The Emperor's Daughter

by H M Angues

  “I got out first since I was taking the remaining survivors. High Lady Katarina had disappeared, so I started looking for her. Before I knew it, I was on the ground and being dragged to a ground transport with Ramsey’s insignia on it.

  “When Calla found out I had been captured, she was given a choice. To release me, she had to give Ramsey her life.” I take in a shaky breath, fighting tears. “Ramsey was controlling Kainan. It was her or him, and she wouldn’t kill him.”

  “So, she decided to give her life. For Kainan. What about you?”

  “Forced to watch.”

  “And Rysen? I never saw the execution, only heard some... troubling rumors.”

  “He was in love with her when she died. I don’t know what hurt him more; losing Calla or realizing she loved his brother.”

  “Right, I remember hearing something about that. No wonder you and Rysen are so... dark. Moody.”

  I nod, unable to find my voice. Syn pats my knee. “That’s something real, what she did to keep you all alive. Don’t waste it,” she adds before getting up to finish the day’s training exercise with Bellamy.

  ∞∞∞

  I sit there and watch different training drills until Jed finds me. The Overseer taps my shoulder, whispering that there’s something urgent I need to take care of.

  Once we’re in his office, he gestures for me to take a seat. Ryse is already there, standing in the back of the room.

  “As you know, we sent a force to scout Stonefire Palace and Capital City to see if there’s any possibility of setting up a base there.”

  “How did it go?” Ryse asks. It had been his idea, after all, though Jed hadn’t let him go with the scouts. He doesn’t let either of us do much, always muttering something about a promise he made any time we question him about it.

  “All but two of them were captured. Ramsey has infantry and sniper units scattered all through the area. One of the survivors says he picked up something about them being taken to Ragnar Prison.”

  Ryse mutters a curse under his breath. “This is my fault.”

  Jed shakes his big head. “No. Your idea was sound; we had no reason to believe there were enemies in the area. All sources had said the city’s been abandoned for the last year.”

  “What do we do next, then?” I ask.

  “Right now, the Council and I are drafting up a plan to infiltrate Ragnar and get our men out of there. The two of you know the imperial palace the best. We need you to break into Stonefire, find the blueprints for the prison, and then lead the rescue mission when we send it in. Only the emperor’s family has the entire layout of the prison. Without the old plans for it, we’d be going in completely blind.”

  “What makes you think the plans for the prison are even in the palace?” Ryse finally steps closer to Jed’s desk.

  “Because the plans for every single building ever constructed in the empire are in the National Archives in that place.” He turns to me and says, “You’ve spent more time there than anyone else in the Underground, you should have the easiest time finding it.”

  “Do you know where the National Archives are?” Rysen asks me.

  All I offer is a nod. The thought of returning to Stonefire without Calla... It burns like her flames.

  Jed gives me a gruff nod. “It’s settled then. You have tonight to prepare, then you leave in the morning.”

  Chapter 27

  Rysen

  I hurry out of the Overseer’s office before Blade can try to make conversation. I have my orders—there’s no need to stick around any longer than I have to.

  That’s been one of my habits lately. I avoid Blade at all costs. I can’t bear to even look at him for very long. Visiting his apartment to talk about Fayette—that was something rare. And probably the most I’ve spoken to him since the hoverjet ride out of the Arena.

  One year. Today’s the anniversary of the day Calla died. The day he killed her.

  He killed her he killed her he killed her he killed her

  I shake my head, trying to fend off the oncoming headache those words always cause. Their truth weighs so heavily on me that it causes very real, very physical pain. Because it is true. I had to watch him kill her, right after learning that he was the one she loved.

  I should have kissed her on the tower so long ago. I should have told her how much I love her. There are so many should have’s.

  I haven’t heard from Kainan since. No one has seen him since Ramsey killed Katarina and the Concilium.

  End it.

  Calla’s last words slip through my mind as I finally reach my room and turn the shower on the hottest setting. Ever since I lost her, I haven’t been able to get warm. The world feels cold without her fires to heat it.

  The entire Arena heard those words, like an echoing whisper of solidarity and acceptance that death was coming. She wanted to die, and I know part of it was because of what happened to her in Louvelle. I wanted nothing more than to hold her, help make the pain go away. Kainan got that privilege instead.

  Scratch that. There is one thing I want more.

  I want to gouge that prison guard’s eyes out and make him swallow them. Right after I shove his own dick down his throat.

  When I finally fall asleep after readying my things for tomorrow’s mission, my dreams replay every second of the day I watched her die. Kainan delivering that final blow. Trying to kill myself after.

  ∞∞∞

  I throw my pack over my shoulder, taking my coffee mug with me as I head out the door. Fayette is standing there, fiddling with her thumbs in the dim morning light. Lights in the halls are set to mimic the day's cycle. She must have been about to knock on my door.

  “What did you tell Blade?” I snap, referring to the day before when I had found her in his apartment. “What part of me being drunk and never wanting to talk about it again did you not understand?”

  “I’m sorry, Ryse. I just don’t understand what’s going on with you! You’re impossible to read.”

  I can’t help but feel absolutely disgusted by Fayette and her desperation to pick that night apart.

  That night, Fay had told me how she believed Cal was in love with me, not my brother. That’s when I had to break the news that the opposite was true, and it tore me apart to admit it out loud. As for the rest, I don’t know what I had been thinking. Considering how much I had to drink that day, I probably wasn’t thinking at all.

  I deeply regret sleeping with her, regardless of how badly I remember my drunk self wanting it. To forget Calla, and get back at her, in a way. I barely remember any of the rest of it—it’s all a drunken haze. It was an act of grief and desperation, loneliness and despair. For some reason, I’d thought, maybe for just a moment, being with someone else would lift a little of my grief away.

  It didn’t. Once I realized she wasn’t Calla, everything had come rushing back.

  I want to just be with her. Not Fayette. I want Calla so bad that it hurts. I need to hold her and to touch her, but I know that wouldn’t be happening now if she were alive. My bastard brother would get that privilege.

  Maybe it’s better that she’s dead, then.

  “Ry, I’m sorry. I should’ve come to you.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I snap.

  “Okay. But at least listen to me, please. I care about you, Rysen, a lot more than I should, and I think we need to talk about that night,” she pleads.

  “Just... leave me alone. I’m not ready,” I breathe, stalking down the narrow hall.

  ∞∞∞

  Unlike Drakonis, Jurynn has no “city center.” There really isn’t much about it that would characterize it as a city. It more closely resembles a military fort, with its maze-like halls and fluorescent lights that don’t always want to work. The only places that aren’t concrete are the offices and apartments.

  The hangar is relatively close to my residence. Blade is already waiting by a Nighthawk, his hair blending in with the black metal exterior. I hardly acknowledge him and
climb into the co-pilot’s chair.

  “Finally. Did you have to do your makeup before we left or something?” Bellamy’s head appears from the hoverjet’s cargo hold.

  “What the fuck, Bell?” I exclaim, startled.

  “Oh,” she coos, “you’ve developed quite the potty mouth. Y’know, I think that’s the most you’ve ever said to me in the past like, six months.”

  As Blade taxis the hoverjet to the lift that will take us into open air, I turn around in my seat to face Calla’s half-sister. I tend to avoid her the most. She shares her sister’s amber eyes, and I can hardly stand looking into them. “You’re not supposed to be leaving the compound, Bellamy. If anything were to happen to you—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. You lose your ‘legitimate’ heir to the throne. Whatever. No one ever asked me if I even wanted it.” She takes my silence as an opportunity to add on. “Well, I don’t. I could never live up to...” her voice catches in her throat and she falls silent, slumping into one of the seats against the hull.

  The rest of the flight is conversation-free. We fly above the clouds to avoid being seen from the ground. It’s still overcast as we cross the Mordan landscape, but the clouds disperse above Capital Province. Blade moves low and guides us into the open hangar in the side of the ravine. One of the Terras from Helkyn must have opened it on the last mission here.

  The hangar is the easy part. Once we’ve crawled through the manhole to the surface, Stonefire’s massive elegance looms before us with the sheer drop of the rocky ravine at our backs.

  The back door to the basement kitchens—one I’ve used countless times—is barred by thick wood planks. The hundreds of windows have been boarded up as well.

  “I’ve got this,” Bellamy whispers, slipping between me and Blade. She puts her hands on the wood and her fingers begin to glow orange. The wood catches fire, burning the door and its barricade to a crisp in seconds. Some of the fire licks the ground. Bellamy has a lot to learn about controlling her flames—it’s lucky the threshold around the door is stone, or the whole grassy land would be ablaze.

  The only living Renald removes her delicate hands and pushes through the charred door. It gives way easily.

  As we make our way through the palace to the National Archives in the south wing, tears constantly threaten to well in my eyes. All the familiar places we pass—my room, Calla’s apartment, the door that leads to the tower where I almost kissed her...

  I should have just done it. I hate myself for hesitating as much as I had.

  It’s untouched, but not pristine. It seems as if Stonefire could spring back to life at any moment. Though the employees would probably lose their minds at the dust collecting on every surface and cobwebs coating the walls and ceiling. A year can do a lot to a place.

  Bellamy lights the few candles and sconces as we walk, though the obsidian chandeliers remain dark. The enormous windows I used to love gazing out of have been boarded up so thoroughly that barely a sliver of light peeks through. Stonefire’s hallways used to glow with sunlight, the glare off the fire-colored furnishings and decorum brightening the halls in a beautiful luminescence, the obsidian floors like coal to the flames of color.

  Calla would cry at the sight of it. At what her home has become.

  ∞∞∞

  A window I remember walking by on several occasions is where we stop. It always caught my attention because it wasn’t on an outside wall. I had assumed that it once had overlooked the courtyard, but when the palace was added on to, they just concealed the old window rather than going through the hassle of tearing it out. Blade pulls the drapes aside to reveal a small metal door with a keypad. He enters seven numbers and the red light on the door flashes to green. It slides open to reveal our destination beyond. It’s smaller than the grandiose palace library, and not as ornately decorated. There are no windows, since every single wall is coated with floor-to-ceiling, dark-wood bookshelves.

  I had expected something far less breathtaking, and more like a dusty basement filled with dusty cardboard boxes carrying old manila folders inside. I’d expected cobwebs and flickering fluorescent lights.

  But the Archives are beautiful in their simplicity. It’s a three-level, rectangular space, and we enter on the second floor. Every surface is deep mahogany, but—unlike the rest of the palace—not a single speck of dust rests the beautiful wood surfaces.

  The levels of the Archives are more like walkways along the bookshelves, with a clear view available from the floor of the bottom level to the ceiling of the top. I lean over the railing and realize how this place has been kept so pristine.

  A lonely man hunches over in a plush armchair, one of the many such pieces of furniture down below. He’s engrossed in a particularly old-looking volume that sits open on his lap. When he finally notices our presence, and looks up to meet my stare, I almost tumble over the rail.

  Valek.

  I thought he’d died when Ramsey ransacked Capital City and slaughtered Calla’s staff, advisers, and any high-ranking military officials that hadn’t escaped the palace with the Underground in time.

  “Thank the gods,” he says to us. “Do you know how long I’ve been in here waiting for one of you fools to come find me? You’re lucky the palace has enough food to feed an army for more than a year, or you’d have found my corpse in here.

  Snarky, as Calla always said he was. I’d never experienced his attitude firsthand until now.

  A narrow spiral staircase twists downward at the railing’s corner. The three of us descend to greet Valek.

  “Calla would rise from the dead and bite my head off if I let the Archives get dirty. Nothing but cleaning for over a year is so boring it should be a sin. When I die, the gods and I are going to have a nice chat about my living conditions after they thought it’d be a clever idea to let that girl sacrifice herself for a traitorous Rorani baboon out of a phenomenon as useless as a mating bond.” He heaves himself out of his seat, his lanky elf-like limbs crossing the distance between his chair and one of the shelves in seconds. “Anyway, I know you aren’t here for me. You want the plans for Ragnar.”

  “How did you—” Blade begins.

  “Ramsey sends patrols here occasionally and I can hear them talking through the walls. I know some of your organization’s men were captured and made the educated guess upon seeing you three that you were here to try and get them out.”

  “So, where are they?” Bellamy asks.

  “Not here. They’re gone,” he says with a shake of his head. His pin-straight silver hair is messier than I remember, untrimmed and unkempt. “Emperor Calla burned them after Ramsey’s escape. While she was pretending to be Sybella, she’d spent some time in this very room, poring over every single volume she could get her hands on. Calla put two and two together and burned the plans for every prison in Namari to prevent a comparable situation.”

  I let out an exasperated sigh. “What are we supposed to do? And did you just call my brother a Rorani baboon a minute ago?”

  Valek leans against the shelves. “Why yes, yes I did. You hated him, anyway. Is there an issue? And I’m surprised Blade hasn’t figured it out yet and said something, seeing as he knows how things work when it comes to palace staff. Do you know what some of the educational requirements are to become an imperial adviser?” He directs the question at me.

  I shake my head, and he elaborates. “Exceptional memory. Only mine is beyond exceptional. Photographic to be specific. You’re lucky, Rysen Dane, because I’ve had the layout and plans for every prison, military fort, and government building memorized since I was seventeen.”

  ∞∞∞

  Jed doesn’t hide his disappointment at our unsuccessful mission, even though I don’t believe it could have gone any better.

  Valek agrees to help us plan to infiltrate the prison, and even offers to accompany us on the mission to ensure we know exactly where we’re going. But, for now, all the Overseer wants is a physical copy of Ragnar’s layout, so Valek spends his fi
rst few hours in Jurynn drawing them up.

  When I’m finally called back into Jed’s office after hours of physical training, the plans have been drafted. The paper spans the Overseer’s entire desk from corner to corner. Measurements are even included to show the length of each hallway.

  “These aren’t actual hallways. There’s not a single enclosed corridor in the prison blocks—it’s all wide open. There are twenty-six cell blocks, Alpha through Zulu, or A-to-Z, if you’re unfamiliar with the phonetic alphabet. Each block is divided by a concrete wall that’s approximately three meters thick, with an iron door in the middle that’s just as hefty and impossible to infiltrate without proper clearance.

  “The entire structure itself is massive. Walking from Alpha to Zulu would take very long, which is why guards are stationed to specific blocks, and they take an underground train to get to each one. There are seven levels, level one being the surface and level seven being the farthest underground. Criminals are assigned to levels based on severity of crime. Those on level seven are the worst of the worst. Beneath them, an enormous lake that can be seen from the walkways at the top of the prison.”

  “I’ve heard about the lake. Don’t they call it the Sea of Silence or something like that?” I ask. Ragnar is quite notorious for it.

  Valek nods. “Do you know how it got that name?”

  Blade, Jed and I don’t offer an answer, so Valek says, “Ragnar was opened almost four centuries ago, built by Emperor Kaesarus, a Terra with a Metallurge son who helped him. Roughly a hundred thousand men and women have been sentenced to life in the prison since its construction. Forty thousand of them have committed suicide by pitching themselves over the railing and into the water. The lake is relatively deep, but the bottom is nothing but jagged rocks, impaling their bodies on impact.”

  And we’re about to charge willingly into this place. A shiver runs down my spine.

  For Calla, I remind myself. She would go in without hesitation.