Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6)(39)

“You’re a child, and I’m not!” he yelled, with all the fury his wasted body could contain. He sat up partially in the bed, then fell back into the pillows, panting. “I was so young. I had my whole future waiting for me. I had my beautiful Elise waiting for me. And I spent my entire life here, in a place I didn’t belong, all for the sake of a bunch of animals and some stories they made up about how the world works. Now I’m asking a stranger to kill me and take my place, because that’s what humans do in the Hooflands!”

“What happened to the others?” Regan’s question was abrupt.

The man looked away, refusing to meet her eyes. “What others?”

“The ones who wanted the throne.”

“Dead,” he said. “Bones at the bottom of the castle’s foundations. They walked to their dooms willingly, with thoughts of power and privilege clouding their minds. Don’t mourn for them. They died generations ago.”

“I thought you’d say that,” said Regan, and cocked an arrow, and fired.

She had been in the woods for five years, hunting to fill her own belly and the bellies of her family. Her arrow flew straight and true, embedding itself in the headboard of the bed where the old man lay. He turned to look at it, mouth hanging slack and surprised.

“You missed,” he said.

“I didn’t,” she replied, and turned her back on him, preparing to walk away.

“Wait!” he yelled. “You can’t leave me here!”

“You’ll die soon enough, from the looks of you,” she said. “I apprenticed to a healer. There’s blood on your hands. Your lungs are killing you, and I don’t feel the need to make it any easier.”

“But whoever comes to find you will find me, and they’ll know about the lie! They’ll know Kagami was never queen, and they’ll know you’re not a hero.”

“Good. Let them learn that destiny’s a lie, and let them find the way to govern themselves, as they should have done from the beginning. Let them learn humans are people, the way you never learned that they were,” said Regan, and turned on her heel and walked away from the old man—away from the old monster—without a backward glance. She didn’t feel like a hero. She didn’t feel like much of anything beyond an exhausted teenager. She still felt like she was saving the world.

In the forest, she knew, her family was waiting for her. Maybe Chicory would be the next queen. The people of the Hooflands would have to decide how queens were chosen, now that they got to do it for themselves again. Maybe there was a record somewhere in the castle, some old ritual or line of succession for the people of the Hooflands to follow. Or maybe they’d decide not to have a monarch at all. The old man couldn’t have done much to rule them on a day-to-day basis, not while keeping his terrible secret safe. They could set the prices of their goods themselves, and not burn anyone’s fields.

At the end of the hall, Regan found another human-scaled flight of stairs, descending down along a well-lit hall lined with burning torches. Someone must have lit them. The man behind her wouldn’t have had the strength. So she slung her bow back over her shoulder, squared her shoulders, and began her descent.

The stairs seemed to go on for the better part of forever, or maybe it just felt that way because she’d made so much of her climb in the dark, and was so tired now. Just as she thought she could go no farther, she heard voices ahead of her, raised in argument. She found the strength to walk faster, and reached the bottom of the stairs, whipping around the corner to see a faun, a silene, and a minotaur facing each other. The faun was holding a rope, the end of which was tied around the neck of a familiar-looking kelpie. Gristle’s head was bowed, eyes on the floor. None of them were looking at Regan, whose bare feet were silent against the stone floor.

“—lurking around the castle wall,” said the silene. His voice was familiar. He had no pies to offer, but Regan remembered him all the same. Her stomach soured as she realized who the minotaur must be. “There was a peryton as well, but the filthy thing flew away. We have to tell the Queen!”

So even the old human’s servants thought he was Queen Kagami? That fit with what he’d said about how none of them were ever allowed to look upon the Queen’s majesty, but it still seemed odd to Regan that none of them would ever have demanded to see the Queen. Or maybe not. The old man had spoken of a curtain that sustained his pretty lie. There had been at least two humans secretly in control of the Hooflands. Maybe there had been more. Maybe this was how things had been since the beginning, with people falling through doors and believing they knew better than the people who were already there, all because they thought humans were the best possible thing to be. Maybe no one had ever seen a king or queen once they took their throne.

Regan cleared her throat.

Gristle raised his head as the three servants of the imaginary queen whipped around to stare at her. “It’s the human,” said the silene she recognized, in a faintly baffled tone. “How did the human get in here?”

“Queen Kagami is dead,” said Regan. It was true enough, even if it wasn’t the entire truth. “Let my companion go.”

The silene dropped the rope. Gristle trotted over to Regan, stopping close enough that she could feel the heat coming off his hide.

“Good girl,” he said approvingly. “Have you saved us all?”