I step forward, meaning to stay, but the crowd works against me. As does Evangeline. She takes me under my arm, her decorative claws still donned and digging into soft flesh. I grit my teeth, letting her lead me out of his chambers, not wanting to cause a fuss or a scene. Julian passes by us with a single raised eyebrow, surprised to see us in such close confidence. I try to communicate with my eyes. Try to ask for some help or guidance. But he turns away before he knows what I want. Or he simply doesn’t want to give it.
We pass the guards again, the Lerolans looking like Sentinels in their colors of red and orange. Perhaps that’s where the robes first came from. I look back, over the heads of Silver lords and Red officers. Farley’s blond hair glints somewhere, with Ptolemus Samos keeping a safe distance from her. I see Anabel, watching like a hawk. She plants herself in front of the door to Tiberias’s bedchamber. He slips behind it, out of sight without so much as a backward glance.
“Don’t argue,” Evangeline hisses in my ear.
On instinct, I open my mouth to do just that. But I cut myself off as she drags me sideways, out of the crowd and into the corridor.
Even though we’re as safe as possible for the circumstances, my heart beats a ragged rhythm in my chest. “You said yourself, locking us in a closet together wouldn’t work.”
“I’m not locking anyone anywhere,” she whispers back. “I’m just showing you the door.”
We turn and turn, taking the side stairs and servants’ passages far too slowly and too quickly for my liking. My inner compass spins, and I think we’re almost where we started when she halts within a dimly lit passage, almost too narrow for us to squeeze through.
With a ripple of unease, I think of my earring. The one I’m not wearing. A bloodred stone, tucked away in a box in Montfort, hidden from the world.
On my right, Evangeline lays her palm against an old door, rusted over from disuse. The hinges and lock have gone dark red, crusting like dried blood. With a flick of her fingers, the metal spins, shedding the rust like droplets of water.
“This will take you—”
“I know where it’s going to take me,” I reply, almost too fast. I suddenly feel like I’ve run a mile.
Her grin sets me on edge, and almost makes me turn around. Almost.
“Very well,” she says, taking a step back. Her hand brushes through the air, gesturing to the door like it’s a priceless gift. Instead of the naked manipulation it is. “Do what you want, lightning girl. Go where you please. No one will stop you.”
I have no clever response for her. All I can do is watch her slink away, eager to be rid of me. Elane must be on her way to the city to help celebrate this victory. I find myself envying them. They’re on the same side, at least, allied despite the impossibilities stacked against them. Both Silver, both raised noble. They know each other in a way Tiberias and I could never. They are the same, equals. He and I are not.
I should turn around.
But I’m already through the door, pushing through the semidarkness of a forgotten passage, my fingertips brushing along cool stone. A light bleeds ahead, closer than I thought it would be. Outlining another door.
Turn around.
My hands flatten against the wood, a smooth cut, uniquely carved. I trace the panels for a moment, on edge. I know where this path leads, and who waits on the other side. Footsteps sound inside the room, making me jump as they pass. Then a chair creaks as a heavy weight sits. Two thumps announce his boots as he kicks them up on a desk or table. And then a long, lingering sigh. Not the satisfied kind. Full of frustration. Full of pain.
Turn around.
The knob moves in my hand, as if of its own volition, and I step out blinking into the soft light of afternoon. Tiberias’s bedchamber here is large and airy, with vaulted ceilings painted blue and white, almost like clouds. The windows look out on the Bay, and a sunnier day than it should be. The ocean breeze blows the last of the smoke away.
It looks like the king is doing his best to fill the place with his usual mess, despite only having been here a few hours. He sits at a desk haphazardly dragged to the center of the room, angled away from a bed I refuse to even glance at. Papers and books pile around him. One in particular lies open, the text inside handwritten in a tight, looping scrawl.
When I finally get the courage to look at him, Tiberias is already standing. He has a fist raised and flaming, his entire body coiled like a snake, ready to spring.
His eyes rove over me, hand still ablaze even though I’m not a threat. After a long moment, he brushes away the fire, letting it flicker and die.
“You got here in a hurry,” Tiberias blurts out, almost breathless.
It takes us both off guard, and he looks away, easing back into his desk chair. He puts his back to me and quickly shuts the book with one hand. It spits dust. The cover is worn, a faded gold, with no writing on it and a broken binding. He shoves it away, tucking it into a drawer with little regard.
Then he pretends to busy himself with some reports. He even bends over them with a very obvious squint. I smirk to myself and take a step toward him.
Turn around.
Another step into the room. The air seems to vibrate on my skin.
“After the . . . ” I stumble. There’s no easy way to say it. “After, I had to see for myself,” I reply, watching the side of his mouth lift. His eyes don’t move, burning a hole into the page in front of him.
“And?”
Shrugging, I rest my hands on my hips. “You’re fine. I shouldn’t have bothered.”
At the desk, he barks out a harsh but genuine laugh. Tiberias leans backward, putting an arm over his chair, twisting to look at me fully. In the daylight, his bronze eyes gleam like molten metal. They run over me, snagging on the exposed cuts and bruises. His gaze feels like fingers. “What about you?” he asks, his voice lower.
I hesitate a little. My own injuries seem small compared to what he suffered, and to the memory of Kilorn choking on his own blood. “Nothing that can’t be mended.”
He purses his lips. “That’s not what I asked.”
“Nothing to compare, I mean,” I tell him, circling to the front of his desk. He moves with me, tracking like a hunter. It feels similar to a dance or a pursuit. “Not all of us can say we almost died today.”
“Oh, that,” he mutters, and runs a hand through his hair. The short locks stand on end, mussing an otherwise kingly appearance. “Everything went to plan.”
I scowl, showing my teeth. “Funny, I don’t remember fighting a killer nymph in the middle of the ocean being part of the plan.”
He adjusts in his chair, uncomfortable. Slowly, he starts discarding his armor, revealing the thin, tight shirt and trimmer form beneath. It’s a dare, but I hold my ground. Each piece hits the floor with a resounding clatter. “We needed the ships. We needed the harbor.”
I keep circling, and he keeps tossing pieces of armor away. He unfastens his gauntlets with his teeth, never taking his eyes off me.
“And we needed you to go toe-to-toe with her? Who had the advantage there, Tiberias?”
The king smirks against red steel.
“I’m still alive.”
“That isn’t funny.” Something tightens in my chest. I run a finger down the adorned edge of his desk, swiping at the dusty surface. My skin comes away gray, leached of warmth. Like it was when I masqueraded as a Silver, suffering through painted-on makeup just to keep breathing. “We almost lost Kilorn today.”
Tiberias’s smirk drops instantly, wiped away, and he forgets the armor for a moment. Darkness clouds his eyes, dulling their gleam. “I thought New Town fell easily. They didn’t expect—” He cuts himself off, clenching his teeth. I look away as his gaze lands on me. I don’t want to see his pity. “What happened?”
My breath feels ragged in my throat. It feels too close to relive, the danger still near. “Silver guards,” I mumble. “A telky. Tossed him down a stairwell. Tore up his insides.” The words hitch as the memory reigns. My oldest friend, his skin going pale, dying faster by the second. Red blood on his chin, his chest, his clothes. All over my hands.
The king doesn’t say anything, holding his tongue. With a great burst of will, I look back at his face to find him staring, eyes wide, lips pressed into a grim, thin line. The concern is clearly written on him, in his furrowed brow and tight jaw.
I force myself to move again, my path taking me back around. Closer to his chair, into the circle of familiar heat.
“We got him to a healer in time,” I say as I walk. “He’ll be all right, same as you.”
When I pass behind him, I bite back the urge to touch his shoulders. To put one hand on either side of his neck and lean forward, bracing myself against him. Letting him hold me up. Now more than ever, the need to let go and rest, to allow someone else to carry my burdens, is difficult to resist.
“But you’re here with me,” he whispers so low I almost don’t catch it.
Instead the words linger, smoke between us.
I have no answer for him. None I’m willing to give or admit. I’m no stranger to shame. I certainly feel it now, as I stand in his bedchamber, with Kilorn recovering miles away. Kilorn, who wouldn’t be here if not for me.
“It isn’t your fault,” Tiberias pushes on. He knows me well enough to guess my thoughts. “What happens to him isn’t on your shoulders. He makes his own choices. And without you, what you did for him . . .” His voice trails off. “You know where he would have ended up.”
Conscripted. Doomed to a trench, or a barracks. Probably dead in the final gasps of the Lakelander War. Another name on a list, another Red lost to Silver greed. Another person forgotten. Because of people like you, I think, forcing a deep breath. The bedroom smells like salt air, fresh from the open windows.
I try to take some comfort in what he says. But I can’t. It doesn’t excuse anything I’ve done, or what Kilorn has become because of me.
Though I suppose we’ve all changed since last year. Since that day when his master died and he stood in the dark beneath my house, trying not to mourn his life as it was snatched away. I swallow hard, remembering what I said. Leave everything to me.
I wonder if we changed into who we were supposed to become, or if those people are gone forever. I guess only Jon would know, and the seer is long gone, far out of reach.
Clearing my throat, I change the subject with little tact. “I hear there’s a Lakelander fleet on the horizon.” I put my back to him, turning to face the exterior door, the one leading back into his receiving chamber. I could walk out right now if I wanted. He wouldn’t stop me.
I’m just stopping myself with every single breath.
“I hear that too,” Tiberias replies. Then his voice drops, deepening. It wavers in fear. “I remember darkness. Emptiness. Nothing.”
Reluctantly, I look over my shoulder to watch him stand, shedding the last of his armor. Avoiding my gaze. He’s still tall, still broad, but lesser without the weight of the battle-worn steel. Younger-looking too, just twenty years old. Tipping on the edge of manhood, parts of him still clinging to youth. Holding on to something as it disappears, just like the rest of us.
“I went into the water and I couldn’t get back up.” He kicks the pile of steel on the floor. “Couldn’t swim, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.”
I feel like I can’t breathe either.
Tiberias shudders as I watch, a tremor that starts in his fingers. His fear is terrifying. Then he forces himself to look back at me. With his feet planted and his hands firmly settled on his hips, he is rooted. The king won’t move unless I do. He’s going to make me surrender first. It’s what any good soldier would do. Or he is simply letting me choose. Letting me decide for both of us. He probably thinks it’s the honorable thing to do.
“I thought of you before the end,” he says. “I saw your face in the water.”
And I see his corpse again, suspended before me, dappled by the shifting light of a churning sea. Afloat, at the mercy of a foreign tide.
Neither of us moves.
“I can’t,” I bite out, looking anywhere but his face.
He responds quickly, with force. “Neither can I.”
“But I also can’t—”
Stay away. Keep doing this. Denying ourselves in the face of always-looming death.
Tiberias hisses out a breath.
“Neither can I.”
When we take the step forward together, from opposite directions, both of us laugh. It almost breaks the spell. But we keep walking, equal in motion and intention. Slow and methodic, measuring. He watches me, I watch him, as the space closes between us. I touch him first, putting my palm flat over his thudding heart. He inhales slowly, his chest rising beneath my fingers. A warm hand slips around my back, splaying wide over the base of my spine. I know he can feel my old scars through my shirt, the knobbled skin familiar to us both. I answer by curling my other hand at the nape of his neck, gently digging my nails into the lock of black hair.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I say against his collarbone, a firm line against my cheek.
I feel his answer in my rib cage. “No.”
“We aren’t making different decisions.”
His arms tighten around me. “No.”
“So what is this, Cal?”
The name has an effect on us both. He shivers, and I move closer, flattening against him. It feels like giving in, for both of us, though we have nothing left to surrender.
“We’re choosing not to choose.”
“That doesn’t sound real.”
“Maybe it isn’t.”
But he’s wrong. I can’t think of anything more real than the feel of him. The heat, the smell, the taste. It’s the only real thing in my world.
“This is the last time,” I whisper before I cover his mouth with mine.
Over the next few hours, I say that so many times I lose count.
TWENTY-ONE
Maven
I hate the waves.They offend me.
Every heave of blue against the hull of the boat makes my stomach toss, and it is entirely too difficult to remain still, silent, the image of reserved strength I need to be, Perhaps Iris or her mother is roiling the sea on purpose. In punishment for my risking Iris’s life in Harbor Bay. Even though she survived and escaped easily enough. Survived, escaped, and lost the city to my perfect brother. I wouldn’t put it past the Lakelander queen. She’s even more powerful than her daughter. Certainly she can control the rise and fall of the ocean around us. I spot her ships ahead, six of them. Small but formidable warships. Less of her armada than we expected.
I snarl to myself, lip curling. Can no one simply do as they’re told? Even with her daughter in the balance, leading the failed defense of the city, Queen Cenra hasn’t brought her full strength. A trickle of heat bursts through me, a tongue of angry fire down my spine. I restrain it quickly.
The constant motion makes it more difficult to keep my grip on the rail of the deck. It drains my focus. And when I lose focus, my head becomes less . . . quiet.
Harbor Bay is gone.
Another thing lost to Cal,the familiar voice whispers. Another failure, Maven.
Mother’s voice has grown fainter as time passes, but she never truly recedes. Sometimes I wonder if she planted a seed in me, leaving it to bloom only after her death. I don’t know if whispers can even do that. But it’s an easy explanation for the murmurs and the mutters that rattle around in my skull.
Sometimes I’m glad for her voice. Her guidance from beyond the grave. The advice is always small; sometimes it’s something she used to say before she died. Sometimes it could be just memories. But I wake up far too often from uneasy sleep, her words ringing in my ears, for her voice to simply be a product of my own mind. She’s here with me still, whether I want her to be or not. I call it a comfort, even when she is anything but.
All that matters is the throne,she whispers again, as she whispered over the years. Her voice is almost lost to the swell of the ocean. Part of me strains to hear, and part of me tries not to listen. And what you have given to get it.
That is today’s refrain. It repeats as my flagship sails toward the waiting armada, cutting through the waves as the sun sets low and red against the distant coast. Harbor Bay still trails smoke, teasing me on the horizon.
At least her voice is gentle today. When I falter, when I slow down, it turns sharp, a fraying, splintering shriek, steel on steel. Glass popping in the heat of flame. Sometimes it’s so awful I check to make sure my eyes and ears aren’t bleeding. They never do. Her words never exist beyond the cage of my head.
I stare at the waves ahead, each one a white crest of foam, and think of the path laid out. Not before, but behind. How I came to stand on the prow of a ship, a crown low across my forehead, with the spray of salt water drying on my skin. What I gave to be here. The people I left behind, willingly or not. Dead or abandoned or betrayed. The terrible things I’ve done and let be done in my name. How much will have been in vain if I fail. And now I race toward a Lakelander fleet. Enemies turned allies, through my own careful maneuvering.
Like the rest of my country, I was taught to hate the Lakelands, to curse their greed. Perhaps more than anyone else, I learned to despise them. After all, my own father and his father spent their lives locked in a stalemate war on the northern border. They saw thousands wasted against the blue uniforms, drowned in the lakes, obliterated by minefield and missile. Of course, they knew what the war was truly for. I don’t know if Cal, the poor, simple brute, ever connected such easily traced dots, but I certainly did.
Our war with the Lakelands served a purpose. Reds outnumber us. Reds can overthrow us. But not if they die in greater numbers than we do. And not if they fear something else more than they fear the Silvers standing over them. Be it dying in war, or just the Lakelanders. Anyone can be manipulated against their own interests, if given the right circumstance. My ancestors knew that well enough, in their deepest hearts. To maintain power, they lied, they manipulated, they spilled blood. Just not their own. They sacrificed life, but not the lives closest to them.
I can’t say the same.
Mother is never far from my thoughts. Not just because of her voice running through my mind, but simply because I miss her. The ache is permanent, I think, a dull pain that dogs my every step. Like a missing finger or a shortness of breath. Nothing has ever been the same since she died. I remember it, the sight of her brutalized corpse in that Red girl’s hands. The memory is a punch in the gut.
It isn’t the same with Father. I saw his corpse too, but felt nothing for it. Not anger, not sadness. Just emptiness. If I ever loved him, I have no memory of it. And searching for one only gives me a headache. Of course, Mother removed it. To protect me, she said, from a man who did not love me as he loved her rival’s son, my older brother. The perfect boy in all things.
That love for Cal is gone too, but sometimes I feel its ghost. Moments return at the oddest times, drawn out by a smell or a sound or a word spoken a certain way. Cal loved me—I know that, of course. He proved it many times, over many years. Mother had to be more careful with him, but in the end, it wasn’t she who severed the last thread between us.
It was Mare Barrow.
My brilliant fool of a brother couldn’t keep sight on all that was his, and what little was mine.
I remember the first time I watched the security footage of them together, dancing in a forgotten room tucked away in the summer palace. It was Cal’s idea, their meetings. Their dance lessons. Mother sat by my side, near enough if I needed her. I reacted as she trained me to. Without feeling, without even blinking. He kissed her like he didn’t know or didn’t care what she meant to anyone but himself.
Because Cal is selfish,Mother croons in the memory and in my mind, her voice like silk and like a razor. The words are familiar, another old refrain. Cal sees only what he can win and what he can take. He thinks he owns the world. And one day, if you let him, he will. What will that leave for you, Maven Calore? The scraps, the leftovers? Or nothing at all?
My brother and I have something in common, at least. We both want the crown and we’re both willing to sacrifice anything to have it. At least I, in my worst moments, when the wretchedness threatens to overwhelm me, can blame such wanting on my mother.
But who can he blame?
And somehow everyone calls me the monster.
I’m not surprised by it. Cal walks in a light I’ll never find.