25. Charlotte
CHARLOTTE
S omehow Celandine slipped through Henry’s grasp and fell into the room behind the wall. Charlotte cried out, both of them scrambling to follow. They had been trying to find that latch when they’d heard Celandine’s arrival. If only they’d known where it was, they might have been able to intercept her before she got inside.
Night had fallen outside, but enough light came through the room’s windows and spilled from the lanterns in the bedchamber beyond to illuminate the scene before them.
The chests that overflowed with gold lay neglected along the walls, the focus of the room on the many plinths that were scattered through the middle of the room. Each one held a different object, except for the empty plinth in the middle where Celandine stood. Her hand was clasped around something that looked like a short scepter, and her mouth was turned up in a smile that held no true emotion.
All the anger, fury, and fear that had danced over her face earlier were drained away, leaving her terrifyingly cold and empty. How was it possible to change so quickly? Was it due to the object in her hand?
Both Henry and Charlotte stopped warily just inside the room, but Henry began to advance slowly forward again, his eyes on the deposed queen.
“There’s no point to any of this,” he said. “Put down the object, and we can report that you cooperated.”
Celandine laughed, mirthless and high. “You have no idea how hard I worked for the power I hold. I will never choose to lay it down.”
Henry took another step forward, his eyes on the object in her hand.
“What is that?” he asked, his voice reasonable and calm, although Charlotte knew him well enough to recognize the underlying note of tension.
“I was going to flatten the path before Gwendolyn with this,” Celandine said. “She claims I’m so awful, but I was going to give her everything. I was going to flatten the mountains for her.”
Charlotte gulped, staring at the winking jewel on the tip of the scepter. Could that small thing really do so much?
“But Gwendolyn doesn’t want what I can offer,” Celandine said. “And she has turned my people against me. Now she will see what happens when I turn the mountains against her.”
“You can’t do that,” Henry said. “You shouldn’t do that.”
“You think I’m lying?” Celandine’s lips curled upward, and she thrust the scepter toward one of the windows. “This object can do even more. She thinks the sunset saved her, but I will steal the sun away. See who will follow her when the sun never returns.”
As she spoke, dark clouds rolled across the sky, too quickly to be natural, stealing the last of the dusk light and obscuring the stars and moon. The only light left in the room was the lamplight coming in from the bedchamber.
Charlotte shifted uneasily, staring at the stark blackness out the window. Surely Celandine’s words were empty boasts. She couldn’t really steal the sun, could she?
Celandine cackled. “First the sun, and now I’ll take her precious mountains. I was going to flatten them for her, but instead I’ll send them crumbling on her head.”
Henry lunged toward her, reaching for the scepter, but she jumped backward out of reach. A rumble began outside. It sounded like thunder except it built and built until Charlotte could feel it rattling through both the stones beneath her and her bones.
She staggered toward the window, gripping the sill and trying to peer outside. Were the mountains collapsing toward them? It sounded like it.
Henry lurched, the ground beneath them shaking and disrupting his footing as he tried to chase Celandine through the plinths. She evaded him, her knuckles and fingers white around the scepter.
The rumble grew until Charlotte pressed her hands to her ears, her eyes watering. Celandine was going to destroy them all, not caring that she would destroy herself in the process. And what about the valleys and the kingdoms beyond them? Celandine would destroy everything if she blocked the sky and brought down the mountains.
Charlotte dropped her hands, using them to brace herself against the wall instead as she took in the room. Celandine was dashing between the plinths, Henry in pursuit. But somehow she always slipped from his fingers. Should Charlotte help? If she tried to circle from the other direction, they might be able to trap her and force the scepter from her hand.
Or maybe Celandine would bring the ceiling down on their head before they could. The palace was already creaking alarmingly, and they were three stories up. If the wing collapsed, none of them would survive.
Her eyes swept over the room until a beam of lamplight coming through the open portrait caught on a round, smooth golden surface. The one familiar object in the room of plinths. The golden apple.
With a jolt, Charlotte remembered the moment Gwen had first placed it in her hand and her explanation of its purpose. Gwen had arranged for it to be placed here with intention. If there was something in this room that could stop Celandine, the apple would tell Charlotte what it was.
She pushed off from the wall and ran toward the apple, swerving to avoid Celandine’s path on the way. Thankfully, the deposed queen swerved to avoid her as well, unaware of Charlotte’s intentions.
She staggered the final steps to the plinth, the floor unsteady beneath her. Her fingers fell on the apple, and even before she had fully picked it up, her mind warmed with the awareness of multiple familiar objects all around her. It was nothing like her previous experience with the apple, not only because of the affectionate familiarity she felt toward the objects but because of their number. They overwhelmed her mind.
She gasped, whirling to look at all the objects with her eyes, trying to match them with the sense of their presence in her mind. Her eyes landed on a small golden whip, sitting alone on a plinth near the door. As she focused on it, her awareness of the other objects in the room muted, receding slightly to bring this one to the front of her mind.
It was the pair to the golden halter in her pocket, the tool Celandine had used to fight Gwen’s travel on the wind—a tool that had leveled a village and nearly sunk a fleet. It was no good to her inside the room when the halter wasn’t in use, but it called to her because it was familiar.
She tore her eyes away, forcing her mind to the next object along. But there were too many objects in the room, and the rumbling was growing even louder. She could barely hear anything above its sound now. If she examined the objects one by one, she might not find anything of use in time.
Instead, she squeezed her eyes closed and filled her mind with the apple’s awareness. Even with her eyes closed the objects floated in her mind, no longer attached to their plinths. She let her mind drift over them, releasing her conscious thoughts to let the instinctive layer of her mind take control.
There! Something flashed past her awareness, and she seized on it, focusing in. The object was a jewel, cut to fine points and polished to a high sheen. Its outside was cold and hard and clear, but inside it roiled and pulsed with an intensity that took Charlotte’s breath away. Anger, sadness, love, joy, hatred, envy, excitement, anxiety, disgust, all mixed together and contained beneath the smooth surface of the jewel.
And Charlotte knew—thanks to the apple—the meaning behind what she sensed. This object removed emotions, sucking them from anyone who touched it and storing them inside the jewel instead.
Charlotte had noticed the change in Celandine after she entered the room and wondered if the scepter was responsible. But Celandine must have touched the jewel on her way past. How often had she come into the room to hold the jewel? From the store of emotions inside it, she must have come countless times.
Celandine didn’t believe in emotions—she had made that clear. She saw them as weaknesses, so it made sense she wanted to purge them from her system. But that meant she had never learned to deal with them, to feel them. She had never learned how to let them wash over her and recede. If Charlotte could break the jewel, would the emotions return to their original owner?
Her eyes snapped open, and she scanned the room, looking for a jewel that matched the one in her mind. Her gaze caught on a red stone thanks to the lamplight that made it gleam.
She ran toward it, ducking past Celandine as she went. Celandine was in the middle of lunging away from Henry, and her body slammed into Charlotte’s arm, knocking the apple from her grip. It flung halfway across the room, rolling out of sight. But it didn’t matter now. Charlotte already knew what tool to use.
She reached the plinth and snatched up the jewel. Instantly her body calmed and her mind felt clearer and easier, the terror and anxiety she had been feeling sucked away. She could see why the object had been appealing to the former queen. But it had become a crutch.
Lifting it over her head, Charlotte threw the jewel with all her might at the closest wall. It sailed through the air, winking as it arced high. It caught the attention of the others, and they both paused, turning to look. Celandine let out a wordless cry of protest, but it was too late.
The jewel hit the stone wall and smashed, shards flying in all directions. A wave of fear and anxiety hit Charlotte so strongly she staggered backward as her fear returned to its original owner. Gasping, she barely kept her balance, spinning to find Celandine.
If the returned emotions had hit Charlotte so hard, what would they have done to Celandine, who had stored decades’ worth of every emotion in there?
Celandine’s head was thrown back, her face twisted with heightened emotion, her eyes wide and staring. She fell backward, colliding with a plinth and taking that down too, its object toppling off and bouncing away in one direction while the scepter flew from Celandine’s hand in the other.
Celandine curled into a ball, sobbing. Her arms wrapped so tightly around her knees it must have hurt, her sobs turning into a keening that rose higher and higher.
It was hard to turn away from the horrible effect of twenty years’ unchecked emotion, but the floor was still shuddering, the rumble in the air still vibrating in Charlotte’s bones. The scepter had flown in her direction, so she dropped to her hands and knees, searching the floor for it.
“There!” The tip showed from between two chests, fallen gold coins lying atop and around it, obscuring its presence.
She stretched out, wrapping her fingers around it and pulling it back toward her. The second she touched it, her mind expanded, taking in not just the room or the palace but the mountain range in every direction and the sky above her. Holding the scepter, she could shape her environment however she wanted. The thrill of power ran through her, but following behind was the fear. It was too much. No one person should be capable of re-forming the land itself.
Charlotte nearly flung the scepter away from her, only just stopping herself. Her fingers remained wrapped around it, but she looked up, pleading wordlessly for someone to help her.
A figure holding a lantern appeared in the open portrait, another dark shape behind her. Charlotte’s mouth fell open at the magnificent sight of Gwen in an enormous wedding dress, the filmy layers falling around her and the train disappearing behind, her hair piled high and the tiara on her head winking in the light.
Gwen paused for one second as she took in the room—Celandine balled up and keening with Henry hovering beside her, and Charlotte sprawled across the floor on the far side of the room, a scepter gripped in her outstretched hand and terror on her face. She met Charlotte’s eyes, seeming to read the plea for help there, and handed her lantern to Easton behind her.
But she didn’t run toward Charlotte. Instead, she gathered her skirts and darted in a different direction, stooping to retrieve something fallen on the ground.
For a stupefied minute, Charlotte’s consciousness hovered between the mountains outside—whose peaks were beginning to crumble, enormous boulders rolling down their sides—and her friend. Was Gwen retrieving the object Celandine had just knocked loose? Charlotte hadn’t even seen what it was, but surely it wasn’t important in the middle of such danger.
But when Gwen straightened and turned toward Charlotte, it was the apple gripped in her hand. She ignored Celandine and the plinths and the rumbling outside and walked straight toward Charlotte, the apple gripped in her palm and her eyes on the scepter.
Understanding washed through Charlotte, followed by relief. If Gwen had the apple, she would know how the scepter worked. She would know how to wield it and how to undo the damage Celandine had already done.
Charlotte pulled herself to her knees, holding the scepter toward Gwen. When her friend reached her, she dropped to her knees at her side. But when she wrapped her hand around the scepter, she didn’t pull it away from Charlotte.
“Two will be better than one,” she shouted over the rumbling. “It will only respond to strength. We have to force it to obey us.”
Charlotte could feel Gwen beside her through her normal senses, but she could also sense her through the expanded awareness the scepter gave her. Charlotte tried to follow Gwen’s lead, forcing her will on the scepter, instructing it to roll back the clouds and rebuild the mountains.
It groaned, the sound more felt than heard beneath the volume of the thunderous rumble. But it didn’t obey. More of the mountain tips crumbled, the broken boulders rolling further down, heading toward the city in the valley below.
“No!” Gwen shouted. “I will not let her destroy our mountains! I will not let her steal even one more bit of light from me.”
Gwen’s will merged with Charlotte’s, their unified voices commanding the same thing. Together they shouted into the deafening noise and chaos around them, building a mental picture of a clear sky and whole mountains and forcing the shape of that command onto the scepter.
“You. Will. Obey. Us,” Gwen choked out, speaking through gritted teeth.
The rumbling quieted.
Charlotte drew a gasping breath, her fingers squeezing forcefully around the scepter. The rumbling quieted further and then still further. New light stole into the room as the sky cleared, revealing the moon and the last of the light from the sunset.
In the distance, blocked by the walls, Charlotte sensed the boulders rolling back uphill. The mountain peaks re-formed as if they had never been touched, even the life on their slopes returned to its original state.
She slumped down, every muscle trembling with the aftereffects of her exertion. They had done it.
Gwen swept her into a hug, crying into her shoulder and croaking out her thanks. A shout sounded behind them, followed by running feet, a crash, and then a high-pitched scream that made her blood stop.
The girls pulled apart and looked across the room. Henry was taking the final two strides toward a broken window. He looked back at them with a pale face.
“I tried to catch her,” he said, “but…”
“She moved too fast.” Easton’s voice shook. “We were both watching you, and…”
Gwen stood, swaying on shaky legs. Easton hurried to her side, putting an arm around her for support, and she leaned against his shoulder.
“Perhaps, she…” She swallowed and tried again. “When I fell from an upper-story window, the wind—”
Henry poked his head through the broken window, careful to avoid the remaining shards of glass. When he pulled back into the room, his face was drawn and he shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Gwen. There wasn’t any wind to catch her.”
Gwen swallowed. “I could have…I should have…”
“No.” Charlotte stood more slowly, speaking the word with force. “You were busy saving entire kingdoms—busy undoing the work that woman set in motion. Everything about her life was a tragedy, but none of it was your doing.” She moved around to meet her friend’s eyes. “This isn’t your burden to carry, Gwen. You’ll have enough burdens undoing the damage she caused in your kingdom.”
“Listen to Charlotte,” Easton said. “She’s right. At the end, Celandine made her own choice. It wasn’t your fault she wasn’t in her right mind.”
Charlotte looked sadly toward the plinth that had supported the jewel. “I’m not sure she had been for a long time.”
She looked down, realizing she still held the scepter. She wanted to drop it. She wanted to never touch it again. But she couldn’t risk anyone else getting their hands on it. She gripped it in both hands, raising it high and pulling up one knee. But just before she brought it down, she paused, the scepter hanging in midair.
Her eyes slowly rose, meeting Gwen’s.
“Perhaps,” she said, “there’s one thing…”
Gwen’s blank look transformed to understanding, and a smile spread over her mouth. “Just one,” she said.
She stepped forward and gripped the scepter along with Charlotte for one final time. Connected through the scepter, Charlotte knew they had indeed had the same thought. Together they bore down on the scepter, forcing their will on it.
Distantly, the sound of grating stone drifted through the night air, making Henry turn back to the window. But there was nothing to see in the gray dimness of early night.
Within a minute, both girls relaxed, grinning at each other.
“A small change like that won’t do any harm to the mountains or their environment,” Gwen said, letting go of the scepter.
“But it will do us a lot of good.” Charlotte smiled.
Once again gripping the scepter’s length in two hands, she raised it up and brought it down hard on her knee. It snapped in half with a sound like brittle wood.
She looked down at the two lifeless shards she held in each hand and nodded. No one could touch the mountains now.
Gwen nodded approvingly, and Charlotte let the pieces fall to the ground, overwhelmed by a rush of exhaustion. Henry’s arms slid around her from behind, and he guided her back against his chest. She collapsed against him with a sigh of gratitude, letting her eyes drift shut.
“What did you do?” Henry asked. “At the end there?”
Charlotte didn’t open her eyes although a smile curved up her lips. “Nothing too significant.”
“We just made sure we’ll always be able to visit each other from now on,” Gwen said.
“You made a permanent pass?” Easton asked eagerly. “One that doesn’t require bear form?”
“The mountain kingdom isn’t cut off from the other kingdoms any longer.” Gwen sounded satisfied. “And I won’t have to fly the captives home one or two at a time. We can set up proper trading routes too.”
“An excellent first act as ruler,” Easton said, sounding a little awed.
“I thought so,” Gwen said smugly before sighing, her voice turning rueful. “I’ll have to explore the rest of these objects later. I think there are some wedding guests who are waiting to see us.”
Charlotte’s eyes flew open, taking in her friend’s appearance for a second time.
“Your wedding!” she cried. “Did it succeed? Are you married?”
Gwen nodded almost shyly before looking up into the face of her new husband and beaming. “Celandine tried to stop it, but she was too late. And I exposed her as a usurper before everyone.”
“We broke the enchantment, too,” Easton said.
Charlotte gasped. “Of course you did! You’re not a bear, Gwen!”
Gwen gave a relieved laugh. “I’m very pleased to know I never will be again. I’m quite happy to keep my normal human body from now on, even if I can’t break down doors with my hands.”
“I’m so happy for you both.” Charlotte wasn’t sure if the tears in her eyes were from joy, relief, or exhaustion. “I just wish I could have been there.”
“It was beautiful,” Gwen said. “The captives outdid themselves.”
“ You look beautiful,” Charlotte said.
“We weren’t able to be there for Gwen and Easton’s wedding,” Henry said, “but I hope Queen Gwendolyn and King Easton will grace our wedding with their presence.”
Charlotte pulled away, twisting to look up at him. “What are you talking about? We’ve been married for months.”
“In the valleys,” he said. “But Celandine pointed out to me that it might be more than a year before Master Harold registers it officially with the Rangmeran authorities. And in the meantime, she was convinced I could register a different marriage elsewhere. So as soon as possible, we will be married again and officially registered here in the mountain kingdom. I don’t want anyone to ever question that you’re my wife again.”
Charlotte laughed. “Are you expecting a steady stream of people trying to force you into unwanted marriages?”
“Maybe I just want to give my beautiful bride the wedding she always deserved.” He smiled down at her.
Charlotte had only one answer to that. She reached up on her tiptoes and kissed him.