for the season. Fruit trees and vines made up a small orchard that would bloom in the coming months. Everyone worked, but Sylvi was clearly in charge. My sister had worked her fingers to the bone to keep our people fed. While I lived a life of solitude, serving drinks to humans and eating my fill of junk food and binging television shows. My freedom had been so important to me, but what had I done with it?
Pride filled me as I watched my sister pull a heaping cart to each of the greenhouses, shoveling peat into the fire pits keeping the greenhouses warm. The bottom half of her skirts were damp with mud, but she didn’t seem to notice. Fiske followed her at a close trot, lighting the fires as she shoveled peat into the makeshift braziers. They looked as though they’d performed this task together a thousand times.
“She’s a wonder, your sister.” Druan stepped up beside me and placed a warm cloak around my shoulders. I hadn’t even realized I was shivering. “She’s also kind of mean.” He chuckled fondly, watching Sylvi give a tongue lashing to a couple of young boys who were supposed to be working.
I had to tell her about Mother before someone else did.
Ignoring Druan, I clutched the cloak around me, flinching when a cold splash landed on my hand. I looked up, expecting to see rain.
Druan swiped a thumb across my cheek, wiping my tears away. I hadn’t realized I was crying.
“Coming home to this must be a terrible shock.” His voice was gentle and his eyes filled with concern. The low hum of his voice calmed me.
I watched a young girl following my sister around. I vaguely recognized her as Annika, my not-so-secret cousin. She’d grown into a beautiful girl in my absence. Annika was Astrid’s daughter, but the Queen of the Citadel was required to be celibate, so she could never claim her daughter as her own.
“Knowing it’s all your fault probably makes it a thousand times harder.” Druan leaned against the terrace balustrade, his arms folded across his chest. “But after three years of playtime, you don’t get the luxury of wallowing, Thea.” His voice was still gentle, but I didn’t like his words.
“Watch yourself, Druid.” I shot him a warning glare. Everything he said was true, but he didn’t have the right to say it to my face.
“I’m not, you know.”
I gave him a blank look.
“Druid, I mean. I’m not even Berserker. Or Valkyrie, even though I’ve lived among you for the longest. I’m just Druan. A man with no ties to any one people.” He crossed his ankles, staring at me. “What are you going to do to fix this, Princess?”
“I don’t know.” I swiped at the tears still trailing down my face.
“You’d better figure it out. And soon. Now’s not the time to be emotional. Your people need you and you’ve neglected them long enough.”
“I didn’t know!” I took a step toward him, shoving him back against the terrace railing. He barely moved. “I left my people in capable hands. I left them with a strong queen, a formidable ruler of the Citadel, and my sister as Queen Heir. They didn’t need me.”
“Maybe. But that’s not what happened.” Druan shrugged. “Get over it.”
“Get over it?” I slammed my hands against him again, hoping he’d fall right over the side to the ground below. But he was immovable, like a boulder. And stubborn as one. “Look at them!” I pointed down at the farmland that was once the most beautiful garden in all of Valsgard. “My people are slaving away just to feed themselves. Trapped in this mountain fortress for years just waiting for me to come save them? How do I just get over how I’ve utterly failed them?”
“The past doesn’t matter, Princess.” He shrugged his wide shoulders. “You can’t change it so there’s no use dwelling on it. But you can change their present and promise them a brighter future. You just need to step up. Do better. What do the humans say? Man up.”
I snorted. “You definitely aren’t from around here if you expect that to be some kind of pep talk.”
Druan pushed away from the wall. “Then go be the strong woman I saw take charge today and every single day since she stepped foot in this realm. Not this sniveling little girl too afraid to face mommy. You took what you wanted right out from under Neela’s nose and you rubbed her face in it. You can do this, Thea. You are doing it.”
“I don’t know what that was.” I stared down at my hands. “It wasn’t me.” I shivered, afraid the shadows I felt whenever I called on my magic were responsible for what happened. And when there was no more light left within me, what would be left?
“Yes, it was. You let your righteous anger take precedence over your fear. Find that confidence again when you face your people.”
“Face them?” Just the thought of addressing the very people I’d abandoned made me queasy.
“After what you did today, everyone will look to you for leadership. Even Queen Astrid. So you need to get out of your head and make a plan, because Neela will retaliate. Soon. You shocked her. You made a fool of her, and you took her most important prisoner—the source of the power she needs to hold her position. She’s not going to let that slide, so the question is, what are you going to do to meet her head on?”
“I have no idea.” I bit my lip. He was right, it was up to me to make the next move—quickly.
“Look at me, Thea.” He turned me to face him, his hands on my shoulders. “You are not alone in this. No successful ruler has ever done the job entirely on their own. If you try to take on this burden all by yourself you will drown.”
“Thank you.” I laid my hand over his. He wasn’t nice. He certainly wasn’t impressed by my title, but he seemed to care about my people. I could respect that even if I didn’t like him very much.
“For what?” The dark arc of his brow raised in question.
“For not being afraid to tell me exactly what I need to hear, no matter how much it makes me want to scratch your face off.” I took a step back, needing some space between us before I completely fell apart and collapsed in his arms for a good cry.
“Thea?” Ben called from within the Citadel.
“Out here!” I took another step away from the tall, intimidating Druid with the Berserker eyes.
“Your mother is asking for you.” Ben stepped onto the terrace, looking completely disoriented in this new world. Dressed in his human clothes and leather jacket, he seemed so out of place. Gone was the confident, cocky rogue who took home a new girl every night. In his place was a lost little boy I felt a visceral need to protect.
“I can’t face her.” I reached for him, needing the familiar reminder of my human life.
“She’s a nice lady,” Ben said, opening his arms to me and resting his chin on my head.
Druan snorted irritably. Either from Ben’s understatement or from his familiarity, I wasn’t sure which.
“You could have told me about all this ages ago, you know.” Ben murmured into my hair. “I would have understood.”
“The princess has bigger things on her mind than you, kid.” Stiffly Druan stepped to my other side. “Make a decision and don’t put it off.” With that, he left us on the terrace alone.
“A bit of a jerk, that one.” Ben scowled at Druan’s retreating figure. “He probably just doesn’t like me because I’m prettier than he is.”
“I love you.” I laughed and drew away from his hug, beckoning to him. “Come on, I want you to meet my sister. I have to tell her about Mother.”
“I’ve met your mother. I found her and Astrid when I went looking for you. I think the queen likes me more than you. Especially right now. You’re kind of up to your neck in trouble, aren’t you?”
“Pretty much.” I sighed, grateful my friend was here, though it was only a matter of time before his secret was out. If that happened, I wasn’t sure what I could do to save him. I had to send him back home before he ended up on the executioner’s block.