At some point, I must have fallen asleep, though I couldn’t say whether ten minutes or several hours had passed. My last thought had been a promise that at all costs, I must not let down my guard. Then I’d closed my eyes and broken the promise. I was lucky to be alive.
And unlucky, for I was still in this confined place with a swollen ankle that would not support my weight.
I did feel a little better when my eyes opened, though I wasn’t nearly strong enough to face Joth again, which I would have to do soon. With every passing minute, his hold on the kingdom deepened. For all I knew, I was already too late.
Panic began to rise in me, worse than before, creating a cycle I could not break: My desperate need to leave the tunnel was sapping the very strength I had to leave this horrid place.
I wanted to sleep again, to escape into empty dreams if nothing else offered me respite. But in the darkened room, I heard footsteps. Maybe that was what had awakened me before.
I looked up at a faint light that entered the tunnel and saw Harlyn standing over me with a clearstone in one hand. Her disk bow was armed and within easy reach if she decided to use it, but it was not aimed at me, not yet.
“For once, when you go away, will you please consider staying away?” I asked.
“You must make me understand,” she said, setting the clearstone in a sconce. “Why did you let me live back in the throne room?”
“A moment of insanity.”
“And then here, why did you save me again?”
I turned my head away from her, but she would not give in to my silence. Crouching beside me, she said, “I know what Endrick did to you before you killed him, I saw what happened as the corruption entered. You should want to kill me.”
“I do.” More than usual, at the present moment.
“But you saved me instead. Tell me why. I need to understand this, Kestra!”
“I don’t even understand it, all right? I just know …” I took a breath, trying to calm myself. “I have to stop Joth, because no one else can do it. If I win, I will take the throne again. But …” I hardly dared to say the rest, especially with Harlyn studying my every move, ready to shoot that disk if I twitched the wrong way. But I had to say it. “Harlyn, I know there is a chance I won’t win. If I die, then the fight against Joth must continue. At the end of it, you must take the throne in my place.”
Silence followed, so long that I wasn’t sure she had heard me. Then she said, “Why would you want me on the throne? You hate me.”
Behind me, where I had accidentally collapsed the tunnel, pebbles fell from the tunnel ceiling, as they had occasionally done for hours. I wrapped my arms around my body until everything was quiet, then said, “Whatever I think of you, I also know that the people will follow you, and they should. You’re a good person. No corruption. And Simon will be at your side.”
I was so tired by then, I was only mumbling. I knew that Harlyn sat beside me, putting an arm around my shoulders while whispering assurances that there was nothing to be afraid of down here in the tunnels. How very wrong she was.
Harlyn continued talking, asking questions that I’m sure she suspected I would never answer in any other circumstances. We talked of magic and the throne, and of Joth and Simon and Trina and Loelle. We spoke of other things too, though in my exhaustion, I had no idea what I might have said.
Finally, I nodded off to sleep, the last words in my head being Harlyn’s promise to stay and keep watch over me.
At least for now, I was safe.
I awoke sometime later, filled with the magic I had thought might be lost forever, and fully recovered of every hard feeling that Joth had numbed when he had robbed me of strength. My ankle was so completely healed that I wondered if I had imagined it being injured before.
When I warmed the clearstone, I saw Harlyn asleep in a corner of this small tunnel room. Her disk bow was slung over one shoulder and her hand was on her sword, sheathed at her waist. Unfortunately, I had not imagined any of this.
What a fool she was, to have let herself become so unguarded, so vulnerable. It showed a lack of respect, as if I were no threat to her. Maybe last night, when I’d been empty and lost, I had not been any more dangerous than a mouse or a biting fly, but that was different now.
Silently, I reached out to my Ironheart soldiers, instructing them to find me here in the tunnels. I promised that if they remained loyal until my final battle against Joth, I would free them, either in my last breath of life or as my first act as the established queen.
And I sensed their response. Every Ironheart still in Highwyn heard my call. The test would be how many of them obeyed. For their own sakes, they had better be competing for who would be the first to reach me.
As I waited, I searched within me to understand what abilities of Endrick’s were mine now. There were so many powers I didn’t understand, or powers that felt colder than I dared to explore. Endrick seemed to have a fascination with life: its creation, destruction, and eternal preservation. One day, I would know all that he knew.
Every day after that, I would surpass all that he could do.
But for now, I simply needed the power to make a person sleep. Harlyn had barely stirred, and that’s how I wanted her to remain. Now it was simple to take the dagger from her boot, the sword from her waist, her bow, and the satchel at her side containing two disks, the black one she had already threatened me with, and a white disk that would separate the target’s soul from their body. The eternal punishment.
I smiled as I placed her satchel over my shoulder. This may have been the first kind thing I could say about Harlyn: that the black disk she had threatened me with was far better than the alternative. One day, I would have to thank her for that, probably a few minutes before executing her for treason.
Once I had disarmed her, I tried to recall the conversation we’d had shortly before I fell asleep. I’d said more than I intended to, I knew that. I vaguely remembered that I had offered her the throne.