Evanescent by Andria Buchanan

the tear or he’s going to invade, kill all of you, kill my mom at my feet, torture me, kill me, and then let my aunt have the throne. I may not have all of that in the right order but I think that’s the basic idea.”
    “Did he hurt you?” Rhys repeated. “Or was it just threats?”
    “He just threatened me.” I closed my eyes and swallowed, trying to keep from losing it in front of everyone. “Just empty words about how he could hurt my mom. How he could go through to our world and kill her. That he’d bring her back here so that I could watch her die.”
    “Allie.”
    “He can’t do it. Not really. We’re here, and she’s on the other side of reality, beyond our reach. The mirror is gone and there’s no way that he can get to her. There’s no way between this world and that one. It’s all just threats. Isn’t it?”
    “Of course it is,” Rhys said softly. “Your mom is safe on the other side of the Bleak. He can’t get to her.”
    “Are you okay?” Winston asked softly. “You? Allie? Not Queen Alicia. Not your mother. You .”
    “I don’t know.” I shook my head and tried not to cry. “I always have my sword on me but tonight, tonight was a ball and so I was unarmed, and even if I had had my sword it wouldn’t have mattered.” I could hear the panic seeping into my own voice. “He used magic to tie me to my chair, and I was helpless. You were frozen and I was unarmed, and there was nothing I could do. I was alone and I was trapped and there was nothing I could do.”
    “Rhys,” John of Leavenwald said. He’d slipped into the area closest to the throne. “We need to give everyone a task. We need to keep them calm.”
    “Calm.” I nodded. “Yes, that’s what we need to do. Everyone needs to remain calm.”
    “Right.” John moved forward, blocking me from the view of the rest of the nobles while I got control of myself.
    “We need to prepare,” he said to the crowd. “If the Fate Maker has dared to come here it must mean he’s planned something.”
    Yeah, I thought to myself. He’s planning on murdering us all. And he intended to start with me. Probably something I didn’t want to fill my nobles on just yet, though.
    “Where do we go?” one of the noblemen shouted.
    “We’ll send out dragon messengers as Queen Alicia had suggested earlier. They’re quickest. They’ll go to each of your lands, stop in all the villages. If the Fate Maker’s army is two days away, we must be quick to raise an army and march them here. There is no time to waste.”
    “We can’t fight an army headed by a wizard. Not again,” Lady Arianne said. “Think of the warriors we lost last time. My son, my heir, was wounded. If someone as brave as Gunter can be brought down then none of us are safe. Our army isn’t prepared for this.”
    “So what do we do?” another man called out.
    “We’ll fight back,” I said, ignoring Arianne’s whining and my own fears about taking our weakened army into battle. “And we’ll keep fighting back until he realizes that this land isn’t his for the taking. If he wants a war, we’ll give him a war to make the Pleiades tremble.”
    “To war!” a young dragon on the far side of the room, near the windows, yelled.
    “To war!” someone else joined in.
    And suddenly the mood shifted from panic to something else. Something bloodthirsty. Angry.
    “To war,” hundreds of voices replied, the windows in the ballroom shaking from the noise.
    “Allie?” Winston looked at me, and I stepped forward, pushing my way between John and Rhys so that I could face my subjects, hoping that they couldn’t tell how badly I was shaking.
    “To war,” I said, trying to ignore the way my knees were trembling and keep from vomiting on the throne room floor.

Chapter Seven
    “All but the last of the dragon messengers have returned, Your Majesty,” one of the red-jacketed soldiers said. He handed me a glass of ember fruit juice and a stack of paperwork as the sun rose over