The Invasion of the Tearling (the Queen of the Tearling, #2)

The second volume of Erika Johansen's Queen of the Tearling trilogy is set in a neofeudal kingdom called the Tearling, founded centuries after a mass migration known as the Crossing brought settlers from a collapsed America to a new continent. Young Queen Kelsea Glynn, who claimed her throne in the previous book, faces the consequences of her decision to end the slave shipment, a monthly tribute of Tear citizens sent to the neighboring kingdom of Mortmesne. The Red Queen of Mortmesne, an ageless and powerful sorceress, has dispatched a vast army to invade the Tearling in retaliation.

On the Mort border, Colonel Hall, a resourceful Tear officer whose twin brother was taken in the shipment years earlier, launches a surprise attack on the Mort camp at Lake Karczmar. His men use catapults to fling bundles of venomous rattlesnakes into the encampment, scattering the enemy and buying the Tearling roughly two weeks before the Mort can regroup. The reprieve is temporary: The Red Queen replaces her disgraced general with Benin Ducarte, her Chief of Internal Security and a notorious interrogator, who takes command of the invasion force.

Meanwhile, Kelsea battles political enemies at home. She clashes with General Bermond, her army's commander, who resists her order to divert soldiers to evacuate border villagers ahead of the invasion. When Bermond dismisses the threat of rape during wartime, Kelsea threatens to replace him with Hall, and he reluctantly complies. Tear nobles protest that the evacuation damages their farmlands, but Kelsea invokes eminent domain to silence them. She hosts a disastrous dinner with the new Holy Father, Cardinal Anders, hoping to negotiate use of the Arvath, the Church's massive building in New London, for refugee housing. Anders goads Kelsea about her lack of an heir, and negotiations collapse. When the Holy Father shoves Father Tyler, a kindly priest who serves as Kelsea's Keep Priest, down a flight of stairs, breaking his leg, Kelsea slaps Anders across the face. The Mace, Kelsea's Captain of Guard, seizes one of Anders's acolytes, identifying him as a conspirator tied to the fugitive Arlen Thorne, the kingdom's former Census Overseer who facilitated the slave trade.

As these crises mount, Kelsea begins experiencing vivid, involuntary visions of a woman named Lily Mayhew, who lives in pre-Crossing America. Lily is a wealthy but trapped wife, married to Greg Mayhew, a defense contractor liaison who is controlling, violent, and desperate for children. Lily secretly takes illegal contraception, defying Greg's demands. Through Lily's eyes, Kelsea absorbs detailed knowledge of the collapsing American society: extreme wealth inequality, an authoritarian government, and the rise of the Blue Horizon, a separatist movement. These visions are accompanied by unsettling physical changes in Kelsea. She loses weight rapidly, her features grow more attractive, and her hair lengthens dramatically.

Kelsea also discovers she possesses growing and dangerous power. She learns she can manipulate flesh with her will and begins cutting herself as a coping mechanism. When one of her guards, Kibb, develops a fatal burst appendix, Kelsea instinctively channels healing energy through her sapphire necklaces, absorbing his pain and saving his life. The Mace insists the incident remain secret. Kelsea's attendant Andalie, who possesses prophetic sight, warns Kelsea of dangers ahead, and Andalie's youngest daughter Glee delivers cryptic warnings about a "queen of spades" and a "dead hand grasping and empty."

A mysterious, supernaturally beautiful man appears in Kelsea's fireplace, communicating telepathically. He offers to reveal the Red Queen's vulnerabilities in exchange for his freedom from an unspecified imprisonment. Kelsea is intensely attracted to him but refuses. The Fetch, a legendary outlaw with whom Kelsea is infatuated, later visits and identifies the man as Rowland Finn, warning that Finn is deceptive and extremely dangerous. Emotionally devastated after the Fetch's visit, Kelsea asks her close guard Pen Alcott to sleep with her. He initially refuses, citing duty, but later agrees after comforting her.

In Lily's storyline, a wounded young separatist named Dorian Rice tumbles over Lily's garden wall after bombing a nearby naval base. Lily hides Dorian, and her bodyguard Jonathan reveals himself as a member of the Blue Horizon. William Tear, the movement's English-born leader, visits and describes his vision of "the better world," a place free of poverty, surveillance, and greed. When Lily overhears that Security plans to raid Tear's warehouse headquarters, she knocks Greg unconscious and drives alone outside her gated community's walls for the first time. At the warehouse, she encounters Parker, a violent criminal separatist leader whose faction has an arrangement with Tear to serve as a chaotic distraction on the planned launch date. Tear's people escape through tunnels, and Lily discovers they are secretly building ships to leave America entirely.

Back in the Tearling, Ducarte sets the Border Hills ablaze, killing Hall's archers and pushing the Tear army into retreat. Thorne infiltrates the Keep's dungeon but is captured by Ewen, the loyal Jailor, and a prisoner named Javel, a former Gate Guard. Kelsea executes Thorne publicly, using her telekinetic power to tear him apart before a cheering mob. She feels a terrifying, seductive pleasure in the violence, experiencing herself as "the queen of spades," fulfilling Glee's prophecy. The Mace confronts her afterward, telling her she has changed and bowed to the will of the mob.

The Red Queen, whose real name is Evelyn Raleigh, is attacked in her chambers by Row Finn, a powerful entity imprisoned in the Fairwitch Mountains who can project through fire. He tells her he has no more use for her because he already has "the girl," meaning Kelsea. The shaken Queen decides to travel personally to the Tearling front.

Father Tyler, ordered by the Holy Father to poison Kelsea in exchange for access to a hidden library, instead knocks Anders unconscious. With help from Maya, one of the Holy Father's drugged concubines, Tyler steals the long-lost Tear crown from Anders's cabinet, rescues Father Seth, a fellow Arvath priest whom Anders had castrated and publicly humiliated as punishment for homosexuality, and escapes the Arvath through a secret passage.

When the Mort army surrounds New London, Kelsea summons Row Finn and strikes a bargain: She frees him by forgiving him while holding her sapphires, and he reveals that the Red Queen's vulnerability lies in her childhood. The Red Queen cannot eradicate the frightened, unwanted child she once was. Kelsea has her treasurer Arliss draft a Bill of Regency naming the Mace as Regent, signs copies for distribution, and rides at dawn to the New London Bridge with four guards, including Aisa, Andalie's 12-year-old daughter whom the Mace has trained in combat. Kelsea freezes her guards with her power, destroys a section of the bridge behind her, and walks alone into the Mort camp.

Inside the Red Queen's tent, Kelsea recognizes Evelyn as the disfavored child from a portrait of the Raleigh royal family in the Keep gallery. She invades the Red Queen's mind, uncovering a childhood of neglect and abandonment. Kelsea offers a trade: both sapphires in exchange for three years of autonomy for the Tearling. The Red Queen swears on the sapphires and accepts. When she takes the necklaces, however, she discovers they are inert, bonded only to Kelsea. The bargain is sealed and cannot be reversed. Kelsea is taken prisoner, laughing.

In the epilogue, Lily's story concludes. On September 1st, Parker's forces unleash chaos across America while 17 ships launch and sail through a passage Tear opens in the eastern horizon, a portal through time. Jonathan is fatally shot during Lily's rescue from a Security compound. Aboard the ship, Lily buries Jonathan at sea and learns her sister Maddy is alive, commanding another vessel. Tear shows Lily a vision of her future: pregnant, content, and free in the new world. She names her unborn son Jonathan.

In the Tearling, the Mace accepts the regency. The Fetch arrives and offers his help, assuring the Mace that the Red Queen will not kill Kelsea because she is too valuable. The Mace rallies the Guard and vows to get the Queen back.