The Mirror King (The Orphan Queen, #2)(99)

The wraith boy approached me with all the hesitancy of a kitten taking its first steps. “That’s irrelevant,” he said. “What my queen wants is the only thing that matters.”

Darkness blanketed the castle by the time Melanie, James, and I returned to my rooms and dragged a trio of chairs closer to the fire.

A tray of tea and snacks waited for us. I poured while James pulled out a large map of Aecor and Melanie prowled the suite as though searching for someone hidden. When all was clear, I told them about my conversation with the wraith boy.

“He said he could protect you.” James took his seat. Red rimmed his eyes, but if he’d cried over Tobiah’s death, I hadn’t seen. “Any idea how he’d do that?”

I shook my head. “Kill wraith beasts, maybe? I doubt even he knows. I get the feeling his actions are as much a surprise to him as they are to us. He never considers consequences. He just acts.”

“He’s like a wild animal.” Melanie’s gaze drifted toward the map sitting on a stand between her and James. “Trying to please, never getting it quite right.”

“Usually never in the vicinity of right.”

“Because you keep him caged, even when he behaves.”

“My point is,” I said, “Chrysalis may be willing to try to protect the entire kingdom, but there’s no guarantee he’ll be successful. He’s too powerful to sacrifice without assurance of success.”

“Plus, he’s human now,” Melanie said. “He’s a person, not a tool.”

“He murdered the last person who believed in him like that.” James kept his tone even, but his eyes were hard. “He’s not human. He’s a human-shaped wraith creature, alive only because Wilhelmina commanded. So don’t be so quick to defend him.”

She frowned and went back to her study of the map of Aecor. “What of the barrier?”

“We must assume it’s gone. Tobiah said—” James cleared his throat and touched the notebook he’d used to write to Tobiah. “He said they’d started to put up some of the barrier, but obviously it didn’t hold.”

“Maybe it wasn’t big enough, or there wasn’t enough magic. Maybe the wraith beasts weren’t enough, and it needed to be real, human magic.” I sighed. “There are a hundred things we can’t know.”

“We have the construction plans, right?” Melanie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “What if we tried to make one? Aecor is smaller than the Indigo Kingdom. We could set up the barrier along the coast. Maybe ring the entire peninsula if it looks like it’s going to work.”

“What about Laurel-by-the-Sea?” I pointed at our northern neighbors. “James, do we know their status?”

He shook his head. “They’ve closed their borders. But a ringed barrier wouldn’t prevent them from coming here if they didn’t have defenses. How much of a population can Aecor support?”

I didn’t know. “It might not matter. Chrysalis doesn’t believe a barrier will do anything more than delay the inevitable. That was Liadia’s experience, and what we were hoping for with Tobiah’s”—I managed not to choke on his name—“committee. But we believed we’d have more time. Time to research, experiment, and build, and then the wraith would hit the barrier.”

Then we’d have a year to live unless we miraculously found a solution.

Our parents and grandparents had left us this world that was spiraling out of control. All their efforts hadn’t been enough to save it. How could we hope to make a difference?

“We don’t have time to build a barrier,” James said. “Even with the construction plans, we don’t have the resources.”

And even if we had enough flashers in Aecor to supply the magic, I doubted they would step forward. I wouldn’t have.

“What do you propose?” Melanie asked.

“My king and cousin is dead.” James’s chest expanded with a ragged breath as he faced me, expression grave. “Two months ago, he forbade me from returning to the Indigo Kingdom, but now, Wilhelmina, you are my queen. Allow me to journey into the new wraithland with a team of volunteers and retrieve any parts of the barrier I can find. I’ll bring it back to you.”

“You’d be risking your life.”

“It’s nothing less than you or Tobiah would do. Besides, I have no intentions of dying. Best case, I return with barrier pieces to help protect Aecor for a time. Worst, I return with information about the wraithland and where the borders are.”

“Worst case, I never see you again.”

“I’m reasonably certain I can’t die.” James hazarded a smile, but we both knew he was thinking about the mystery of his healing. Now he’d never know what happened. “Maybe I can find refugees as well.”

Maybe he could find his cousin, he meant.

I turned my eyes to the fire, watching flames jump up and around the blackening logs. “This is the only plan we have?”

“The only one that doesn’t involve giving up.” James leaned forward and touched my arm. “Let me do this. I know I can.”

The idea of sending James into the wraithland was appalling, not just because the wraithland was a nightmare come to life, but because I needed him here. But he was the best choice for this mission, and if there was even the slimmest chance that Tobiah and the Ospreys had survived, James would be the one to find them.