exploded into movement. Like one of Con’s vurgsten bombs they’d buried in swamps and fields, to touch them was to set them off. Wizard magic blew over and through me.
Tertulyn flung herself at me, her face a rictus of rage, fingers curled into claws that fastened around my throat. She hurled me onto my back, the breath thudding out of me. I’d fallen into a trap, baited especially for me. Her hands tightened on my throat until I couldn’t draw breath.
But I could reverse her viciously expelled energy and that coiling wizardry. Inhaling the scent of the orchid ring as it funneled Calanthe’s deep magic through me, I repelled both. Tertulyn bounced away, falling to her back, and I followed, pinning her there with her own struggling attempts to attack again. The wizard magic, untethered, furled around me, seeking a target. Drawing on Calanthe’s wards, I bundled the wizard magic and flung it into the teeth of the ancient enchantments. They chewed, strange otherworldly shrieks echoing, then all went silent.
Tertulyn went limp. I looked into her blank face, the empty eyes vacant of the warm affection they’d once held—or pretended to hold. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from seeing her. Maybe a part of me had hoped she could be reclaimed. Mostly I’d wanted to ask if she’d betrayed me deliberately, if everything had been a lie. I’d wanted resolution and now it seemed I wouldn’t ever have it. Shadows slimed behind her smile, her face holding nothing of the woman I’d known, the girl who’d been my friend.
I sat there a moment longer, coming to terms with losing her, that I’d lost her long ago. My friend and lover had died when they wiped her mind. I thought of what Mother had said, about the spirit extending to live awhile in Tertulyn’s body. Was it there still, trapped in flesh that lived on mindlessly? If so, it deserved to be freed.
I hated to do this, and yet I refused to be the coward and leave it to another. I’d given execution orders before—more times than I liked to contemplate—and I’d observed those executions, taking that responsibility on myself as queen, as my father had taught me to do. But never had I carried out a death sentence with my own hands. Truly, I never guessed I had this ability. It came to me, though, offering itself, and I pulled at Tertulyn’s physical vitality, draining the life slowly from her body. She weakened, then went boneless. Her eyes drifted closed and her face relaxed dreamily as I let her life sift softly into Calanthe’s soil.
Finally she collapsed into herself, a puppet with her strings severed, the last of her body’s life gone. Wiping the tears from my face, I arranged her limbs into a peaceful posture, brushing her hair from her face with the old tenderness that had lived between us for so long. Maybe it had never been real for her, but it had been for me. I’d choose to remember her that way. My childhood companion. My fellow student in those first shy joys of the body. I folded her limp and boneless hands, cold and damp from the water, on her breast. In her rest, her face looked familiar again.
“It’s time to sleep now, old friend.” Tertulyn wasn’t a child of Calanthe, but she would become part of us anyway. I could give her that. The orchid hummed gently on my finger as I drew on it, the violas rustling as they burgeoned. Stems wound over Tertulyn, filling in as leaves and blossoms billowed into verdant life. Calanthe, answering my request with a warm embrace, took Tertulyn into her soil. Within moments, there was no sign of her body, except for the lavish mound of flowers. Violet for mourning.
I sat there a while longer, letting the tears fall. “I loved you well, Tertulyn,” I finally whispered. “Rest in peace.”
When I rose to my feet and turned, Mother stood there. I hastily wiped away my tears, wishing my guilt could be as easily hidden. Hoping she hadn’t seen how easily I could take a life. “I thought we’d said goodbye.”
She shrugged a little. “I thought this decision might be easier for You if You believed that. I suspected this might be the outcome.”
“Do you disagree?” I asked, realizing that it was far too late to ask that question.
“Would I disagree with my queen?” she returned with a sad smile.
“I would hope so,” I returned immediately, though I