She was never with me from the start.
“It’s time for us to be off too,” Rowenna says, as if everything’s resolved.
I shake my head and rise to my feet, standing over Alaric like atowering, immovable oak tree.
“Stand aside, Indira. I’ve been more than patient. We’re leaving this mountain with the blood, flesh, and bone of Callahan, whichIwill cut from Alaric’s skin, since you’re too weak to stomach it.”
“I won’t let you kill him.”
“That’s rich, considering he’s mostly dead already, thanks to you,” Rowenna retorts.
“Only because you deceived me and framed him! Alaric is innocent in all of this.”
“You already know my thoughts on hisinnocence, but fine.” Rowenna lets out a long exasperated sigh. “Since you’re too tangled up in your feelings to think clearly, I’ll concede.Again.Because, contrary to what you think, I am a thoughtful, reasonable person. Instead of killing Alaric, we can bring him back to Tashir, throw him in a prison cell, and allow him to live as long as he cooperates and continues feeding his power into the mountain range. While I’d obviously prefer to control the earth myself, this will do for now. It might even be preferable for a short while—we won’t have to worry about the logistics of reimplanting the gemstones.”
I look down at Alaric’s broken body and picture him languishing in one of the dark damp cells beneath the hillock palace. Everything about it is wrong. Most obviously, that it would be impossible to keep him there.
“He’ll just move the earth and escape,” I point out.
Rowenna sucks an irritated breath through her teeth. “Then we’ll let him live free from a cell—give him the same ‘comforts’ he afforded us in Vanzador. You can’t possibly take issue with that.”
I try to imagine this scenario—Alaric in Tashir, wandering through the rolling fields, sweating beside me in the planting beds, lying on his back as dragonflies buzz overhead and the sun browns his marble chest. I see us laughing as we chase each other through the tunnels and dancing beneath the golden harvest moon. We could be happy, away from thesecold mountains, without the dark legacy of his father looming over us.
Except I know, deep down, it would kill him to abandon his people. And it would quite literally kill them—Vanzador’s economy would collapse if he wasn’t there to oversee the mining operations.
A stone will never have a place in a planting bed. Just as a flower is never going to thrive on this frigid mountaintop. There’s nowhere on this continent a girl born of seeds and a boy forged of stone can exist together. Not without sacrificing our seminal roots—the core of who we are.
“We’re not taking Alaric back to Tashir,” I say firmly.
IfeelRowenna’s reaction before she says a word—like grass, standing on end before a lightning storm.
“What do you meanwe’re not taking him back? Thisis a generous compromise! Did you forget the other option is killing him?”
“I won’t let you do that either.”
Rowenna blows out a long breath. “Stand aside, Indira, or I’ll be forced to remove you.”
“What does that even mean?”
Ro’s eyes dart sideways, and before I realize what she’s doing, she snatches the discarded knife from the ground—still slick with Alaric’s blood—and levels it at my chest.
“You wouldn’t,” I whisper.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Tashir. I’m beginning to think you never really knew me at all—that you never truly loved me, as you always claimed to.”
Before, this accusation would have gutted me and made me question everything I thought I knew about myself. But now I hold my ground and raise my chin high, because if Rowenna truly lovedme,she wouldn’t make me feel this way. Her love wouldn’t be contingent on my obedience. She’d let me put down my own roots and become my own person instead of treating me like an offshoot of herself.
The seconds tick past, and even though discomfort twines throughevery part of me, I stand tall. Meet her stare. Surprised to find that the longer I sit with these feelings, the more I’m cleansed—like a controlled fire, sweeping through fallow fields. Burning everything down in order for it to grow back stronger.
“You don’t want to do this,” Rowenna warns, raising the blade.
“You’re right. I don’t,” I admit. “But I won’t sentence either nation to death when there’s a better way forward. You’re just too stubborn to open your eyes and see it.”
“And you’re too blinded by love to admit Alaric and his people are feeding off us like spider mites. Tashir is better off without them.”
“No. We’redeadwithout them!” I cry out. “I think that’s what Earth Mother has been trying to teach us—why she blessed each country with power that the other needs. We have always been meant to work together. To unite and thrive or perish alone.”
Rowenna closes her eyes and squeezes the bridge of her nose. “Tell me, Indira. What happens when worms infest apples before the harvest?”
