“I’m sorry,” Cora said, voice trembling. “That should have been the first thing I asked?—”
“And you?” Maiya faced her again, this time with two mugs of fragrant tea in her hands. “How have you been?”
Cora blinked at her a few times, surprised by Maiya’s deliberate change of subject. Her lips were pulled wide but the smile no longer reached her eyes. Cora shook her head, accepting one of the mugs her friend offered. “I…I’m as well as I can be, considering current circumstances.”
Maiya sipped her tea. “You’re a queen now, if the news from the villages is to be believed.”
“I am.”
“You still don’t mind if I call you Cora and not Highness or Majesty?”
Cora’s shoulders slumped. “I always want to be Cora to you. To everyone here.”
Maiya’s jaw tightened, and Cora was struck with a spear of anger that wasn’t her own. Still, her friend’s grin remained on her lips and she kept her tone light. “I don’t think you can bejustCora anymore. Not to the commune at large.”
“Why do you say that?”
Maiya gave an easy shrug and took another sip of her tea. “Twice you’ve returned since leaving us, and twice you’ve brought terrifying news. Last time, you took some of our people to war. This time, you’re taking our High Elder.”
“That’s not…I don’t mean to be a harbinger of doom, but?—”
“I’m just telling you how it seems to the commune.” Maiya’s tone took on a sharper edge. She was so unlike the sweet shy girl she’d been not even a year ago. “I’m explaining why you can’t expect to be received as Cora anymore. To the commune, you are Her Majesty Aveline, Queen of Khero.”
“And you? You said the commune sees me this way, but how do you see me?”
Maiya let out a long breath, her expression softening. “I see you as a treasured friend whom I’m looking at for the last time.”
The weight of that statement pressed hard upon her chest. She wasn’t sure how to take those words. Was she saying she never wanted to see Cora again? Warning her to stay away? Or was this a claircognizantknowing?
“It doesn’t mean I don’t wish it were otherwise.” Maiya’s voice came out soft, strained. “You were my sister, Cora. But…but now you’re a queen. You can’t just show up when you need something. It makes a mockery of our core principles. The very rule that allows our commune to live in peace.”
Mother Goddess, she was right. Cora knew she was right. Fate may have wanted Cora to come here, to meet Ailan, to walk the path her threads had woven, but after this…
She needed to let the Forest People go. Not from her heart. Never from her heart. But she could not use them as her political allies ever again. Even asking them to teach Mareleau magic had been offensive enough. At the time, it had seemed like the only recourse. Yet she couldn’t use them as a recourse. A last resort.
“You’re right,” Cora said, voice trembling. “I can’t do this again. I won’t do it again. Yet I will keep you and everyone else in my heart. I will protect you in whatever way I can, even if it means never coming to find you again.”
Maiya set down her mug of tea and sank onto the foot of her bed. Cora did the same, having no sense of thirst with such a heavy conversation. She kept her distance from the other girl, sitting a few feet away.
“How will you protect us from the newest magic war that’s about to clash on our land?”
Cora shook her head. “I don’t know yet. Did your mother tell you about it?”
“She told me and Roije late last night. Neither of us could sleep after seeing the dragons, not to mention all the rumors that were circulating camp.”
“Ailan—Nalia—is taking us to find the tear in the Veil. We’re leaving today, and none of us are asking the Forest People to fight this time.”
Maiya stared down at her hands, idly picking her nails. She lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “Have you thought about giving him what he wants?”
“What…who wants?”
“The King of Syrus.”
Cora blinked at her. “You mean…give him Noah?”
“No!” Maiya lifted her head and met Cora’s eyes. “No, I don’t mean giving him the child. What I mean is…as queen, you are in a position to negotiate with him as a fellow monarch. You can give him what he truly wants—access to the Veil. El’Ara. In exchange for leaving Lela alone.”
Cora would be lying if she said she hadn’t considered it. The Elvyn weren’t exactly her friends, and even the Faeryn she’d come across in El’Ara hadn’t treated her any better, but that didn’t mean they deserved destruction. And what about the other fae? The Djyn, Mermyn, and all the fae creatures like Valorre and the dragons. What would happen to them if Darius took control of El’Ara?
