“Don’t.” I shook my head at him. “Please don’t, Joscelin. I couldn’t bear it. I remember my own madness. I remember what I said and did, and it was vile and hurtful. With all that happened, even at the worst of it, you were only trying to protect me from myself.”

His eyes shone. “I thought . . .”

“I know,” I said. “I do.”

Joscelin embraced me, his callused hands firm against my shard-studded shoulder blades. I stifled the pain. Still, he felt it and let go. “I’m proud of you,” he said simply. “So proud.”

I blinked away my tears. “I sought but to follow your lead.”

“Imriel.” At Joscelin’s side, Phèdre’s closed eyes opened. A sweep of lashes lifting, unshuttered. She looked at me with wonderment. “Blessed Elua joins more than the hearts of lovers,” she said. “For surely he knew what he was about when he sent us into Daršanga to find you.”

Joscelin glanced toward the south. “What in Elua’s name was that thing?”

“Ptolemy Solon called it a ghafrid,” I said. “An elemental desert spirit. I called it a demon. It was trapped in the stone.”

“Ptolemy Solon,” Phèdre echoed. “The Governor of Cythera?” She furrowed her brow, examining her restored memories. “The one rumored to be your mother’s patron?”

“Yes.” In the midst of everything her quick wits were beginning to work on the puzzle. Despite my aching head and stinging backside, it made me smile. “It’s a very long and very strange tale. And I will gladly tell you the whole of it, but not right now.”

“What can we do to help?” Phèdre asked without hesitation.

I looked around at the milling chaos. “Right now, help people stay calm. Tell them it’s all right; everything will be all right.”

It took a while to get everything sorted out. Dozens of people had been injured by the flying shards or suffered severe abrasions from the ghafrid’s passage. The Royal Chirurgeon, Lelahiah Valais, arrived. Although she was no less dazed than anyone else in the City, she took control of the situation at Sidonie’s order. Tents and cots were fetched and a makeshift infirmary quickly established in Elua’s Square.

Aside from one young soldier who was in danger of losing an eye, most of the injuries were superficial; but it took a long time to remove all the tiny shards of emerald. Teams of chirurgeons worked diligently with tweezing implements, washing and salving myriad punctures or bandaging raw patches of scoured flesh. Lelahiah Valais attended me personally. She would have tended to Drustan first, but the Cruarch insisted that I take precedence. For once I didn’t argue. I lay on my belly, listening to the sound of gem fragments plinking one by one into a metal pan.

Sidonie stopped in to check on my progress.

“How are they?” I asked, meaning everyone.

“Scared, confused, horrified.” She was quiet a moment. “I understand what they’re feeling. I was there, too. If you hadn’t found the gem, I would have been part of launching a civil war.”

“We knew the risks of entering the City,” I said.

“Yes.” Sidonie nodded. “It makes a difference. I’ve already been through the shock of awakening from a lie. I’ve had time to live with it. I’m talking to as many people as I can, trying to reassure them that it’s not their fault. But it will take time.”

“Healing does,” I murmured.

“Mm-hmm.” She cast a glance over my flesh. “You look like a demon’s pincushion.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” I said. “My head hurts.”

She gave me a weary smile. “Better laughter than tears. Come find me when you’re done.”

It took almost an hour for Lelahiah Valais to pluck the last shard of emerald from my flesh. I rose and donned my clothing while her assistant went to fetch Drustan. He entered the tent and took my place on the cot, sitting quietly while Lelahiah examined his face. I found myself feeling awkward in his presence.

“I’m sorry this came to pass, my lord,” I said to him.

Drustan looked sidelong at me. “I should have known. When I returned to Alba, the spell lost its hold on me. But when I returned, it reclaimed me and I forgot myself.” He studied me. “That’s why you put an ollamh’s charm on Sidonie, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “But it worked only for a time. And I’d been warned. You had no way of knowing, my lord.”

He shook his head. “I should have known.”

I could tell there was no comfort I could offer that Drustan would accept. Not now. I bowed to him, then left in search of Sidonie.

I located Kratos first. He was seated outside one of the chirugeons’ tents, his thigh bandaged, telling our tale in broken D’Angeline to a group of wide-eyed soldiers who had suffered minor wounds. I paused, listening to his words.

“. . . put her hand on his and zzzzt!” Kratos gestured. “They push the sword into Astegal’s black heart.”

“You saw it?” a soldier asked in awe.

“Oh, yes.” Kratos nodded, then caught my eye and shrugged. I smiled and said nothing. Let him tell the story. Let him give them heroes: let him redirect their horror and self-loathing into anger toward Astegal and Carthage. It could only help.

I found Sidonie in another one of the tents, holding the hand of a Namarrese marquise whose brow had been gashed badly enough to require stitching, a young woman with a hereditary seat on Parliament she’d scarce warmed before the night of the marvel. The woman would have been tended to earlier, but she was sobbing too hard for the chirurgeons to do their work.

“. . . thought, thought, thought it was real!” she gasped.

“I know,” Sidonie murmured, stroking her hand. “So did I, so did we all.”

“And I don’t want to have a scar!” the woman wailed. “Every time I look in the mirror, I’ll have to see it and remember!”

Sidonie looked up, feeling my presence.

“Yes,” I said to the distraught young marquise, sitting on a stool beside her cot. “You will. A very faint, tiny scar.” I traced a line on her brow. “And one day you will bear it with pride. You will say to your children and your children’s children, ‘See? I was there that day in Elua’s Square, when Blessed Elua proved that there is no magic so dire it can stand against the force of love. I bear this scar as proof.’”

The marquise looked at me with fearful hope. “Will I?”

“You will,” Sidonie promised her.

It calmed her enough that she allowed the chirurgeons to sew her wound. Once they began, Sidonie rose. She looked tired, but steady.

“Are matters under control?” she asked.

I nodded. “Well enough.”

“We need to send word to Alais and my uncle.” Sidonie shuddered. “They need to know that they’re not under attack. We have to send a messenger.”

“The Baronesse de Bretel?” I asked.

“Yes.” She sighed. “I should have seen to freeing them immediately, but it seemed important to be here. Will you come with me?”

“Of course.” I glanced around. “Where’s Ysandre?”

Sidonie nodded toward another tent. “Lending comfort. It’s the only thing she trusts herself to do right now, and I daresay she won’t leave until Father’s been seen to. Phèdre and Joscelin are with her. I promised to call an audience as soon as everything’s settled.”

There was a bit of confusion over who was to attend us. Diderot Duval, the Captain of the Palace Guard, was missing. In the end, Sidonie called for her personal guard. Claude de Monluc flung himself on his knees before her, head bowed, apologizing, to her, to me.

“Don’t,” Sidonie said firmly. “Just serve.”

Claude gathered himself. “Yes, your highness.”

We rode through the City to the royal dungeon. Despite Sidonie’s orders, there were a good many folk wandering the streets, looking dazed and lost. One might have imagined that some great disaster had struck, that a vast earthquake had leveled the City, leaving its inhabitants to question the will of the gods. Most of them were ordinary citizens who had been too far away to hear Sidonie speak in the Square. On seeing us, they pressed close around our escort, begging for answers, halting our progress. Claude and his men had to push them away with their shields.

“Hold,” Sidonie said to him. She raised her voice. “My people, you will have your answers by the day’s end. That, I promise. But I beg you now to let us pass. We must send word to let the rest of Terre d’Ange know that the City of Elua is no longer under the sway of Carthage’s spell.”

They fell back slowly, some still shouting pleas. I looked at Sidonie. Her face was drawn with sorrow and weariness. “How are you holding, Princess?”

“Holding.” She glanced back at me. “And you?”

“The same,” I said.

Everything was in disarray everywhere. We reached the royal dungeon and found ourselves besieged by bewildered guards, asking the same questions. Sidonie was forced to repeat a variant of the same speech before ordering the release of Isabel de Bretel and the men who had travelled with her.

As a rule, Terre d’Ange is not cruel to prisoners. But when I saw the elderly Baronesse de Bretel and her men blinking at the spring sunlight in the dungeon’s courtyard, I knew that at the least they had been confined in darkness since yesterday’s audience. The baronesse stopped short, squinting at Sidonie and me. Her men cringed a little.

“Ah, gods,” Sidonie whispered in pain.

“It’s all right,” I said to Isabel de Bretel. “We did it, my lady. We succeeded after all. The spell is broken. Sidonie serves as regent at her majesty’s bidding. There will be no war.”

Her head rose, her formerly neat coif of white hair lank and disheveled. The baronesse glanced slowly around at the shocked guards, their sudden attitude of humble respect. Her voice broke. “Truly?”

“Truly,” Sidonie said. “My lady, I had thought to ask you to bear this message to my sister and uncle, but given your travail, it was thoughtless—”

“No!” Isabel de Bretel flushed, her skin as fine as wrinkled parchment. She gave a short, wondering laugh. She clasped her hands together. “No, your highness. Please, I beg you. Nothing would please me more.”

“Are you certain?” Sidonie asked gravely.

“Yes.” The baronesse nodded. “Oh, yes. May I . . .” She hesitated. “Forgive me, your highnesses, but may I touch you? May I be certain this is real and not some fevered dream born out of fear and confinement?”

I answered for both of us. “Yes.”

With slow, tentative steps, Isabel de Bretel came forward. Her men followed, strides gradually lengthening as they realized their shackles had been stricken for good, that they were no longer prisoners and there would be no war. Isabel de Bretel cupped Sidonie’s face in her gnarled hands, then mine. Feeling and believing, her old eyes filled with hope and awe. After all the stricken faces I’d seen, it gladdened my heart to see hers. I remembered the touch of her soft, wrinkled palms against my skin. Then it had felt like redemption. Today it felt like a benediction.

We had given them hope.

And we had not failed them.

Eighty-Four

We escorted the Baronesse Isabel de Bretel and her men to the Palace to prepare for their journey and found a new dilemma awaiting us.

“You’re not allowed entrance, your highness,” the nervous guard at the gates informed us. “Captain Duval’s orders.”

Sidonie stared at him. “What?”

The guard licked his lips. “I don’t . . . I don’t know. He came riding hell-for-leather from the Square. He said you wrought a terrible spell that’s driven everyone mad and we had to trust him and keep you from claiming the throne at all costs.” He looked ill. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what to believe. Have I lost my wits?”

“No,” I said. “But it sounds like Captain Duval has.”

“I suppose some were bound to,” Sidonie murmured. “It’s a terrible strain.”

Claude de Monluc drew his sword. “Open the gates and stand aside, man! I heard the Queen’s words myself. Her highness is in command here.”

The guard screwed up his face. Now it looked as though he were about to burst into tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

“How many of the Palace Guard are with him?” de Monluc asked.

“Forty or fifty?” he guessed.

“We can take them, your highness,” de Monluc said to Sidonie. He gave me a grim, sidelong smile. “With Prince Imriel’s help, I don’t doubt it.”

“Elua, no!” Sidonie said in alarm. She glanced at Isabel de Bretel, who had gone ashen. “No violence. It’s not his fault. It’s no one’s fault.” She pressed her temples. “Imriel. Do you think you can persuade my mother that her presence is required more urgently here than among the wounded?”

“I’ll try,” I said. “And I’ll drag her here if I can’t.”

I rode quickly back to Elua’s Square, weaving and dodging hundreds of aimless, wandering pedestrians. I found Joscelin outside the tent where Lelahiah Valais was still working on Drustan’s injuries, and Ysandre and Phèdre within it. I bowed and explained the situation to the Queen.

“No.” Ysandre didn’t meet my eyes. “I had Isabel de Bretel cast in chains for speaking the truth to madness. I can’t possibly face her. I’m sorry. That’s why I abdicated the throne. It’s Sidonie’s duty now.”