A slow grin breaks across the king’s face. “And why would I show you that?”
“Because I want to learn why you’re so magnificent.” Only a fool would perceive her tone as defeated and not calm, regrouping.
A vein throbs in his forehead as he scans her face, searching, almost desperately, for any emotion. “You want to see what makes me magnificent?”
Lila does not reply, does not move or look away. She just raises her chin, stares down the monarch and holds me.
“Fine,” he says. A curl flops in front of his eyes, and he swipes it away, the plane grumbling. I take a shallow breath as the perspective of the king shifts in front of me again, for the last time, the true character under all that pomp. With caring or cruel eyes, above all, Maxian wants to beseen.
“So you’ll take me?” Lila asks. “Unless someone else can?”
“We go now,” he says. “All three of us.”
Chapter Fifty-six
The king leads us tothe bathing chambers, where the empty pool is still damp. He strides down the steps until he reaches the drain, then pulls it off. The plane shudders, almost roaring.
He looks up at us. “Are you coming?”
My friend steps forward. I grab her arm. “Wait, should we—”
“It’s here. Can’t you feel it?” She descends into the pool. My body pulses with energy, with fear, and I do not feel whatever magic she speaks of—only the roaring in my ears. It grows and grows until I realize it is the screams.
Lila and I reach Maxian in the center of the pool. He offers a hand to us both. I stare at his palm, uneasy. Lila reaches forward.
“We’re not going down there, are we?” I say, pointing to the drain. “We can’t fit.”
“Not like this, we can’t.”
Then the king snags my arm.
And we lace.
We lace down down down, wind ripping up my condensing body, a rush of light, an elongation of limbs, and we smack into something hard, something wet, something that pulls us under. Water closes over my head, and my eyes fly open to a bleary vision, a shadow of land before me. Then Maxian is kicking upward, dragging us with him, and I reach, stretch, ache for air. Webreak the surface. Gasping, blinking, I cough, my body almost going limp with relief.
“Lila?” I call.
“I’m okay,” she gasps from the other side of the king.
We have emerged in a large lake, the clear blue sky above us.
“Almost there,” Maxian says, tugging toward the landmass at its center. An island.
We splash in that direction until my feet graze against bedrock. Maxian walks out of the water, up the bumpy bank, and onto the flat land above.
Lila and I drag ourselves onto the shore, tripping over the rocky sand. We collapse into the small bank that slopes upward. Ahead of us, Maxian strides to the very center of the flat island and throws out his arms.
“Welcome to the very heart of Versara,” he says. “Welcome to Lucan’s Tree.”
He truly has gone mad.Pushing myself onto my hands and knees, I survey the barren island that plateaus out of the water.
“Where?” I ask. “Where is the Tree?”
Maxian gestures. “We’re standing on it.”
Lucan’s Tree to the newer generation, the Tree of Life to the Unesse faeries—it doesn’t matter. It’s the same myth of existence. A Tree to explain to children why they are here, to comfort the old when they are leaving.
“Avery.” Lila stands up on the level surface. “Avery, get up here.”
