Xander tried once more. “What if I refuse to let you go?” But there was no real weight behind his words now.

I bristled at the idea. “What choice do you have, really? You need my cooperation, and unless you help me get my parents . . .” I let the meaning hang between us.

His eyes warmed, even as his brows drew together. “So are you saying we have your cooperation? That you’ll agree to be our queen?”

“I’m saying that you’re guaranteed not to have my cooperation if you don’t help me.”

Xander beamed at me. “Already I see a promising negotiator,” he lauded me, and I recognized the cunning behind his carefully chosen words. He’d missed his true calling, I thought. He should have been a diplomat. “You’ll make an excellent queen.”

XIX

“There are things you should know, then, if you plan to actually meet her in person,” Xander explained, and I wondered why it was Xander offering this lesson and not Max or one of the royal guards. Surely they had more firsthand experience. Yet they seemed satisfied to let Xander take the lead in this instance.

“She’s cunning, deceptively so. Don’t allow her feeble appearance to fool you into believing otherwise. And she’s brutal, don’t ever forget that.” He paced, and I had difficulty following him with my eyes. He was making me dizzy. “I’d feel better if we all went with you. I’d rather you not be alone with her.”

“What if she doesn’t agr Knyesee to meet with us?” Max questioned Xander.

Xander dismissed the notion with a wave. “Of course she’ll want to meet with Charlie. She’s been planning this for years.”

Max was as uninformed as I was, it seemed. He shook his head. “How would you know what she plans?”

“I know more than you realize. More than anyone else, probably.” He laughed derisively, yet no one challenged his statements. Still, I was baffled by how this revolutionary had such intimate knowledge of our country’s ruler.

He stopped pacing and stood before me. He stared down at me with such a familiar tenderness that I nearly forgot into whose eyes I was looking. I blinked as I realized that it was Xander—and not Max—gazing at me with such intense adoration. “She means to force a promise from you, to share the throne.”

“That makes no sense,” Max finally interrupted. “How can she expect to co-rule? Loyalties would be divided. How would disputes be settled?”

“Her magic is ancient—she’s much older than the body she inhabits. This is not her first time on the throne.” Xander’s story sounded like a child’s fancy, but still, no one disputed him.

“What is he talking about?” I asked, turning to Max instead of Xander.

But it was Zafir who answered, his voice low and almost melodic. “He’s right. The queen’s soul—her Essence, she calls it—has been passed from body to body since before she accepted her post on the throne of Ludania. Same ruler, different body.”

Xander took up where Zafir stopped. “She’s powerful, but she must have permission to make the exchange from one body to the next. And she’s desperate, she’s running out of time. She needs your approval before she can transfer her Essence to your body. Otherwise she’ll remain trapped in the body she’s in. If it dies, she dies.”

“Why my body? Why can’t she find someone else to take her place?”

The answer seemed obvious, but I needed to hear him say it. “Because your blood is royal. Because you’re the only female heir she can find.”

I frowned. “But am I really? I mean, my mother isn’t royal. And my father certainly can’t be full-blood, can he? How strong can my blood really be?”

Xander seemed to know everything, and he answered smoothly, easily, without hesitation. “It doesn’t work that way, Charlie. A female’s blood, no matter how far down the line, is as strong and pure as if she were born to the first generation of royals. Her gifts will be just as powerful as those of her ancestors.” He raised his brows, begging for more questions, but I had only one.

My eyebrows drew all the way down. “And if I were to accept this . . . this Essence . . . what happens to me then?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Max interrupted, gripping my shoulders and forcing me to look at him. “Because you’re not going to do it. You’re going to tell her to go to hell!”

But Xander ignored Max’s outburst, giving me the only answer he had. “My best guess is that there’s room for only one of you in there.”

No one spoke again as silence ate up the air around us. The queen was going to try to bargain: my life for my parents. She was cunning, Xander had said. Well, I would have to be more cunning.

“Max is right,” I declared, snapping my chin up and making my decision. “She can go to hell.”

They were still arguing when I left them, as they tried to decide how best to get a message to the queen. Max wanted to go himself, to ensure there was no miscommunication in the missive, and to force a promise from the queen that I wouldn’t be harmed. But Xander wouldn’t allow it; he still didn’t trust Max. In the end, it was decided that Claude would go, but that he must take one of the resistance fighters with him. Which fighter was going was still up for debate.

Because we were underground, and darkness ruled, I had no sense of day or night as I made my way through the passageways, but I knew enough to realize I was aching and bone weary.