“To what end?”
Kelsea couldn’t answer that. She had killed many people; was this so different? And what was so important about blood anyway? She had just cut ties with the woman who’d borne her, and it had been the right decision. She might have many feelings about that scene down the line, some of them tinged with regret, but not nearly as much regret as if she’d made a different decision. Blood did not make Elyssa a better mother, nor had it made Mhurn a father; he had knifed her in the back. Kelsea felt far closer to Barty and Carlin, even to Mace, than she ever had to her own parents.
“Only as strong as I want it to be,” she whispered. Someone had said that to her once. Mace? The Red Queen? She couldn’t remember. Animals cared about bloodlines, but humans should have evolved to do better.
The circumstances of your birth don’t matter. Kindness and humanity are everything.
This voice she recognized: William Tear, speaking to Lily on one of the worst nights of her life. If it was true, if that was the Tear test, then both of Kelsea’s parents had failed.
“Where do we go from here, Lazarus?” she asked. “Do I stay in exile, just like she does, hiding out here in the middle of nowhere while things get worse and worse?”
“I don’t know, Lady. We can’t stay here, not for long, but I don’t know where we go. New London is under the Holy Father and the Mort, but you have only seventy-five soldiers downstairs. It would be suicide to go back.”
Kelsea nodded. She was no stranger to charging into the lion’s mouth; indeed, reckless action had been the foundation of much of her queenship, even when all she could do was get herself killed. But it felt equally reckless, somehow, to simply sit here, guaranteeing her own safety while her kingdom burned. That was her mother’s way.
“We came so far, Lazarus. Did we really come all this way only to fail?”
“Sometimes that’s just how it turns out, Lady.”
But Kelsea didn’t believe that. Perhaps it was simply her long life of reading books, where plot was carefully scripted and every action taken was supposed to mean something. They had fought through too much together to fail now. There must be some option, even if she couldn’t see it. Her restless mind searched the past, the many-layered history of the Tear through which she had suffered. Jonathan Tear’s death was approaching rapidly, a terrible tragedy . . . but could it have been averted? And would that really have saved the Tear? Katie might have been able to kill Row Finn—maybe—but the Town’s problems were deeper than a single man, and killing a would-be dictator only left an empty throne. Kelsea sensed a solution somewhere in the past, but it would not come clear, not yet.
How did Jonathan Tear die?
Katie had not shown her yet, but she could no longer wait for Katie’s memories to unfold. She looked up at Mace, who still watched her with worried eyes.
“Where’s the Fetch?”
They found him out on the second-floor balcony with Hall and several of his soldiers. The sun was about to break the eastern horizon, but the morning air was crisp and cold; winter had truly come. Lady Chilton’s—my mother’s, Kelsea thought, my mother’s—house was surrounded by scrubby patches of grass that glittered with ice crystals in the ivory morning.
As Kelsea and her guards emerged onto the balcony, Hall and Blaser bowed. She was glad to see both of them, though she had to cut off something from Hall that sounded horribly like the beginnings of an apology. On her way through the house, they had passed through a gallery that overlooked the entryway, a vast stone floor where soldiers slept, fewer than a hundred, all that remained of Hall’s army. The idea of him apologizing to her was intolerable.
The Fetch and his four men stood on the balcony, all of them peering eastward through spyglasses. For a moment, Kelsea was transfixed by the sight of them: Howell, Morgan, Alain, Lear, and Gavin, five boys of the Town, now grown up and apparently damned.
Kelsea turned to her Guard. “Leave us alone for a moment.”
“Not a chance!” Elston snapped.
“Great God, El, do not make me go through this with every man in the Guard.”
“Elston,” Mace said quietly. “Come on.”