Tal parsed the letter, his expression impassive. Finally, he looked up at her. “Surely you can appreciate your army finding solace in the word of the Second Son?” He watched her carefully, urging her toward a carefully laid trap.
“I do not criticize my constituents,” Elodie said. “The fault I find is with you.”
“Oh?” Tal smirked, sinking onto the bed. “And what have I done to displease Her Majesty?”
“You speak for the Second Son. Which means you held the power to stop the threats from the Republics. You simply chose not to.” She knocked the boots from his chair so that she might sit.
Tal’s expression was impossible to read. “So, she did tell you.”
“Of course she told me,” Elodie snapped. “But you’ve revealed yourself much more. You have taken my soldiers, further weakening my geopolitical position, all because the Second Son is threatened by the New Maiden’s light.”
“I was trying to save you, Lo.” Tal leaned forward, looking wounded. “You are so determined not to see me that you fail to realize you have put your faith in the wrong person.”
“Of course I see you,” Elodie said, shaking her head at his baseless accusation. They had been friends for more than half their lives. “I have always seen you.”
“You haven’t,” Tal whispered, so quietly the queen had to strain to hear. “You did not know what to do with my pain, and so you ignored my bruises and my burns. You did not want to lose my affection, and so you strung me along with just enough hope to get what you wanted from me. You never needed to lie in order to keep my loyalty, Lo. You always had it. And on my life, you always will.”
The queen shifted in the unforgiving wooden seat. Tal was right. She had not known how to handle his magnitude of hurt. She had simply hoped her friendship would be enough.
“But He sees me,” Tal continued, eyes glassy. “With Him, I am not damaged. My hurt was not earned. My pain is no longer proof that I am unworthy of love. And so,” Tal said, sounding almost apologetic, “what He commands, I will do.”
“You would abandon me for Him, then?” Her reign would be ruined.
“You abandoned me for Her,” Tal countered. “Relationships go both ways, Elodie, whether you wish to admit it or not. Even if you did not return my affections, you might have stopped to consider what darkness might live within me, too. Might have accounted for me, the way you did for the New Maiden.”
He got to his feet. The room was not large enough to pace. Now that he had drawn her attention to his hurt, Elodie could see it radiating from him. She had been too wrapped up in herself to notice that he was desperate for an escape. So hopeless that he’d been willing to pledge his fealty to an unknown evil that now resided in his heart.
“We are not so different, Sabine and me,” Tal continued. “We come from similar shadows, carry similar scars. Neither one of us stands to improve your ranks. So imagine my surprise when I learned you had given your heart to her. It proved to me that you could have loved me; you merely chose not to.”
“Just because you see me as an object to be desired,” Elodie said, looking up at him, “does not mean that is my only purpose.”
“Perhaps I do see you as a prize, but I treat my possessions with tenderness and consideration,” Tal said sharply. “You’ve never deemed me worthy of the same, and so who among us is the true villain?”
Elodie gaped at the venom in his voice. Tal had never before demonstrated this precise a cruelty.
“Still, I am willing to offer you one final chance at redemption.” Tal’s smile was all teeth. “An opportunity to end the embargo and silence Edgar DeVos for good.”
The queen clutched the seat of the chair with white knuckles. This was exactly what Velle needed in order to prepare for the coming winter. Exactly what Elodie required to turn her reign around. She held her breath, waiting for the catch.
“Give up Sabine, and all this strife can be forgotten,” Tal demanded, his eyes glittering gold. “Offer me the New Maiden, and Velle will rise again.”
21
Morning on the Lower Banks dawned cold and gray. After the effort exerted the day before, Sabine could not bear to wake her companions from their various states of sleep, so she slipped noiselessly out of their tent into the day’s first light. She rolled out her neck, wincing as she poked tentatively at the knots in her shoulders.
The ache in her muscles was strangely satisfying. It was proof—definitive, tangible proof—of the work she had orchestrated and the relationships she had built. Sabine, who had spent years fearing that she could not trust her mind, found assurance in her body instead. This was a different kind of power. Not magic, but strength.
Still, as she surveyed the hole in the ground, she wondered how much farther she could burrow. The earth was packed more tightly the deeper she dug, each strike of the shovel meeting more resistance. Sabine couldn’t help but fear that she was making too much of a mark on this earth. The New Maiden might have been born in the Lower Banks, but Sabine was merely a visitor, still getting to know the land and the people who inhabited it. She slipped the New Maiden’s journal out of her pocket and settled herself on the sand, hoping She might offer Sabine words of wisdom in this trying time.
Some days I fear the duality of power. Before, when I was not yet Her—the New Maiden had underlined the capital letter three times—I craved the attention, the understanding of others. Now that I possess it, I must confront my own inexperience. What type of person would wish to bear such crushing responsibility—to be remembered for decisions made out of necessity rather than idealism?
Yet, whenever I doubt, I know where to turn. Every leader deserves an equal who can see beyond the choices you make, who challenges you and sharpens your convictions through debate.
Sabine smiled despite herself as she thought of Elodie, the way the Queen of Velle would tug on the short baby hairs that curled about Sabine’s ears, grinning as they kissed. It was wonderful to be challenged. Delightful to be deemed worthy enough to polish.
It is especially challenging when the power that makes you valuable is a force you don’t fully understand. I was not born the New Maiden. For years, I was nothing but a girl. And some days, I wonder what the difference is, if my tears were truly a magic salve to bring back the waters, to revive my homeland, or if a single bolt of luck struck me just once, and I will spend my life in the expectant shadows of one incredible, impossible mistake.
The New Maiden’s words settled into the corner of Sabine’s heart with a resounding ache. She, too, had no control over her power, had so many questions about its origins, and had no understanding of why it had chosen her as its host. She had not known what she was doing, had possessed no grand plan. Instead, she had incidentally performed a miracle and fumbled forward from that point on.
It was a relief Sabine could hardly name, a loosening of tension all the way down her spine. It was not possible to disappoint the New Maiden if the New Maiden Herself did not know what Her word meant. She knew only that She wished to do good. To channel Her influence toward benevolence. To matter.
The New Maiden had not known that one day, centuries into the future, She would be worshipped, had never imagined Her word lasting so staunchly after She’d passed. In fact, it was only after Sebastien proposed the idea that Ruti took up the pen to scribe Her teachings.
Even the New Maiden’s archival image had been directed by a boy who would one day become the Second Son.
I am no God, She had written, not like the ones of yore who light the sun and turn the tides. I am simply a girl who stayed, who planted her feet in the earth and waited, who wept with such conviction that her own prayers were answered.
Do I confess I am a fraud? Or transform myself into whoever they need me to be?
Sabine’s focus was interrupted by the soft footsteps of the redheaded attendant emerging from a tent. “You’re up early.” The girl smiled, gesturing to the clouds that were obscuring most of the sunrise.
“Couldn’t sleep any longer.”
“The water will do that to you.” The attendant sighed, stretching her arms toward the sky.
“How do you mean?”
