Maybe.If Merecot didn’t stop her. If the spirits didn’t fight back. If Naelin even wanted this.I...
I want Erian and Llor.
She plunged her mind into the maelstrom of spirits.
Choose me, she told the wild spirits.I will be your queen now. Choose me. Now!
Her thoughts, her emotions, her will was battered by the howling of the spirits. They wanted to rip, destroy, break, kill. She heard a rumbling around her, and the earth bucked beneath her feet. Naelin slammed down hard on her knees. Pain shot up through her legs, but she barely felt it. It was buried in the pain all around her as the spirits’ minds tore at hers.
She felt herself scream, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. It was swallowed by the shrieks and cries. Her muscles felt as if they were being ripped apart, her bones felt as if they were cracking within her body, and her mind splintered.
And then she saw herself, from the outside, as if through a hundred eyes at once, multiplied and distorted. Her vision of her body twisted, as if she were being wrung like a rag, shaken and ripped into a million pieces.
She fought to pull herself back together, and it was like gathering sand in her arms. But she wasn’t lying to Merecot when she said she was strong.
Shewas.
You are mine, she told the spirits.I am yours.
I will take you home.
A pause.
She felt her body fall forward, hard, on the ground, and she was whole again, for a moment. And then the spirits were inside her, ripping through her thoughts, holding up her memories and shattering them into fragments as if they were made of glass.
She saw herself, a child, the night her parents died.
Saw them again. Heard them scream.
Saw Renet, the moment she met him. Kissed him. Married him.
Erian, born squalling, and then suckling at her breast, living, breathing, growing, and then Llor, his tiny face screwed up in a scream. And then they grew, running into the house and throwing their arms around her, laughing and chattering.
The spirits tore through her memories until they found the moment she’d lost Erian and Llor, when they were taken from her. And then she saw the moment she found them again, when they ran into her arms with tears on their cheeks. They paused, expectant, and at first Naelin was confused.
And then she understood.
I will hold you,she told the spirits,like I held them. In my heart.
Take us, the spirits said.
And she did.
In the empty courtyard, Hanna felt the moment that control of the spirits shifted. It was a few stray seconds. Alone, she rolled across the courtyard to look out between the arches toward the mountains in the west.
She saw a peak crumble.
And then she saw a new mountain rise in its place.
Good, she thought.Very good. If I’ve done nothing else in my life, I have done this.Saved a kingdom. Saved a queen.This could have been an ending. But it’s a new beginning.
Chapter23
Even though she knew it was coming, Daleina felt the recoil as if it were a punch. She slammed backward in her throne, her head smacking against the wood. She heard cries around her but didn’t have time to reassure her chancellors.
Plunging into the minds of her spirits, she spread her will through them.Calm. I am here. You are not alone. I have not abandoned you. Cling to me.
And to her surprise, they clung.
