Heart of Stone (24 page)

41.

Queen Cozette

Palace Royale, Gemmes

“Your Majesty?”

A knock on the door startled the queen awake. After her sequestration from her long-lost daughter, she’d cried herself to sleep. The realization of Marcus’s death and Sophie’s eminent one overwhelmed her.

She wished for the strength of the girl she’d been at seventeen. The girl capable of conquering the world.

That sort of courage was needed to sort this out.

              Cozette lifted herself off the floor as Scarlet and Nicolette entered, carrying tea and biscuits, fortifying food, not what she needed. She needed to hold her daughter before she left this earth.

She shook her head, looking at the nursery from this lens. Pitiful, wasted years spent here, mourning a loss that was just that. A life lost.

              “Cozette,” Nicolette started. “I know you dismissed Drake, and I don’t blame you. I understand you’re under a lot of stress. None of the advisors want to trouble you. We know there is quite a scene unfolding in your chambers….” she stopped.

“What is it then?” Cozette asked, holding her head up with her hand.

              “The rioters are incensed. We have lost many of our Légion men. Everyone downstairs is in a panic. Could you, perhaps consider reinstating Drake for the now? Until things have sorted themselves out … upstairs?”

              “Fine.”

              “Fine? Just like that? He says you were pretty, umm, unhappy with him,” Nicolette said, looking terrified.

              “Goodness, Nicolette. You’ve known me forever. You know I don’t want the Palace to fall apart because of Marcus’s and Drake’s stupidity. Let him help. I need to find a way to … oh, I don’t know … Nicolette. Is she doing alright?” Cozette begged her friend, gripping her hands in hers.

              “Scarlet, go let the men know,” Nicolette ordered, and the handmaiden scurried out of the room diligently. “They seem to be in a stalemate. Sophie says they ought to kill her and take the stone; at least then the problems of Gemmes might be solved with the
Trésor de L’espoir
.

“The boy, Henri, says he loves her and has offered his heart, but the
devins-guérisseur
won’t do the magic spell with him, insisting that she doesn’t want more blood on her hands. It’s a mess.”

              Cozette sighed. “She looks like me, doesn’t she?”

              “She does.”             

              “Is it wrong for me to feel, in some sick way, sorry for Marcus? That he missed seeing his daughter grown? She looks like him too, doesn’t she?”

              Nicolette smiled at her friend, “She does, and no, I don’t think it is twisted. You’ve become the woman I wish I had been strong enough to be. You changed, yes, but it’s for the better, Cozette. You can forgive.”

              “I’m not strong. I’m weak … I’m broken.”

              “No. You are more whole than any of us. You see your strength as a weakness but love is never weak. Love conquers all.”

              Cozette’s eyes filled with tears, teeming in her dark lashes as she shook her head, the realization dawning on her.

              “We need to go to the king’s office with the Royal accountant and then, we will go see my girl.”

              Nicolette didn’t ask questions; instead she followed the suddenly confident queen down the now empty hall. Drake must have called the guards to the front line. Cozette was thankful her friend had called upon her when she did. Gemmes, and her daughter, had hope yet.

              An hour later, she entered her chamber room. Sophie stood in the center with a small garnet in her hand. A look of surprise flashed across her daughter’s face, and she dropped the stone, clutching her chest.

              “I know it hurts for me to be here,” Cozette spoke gently. “But I know what we must do. What I must do.” Cozette took a deep breath, the lemongrass in the air, filling her lungs with a breath of life. “I am giving you back your heart, Sophie.”

              Sophie stopped clutching herself. She looked pained to do so, but she steadily walked toward Cozette. She seemed to teeter, not able to hold herself up very well, and Henri was by her side, helping steady her.

              “You can’t do this. I’m not worth it.” Sophie spoke words that broke the queen’s already shattered heart.

              “Yes, I can. I’m giving you back what’s yours. Tamsin will do this, and she will be no longer tried for murdering the king. You will accept this because you are my daughter.” Her voice was true and strong and wavered not a fraction of a moment. She meant her words with every fiber in her being.

              Nicolette cried, but Cozette shook her head at her friend.

              “It’s alright. This is the way I want it to be,” Cozette looked lovingly at her daughter. “This earth holds no greater love than the love I have for you. I am your mother, and I gave you life but, darling, you’ve never had a chance to fully live. It’s my honor to give you a heart that will let you feel the full expanse of life.”

Tears fell across the queen’s cheek, and she knew Sophie didn’t understand yet. She couldn’t understand what it meant to sacrifice for love. That was all the more reason why this wasn’t a choice. This was the only way.

Tamsin stood, with the enchanted dagger in her hands and walked toward the two women who were so alike in their appearance, but it would be impossible to be more different at their core.

              “I will do this. For there is nothing more true than a mother’s love,” Tamsin said.

              Cozette smiled, tears of joy, knowing the truth in her words.

              Scarlet had walked back in the room, and heard the sacrifice the queen decided to make. She fell before Cozette, and kissed the floor.

              “It has been an honor to serve you, my queen.”

              Nicolette embraced her oldest friend, saying goodbye, bravely, in the clutches of courage. Cozette embodied what the room only aspired to be.

Selflessness.

              “I seriously don’t like this plan,” Sophie said, her words stretched thin; she was in so much pain. “I don’t know you! I learn my mother’s the queen and then you just … just … die?” Sophie sat on the bed, struggling to speak as she pressed her fists against her chest. “I wanted to know you and now I never will.” 

              “I met with the Royal accountant and signed the papers, thereby handing the crown to you upon my death. You will be queen, and you will also live.” Cozette’s eyes glistened, tears filled with quiet strength, strength she would pass to her daughter in the form of a beating heart.

              “Emel’s reading was spot on, I suppose,” Sophie whispered. “Death is the obstacle I must face, only it’s not my own. It’s yours. I must overcome the death of my mother.” 

              “You will know me. We have the fortune of sharing a heart,” Cozette said. “You will be strong and courageous.”

              “Just as the garnet said….” Sophie murmured, her eyes closing, blocking the pain.

              “Just as the Queen of Gemmes will need to be,” Cozette said, watching Sophie’s breath become heavy as she fell deeper into sleep. “She’s passed out from the pain again, Tamsin. It is time.”

              It had happened so fast. The farewell wasn’t long and drawn out, it was short and somber and that made it worse, but also better. Cozette couldn’t bear to see Sophie suffer any longer.

Cozette walked to the bed, gathering her billowing silk skirt that rustled as she climbed in the bed, next to her daughter. She leaned over to Sophie, finally able to touch her face. Sophie’s pain now concealed by her collapsing.

Henri stifled a sob, and she matched his tears with her own. She heard a tenderness in Henri that told her someone would protect her daughter, as she would have.

              Cozette pulled Sophie’s hair back, and looked at her closed eyes. She didn’t know how to prepare for death, so she did what felt most right. Cozette held tight to the girl whose heart she always held as her own. In the long-awaited embrace there was no question in Cozette’s mind.

If death was on her doorstep … as it was … this was the most perfect way to greet it.

              Tamsin stood over Sophie and removed the moonstone necklace. Tamsin handed them to Emel who was at her side to help. Cozette watched as Tamsin took a small vile of oil and carefully poured it over Sophie’s unmoving chest, exposed due to her low draping dress.

“My Queen, now for you.”

Tamsin poured the cold, slick oil, causing the queen to squeeze tight to her daughters lifeless hand. The air filled with sandalwood, calming her.

Tamsin drew her enchanted dagger and steadied herself with the words of the ancient folk who came before her. The words were perhaps never intended for this unimaginable moment. A life for a life.

“Be still and be brave,” Tamsin whispered to the queen.

Tamsin murmured words unknown to Cozette, then opened a bag with powdery dust, and blew it in the air above the two vulnerable bodies before her. The powder was held in the air, suspended above them and Cozette watched as the moment become still, like it had earlier, when Sophie first fainted. In that precious minute Tamsin drew the dagger above the Sophie, and she sliced her chest, past her ribs, breaking open the cavity holding the garnet.

              Screams echoed, but Cozette held steady. As though holding her daughter’s hand was the single solid thing in this world. The only thing left to hang onto.

Tearing it out, she handed it to the Emel. The dark red stone was covered in thick blood. The gem remained intact, and Tristan and Rémy came closer, to see this prized
trésor
.

Cozette didn’t look. She felt the blood drip out of Sophie’s chest, as it pooled around her, and worked to steady herself, not allowing the sight of blood to sway her. Only one solitary thing mattered.

Sophie surviving this.

“Tamsin. Do it now. I trust that you will give her life, as you once gave it to me.” Cozette breathed deeply, pressing her fingers in Sophie’s hand, wanting so badly to be brave. Still, her flesh was scared. This was the moment.

The moment of death.

“As you wish, My Queen.”

Tamsin raised the dagger once more, but before she sliced though, the most glorious sight filled the room.

This is death,
Cozette thought, as she rolled her head from side to side, trying to see, yet not believing what was before her.

A group of men and women, ghost-like in their eerie presence surrounded her bed. She tried to focus, but it was hard. She saw life and death, but also past and present.
The Hedge Riders
, she realized.

“What are you … why have you returned?” Tamsin cried.

Cozette couldn’t focus on Tamsin’s terror; she cared only that the spell would work. That Sophie would live.

  “We are here for the queen. She has earned her place with us, she will Ride,” a strong voice spoke. She couldn’t tell if it was in a whisper or in a scream. If it was everything or nothing. The Hedge, and its Riders were as legendary as the
Trésor de L’espoir
, but the Riders were no longer legend. They were here.

The Hedge was claiming her.

She tried to absorb this truth, but she couldn’t. In that moment, the strong voiced man, who held the hand of an otherworldly woman, moved aside. In their place, he stood.

“Marcus,” she said breathlessly.

Her Marcus was there, as spirit-like as the other Riders, and she couldn’t understand how they would claim him, too. Somehow they had.

“How is it so?” Tamsin asked, Sophie’s chest still open, exposed.

“Marcus would do anything for love,” said the woman, who held the strong man’s hand. “He proved that the night his daughter was born. He chose his queen; because that was the only thing he knew how to do. There is no fault in that. Only mercy.”

“So he lives on, in my place,” Tamsin said, nodding her head.

“Indeed. Riders take seriously the vows they make; Marcus and Cozette have earned their place among us. Now you must finish the deed you began.”

Cozette looked at Marcus, who had moved closer to her. He was no longer a man. What he was she did not know … but she knew this. He could see his daughter, grown. The one thing she wished for.

“Our girl….” he said, a voice heavy with sorrow.

“Our girl.”

Tamsin lifted the dagger once more, and Cozette closed her eyes.

In one divisive cut, she was gone.

Cozette found her place in the Hedge. A place not life, not death. A place both good and bad, merciful and partial. Pure and unbiased yet completely undeserved.

The Hedge was her new home, and Marcus finally returned to her, after all these years.

42.

Henri

Palace Royale, Éclat, Gemmes

The queen’s body remained lifeless and her heart a pulsing, bloody mass, in Tamsin’s hands.

Henri covered his mouth, desperately trying not to gag. Focusing had become difficult. Everything felt difficult. Breathing, for instance. That thought filled him with shame, however, considering Sophie literally lay on the bed with no breath. Zero. Her chest still spliced open.

The air was wrought with tension. The Hedge Riders, who’d vanished, didn’t help keep things calm. Their presence had ratcheted the pressure for Tamsin. From what he gathered, Tamsin and the Riders weren’t on good terms.

Tamsin tenderly placed the beating heart in Sophie’s ribcage. He watched as Tamsin blew the powdery dust over her open chest. As the dust settled so did the disconnected vessels join, until the heart pounded in place, perfectly mended. Perfectly whole. Sophie had her own heart, where it belonged.

Tamsin’s magic worked.

“It is done.” Tamsin raised her hands; to speak the words that would bring time back once more for Sophie.

              Henri stayed where he was. He wanted to rush over to her, kiss her lips, and hold her tight. He wanted to tell her he loved her. He wanted to never leave her side.

But he didn’t.

              This girl before him was not a girl he knew and it scared him. It scared him that maybe Emel was right, that Sophie would no longer be Sophie now that she had a real, beating heart. She would be able to love, sure, but his heart pounded knowing that she may never love him.

              He glanced at Tristan, the cocky bastard who stood behind Emel as she held the garnet now that she no longer held a heart. Tristan ogled it as if it were as precious as a child. He stuffed his clenched fists in his pockets, knowing that was a better choice than what he really wanted to do. Which was punch the guy in the face.

              Tristan had held a knife above Sophie, willing to kill her to get the precious gem. Henri had no patience for this Gem Tracker’s fantasies of living happily ever after with the
Trésor de L’espoir
as his own.

              That garnet was Sophie’s as far as Henri was concerned. It had rested in her flesh her entire life, and before that, in the king’s vault. Which was hers now. Hers. Sophie was the Queen of Gemmes.

              Henri shrunk smaller than he already felt. He pictured Sophie living in this chamber room. Such a far cry from their village homes.

              Tamsin gently shook Sophie’s shoulder, stirring her awake. The queen lay beside the girl he loved, and although Tamsin’s magic had sealed the empty chest, it was still Sophie’s mother lying there. Dead.

              “What … what … happened?” Sophie grabbed her chest, and for a moment, Henri feared it wouldn’t work. That her own heart would fail her.

She sat up, taking in the room.

              “Did I…?” Sophie couldn’t finish a sentence. Her eyes welled with tears as she saw the woman next to her, who gave her life, in every possible sense of the word.

              She took the queen’s hands, pulling them to her lips. “Mother,” she sobbed.

              Henri watched and knew. This girl was not the same Sophie. She could now cry, mourn, feel loss. And as she looked up from her dead mother and let her eyes fall on Henri, he knew. Undoubtedly.

She was still the Sophie he loved.