Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
Finally feeling like myself again, I stride into the meeting with my spine straight and my head held high. Draven follows and closes the door behind us. Everyone else is already there.
On one side, Rin, Diana, and Ejnare are standing, wearing dragon scale armor in the color of their respective clans, while the leaders of the fae rebellion in the Seelie Court are clustered together opposite them.
They’re casting wary glances at the many dragon shifters in the room before also shooting looks of confusion and disbelief towards the Dryad Queen and Lavendera, who are standing a short distance from them.
Our friends are spread out across the room.
Galen is standing close to the door while Lyra has taken a seat at the table.
Alistair is scowling at the nervous leaders of the fae rebellion, looking incredibly unimpressed.
By the window, Isera and Orion are leaning back against the windowsill, their expressions unreadable as they watch the rest of the room.
“Alright, I know we all have history,” I begin as I come to a halt in front of the round table in the middle of the room. “But let’s put that aside for now and focus on what matters. Finishing this war.”
The leaders of the fae rebellion all snap their gazes to me, looking shocked that I’m taking the lead in this meeting. I sweep my gaze over the room. This very familiar room that I was never allowed inside.
We’re in a spacious meeting room upstairs from a tavern. A large, round table with chairs around it takes up most of the floor space, but there are a few shelves along the walls, as well as a fireplace at the back of the room.
I used to sit on a cold stool on the street outside, wrist-deep in fish guts, while the important members plotted and schemed in here. I wanted to help with that too, but because of my magic type, our leaders never trusted me, so they kept me stuck as a lookout the entire time.
But I have always wanted a seat at this table.
So now, I pull out a chair and take it.
The leaders of the resistance exchange a glance, but none of them dare to say anything. I deliberately turn towards them and lock hard eyes on them.
“Have a seat,” I say, a hint of challenge in my voice.
They clear their throats awkwardly and glance away before hesitantly drifting over to the table. Chairs scrape against the floor as they, followed by everyone else, sit down as well.
Once we’re all seated, I look from face to face. “We need to press the advantage. Right now. Before Jessina has a chance to recover.”
“She’s right,” Diana agrees. Her purple dragon scale armor shifts slightly as she leans forward and braces her forearms on the table. “I’ve never seen Empress Jessina this off-kilter before. We can’t give her even a second to catch her breath.”
“Was this part of the plan?” Vestra, one of the leaders of the fae resistance, asks.
Her gaze darts to me for a second before she decides to look at the others instead.
“Kill Emperor Bane in order to make Empress Jessina lose her mind so that she becomes careless and out of control, which would make it easier to kill her?”
When she puts it like that, I feel like that probably should have been our original plan. But technically, we had wanted to kill Jessina first since Bane is easier to predict. Vestra doesn’t need to know that, however.
So I just reply, “Yes.”
“Jessina’s greatest strength is her ability to plot and carry out complex schemes,” Draven picks up.
“But now that she has lost Bane, she will be reacting on pure emotion.
It gives us an unprecedented opportunity to finish this war without having to play a careful, long-term game.
We need to hit her hard and fast with everything we have before she can process her grief and shock.
Yerion, who is another leader of the fae resistance, narrows his eyes in suspicion. “Someone who is consumed by grief and revenge is a very deadly adversary.”
“Indeed,” Draven confirms. “Jessina is ten times more dangerous when she is this unhinged, but she is also more likely to make mistakes.”
“But wouldn’t it have been better to—”
“Bane is already dead,” I interrupt in a hard voice, cutting Yerion off.
“Now, we need to kill Jessina. And we need to do that before her unhinged rage sharpens into something more cunning and lethal.” I level a commanding stare full of challenge on all of my former leaders. “Get on board or get out.”
They all gape at me, wide-eyed. As if they can’t believe their eyes or their ears.
To be fair, I don’t blame them. The last time they saw me, I was an anxious people pleaser who never stood up for myself and always twisted myself into knots trying to get people to like me. I have come a long way since then.
Tension crackles through the room for a few seconds as they just continue staring at me, their expressions full of confusion and hesitation.
Then they clear their throats and drop their gazes.
And damn it feels good.
For years, I have craved power and respect. I want the acknowledgment I never received. I want them to realize that they made a mistake when they sidelined me.
It’s petty and vindictive, but I don’t care. The rage that I have been holding back for decades is already roaring freely in my soul. There is no putting it back now. I resent the way these people treated me, and it’s time they know that.
“We need to draw her away from Frostfell,” Galen picks up, smoothly moving the conversation along after my interruption. “Not only because fighting over a city is problematic, but also because we need to meet her on terrain that suits us more than it suits her.”
“Agreed,” Draven says. “We should—”
“First keep the promises you have already made,” Lavendera finishes instead. Her pink and purple eyes are filled with steel as she holds Draven’s gaze before she locks them on me. “You promised me.”
My expression softens, and I give her a nod. “I know.”
“So where is it? Where is the Soul of Trees?”
“Orion said that it’s in the Ice Palace, remember?”
“Where in the Ice Palace?”
We all glance to Orion. The Unseelie King looks back at us all in silence for another second before clicking his tongue.
“Underneath it,” he says. “It’s encased in the thick foundation of ice that the castle is resting on. Apparently, burying it there was incredibly exhausting and difficult, which is why Bane had a bad memory from that time.”
A sharp hiss rips from the Dryad Queen’s throat. “It has been frozen in ice for six thousand years?”
She lets out a vicious growl that rumbles through the room like a volcano ready to erupt.
The leaders of the fae resistance flinch and cast terrified glances in her direction before looking back at us for guidance.
Since the rest of us are somewhat accustomed to the primal rage of the dryads at this point, we all just watch as the vines in her hair and clothes whip around her like furious snakes.
“You have ice magic,” Rin Tanaka begins, her dark eyes sliding towards Isera. “I know that you can’t make someone else’s ice disappear, but can’t you just move this artefact up to the surface?”
“It is not an artefact,” the Dryad Queen says.
“No,” Isera replies to Rin’s question. “If it’s buried in the whole foundation of the palace, I won’t be able to move the ice in a precise enough manner to lift out one small artefact.”
“It is not an artefact,” the Dryad Queen growls again.
Draven turns to her. “Is it fragile?”
“No.” She raises her chin. “It cannot be destroyed. It is not an artefact. If it was possible to destroy it, Bane would have done so after they fused the Mother Dryad with Lavendera.”
Vestra and the others stare at her in utter confusion, but we don’t have time to explain all of this to people who don’t need to know. So Draven just continues speaking.
“Then how about we just blow up the Ice Palace?” he says.
Across the table, Isera sits up straighter, interest sharpening in her eyes. “How?”
“Hector and the rest of the human rebellion planned to blow it up a few years back, but since that would’ve put my clan in danger too,” he flicks a glance towards Galen and Lyra before looking back at the rest of us, “I managed to convince them that it was a bad idea.”
“Wait,” Yerion sputters. “You were a member of the human rebellion?”
“I was a member of your rebellion too.” He gives them all a knowing look. “The white mask with the two crossed swords on it. That was me.”
Their jaws drop.
Smug satisfaction pulses through me as I watch them gape at Draven.
“Yeah, I hate to point out the obvious,” Alistair begins while raising his eyebrows at us all. “But the human rebellion is dead. All the humans from Frostfell are dead, remember?”
“No, they are not,” the Dryad Queen says.
We all turn to stare at her in surprise. When we were in Frostfell earlier to kidnap, or rescue, Lavendera, there was not a single human in the entire city. So we just assumed that the Icehearts killed them all after the failed rebellion I sparked.
“They are living in the forests outside the city,” she finishes, completely oblivious to our surprised looks.
Relief and anticipation wash through me. I turn to Draven. “Do they still have the explosives they planned to use?”
“Yeah.” He nods. “As far as I know, they left them stored in some of their safe houses. Not sure where, though.”
Lavendera shoots up from her seat. The move is so sudden that half of the table jumps and reaches for weapons.
But all she does is to walk over to a shelf and pull out a piece of paper before returning to her seat.
The paper rustles as she smooths it down before her. Then she starts sketching something.
“Uhm…?” Vestra says, casting a hesitant glance towards her.
“She does that,” Lyra says cheerfully.
“Alright, we need to split up,” I say, pushing the conversation back on track.
“To get the Soul of Trees, we need to draw out Jessina from Frostfell. And to do that, we need to start the war. So all of you,” I sweep my gaze over the dragon shifters in the room, “need to take your armies and the fae you have bonded with and head to the battlefield.”
“Which is where, exactly?” Ejnare asks, his brow furrowed.
“Leave that to me,” Diana says.
“And we,” I motion at Isera, Alistair, and Orion, “will head to Frostfell to get the Soul of Trees, and then we’ll join you on the battlefield.”
“I’ll come as well,” Draven says. “You need a dragon shifter to fly you there and back.”
“Yes, but it can’t be you.” I meet his gaze. “You’re the leader of our army. If you’re not on the battlefield, Jessina will know that something’s going on.”
He clenches his jaw. I can see him about to protest. He doesn’t like the idea of splitting up. Neither do I, to be honest. But he knows I’m right, so in the end, he just forces out a long breath and nods.
“I’ll take you,” Lyra offers. “Galen needs to stay as well since he is the second-in-command. But I’m no one, so she won’t notice that I’m missing.”
“You’re not no one,” Alistair growls in a low voice.
Several heads turn towards him. Alarm flashes across his features when he realizes it. However, before he can say anything else, Lavendera yanks up the paper in front of her and then smacks it down in the middle of the table.
“Here,” she announces, and points to an incredibly beautiful map that she has drawn.
“There are secret tunnels running underneath the castle in these locations. I’ve searched them all when I was looking for the Soul of Trees myself.
It wasn’t in there, obviously. But if you plant explosives here, here, here, here, and here,” she points to several tunnels and rooms she has marked, “you will take out the support structure and the entire castle will collapse.”
For a few seconds, we all just watch her in surprise.
Then a wicked grin spreads across my mouth.
“Well then, let’s go blow up a castle.”