Evanescent (Chronicles of Nerissette) Read online

  The world around me started to buzz. The air hummed like bees inside my ears and the hair on my arms and on the back of my neck prickled.

  “Your Majesty?” Kitsuna’s voice sounded far away. “What’s…”

  The shelf in front of me started to fade out and I could see a faint light glowing as the whole shelf seemed to waver like a mirage. Behind that shimmery image I could see another shelf, this one hidden behind the first, and there, directly in front of me, was a thick book bound in royal-blue leather. Just like the Chronicles of Nerissette had been when I’d first seen it in the World That Is.

  The book seemed to float, levitating above the shelf, and I reached out, plucking it down. Once it was flat in my hand the book flung itself open, the pages flipping rapidly on their own. Suddenly the book stopped moving, and I looked down at two pages. One of them held a portrait of a woman on a throne and the other was filled with text. The Dragon’s Tear was across the top in large letters.

  “Hey, Kit, I think I might have something. ‘The Dragon’s Tear is said to give its owner the power to imprison their enemies, to hold the fates of every person and thing in Nerissette in the palm of their hand. A magical talisman, its purpose is to temporarily melt the barrier between the World That Is and the World of Dreams.’”

  “That certainly sounds like a portal,” Kitsuna said. “Does it have a picture? And where did that come from anyway? It’s like a magic book just appeared in your hands.”

  “Maybe.” I stared at the other page, at the portrait printed there, ignoring the bit about magic. These days I would have been surprised if there wasn’t some sort of weird magic involved in all of this.

  A woman in the same coronation dress I’d worn three months ago was sitting on the Rose Throne, my crown sitting on top her head. She wore a crystal necklace and held a twisted wooden staff with a glass dome on top, no bigger than a golf ball, and a silver leaf floating in the center of the glass.

  “Okay.” Kitsuna took the book from me. “What in here looks like it could be the relic?”

  “That glass ball.” I pointed at it. “I bet that’s a relic.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think it’s the tear. Not dragon-y enough.”

  “You’ve got a point. So what else could it be then?”

  “No idea.” Kitsuna shook her head. “What else is in this picture that speaks to you? What else feels like it could be a relic? Specifically a dragon-related relic.”

  I took the book back and studied the picture, trying to find something, anything, that might be a relic.

  “The necklace?” Kitsuna pointed to the trinket the woman in the portrait was wearing around her neck.

  I leaned closer and scrutinized it. The Golden Rose in the picture was wearing the necklace the dragons had given me at my coronation. Winston had put it on me himself. The necklace wasn’t lost—it was in my jewelry box. But the bracelet…

  “What about that?” I pointed to the queen’s hand and Kitsuna took the book from me, bringing it up close to her face.

  “Are those dragons?”

  “They look like dragons to me,” I said. “Each of them is biting the tail of the one in front of it.”

  “Someone biting my butt would make me cry,” Kitsuna said. “Nice, big, fat tears.”

  “Not to mention a bracelet goes around your—”

  “Hand,” Kitsuna and I said at the same time.

  “So, crying dragons circling a hand… If I was a magic sorceress looking to make a relic called the Dragon’s Tear that holds fate in the palm of your hand, then that’s what I’d go for,” I said. “What about you?”

  “I’d say that magic has never been a very subtle force of nature,” Kitsuna agreed.

  I stared at her and we both started to laugh as she hugged me tightly and I clung to her in relief.

  Chapter Nine

  We hurried down the stairs and into the main part of the library. “We’ve found something,” I called to the others.

  Darinda looked up at us. “What?”

  “This.” I held the book out to her and she took it. “According to the photo caption, this Golden Rose has the relics. That means they’re in this picture.”

  “And?” Aquella asked, coming toward me. “Does anything in the picture look like the relic?”

  I pointed to the picture, lingering on the necklace that I’d worn. The crystal on it seemed to call to me, but the necklace wasn’t lost. I’d had it the whole time and besides, Esmeralda had said specifically that the relics had been hidden inside the palace. Winston and the dragons had brought me the necklace from Dramera. Whatever weird magic was drawing me to it had to be trying to play a trick. To distract me from what I was really looking for. To keep the tear hidden for just a bit longer.

  I put my finger directly under the bracelet that I’d never seen before. A piece of the crown jewels that was lost. It was the Dragon’s Tear. It had to be. “That.”

  “Are you sure?” Darinda asked.

  “That’s it. I don’t know how, I know but I do. That bracelet has to be the Dragon’s Tear.”

  “Okay.” Darinda nodded. “What I want you to do is go to your rooms and start searching for it. The bracelet is part of your royal jewels. It has to be in the Rose’s Tower.”

  “And what will you do?” I asked.

  “We’ll keep searching for a way to destroy the tear while you find it.”

  “And if it’s not in my jewelry box?” I asked. “What do we do then?”

  “Then search the other rooms,” Darinda said. “It might be tucked away in another closet, or a wardrobe, or even hidden inside a vase. It’s in this palace and we need to find it. My guess is that that now that the tear knows you’re looking for it, it’ll make sure that it’s found.”

  I raised my eyebrow, unconvinced.

  “The relics want to be found,” Darinda said. “They’re magical instruments so they want nothing more than to have magic flowing through them. They need the magic that you can give them. They need to be used like you need air to breathe.”

  “So you’re saying that what? The relics are addicted to me?”

  “Something like that,” Darinda said. “Only you can provide that magic now that Esmeralda is gone. They’ll be somewhere clever but obvious. The tear will be somewhere that it knows you will find it.”

  “Clever?” I asked.

  “Somewhere you wouldn’t notice them if you didn’t know what to look for,” Darinda explained. “But still easily found.”

  “Then why hasn’t the Fate Maker found them before now? Why does he need me?”

  “Because”—Darinda smiled at me—“when your mother was trapped on the other side of the mirror, your tower locked itself. If the cat was clever…”

  “What? What happens if Esmeralda was clever?”

  “The Rose’s Tower can only be opened by the Golden Rose. Without a Golden Rose, the doors won’t open. The cat could have specified in the spell that she cast that the relics were to hide themselves someplace only you could find.”

  It hit me hard then. “She hid them in my tower, the one place he couldn’t go.”

  “Yes.” She nodded, her eyes wide. “The rest of us thought they were legend. Myth. We’d have never even thought to look for them. Never noticed that they were gone.”

  “But the Fate Maker, who knew they existed…”

  “Couldn’t get to them without the rightful heir. He needs you to bring him the relics because he can’t get them on his own. The Rose’s Tower itself has protected them for you.”

  I swallowed and looked over at Kitsuna. “Well then, let’s go find the tear and finish this. What do you say?”

  “If a couple of doors are strong enough to stand up to the greatest wizard in the World of Dreams then so am I.” She nodded at me. “Let’s find the tear and end this. Right here and right now.”

  “You find it and we’ll keep looking for ways to destroy the tear,” Aquella said. “When you find the relics we’ll have a way
to get rid of it. I promise you that, Your Majesty.”

  “Thank you.”

  I heard a faint sob from somewhere inside the shelves of books, and my shoulders hunched as I recognized the sound of my best friend crying. We were going to find the tear, and we were going to have to destroy it, and with it we were going to destroy another chance to go home. All I could hope was that once the Fate Maker had been beaten back there would be something left to take us home. Some piece of magic that we hadn’t been forced to destroy.

  “Come on.” I nudged Kitsuna and tried to ignore the way Mercedes’s sadness made my stomach clench. “We’ve got a Tear to find.”

  Kit followed me out of the room and instead of using the runes in the hallways to teleport as Esmeralda had taught me, like I would if I were on my own, we started up the stairs to my bedroom. We remained silent until we reached my tower, and the doors to my room creaked open, warming slightly under my touch.

  “So,” Kitsuna said as I sat down at my dressing table and set the box of jewelry on top of it. “Where should I look?”

  I swallowed. My rooms were huge. What if the tear wasn’t here? What if Darinda was wrong? What if we were on the wrong track? What if we didn’t find it?

  “Your Majesty?” Kitsuna asked.

  I shook my head and tried to focus. “I’ll do the jewelry box, and you start going through my wardrobe.”

  “And what will you do about Mercedes?”

  “Mercedes?” I asked.

  “How will you make it up to her when you destroy the tear? It will break her heart.”

  “I know. But I don’t have a choice. It has to be destroyed.”

  I pushed down the lump in my throat and tried to ignore the sting of tears filling my eyes. I was going to ruin my best friend’s life. Destroy another possible route home. I didn’t have a choice, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still suck that my best friend was downstairs, crying her eyes out in the library. “It does, but perhaps you could use it first? You could send her back.”

  “Could I?” I asked. “I’ve never opened a portal before. What if it went wrong? What if I sent her to the wrong place? Or she was trapped in the Bleak? What if she goes back and they don’t remember her? Our families are under a spell that makes them forget us. What if I send her back and it doesn’t break the spell?”

  “I don’t know.” Kitsuna shook her head.

  “Neither do I,” I said quietly. “All I know is that if I send her through and something goes wrong then she’s alone and we might not be able to get her back. There I can’t make sure she’s safe.”

  “And you can do that here?” Kitsuna asked. “Guarantee her safety?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “But if she’s here then I have a chance and that’s more than I’ve got with her on one side of the Bleak and us on the other. Besides, if I use the tear and it goes wrong, then I’m the one who killed my best friend.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, Your Majesty,” Kitsuna said as she opened my closet door, “Mercedes’s last real chance to go home died the minute, the very second, that you decided to declare war on the Fate Maker. Even before that, really, because no one who comes here ever goes back. The minute you fell through the portal between the World That Is and Nerissette you were all doomed to stay. There was never a safe way for you to get home. ”

  “But my mother—”

  “Your mother was desperate and she took a dangerous gamble. She risked everything, including her own life, for the chance to make sure you were safe. And even then, with all that risk, it wasn’t your mother controlling the magic—it was a centuries-old sorceress trapped in the body of a housecat. A sorceress who is no longer with us.”

  I sat down at the dressing table and took off my crown, dropping it into the heavy wooden box where I stored it. The box slammed shut the second my fingers were clear of the lid, and I heard the ominous sound of its magical locks clicking into place.

  “What you said before was the truth, Your Majesty, no matter how much you don’t want to accept it. If you try to send Mercedes back there is a very real chance that you could kill her.”

  “I know. It’s just that Mercedes has always believed that someday, somehow, we were going to find a way home. She’s never given up hope that we would go back to the families we left behind.”

  “They’ve forgotten that you existed.” Kitsuna leaned against the door to my closet. “Why would you risk your lives to return to a world where you don’t exist? Why mourn over families that have forgotten you?”

  “I don’t know.” I grabbed my braid and tugged on it, frustrated. “Because it’s not like they chose to forget us. It’s a spell. They were forced to forget us but we still remember them. We still remember what being loved was like.”

  “And that’s enough to risk dying for? The memories of families that forgot you?”

  “Yes! No! I don’t know, but I think deep down that Mercedes believes her family could love her enough to beat the spell. That somehow that love would keep her in her family’s mind. She wants their love to be stronger than anything else—even magic.”

  “Nothing, not even love, can stand against magic,” Kitsuna said.

  “She doesn’t want to believe that. She wants to be loved enough that even if they can’t remember her, they instinctively know that something’s missing with her gone. If I could give her that, I would. ”

  “What about you?” Kitsuna asked. “Do you feel the same way? Do you want to be someone’s missing piece?”

  “No.” I opened my jewelry box and started to search through it, not meeting her eyes. “The only person who loved me that way is trapped inside her own mind. The Fate Maker put her there, and there’s nothing I can do to change that. Just like I can’t change the fact that we’re trapped here in Nerissette.”

  “What about your Gran Mosely?” Kitsuna asked. “You don’t think your foster mother loved you enough that her heart isn’t complete without you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she misses me. Maybe she’s happier with the life that she has. Either way, you’re right. The minute we came here, any real chance I had of getting back to her was gone. They’re as lost to us as they would be if they were all dead. And I refuse to let my best friend die chasing the ghosts of what might have been. No matter how much she hates me for that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” I sniffed once and then wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand before turning back to the jewelry box.

  “So what are you going to do?” Kitsuna asked, standing just outside the wardrobe.

  I turned to her. “We’re going to find that bracelet, wherever it is, and then we’re going to destroy it.” I spied the necklace with the heavy crystal on it that the other Rose had been wearing in the picture and put it on for good luck. Maybe it was linked to the tear somehow. Maybe they’d be able to feel each other and the tear would show itself. Or maybe I was finally losing it from the stress.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Kitsuna scurried into the closet as I began to carefully pick through the jumble of jewelry in front of me.

  Somewhere in this room was a relic that needed to be destroyed, and I was going to find it.

  “I’ve found it!” Kitsuna yelled from deep inside my closet two hours later.

  “What?” I sat up from where I had been slumped over the dressing table, picking through a pile of overly fancy rings.

  “I’ve found it.” Kitsuna rushed out of the closet, the bracelet clasped in her hand, high above her head. “I found it, I found it, I found it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She brandished the bracelet at me again. “Dragons biting each other on the butt.” She set the bracelet down on the dressing table in front of me. “Right here.”

  I picked up the bracelet, waiting for something magical to happen. It was supposed to be a relic. Why didn’t it feel magical? Shouldn’t it at least feel tingly or powerful or something?

  “Your Majesty?” Kitsun
a asked. “Is everything okay?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head, still staring at the bracelet, waiting to feel something. Anything. Maybe I needed to turn it on? Or was there supposed to be some sort of spell to zap it back to life?

  “We have it now, so let’s go back to the library and find out how to destroy it,” Kitsuna said quickly. “You destroy it and then we use our army to beat the Fate Maker.”

  “Okay, right.” I hesitated. “But the thing is, it doesn’t feel magical. It just feels like a bracelet.”

  “There’s no power in it?” Kitsuna asked.

  “No.”

  “Not filled with awesome world-bending power?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe even just a little enchanted?”

  “No.” I widened my eyes. “I mean, I feel something but I don’t know what it is. It doesn’t feel like touching the Mirror of Nerissette did.”

  “But it’s not the mirror,” Kitsuna pointed out. “Maybe they aren’t meant to feel the same.”

  “Maybe,” I said dubiously.

  “Let’s take it down to Darinda in the library and see what she says,” Kitsuna suggested. “She’ll be able to do some sort of dryad magic to tell us if it’s the right relic, won’t she?”

  I bit my lower lip. “I wouldn’t think so if it only responds to the Rose, but maybe…”

  “So let’s go.” Kitsuna motioned to the door. “We’ll get Darinda and figure out how to destroy this thing. Even if it is sort of pretty.”

  “Yeah, it actually is.” I held the bracelet up and studied it. Shiny gold with intricately carved dragons. I could see the individual scales on each dragon. Every one of them slightly different from the rest, their eyes were made of tiny, precious jewels. It was a beautiful piece of jewelry…if you ignored the fact that it apparently could be used as a weapon to destroy our entire world.

  Chapter Ten

  Halfway down the stairs I felt a shiver run along my spine. The back of my neck started to tingle and my stomach knotted. Something in my head was screaming, something primal telling me to run. To run as far and as fast as I could. There was a niggling spark in the back of my brain telling me not to go to Darinda. To avoid the library. To hide myself somewhere that no one would be able to find me. Apparently all the bracelet had needed to wake up was the threat of its own imminent destruction.