She leaned her hip against a weight machine and studied me. "How? How can we be this far apart?"
"You tell me."
We stood watching each other for a beat of twelve, neither understanding what the other was thinking.
Finally she pushed away from the machine and began to pace. "Peter told me what happened. I didn't believe him at first. . " She stopped. "Or maybe it's that I didn't want to. I've always known you loved the tribe more than anything, but I trusted. . " She placed her hands on a stack of weights and stared down at them. Then without warning, she looked up. "Do you really think this baby is a threat? That there is no choice but to kill him?"
"Kill? Him?" What was she talking about? I frowned. "Someone's been lying to you. I'm here to save the baby, to take her from the sons. They stole her from her mother. We don't know why." I waited for dawning to hit her, for the anger to come.
She laughed. "And you believe that?"
"The high council-"
"Fuck the high council." She slammed her hands onto the weights. "They don't even exist."
I stiffened. It had been a while since anyone had talked to me like that, in fact, no one except Mel, her family, and my mother ever had. I measured my words. "Of course they exist."
"Just because they have existed doesn't mean they do now."
"We. . our new priestess just spoke to them. It's how we learned of the baby." Someone had been lying to my friend, the sons I guessed, to get her on their side for some reason.
"She may have spoken with someone, someone who was on the high council. . but they aren't now because the high council has split. The members aren't meeting."
Split? She was speaking gibberish.
I spoke slowly. "The council has not split. The high council is the Amazons. It always has been."
She leaned forward; magic snapped around her. Even as talentless as I was in that area, I could feel it, like electricity. The hairs on my arms, legs, even inside my nose, stood, but I didn't back away.
"You can't believe the council is the Amazons. You are not that stupid," she muttered.
I ground my jaws together. "You've gotten brave in the last few months."
She laughed. "No, I just realized what's important, and what's really worth fighting for. And the council isn't it."
"The Amazons-"
"Aren't the council. The council was created to serve the tribe, not the other way around. Somewhere, somehow that got messed up. You can't follow them blindly. You need to think, Zery-for yourself."
I pulled back. "But we are the council; we give them our power when they accept the role."
"Do you give them your brain, your soul, your heart? Where does it stop? Have you thought about what killing that baby would mean? It isn't about one child-horrific as even that act would be. It's about all of our children. Dana's baby-he's the son of a son, and not just any son. . the one who was strong enough to murder three Amazons and stake out one of their queens."
Me. I was that queen.
I opened my mouth to tell her again she was wrong-that I wasn't looking for the baby to kill her. . that it was a her, not the he Mel seemed to think.
But she looked past me and kept talking. "My son. What about him? He's second generation. They're already watching Harmony; don't think I don't know that. If they find my son before I do, who will be ordered to kill him? You? Would you?" Her eyes were on me now and I discovered I couldn't meet them.
Something was curling around inside my heart, squeezing, making me want to run. Something she was saying rang true.
The Amazons had killed their infant sons before, and now after we had discovered the Amazon sons had gathered together, that they had powers and one had already used those powers against us. . it made sense some might want to return to the old ways, especially if the male child was second generation, the son of a son.
"And Harmony, what about her? Yes, she's a girl. . but if she doesn't agree with the council, doesn't want to play the role they lay out for her, if she stays with me. . how long before they want her eliminated too?" Mel stepped closer and forced me to look at her. "What about that? Have you thought of all that? Do you know what you will do when they point at my child or Dana's or someone else's you know, maybe love?"
Despite the sick feeling her words were creating in my gut, I had to try and convince her what she was saying wasn't true. "I don't know what you are talking about. The baby I'm looking for is a girl and we don't want to kill her, we want to. . " I paused. I didn't know what the council had planned for the child because no one had told me. . because without knowing, I'd raced ahead and done my damnedest to do their bidding.
Mel leaned forward, her face grim. "It's a he, Zery. A son of a son and a high council member. The rest of the council doesn't want to save him, they want to kill him. I know. I've talked to his mother. I've seen the child."
And like that, my world crashed around me. I don't know how I knew she was speaking the truth. . No, that wasn't right, I knew because it was Mel, because despite all of our fallouts I trusted her.
I took a step back. Thea. . the knife. . the slit in my thumb. . the blade had been sharp enough to cut it. I'd missed it, somehow, but it made sense. Thea had known this council's plan and hadn't told me. She'd been using me to find the child so she could do as the council asked. . so she could kill him.
I wasn't a queen; I was a tool.
The realization was like a physical blow, and I couldn't stand next to Mel now, couldn't look at her.
A piece of me was dying and the only thing I could do was run.
I left Bern at Mel's. I needed to be alone and I didn't know what waited for her back at camp. I didn't know what waited for either of us, but this felt like my fight.
After being forced to see the truth, I'd walked from the room in a fog. I knew from the outside I'd appeared to be under control. I always appeared under control, but inside, my knees were buckling and my heart was thrashing around inside my chest.
I'd walked through those damn babies without looking down. If I'd thought they were watching me when I entered, when I'd left, the feeling had been one hundred times worse. They weren't just watching, they were judging.
And I came up lacking, severely lacking.
The Jeep's engine roared as I barreled down the highway. I zipped past two semis and a car full of teenagers before thinking to glance down at the speedometer-eighty-five. I tapped on the brake.
Amazons didn't speed. Speeding invited troopers to stop you, which led to questions. We avoided questions.
When the vehicle was back under sixty-five, I shoved my back against the seat and tried to think.
But I couldn't-or I was thinking too much. Images from my life as queen and my life as Mel's friend swirled through my head. Images of Bern and Lao: Thea asking Bern to give up her givnomai, Lao telling the girls to put down the bowl.
All of them part of the tribe.
None of them completely seeing things the same way.
When did that happen? When did we stop all agreeing?
Then I thought of Bubbe. Before my birth, she had fought the high council, gone against the old ways and stopped Amazons from killing and maiming their sons. After that we had simply deserted them, left them for humans to find and adopt.
But since then the high council had grown, not in size but power. They had fought every change since all the harder until there had been no change, no independent thought at all.
My job as queen had always been to follow blindly, like a sheep.