Something appears in my head through the nauseating fog. The invisible strand I’ve been following, the one that’s pulled me across the sea and down these winding streets, to an abandoned home with a photograph of my mother and her two brothers. Two uncles, both holding guns. A world she refuses to talk about—ever.
I take it all in my hands, really seeing it for once, searching the colours there.
The boots stop.
We’ve both halted, standing in the alley, and I’m staring at my hands.
My hands.
“Tirza,” I whisper. “What’s in my blood?”
It’s too strange a question, but the only one I can manage, and Tirza understands. Her eternal honesty has finally betrayed her. “The desire to fight,” she says softly. “For revenge. For justice.”
A sob crawls into my throat.
“To challenge and break and make new.”
Your uncle.
“The desire to heal and protect.”
“You should worry more about your uncle.”
That’s what Lark said last summer. He said it and I ignored it. Lark, Havis, even Rahian. They’ve each tried to tell me without telling me, and I stand here now, trembling, the proof of it sitting before me. The fact that Tirza won’t say his name aloud even now, in this tiny alley. She’s speaking in circles. Words that no one listening could ever understand—but I do.
This is why Lark spoke the language of resistance. Why my mother herself could look me in the face and tell me our debt to Seath was nothing at all, that everything would be well with the one man in the world the North fears, the man she betrayed.
Of course she wasn’t afraid.
He’s her brother.
“Please,” Tirza says, “don’t be ashamed. He’s a—”
I pull from her comforting touch, tears stinging hot. I don’t want her excuses. It doesn’t matter if they’re right to resist, to fight for something better. Look what Seath has done! Look at this hell! He’s not wearied at all. He’s threatened Rahian into something dangerous, paved the way for the Commander’s claims and unleashed the Safire upon this innocent kingdom. And now there are too many gone. Too many still yet to die before this can end. Thousands upon thousands, and it’s partly because of my skin and my blood.
My hands.
My family.
A Resyan fighter plane hurtles overhead at a reckless speed. He’s low enough he nearly skims the roof, spent shell casings clattering down. It doesn’t take long to see why he’s running so fast. The shells are from two Safire fighters on his tail, their deafening engines snarling, hunting in the sky above, guns firing with ruthless fury.
Tirza and I flee like the Resyan planes.
30
ATHAN
North of Madelan
With the encirclement broken, Army Group North and Army Group East join forces for the first time since war began. Evertal took Irspen all on her own—which, rumour has it, caused a little love lost for her beloved Arrin, the one who ran himself right into a trap and abandoned her. But it was still an astonishing victory, only made possible after our codebreakers in Thurn cracked the Resyan cipher, allowing Evertal to discover an enemy feint on her left flank. She exploited the maneuver. Crushed them and pierced through.
And when Arrin himself broke through the Resyan lines and arrived in the dawn light, standing on a halftrack, victorious, I saw the thing I knew I would see, but somehow still didn’t expect. My father waiting for him—relieved.
Relieved.
The expression is barely detectable on Father, but it was there, and it said enough. Never mind his drunk words to me last spring. Never mind the promises. I was never the favourite.
It’s always been Arrin.
And I don’t know why I care.
As I wait for Moonstrike’s next orders, sitting on a discarded box of ammo at the side of our latest runway, the celebration of our sortie has already dissolved into more hammering against my skull. I try to recapture the elation. The pride. But every weary soldier from the encirclement that passes me—haggard, smoking, completely oblivious to the truth of Seath’s betrayal—guts me with guilt. Safire blood now soaks the Resyan earth, thousands of lives snuffed out in a matter of days, and they don’t even know that we gave the Nahir those weapons. Funds swapped, guns delivered under the cloak of secrecy. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. My father might be ruthless, but he always has a sharp purpose. Nothing’s gained without a very precise sacrifice.
This …
What kind of man can throw everyone into the same furnace? Northern and Southern alike? Seath has just betrayed the only person in the entire world who might have spoken for him—my father—and ruined two armies at once.
For what?
“Hey, there’s the lucky charm!” someone calls behind me. “Practically a captain now!”
Thorn Malek’s hand is gripping my shoulder before I can turn. He grins down at me, still wearing his flight suit and goggles, dust baked to his face. Must have walked right off the tarmac.
I shrug. “Lead one op. Nothing official.”
I’d like to muster more for Thorn, the kind of grin Trigg always has on hand, but nothing comes. The emptiness returns. The nothingness.
“Yeah, one op right out of a damn encirclement! And three batteries ruined for life.”
“Lion’s Paw helped out,” I admit, then pause. “We lost Ollie Helsun.”
Thorn’s grin fades. “That’s a shame. He was good. I’m up to six gone in my squadron. Trying to keep track of the replacements now.” He blocks the sun with a hand. “Been to Madelan yet? I just took a little spin over the prize and it’s a nice way to get a few more marks on the plane. No resistance left. Like cherry-picking those Resyan fighters. They’re saying we could have it by tomorrow night.”
“They also said the Nahir were on our side.”
Thorn gives me a thin, warning smile to keep my mouth shut. “Hard to say right now. But I need water. Want to get water? It’s damn hot.”
He’s deviating around the accusation, but he’s right. We can’t talk about it. Not here. We walk for the nearest pump, and Thorn splashes his face and neck, rubbing. I feed the pump for him, but my gaze drifts across the road to a fresh group entering from the north. Marching boots and hacking coughs. Probably more of our battered divisions, finally free of the cauldron.
“Hey, a bit more water?” Thorn asks.
I stare at the columns of soldiers. No, not ours. Resyan prisoners. Their hands are held high, bandages wrapped around heads and arms and legs. All dazed and shell-shocked.
Thorn rubs at his wet face. “Must be part of the regiment we captured. Heard they turned themselves over right as your brother arrived.”
I glance back at him. “The regiment surrendered?”
“The entire group. Lucky stroke. Apparently they had the terms already drawn up.”
Something queasy hits my empty stomach.
“Terms?”
“To offer the surrender.”
“Did we know they were surrendering?”
Thorn looks at me. He knows we means Arrin. “Encirclement is confusing,” he says quickly. “It might have been a ruse. You can never know for sure if they’re going to honour that kind of thing.”
A ruse?
I was there. That artillery never even fired on us when we dropped on the town. The tanks never spit out shells and the soldiers never raised guns. It was all one giant surprise, something they weren’t expecting, because they had terms already written. Because they were surrendering. They didn’t want to fight us. They didn’t want to be there any longer.
And I tore them to pieces.
I shove past Thorn.
“Charm, what’s—”
I don’t stop. The hollowness inside me fills with something at last, a rage that’s high on injustice and self-loathing, the realization that perhaps every single one of those pamphlets was completely true. The massacred prisoners. The tortured pilots. We did it all�
�both Evertal and Arrin well aware—and as I march through the wooden doorway of HQ and into a briefing room, I reel with the fact I’m now as guilty as anyone else. They’re all hovering around a map. Most of Army Group North leadership. No sign of Father, but I only need my brother, who’s hunched over the table, saying, “I want this entire city brought to its knees tonight. When we enter, I don’t want to lose a single soldier. God knows we’ve lost enough already.”
“You,” I snarl.
Arrin straightens, cocking a brow. “Excuse me,” he says to the rest. “I need a moment with the Lieutenant alone. He can be—”
I push Arrin in the chest, catching him off guard and throwing him back a step. “Did you know they were going to surrender? Goddamn it, did you!”
I’ve gone too far.
He knows it.
I know it.
His hands seize me and he drags me into the adjacent room, slamming the door closed behind us and me right onto the sharp edge of a desk. Pain stabs my lower back. But I’m going to keep up to him. I won’t leave here until I have my answer, until I know exactly what sort of filth lives in his soul.
I stand defiantly. “Tell me the truth. Did you send me on that run knowing they wanted to surrender? What did your girl tell you?”
He stares at me, jaw clenched.
He won’t deny it.
“Athan, this is noth—”
“No, don’t tell me this is nothing! I did it. I did your dirty work and now it’s on me!”
“Don’t be—”
My fist is in his face before I can stop it. I feel the satisfying thud, the crack, a savage hit of rage and jealousy that I’ve waited too many years to execute.
His revenge is faster.
Excruciating pain explodes on my nose, sudden darkness, my entire head splitting apart in agony and then I’m on the floor. I stare at my hand, blood dripping onto it. Warmth on my lips.
I look up.
Arrin towers above me. “I’ve got two of these,” he says, holding up his fist. “Be goddamn grateful I’m going easy.”
Blood streams now, and I tilt my head back, trying to staunch it with my hand. When I move to stand, everything sways. My skull feels like it’s entered a flak field. Fireworks the wrong way around, and I can’t walk out of here. Everyone in that room will see how small I really am. The realization is an ache as unwieldy as a plane with no rudder. Fatal. Everything Arrin once told me in Rahmet is true. That being valuable is the only thing Father will accept, and he’s right. That’s what Arrin is. He can get himself out of cauldrons and win wars, and no matter how hateful that is, no matter how dark and gnarled on the inside—he survives.
I realize I’m tired of being small.
He shakes his head. “Look at you. Mother thought you were the good one. The perfect one. But you see how easy it is now? One minute you’re the hero, the next you’re this.”
That hurts more than his fist. The idea that this strafing run was intentional, the sick chance he needed to ruin me. To make me like him.
Too late I realize Father’s in the doorway.
I struggle to rise again on shaky legs, my face feeling numb and sharp at once. My headache at war with my nose. I don’t know how much he’s heard of our fight. But his glare isn’t on Arrin.
It’s on me.
He grabs my shoulder and we’re swiftly out through the ops room and into the sun, the sudden brightness accelerating my pain further. I try to shut my eyes. Try to block out the torturous light. We march across the tarmac and I blink through the sting. Straining to see properly, to see where he’s hauled me.
A pale horse stands there. Its rear leg hanging at an awkward angle.
Father hands me his pistol. “Shoot it.”
I don’t move.
“Shoot it,” Father repeats. “It’s finished.”
Blood still drips from my nose as I take the pistol and hold it to the white furred temple. It looks like Ali’s horse. Gentle eyes, long whiskers, but it’s mangled. It wheezes in the heat, nostrils bleeding. There are other injured horses nearby. All broken, waiting for a bullet. Did they belong to the enemy? Were they in the town I strafed? This one’s back leg is torn wide open, the sort of damage a twenty-millimeter shell could do. It was my plane. It had to be. Why else would I be standing here now, forced to make this choice?
My hand—the pistol—hovers.
But what if it could be saved? Cyar would know what to do. He healed that horse in Etania, and maybe he could heal this one too, with the right plant or food or … something. It doesn’t have to die just because it’s ruined. It can be fixed.
Cyar could heal it.
He’ll heal it.
I know, then, that I can’t shoot this horse. In the sky, I can pretend to be the version of Athan Dakar that needs to survive, where the emptiness takes away all the regret and makes it into dark steel. Father’s ruined the one place in the world I loved best. He’s stolen the sky from me. But he can’t steal this. This is my power. My line drawn. I have a fighter plane sitting twenty feet away with sixteen black marks on the flank, and he can’t diminish that.
He can’t diminish me.
I lower the pistol, facing him again. There’s nothing in his expression. No crack or fissure, no hint of my fate, only a stare that would have ground me to the mud months ago, back when I needed him. But I don’t need anything here. Not in this hell. I don’t need his love or his trust or his brand of “favourite.”
Sixteen black marks.
An ace.
I’m the thing he needs.
Disgust glowers in his gaze now, the beginning of a threat—or ridicule—but before he can say anything, the gun is yanked away. I look down in surprise, a drop of blood falling onto my now empty hand, where the metal was.
Arrin pushes the barrel to the drooped head of the horse and fires.
For a moment, it’s like a parody of death. The horse sways, then falls to its knees, red spurting, collapsing onto the withered grass. The nostrils flare with one last breath, suffering ended.
Arrin throws the pistol at Father’s boots. “Enough.”
31
AURELIA
Madelan
The palace is panicked at last. I arrive on a fit of rage and grief, sweat-soaked, desperate to escape the truth Tirza has just enlightened me to, the one that’s hovered over my life, one I’ve never even noticed.
Tirza tries to reassure me, but her words are meaningless right now, and I wheel down the palace halls, straight into the fleeing Lady Havis. “Aurelia, we’re flying for my home in Sanseri,” she orders briskly. “Last chance before this entire city becomes a battlefield.”
I glare at her, well aware the Havis family is evermore intricately tied to this conspiracy. They gave my mother the title, the nobility. They had to know—that she’s sister to this dark man, their wealth and prestige building up her fiction, and I’m fairly sure they’ve been richly rewarded for it.
Lady Havis steps back at my cold greeting. “Or not.”
“I’m going nowhere,” I announce. “As it turns out, my family is very necessary to all of this.”
She flinches slightly at my sharp implication, seeing right through it, to the thing I can’t speak aloud. But I also wield new power, and it’s both revolting and emboldening. “Very well, Sarriyan,” she relents, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “But whatever happens, always fly south if you’re in trouble. Come to Sanseri.”
I don’t nod, or promise anything, and she gives a grim sigh. Her face is sad. Whatever else she hides, this part of her feels true. Then she’s gone, escaping the worst like a Havis does, while I march onwards for Rahian’s private study.
The war is lost. The palace knows it now, completely, reduced to an echo of panicked boots and dying hope. I find Rahian pacing before his oak desk, surrounded by his usual circle of officers. His strained expression says it all, his own fate now sealed. Whatever he’s been hiding is about to be brought into the Safire sun.
“Please, Your Majesty, offer the surrender before they bomb Madelan,” a harried army commander begs.
“They won’t target the city,” another responds stoically. “Let them march in here and find us on our feet, refusing to grovel!”
The first gives a bitter laugh. “You place too much faith in Safire honour.”
Rahian appears torn, sending everyone in uniform from the room, leaving Havis, Jali, and me alone with him. His tormented gaze finds us.
“When they arrive,” he says, “I can’t surrender to them. They’ll shoot me on the spot.”
“That’s doubtful,” Havis replies, his voice the smooth one I recognize from countless court dinners. The voice that could promise anything while hiding everything. “They’ll bring you before the League to make their case. They want to make an example of you.”
Rahian sinks into the chair at his desk. “No, not this time, Ambassador. I’m dead already, and Teo…” His hands cradle his head. Brandy in a nearby glass.
I stride forward.
“I’ll negotiate your surrender,” I say, the words out of my mouth before I can stop them. This entire disaster is now tied to my family, but I can do better than them. “I’ll secure a promise for your fair trial.”
All three stare at me. I’m standing before them with wild hair and a frantic gleam in my eye, I’m sure.
“You’d offer the surrender?” Rahian repeats incredulously.
“I would, as the neutral royal party here.”
It’s such a lie. I’m hardly neutral, not any longer, no matter what I want to believe, but I refuse to walk away from this. Not when I can do good.
“You most certainly are not offering the surrender to the Safire army,” Havis intervenes. “How is this even an idea in your head?”
“I’ve dealt with them before,” I reply. “It’s possible.”
“Look around you! This is war. This city’s going to burn. If an exhausted, trigger-happy soldier finds you in their way, they won’t stop to ask questions. You’ll have a Safire bullet in your head before the truth ever crosses your lips.”
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