A few minutes later Hecate was standing on a pyre, her hands tied to a post behind her.
A guard began reading out charges from a scroll. It seemed impossible that the list was made after our visit to the Queen today; it was so long and dreadfully detailed. I couldn’t make sense of any of it. The only crime the Entente were guilty of was sacrificing generation after generation to help the Queendoms.
But Hecate ignored the guard and focused on the Queen.
“Do you have anything else to say, witch?” Magrit asked.
“You have already seen what I have to show you,” Hecate said simply.
“Just because my mother and her mother before her believed in fairy tales doesn’t mean that I will follow in their folly . . . Do you really expect an entire Queendom to turn on your word?”
“This is how it has been done for generations. The Entente exist to serve and guide you, our Crown. Do you argue with that legacy, that history?” Hecate asked.
The Queen shook her head. “History is in the eye of the beholder. And from where I am standing, you have done nothing for the Queens before me that they couldn’t have accomplished on their own.”
“If you don’t trust my words, then trust my wand—you have seen what the Future holds for you if you do not listen.”
“Our memories are our own—and so are our destinies. You don’t get to take them from us.”
No. I could hear my own voice in my head, but I couldn’t get the word across my lips. I tried to move toward Hecate, but my limbs were no longer my own. They were still. Just as Hecate wanted them to be.
She looked the Queen straight in the eye.
“You don’t have to do this, Magrit.”
“But it is my Fate. According to you.”
The Queen waved at the guard reading the charges, and then snatched the scroll from her hands, taking over.
“You are charged with performing sorcery with the intention of usurping the Crown. What say you?” the Queen pressed.
Hecate did not answer. The Queen continued to pace around her.
“Did you or did you not come to me and ask me to take off my crown in the name of your dark magic?”
As she spoke, people began to gather. It was a rare thing to see the Queen in the square. It was an even rarer thing to see a real, live Entente.
Most people in Hinter were aware of magic. And of the Entente. But no one, except the royals, was sure that we really existed. Until now.
They did know the Queen, and they believed in her. And if she said that we were bad . . . then perhaps they would believe that the world was better off without us.
I waited for someone to stop her. There were gasps. But then there was quiet—the worst kind of quiet, where fear holds everyone hostage and no one breaks free of it.
Not a soul stopped what was happening. Not even Hecate. I’d seen Hecate perform magic without touching her wand before. Why not now? Was it the fault of the Black Glass or was it Hecate herself? Was Hecate wrong before? Did the Black Glass have the power not just to reveal our faces but also to stop our magic in its tracks? And if it could, how could Hecate not have foreseen this? How could she not know that the war that Magrit sought was not just on the other Queendoms but on us as well?
Please, Hecate, help yourself. Save yourself. Please.
“You claim to love the people. But you told me you would choose a piece of metal over them,” Hecate said.
Suddenly Hecate’s face began to transform itself into the Queen’s.
She spoke in the Queen’s voice: “The people belong to me. They would gladly give their lives for me. I am the Crown. I am everything to them. I could run the streets with their blood and they would line up and offer up their veins for me.”
The real Magrit did not flinch, but the people reacted. There was a murmur of dissent. Was their beloved Queen admitting that she could put them on the pyre too? The guards shifted closer to them, quelling their din before it could grow. Their faces were awash with confusion.
“Who do you believe—a witch who can change her face and voice at will or your Queen?” the Queen countered.
The people shifted uncomfortably, looking from Hecate to the Queen and back again. The Entente had not been real to them until today. And their Queen was everything to them, as her mother was before her. But they had known only peace during Meena’s reign. And Queen Magrit was bringing them chaos in their public square.
Hecate’s face returned to her own.
And the crowd inhaled collectively, inscrutable. They had not seen magic before. Hecate was magic in the flesh.
“We always tell the truth, no matter what face we wear.”
“The people know me. And my heart. Who are you? How can they believe you when you want nothing, love nothing, hate nothing? Who are you?”
In the interminable pause, the crowd made a decision between the Queen they thought they knew and the Entente they had believed were a thing from childhood tales. In the stories, they had been magical saviors, but in the flesh, when the Queen rewrote the story, she made the Entente the villains. A murmur rose that became a chant of “witch.” Hecate had miscalculated. By showing her magic to the people, she had given them cause to fear her.
The Queen concluded her list of offenses. “I don’t trust you or the Entente. And what I do not trust must be extinguished for the good of the Crown. For the good of us all.”
The Queen’s man raised a torch and prepared to light the pyre.
In my mind, I thrashed against that which bound me, tried with all my might to scream and wail, but Hecate had trapped my anguish inside me. Hecate remained calm. A single tear ran down her cheek.
I cannot lose you like this. Please, stop this for me.
Everything I have done, I have done for you and your sisters. You will see, she said in my mind.
Hecate finally said out loud, “We are forever. No one can take us from one another. We are Entente.”
But I knew that Hecate wasn’t talking to the Queen. She was talking to me.
The crowd resumed their chant with more force. “Witch! Witch! Witch! Witch!”
My heart was the only thing that could move, and it began beating so hard it echoed through my paralyzed form. But it wasn’t enough to drown out the words.
I focused again on the boy in full guard’s uniform next to the Queen. His skin and hair were brown. His face was round. His eyes were piercing green, but they reflected back the darkness of the new buildings made of Black Glass around the square. His mouth remained in a fully pursed line. He had not joined in the chant.
Thunder crackled, followed by a flash of lightning that lit up the already bright sky, meeting Hecate’s hand in one of the pockets of her skirts. Hecate didn’t need her wand to wield her power. It only aided her in being more precise.
I willed her to strike again and use the lightning to break the bonds that held her. But the sky remained dark for a beat.
The Queen nodded at the soldiers to light the torches. The flames went up, and I watched in horror as the pyre began to burn beneath Hecate.
Lightning struck again. This time near the Queen, but if Hecate was responsible for it, she did not show it.
From my hiding spot, I didn’t understand.
We had been walking through the square when the Queen’s guards grabbed her. Hecate went with them, even though she was stronger. Even though she could have stopped them with a breath, a whisper, or a turn of her wrist. She let them lead her to the square and tie her up. She let them start a fire beneath the pyre. She kept her lips sealed. She did not move a muscle in protest. She let them take her from me. From all of us.
From me especially.
Hecate was the most powerful of us. She was the Future of Les Soeurs, my mentor, and sister to us all. But I didn’t know she was my mother until the moment before her last breath.
When I could move again, I touched my face. It was wet. I realized that I was crying. I had never seen another member of the Entente cry—not Hecate on the pyre, not Galatea as she was watching her. But I was crying now.
I should have known she was my mother, but Hecate had always been so powerful that her wishes were opaque to me—like she never wanted or felt anything other than what she was doing at the time. But as she burned, her eyes met mine. The flames curled around her. She should have been screaming—instead, she spoke to me in a voice I could only hear in my head.
I wish I’d told you, Farrow. But it is not our way.
I tried to scream, to get to her, but I was paralyzed where I stood. As a man dressed in the livery of the Queen’s guard read off a list of offenses, saying things like “malevolent sorcery against the Queen” and “treasonous inciter,” my mouth would not open; my legs would not move. I didn’t know if Hecate was using what power she had left to stop me from fighting when she should have been fighting to stay alive.
Don’t fight.
Suddenly Galatea, my older sister and the Past of Les Soeurs, appeared in the center of the square. If Hecate expired, there would be only two of them. The three Les Soeurs led the rest of the Entente. Iolanta, the Present, was in isolation. But she would feel Hecate die the moment it happened. Galatea, as the Sister of the Past, would remember every second of Hecate’s death without the kindness of time to help it fade. Even though it was thought that my gift would be the Present someday, it felt like I would be remembering every detail of it forever too. I prayed for them to be able to stop it, but that was all for naught.
The other sisters began to appear. The army raised their swords against them. I still could not move.
Iolanta appeared suddenly—Iolanta, who never left the confines of her isolation. Iolanta, who knew the Present and clearly could feel Hecate on the pyre.
South and Amantha and Bari were there too, making their own desperate attempts at saving her while I stood frozen.
I had no choice. I did not blink once as I watched the flames engulf her body, her face, and her hair. As her skin charred black and her eye sockets filled with fire, and as my eyes stung and teared from the smoke, I could not unsee. But I didn’t know why Hecate would have wanted me to have this be the last image that I would have of her, my mother.
Now there were only two Fates left.
The Queen took in Galatea. The twisted look of satisfaction she wore dissipated at the sight of Galatea standing there. Another Entente holding a wand.
“Hecate, what have you done?” Galatea whispered, looking up at the pyre, which had now completely consumed our sister. My mother. She was ash.
“What have you done?” Galatea demanded again, this time to the Queen.
The square filled with Entente. Galatea stood defiantly in front of them all, her blond hair standing up in the wind.
“The Entente will rain the hells down on you,” Galatea vowed as she raised her wand to the sky.
The Entente replicated the gesture, raising theirs to the sky too. Even South raised his wand—tiny, ill equipped, and utterly without magic. He was the only boy among them. His face was changed too. He’d traded his brown hair for red. And his skin was a ghostly pale. But even with the new face, I would have still known him. And as he stood strong, his wings concealed beneath a coat, he lowered his wand. Now he was holding it like a knife, perhaps readying himself to fight the only way he could—the way a human would.
The Queen seemed almost more curious than afraid as she looked at my sisters and South. “Which one are you? The Present or the Past? Unfortunately, the Future is no longer with us.”
“I am the one who is going to end you,” Galatea said, her voice hollow and cold.
“Perhaps. But your sister already told me that my death is not today.”
Galatea’s face clouded, and the sky darkened with it. “We also told you that Fate can change.”
“Kill them all!” the Queen commanded.
The soldiers fanned out, heading for my sisters and South.
I had never seen Entente fight. Our wands were meant for creating good things in the world, not for combat. As the troops advanced, Galatea pushed the younger Entente behind her.
Bari stumbled backward, landing on the ground near the cart behind which Hecate had pushed me. She saw me and reached for me, her face a mask of confusion.
“Come on, Farrow. Don’t be afraid.” Her hand stretched out toward me, but I still couldn’t move. I didn’t understand why the spell hadn’t expired with Hecate. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you just standing there like that?”
I couldn’t even move my eyes enough to convey that I was frozen—frozen as my sisters fought, which was what we were never supposed to do.
Bari’s hand hit Hecate’s invisible wall. “It’s a spell.” She raised her wand and tried to undo it.
Listen to my wand.
Break her spell.
I won’t tell.
But nothing happened.
A dagger whizzed by Bari’s head, and she ducked. It bounced off the invisible shield in front of me and landed on the ground.
“I’ll come back for you,” she whispered before she raced off, wand raised.
“Advance!” Magrit commanded.
“She is your Queen, but this is your choice!” Galatea yelled at the line of soldiers, daring them to choose peace. She summoned another lightning strike. This one ripped a line in the stone in front of the soldiers. They stopped in their tracks and stared down at the cracked stone, steam rising from it. Galatea had given them a line to cross and an opportunity to turn back.
The Queen gave a condescending laugh. “My people are the Crown.”
One of the soldiers cast a worshipful look at the Queen and stepped across the line.
“We are the Crown!” he shouted, the Queen’s words on his lips. The others followed him across the line.
The commoners began running and screaming, trying to get out of the way as the guards advanced.
The soldiers’ swords should have been no match for our wands. We were stronger than any human. We had magic. But we were taught never to hurt another soul, human or Entente. There was hesitation in our actions, enough to leave us at a disadvantage.
Except for Galatea. She did not hesitate.
Her wand seemed to crack open the sky, and white lightning flashed wherever she wielded it, crackling and sparking toward the line of soldiers. There were screams from their ranks, but they held their formation. They raised their shields defensively.
The lightning hit one shield and went straight through the metal. The shield dropped, revealing that the soldier had been hit squarely in the chest. I could see another soldier’s uniform moving behind him through the gaping, burning hole. The soldier stood for a moment, somehow still conscious. He looked down at the hollow in his chest. He crumpled to the ground and was finally still, his face frozen forever in a look of horrified surprise.
I felt the pressure of more tears welling up behind my eyes. This was a new horror. Within seconds of losing Hecate, I had seen one of Les Soeurs become a killer. I felt another tear roll down my cheek, even though I couldn’t move a muscle to wipe it away.
The other Entente stood still, none of them ready to do what Galatea had demonstrated. They improvised, using their gifts to fend off their attackers instead of killing them.
Amantha appeared and disappeared next to the soldiers in formation, brandishing her wand and freezing individual soldiers one at a time.
Despite Galatea’s deadly might, the Entente were still struggling against the sheer number of soldiers around them. Galatea’s wand moved swiftly, and she struck down more soldiers with her lightning strikes. But for every felled soldier, there was another to take his place.
Behind her soldiers, Queen Magrit was watching, pleased at their progress. The small, strange boy was still at her side.
Who was he?
Suddenly Iolanta appeared at the edge of the square. Her skin was so pale it almost glowed in the daylight. She blinked heavily. But she raised her wand and Black Fire splayed from it, dancing across the cobblestones of the square before it reached its first victim.
South spotted Iolanta and ran toward her, but a line of soldiers stood in his way. For a moment he looked panicked. Then he pulled off his coat and his wings unfurled. The soldiers stopped in their tracks. They raised their swords and charged at him.
He flapped his wings and began to rise, higher and higher, above the fray.
I searched for Bari, and my breath hitched when I saw that a soldier was holding his knife to her throat. Not Bari too! I couldn’t lose her.
“Please, I’m just a child,” she wailed so loudly that I could hear her from my involuntary hiding spot. She made a face that seemed so vulnerable, so unlike her, I was shocked.
The soldier’s face softened, and he pulled the knife from her throat. Bari took the opportunity to raise her wand enough to touch the soldier’s skin. The soldier gasped as he realized too late that she had tricked him, and then began choking.
A scorpion emerged from his mouth. He tossed it away from him in horror. He coughed again and another emerged. His arms flailed helplessly as the creature climbed out onto his face. He could not scream, only gurgle, as it was followed by another and another. His head was engulfed in scorpions in mere seconds. But they were not on him, I realized. A few more seconds and he didn’t appear human at all. He was a pile of scorpions. The pile wobbled under its own weight, then cascaded onto the ground and surrounded Bari.
Bari looked at her wandwork, her chest heaving with effort and adrenaline.
I realized before she did that the scorpions were about to attack her, their tails raised in unison, ready to strike.
Bari turned toward me as if she could hear me, then turned back and looked down at the army of scorpions. She stomped on one of them defensively. A human scream seemed to come from the carpet of bugs, which began to scatter. Other humans screamed too as they saw what had become of the man.
The crunch of the scorpion’s exoskeleton reminded me of what Bari had said about her beetles: If you crush them, you crush me.
Queen Magrit yelled for her men to regroup.
Galatea motioned toward Iolanta to stop.
“She’s happy she did this. I can feel it,” Iolanta said to the others. Then she looked at the remaining townspeople, who had been trapped in the square by the battle. “Some of them are joyous. Some of them are relieved. Some of them are scared. But not a single one of them is going to help us.”
Above, South changed course and headed back into the fray. He was too far away for me to see his expression. But I imagined it to be what I felt: a mix of fury and impossible hurt. He had something in his hand.
As he got closer, I saw it was a rock. He began taking more rocks from his pockets and pelting them at the soldiers, providing some nonmagical cover for his sisters fighting below.
One of the soldiers spotted him and raised an arrow lit with fire. I tried to scream again, but still I had no voice.
An arrow arced through the sky and whizzed by one of his wings. He spotted it and turned over in the sky, evading it. But just as he righted himself, another lighted arrow arced toward him. This one hit its mark.
A hole burned clean through his wing. He screamed in agony, and then he began to fall.
There were too many people in my way to see where and, more important, how he landed. I imagined him crushed and tangled up in his newfound wings.
Iolanta’s expression darkened, and she raised her wand. I thought she was turning her rage toward the townspeople who were in her direct line of vision. But then I spotted them. There were two soldiers pushing cannons toward the Entente.
Iolanta’s Black Fire collided with the cannon fire. An explosion tore through the square as the black plumes reached out like smoky tentacles, destroying everything in their reach. The force of the explosion pushed me backward, and the spell Hecate had bound me with shattered.
When the smoke began to clear, I saw a gulf of earth and debris between the pyre and where the Queen and her men stood. The Entente and most of the soldiers were gone. The explosion had wiped them out.
All that was left was one of South’s bloody shoes lying in a pile of ash. Were they all gone? Had any of them managed to travel away in time? I prayed that they had. But looking at the ashes, my heart sank.
I pointed my wand at the Queen, my hand shaking with effort. She would pay for what she had done.
But nothing happened.
The magic wasn’t there.
The Queen approached me. “Leave this one alone. She’s not Entente. She’s human.” She snatched the wand from my hand and dropped it on the ground like trash. “You should know better than to play at being a witch, little girl.”
After the dust settled, after the soldiers were gone, after every person I loved had been struck down, I picked up my wand from the ground and clambered down to the pyre, where I could still make out some semblance of Hecate’s form. But when I reached to touch her, the ashes crumbled into the pyre and my insides felt as if they crumbled with them. I put the ashes into the pouch I wore around my neck.
How could I still be here when they were gone? How could I have been frozen while they fought? It was all too much.
We were the Entente. We were the architects of Fate. How could this be our end? For centuries we had been at the side of every queen in every Queendom, as advisors, confidants, leaders. And now we were all gone.
Except me. And the ashes.