Karla eased herself into a chair in Jaenelle’s sitting room. She could use Craft to float herself from place to place, and could even stand on her own now for a little while with the help of two canes. But channeling power through her body left her quickly exhausted, and standing made her legs ache. Still, the daily cup of Jaenelle’s tonic was working. But she had an uneasy feeling she would need her strength for something else very soon.

It was the first time since Jaenelle had refused to allow Kaeleer to go to war that Karla had seen her. But even now, when Jaenelle had summoned her and Gabrielle, the Queen of Ebon Askavi was keeping her back to them, just staring out the window.

“I need the two of you to keep the boyos leashed for another few days,” Jaenelle said quietly. “It won’t be easy, but it’s necessary.”

“Why?” Gabrielle demanded. “Hell’s fire, Jaenelle, we need to gather into armies and fight. Scattered the way we are now, we’re barely holding our own and we aren’t even fighting the armies that are bound to come in from Terreille, just the Terreilleans who were already in Kaeleer. The bastards. It’s time to go to war. We have to go to war. It’s not just the people who are dying. The land is being destroyed, too.”

“The Queens can heal the land,” Jaenelle replied, still not looking at them. “That is the Queens’ special gift. And not as many of our people have died as you seem to think.”

“No,” Gabrielle said bitterly, “they’re just dying of shame because they’ve been ordered to abandon their land.”

“They can survive a little shame.”

Karla laid a hand on Gabrielle’s arm. Trying to keep her voice reasonable, she said, “I don’t think there’s any choice now, Jaenelle. If we don’t stop retreating and start attacking, we aren’t going to have a place to take a stand when the Terreillean armies do get here.”

“They won’t receive orders to enter Kaeleer for a few more days. By then, it won’t make any difference.”

“Because we’ll be forced to surrender,” Gabrielle snapped.

Karla’s hand tightened on Gabrielle’s arm. She didn’t have much strength, but the gesture was enough to leash the other Queen’s temper—at least for the moment.

“Is Kaeleer finally going to war with Terreille?” she asked.

“No,” Jaenelle said. “Kaeleer will not go to war with Terreille.”

It was the slight inflection that made ice run through Karla’s body. The way Gabrielle’s arm tensed under her hand, she knew the other woman had heard it, too.

“Then who is going to war with Terreille?”

Jaenelle turned around.

Gabrielle sucked in her breath.

For the first time, they were seeing the dream beneath the flesh.