Queen of Ruin (Grace and Fury)

by Tracy Banghart

  Nomi could think of nothing to say. “Why are you telling me this?”

  He shifted. Sighed. “Because… I suppose I wanted you to know I thought he was kind once too. I was angry that you trusted him over me. But it was not so strange that you did. He has always found ways to use people to benefit himself. I wish I’d known. I would have warned you.”

  Nomi pressed her cheek into her pillow so hard the down pricked her and ached for lost chances.

  With a sad sigh, she confessed, “I wouldn’t have believed you.”

  SEVENTEEN

  SERINA

  THE FIRE DEVOURED Mount Ruin’s distinctive golden grass. It ate the informal groves of citrus trees, the scrubby brush and jungle foliage. It ate and it roared and it raced toward Hotel Misery.

  Around Serina, women were running, their arms full of extra clothes, extra food, whatever they could carry.

  Where could they go? Serina needed to compose herself. She needed to give them a direction. Where would be safe from the fire?

  Serina’s body shook, fine tremors running up her arms and legs. She was shivering apart. She was breaking down.

  No.

  She closed her eyes. Straightened her shoulders. Took a deep, ashy breath.

  You are poise. You are grace. You will never let your mask crack or your calm shatter. Do you hear me, Serina? You will be a Grace.

  Her mother’s voice filled her mind. Serina was the furthest thing from a Grace, but her training served her well in this moment, when she needed to be calm. She needed to think.

  The hotel had survived the volcanic eruption so many years ago because the lava had only come so far… and because the building was made of marble and concrete. When the lava poured through the ballroom and partway up the stairs, melting the stone beneath, the walls hadn’t caught fire. They had withstood.

  Could they again? Should Serina take the chance?

  Some of the girls were carrying their belongings to the upper floors. Could they ride out the fire there? But what if they were trapped?

  “Hey! Hey!” Serina screamed, opening her eyes. She grabbed an arm, dragging Mirror to a halt. “Tell everyone to gather their things and head to the prison compound. It’s gated in iron and steel. It’ll withstand fire. It’ll be safer.”

  Mirror nodded, her face soot-stained and haunted.

  “Head to the compound!” Serina shouted. She ran to the door of the infirmary. Some of the women with more serious injuries were still lying on their pallets, their eyes wide with fear. “We need to move all the injured to the compound. Come on! Help me!”

  She ran to the nearest girl’s side. “Can you walk?”

  The girl had a ridge of stitches across her forehead, and her arm was tightly bandaged. “I get dizzy.”

  Serina helped her to her feet. “It’s okay. I’ll hold on to you. I won’t let you fall.”

  They moved slowly through the doorway. Serina shouted orders, and somehow they cut through the panic. Doing something helped Serina tamp down her own.

  She studied every figure appearing through the smoke, looking for Val. Who else had gone with him to get water? Had they made it back?

  “Is it the volcano?” Ember asked, coming up beside Serina. She took the injured girl’s other arm and slung it across her shoulder. The girl groaned.

  “I don’t know,” Serina said. “I don’t think so. No lava. Just fire.”

  Ember looked up, toward the billows of black smoke and lick of flames. “Maybe the lava’s coming.”

  “I’m so dizzy,” the girl they were helping muttered, her head lolling forward.

  “Hang on,” Serina said. “We’ve got you.”

  All around them, other women were heading for the prison compound. To their right, the roar of the fire built, louder and louder. Smoke settled in a haze above them. It was getting closer.

  Serina hadn’t explored the prison compound fully. She didn’t know if there was a meeting room or any large space beyond the terrifying processing room. So she hoisted the injured girl up the narrow staircase and helped her onto the nearest cot in the prison guards’ rooms, one without any blood. A line of women followed.

  “It’ll be a tight fit,” she said. “Anyone feeling intrepid should explore the building, see if there are any larger spaces we can use.”

  Then she pushed her way down the stairs and back into the choking air.

  She ran back to Hotel Misery. The hike normally took fifteen minutes; she sprinted it in ten, stopping to cough every few yards. Panic beat in her chest. There were still women filing out of the hotel when she got there, even as the wall of fire raced toward them.

  “Hurry!” she yelled. And, “Where are the firearms? Did someone move them?”

  No one answered. They were too preoccupied with their own survival.

  Serina raced to the room on the second floor where they’d stashed the weapons and ammunition.

  They were still there.

  She swore under her breath. Her fault for forgetting to tell the women to bring the weapons. And it was too much to move on her own. She grabbed what she could—two firearms and a couple bags of ammunition. If there was time, she’d find someone who hadn’t left yet and ask them to grab more. She was scared the fire would ignite everything and they’d lose their one advantage—

  A dark shadow filled the doorway, silent as a ghost, and even through the haze of smoke, Serina recognized him.

  Nero.

  Suddenly, she was sure no lava was coming.

  “You set the fire. A distraction so you could steal our weapons.” Her voice sounded thick, distorted, in the dirty air. Her hands shook. She couldn’t shoot him with her arms full. She needed one firearm, held the right way—

  She dumped all but one of the firearms onto the floor, the clatter and clank too loud.

  “I wanted you scared,” Nero said, and it was the first time she’d heard his quiet, mild voice, and it chilled her to the bone. “But the boat’s coming soon, and I want it full of soldiers. That fire’s shooting smoke a hundred feet in the air. The Superior will see it, and he’ll know something is wrong. He’ll send troops to investigate, and they will kill you all.”

  Serina’s lungs collapsed in on themselves, her organs and bones cracking and falling inward, crushed by despair.

  A smoke signal.

  A hundred feet in the air. In full daylight.

  “But yes. I’m taking the weapons,” Nero added, stepping into the room. “And I’m going to kill you myself.” His smile was a ballroom smile: polite and shallow. A mask, like so many of Serina’s smiles. And still it couldn’t to hide the evil underneath.

  He lunged for her, and Serina did only thing she could. She raised the weapon and fired.

  She had no way of knowing if it was loaded, but her ability to aim wasn’t an issue. He was only a couple of feet away, his arms out to grab her. The bullet tore out of the weapon with a roar, kicking her backward, and buried itself in Nero’s stomach. He stumbled back a step.

  She fired again.

  Half his neck disappeared.

  Slowly, his body crumpled. Serina watched through a haze. She could feel every beat of her heart in her temples, and those little percussions weren’t fast enough. Beat, beat… beat. Her vision went spotty. The smoke, the death… she was going to faint.

  Diego stormed into the room.

  Serina tried to will the darkness away. He’d get his hands on the firearms. He’d get his hands on her throat, choking her with his fingers instead of her hair. He’d—

  But Diego never touched her.

  Ember swooped in, long savage homemade knives in each hand, her face sharp and vengeful. She lunged and twisted, and Diego went down.

  Serina’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  Calmly, Ember wiped her knives across Diego’s shirt, cleaning off the blood. Nero’s body twitched.

  Ember didn’t blink.

  Serina’s arms fell, but she held on to the firearm with her numb fingers.


  “They started the fire,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  “We need to get out of here. It’s nearly reached us” was all Ember said.

  Serina piled the firearms she’d dropped into her arms. Ember grabbed as many as she could. It wasn’t close to all of them. “I’ll send someone up to get the rest.”

  “No time.” Ember disappeared through the doorway.

  Outside the smoke was heavy and thick, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Serina coughed, wishing she’d thought to pull her shirt up to cover her mouth and nose. Now it was too late; her hands were full of firearms and ammunition.

  They thundered out of the stairwell to the ground floor, and Serina gasped.

  The trees just beyond the hotel were aflame.

  Hazy figures moved through the smoke. Hands grabbed her.

  “Oh, Val.” Tears streamed from Serina’s eyes.

  He pulled her around the back of the hotel, pushing through scrub in the direction of the compound, and grabbed half the weapons from her arms. “Come on. Hurry!”

  “The rest of the guns,” Serina tried to say, but a coughing fit overtook her. Darkness was falling, making the red snap and crackle of flame even more terrifying. There was no air left, only smoke and heat and confusion.

  “We can’t worry about the weapons,” Val said, his voice moving through the air like a wagon wheel through mud. She could hardly hear him.

  Serina stumbled. Val put a wet scrap of fabric over her face. It helped her draw a couple of breaths that didn’t claw at her throat with burning fingers. The world shrank to the burn of ash in her nose, the heat of danger against her skin, the lion roar of the flames.

  Serina wanted to turn to check on Ember, the other figures in the smoke. Did everyone get out? Was the compound safe?

  What if she’d sent everyone to a death trap instead of a refuge?

  At last, they reached the iron gate. Val bundled her through a door she’d never seen on the opposite side of the building, away from the worst of the fire. A line of women followed them in.

  The air inside was stuffy and warm, but its haze was a far cry from the heavy blanket of smoke outside.

  Serina bent over her knees, coughing, the firearms clutched to her chest. Ember had made it; she stood coughing beside Serina.

  Val led the small group to a long open room, a dining hall. A crowd of women filled the space to bursting, sitting on tables, pacing along the windowless walls.

  Serina, Val, and Ember divested themselves of their burdens, placing the firearms and ammunition carefully on a table out of the way. Only seven weapons. That’s all they’d been able to save.

  Serina searched the crowd for Anika, spotting her in the far corner. Another girl was tending to the long gruesome burns on her forearms. Anika wasn’t the only injured one either. Girls all over the room were crying, coughing, cradling arms or cheeks or hands.

  Serina grabbed Val’s arm and pulled him out into the hall.

  “Is everyone here?” she asked, her voice still raspy and painful.

  He cupped both her hands in his, caressing the soot-covered skin like he couldn’t believe he was touching her, that she was here. She understood the impulse.

  “We lost two girls,” he said quietly. “We were trapped by the fire and had to get to the coast and use the beaches and cliffs. One of the girls fell. The other couldn’t handle the smoke. She collapsed. Diego and Nero—they were clever. They waited for the wind to blow from the north. I think they set several fires, in a line straight across the island. They were aiming to destroy everything.”

  “Nero said it was meant to be a signal.” Serina gripped his hands more tightly. “I don’t know if everyone who was at the hotel made it. There was a lot of confusion… people running.”

  “When I got back, I looked around, but there wasn’t much time,” he said. “By the time I saw you and Ember, the fire was too close. We had to go.”

  “Most of the firearms are still back there. I don’t know if we’ll be able to salvage them.” She was so tired. Her lungs labored, filled with ash.

  “When the fire runs its course, we’ll go see.” Val ran his blackened hands over her hair. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he murmured, leaning forward to press his lips to her forehead, the gesture as much a sigh as a kiss.

  Serina struggled to take a deep breath. The truth sat in her chest, as black and choking as smoke. “Asa will see the smoke. He’ll know something is wrong. He won’t send a prison boat; he’ll send an army. And we’ve lost most of our weapons. We’ve nothing to fight him with.”

  Val gently rubbed her back. “I know.”

  EIGHTEEN

  NOMI

  NOMI WOKE TO a deep, velvet darkness and the silken heat of Malachi’s body against hers. Somehow, in sleep, she had curled into him, tucking her head against his shoulder and her arms into his chest, their legs tangling. The smell of him—sea spray and sweat and peppery spice—surrounded her. She froze, every sense focused on the slow thud of his heart against her cheek. Malachi breathed steadily, heavily. He was still asleep.

  Nomi was afraid to move, lest she wake him. And he was so warm, so solid and…

  No. What was she doing?

  She could never be with Malachi. She would never be his Grace. And Asa’s betrayal still clung like a film to her heart, sticky and suffocating. It didn’t matter how Malachi felt, or how she felt. This embrace was empty, a promise of nothing.

  And yet, she couldn’t bear to separate her limbs from his, and she couldn’t fall back asleep. So she gave herself this one secret moment to breathe him in, to relax against him, to drink in each forbidden breath.

  It was quiet, save for the shush-shush of Malachi’s breath and the stamp and whinny of a horse down in the stables. Nomi thought of the soldiers slumbering in rooms of their own, thought of Renzo, of the public carriage that would arrive with the dawn. The horse whinnied again.

  She moved softly, gently, trying to worm her way off the bed without waking Malachi. As careful as she was, he sighed, shifted, his arms tightening around her. She knew the exact moment he woke. His breath hitched, stopped, his body stiffened. One hand was splayed over the bare skin of her arm. She disentangled herself, happy he couldn’t see her flushed cheeks in the dark.

  “We need to go,” she said softly, slipping her feet into her uncomfortable boots. She hissed when one of her blisters tore.

  “It’s still dark. Come back to bed,” Malachi murmured, the soft, sleepy growl of his voice caressing her. “The carriage won’t be here for hours.”

  “We’re not waiting for the carriage,” she said, tossing him his boots. “We’re going to steal a horse.”

  They were flying.

  Nomi wound her hands into the coarse mane that whipped at her face. Malachi’s chest pressed into her back, and his arms framed her, his hands clutching the reins. So high above the ground, she still felt safe. Even though the morning was cool, the proximity of his body put heat in her cheeks and her fingertips.

  The dark and the wind rushed past them. The soldier’s horse they’d stolen (“It’s not really stealing,” she’d pointed out as they snuck down the back stairs. “You’re the rightful Heir, so this horse, these soldiers, are yours”) was big and fast. They galloped to meet the dawn like racers in the Premio Belaria, and Nomi loved every moment. She’d always wondered what riding a horse would feel like. She’d never imagined it would be this dangerous, this exhilarating.

  They thundered into the outskirts of Lanos City on the tail end of daybreak. Malachi pulled the horse to a walk and straightened. Nomi slumped back against him, her cheeks wind-chapped and her body a whirl of electrified nerve endings.

  “Where to?” Malachi asked in her ear.

  The thrill of the ride wore off quickly, her fears for Renzo swarming back. She pointed to the bank of coal-dark smoke lingering against the far silhouette of the mountains. “Factory Row.”

  Her stomach lurched. Nostalgia slammed into her wi
th each breath of Lanos’s dirty air. She’d been gone a few months. It felt like years. Like lifetimes. Nomi was a new person, but the city hadn’t changed.

  The closer they got to her family’s small, dark apartment on Factory Row, the faster Nomi’s heart beat. She was so scared for Renzo, so afraid she wouldn’t be able to find him. But she was about to see her parents. Her mother, who, for all her harsh advice, gave the softest, most comforting hugs. And her father, who had told her gruffly, in a private moment as she boarded the train to Bellaqua, that he would miss her.

  The horse’s hooves clicked and clopped on the cobbles. They reached the central piazza, and Nomi could almost see Serina standing before the fountain with the other prospects from Lanos. She could remember with brutal clarity Signor Pietro saying Serina’s name, and how her own stomach had clenched in the anger of that moment.

  She directed Malachi to her street, seeing the shabbiness and rust and cracked concrete with new eyes, with the Heir’s eyes. Arriving at her door took an age and only a moment.

  Malachi slipped from the horse and then helped her down, his eyes constantly scanning the street. It was early; soon the bustle of the morning commute would begin, when all the workers would walk to the factories. Her parents would be leaving any minute.

  “No sign of soldiers,” Malachi murmured. Just as he said it, the first doors opened and the first men and women stepped into the street. He tied the horse to a lamppost and turned to Nomi.

  With a deep coal-clogged breath, she knocked.

  When her father came to the door, would he give her a hug? Would he give her a chance to explain?

  What would her parents think when they saw the Heir, presumed dead, alive and well at her side?