Holly's POV

You WHAT?!", Holly cried.
She jumped to hard, her knees buckled when she hit the ground.

"Why?" She gripped Mandrake.
"You didn't ACTUALLY give it to her, right? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I don't understand", Mandrake said, helping her.

"Me neither", Willow added.

"I understand someone's been lying to us!", Nettle growled.
Holly winced.

"I'm not quite sure why or what about, but I know I'm angry about it!"

Hawthorn held out his talons..
"I'm sorry! I though Sequoia would have told you! Wouldn't you think that she would have told the whole story before sending someone on such a dangerous mission?"

"I WOULD think that!", Nettle snapped.

"Maybe she thought it wasn't important to the mission", Mandrake said.
"Maybe she thought Hawthorn was dead, and if he was, the story wouldn't be important."

"That's not better!", Nettle said. "That's cowardly!"

"Wait, how exactly did this happen?", Holly asked, finally managing to stand up.

Hawthorn looked down and fiddled with his teacup.
"All right", he said, "but you'll all hate me at the end of this. That's fine. Just, please hold it back. Fifty years of carrying this guilt have been hard enough."

"More explaining, less self-pity", Nettle hissed.

"Queen Wasp was dangerous from the very moment she took the throne", he began.
"Her mother, Cochineal, wasn't much better, but, at least she respected the seprate tribe monarchies.
But Wasp . . . . she looked at the Leafwings and Silkwings, and only saw more dragons to rule. That was clear very early on.
But that wasn't the worst of it. She thought our power came from the trees, and she thought that if she cut them down, we'd become weak. She did it slowly at first. Small stretches of forest cleared away in far-off corners she thought we wouldn't miss. 'Accidental' wildfires that wiped out hundereds of trees."

He paused again, took a sip of tea again, then nudged a another cup towards Holly and Mandrake.

"No thanks", Mandrake said.

"Um, do you have Bobba, by any chance?", Holly asked hopefully.
Everyone stared at her.

"Never mind. Continue."

"By the time we realized what she was doing, it was too late for thousands if not millions of trees. We tried to stop her in all the diplomatic ways, but she lied to our faces, telling us she would stop, only to turn around and keep doing it. Or she's have us thrown out -the queen of the Leafwings, tossed out of Wasp Hive like a bug! Can you imagine?"

"I can imagine Rita Skeeter being thrown out", Holly said with a satisified grin.

"And then, she got even worse", Hawthorn hurried on.
"She announced that, accourding to the Book of Clearsight, the time had come for the tribes to be ruled by a single queen: her. She sent Queen Monarch and Queen Sequoia instructions for formally stepping down and handing their subjects to her."

"We know this part", Sundew said. "Monarch said yes, Sequoia demanded to see the Book, Wasp refused, and the Tree Wars began."

"Not immediately", said Hawthorn.
"First we tried to talk her down. And second, we turned to . . . . . something else."

He closed his eyes.
"I thought we could stop her. I thought we could save everyone."

"By giving Wasp the greatest weapon ever?", Holly asked.

"It wasn't supposed to make her powerful", Hawthorn said, looking down. "I thought of I found the plant, and we used it on her . . . we could control her."

"You WHAT?!!!", Holly cried.
"I-I mean, yeah, she's bad, but, she's a dragon too! That- I can undertsand why you'd think think that was necessary, but, like-"

 "When was this?", Cricket asked. Questions poured from her mouth like a faucet.
"How did you give it to her? How did she find out? How did she know where  to get more?"
She stopped, pressing her talons to her forhead.
 "WHY would you do this?'

"She threatened our trees, Hivewing", Hawthorn said sharply.
"Trees we loved, our homes, our souls. We knew war was coming. We had no other choice.
So, we held a peace summit and I . . . . .  I put it into her food that very night."

Holly was still clutching Mandrake. Now, he was holding onto her as well.

"Are you all right?", she asked.
"Yeah", he said meekly. "Fine."

"Did the queen know what you were doing?", Sundew asked.

"I told her what I wanted to do", Hawthorn said with an odd expression on his face.
"But, I can't say she exactly told me to do it. She could have told me to stop, and I would have stopped! I was so loyal. If she had, I would have listened! I-"

He cleared his throat, lashing his tail.
"I mean", he said in a much calmer voice, "it was me. I snuck it into her food. It was my idea. It was my fault. Even if I did it with the best intetentions."
"At first, nothing happened. It didn't work."
He put a talon on his egg again.
"Wasp acted the same, both at the meal and the next morning during negotiations. We tried to steer her onto a peaceful path. We tried subtle suggestions and even ordered her to back down. She just hissed and promised war. So, we thought we failed. It was only later, when I saw the mind control, did I realize what must have caused it. I don't know how she figured it out, or how she knew where to get more."

"Okay, I see why you did what you did. Wasp was and is bad. She destroyed your home, I get that. But if you used mind control, how are you any better than she is? How can you justify that? ", Holly blurted.

"That's what you get for sneaking and half-measures!", Nettle growled.
"It should have been poison instead!"

"The good news", Hawthorn said, "is that we need to ingest the plant ourselves. Otherwise, there will be no connection between our minds and hers."

"But if you both ate it", Cricket said, "who would control whom?"

"Ah!", Hawthorn said. "Those are questions I answered with science! Experimentation! Research! All the careful procedures I wish I had time for back then. It's amazing what you can discover when you're left alone for fifty years. Well, not completely alone"

"Not completely alone?", Holly repeated.

"The snakes, my wooden friends, and the plants. I have very good leafspeak, you know."

"So, you've been experimenting on the snakes?", Cricket asked. "And you've found an antidote?"

"Yes!", Hawthorn said. "I tried everything until I finally found this!"

He darted across the room and opened a huge wooden chest, then becond to Cricket to look inside.
Holly peeked inside too. The chest contained gnarly roots- even from here, they didn't smell too great.

"This is the antidote?', Cricket inquired in a hushed voice.
"What kind of plant is it?"

"It's a plant I found growing deep in the jungle", he answered. "I call it Heart of salvation."

Nettle huffed.

"I figured if we were all going to give plants dramatic names, I might as well join in", Hawthorn said with a small smile.

"And it really works?", Cricket asked. "It really breaks the mind control?"

"I think so", he said. "I've only tested it on snakes, so, dragons are a maybe. Oh, hey, you eat one and we'll  see if it works on you!"

"The mind control dosen't work on Cricket", Holly explained before anyone else could say anything.

"So, we wouldn't learn anything from me eatting this", Cricket said, putting the seed back.

  "So, to test it, we need a brain-dead, zombi Hivewing, get them to eat it, and see what happens", Holly said.

"I'm afraid so", Hawthorn agreed.

"Well, lucky for us", Sundew said, "there's an entire army of them coming this way right now. Grab all your knobby salvation roots and let's go."

A/N: If you liked this chapter vote. . . . . .

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Sleep tight.

Wordcount: 1360

Renx out!