Arrin’s staying behind in Madelan to shove the city into order, and I’m well aware that won’t be pretty. The guns will be burning hot today. Executions for any who dared join the insurrection—Nahir and Resyan alike. But that’s the irony, isn’t it? I’m not even sure we can tell the difference anymore. In one night, did half this kingdom become Nahir? Perhaps they weren’t before. Perhaps they never imagined picking up a gun. But then the bombs fell and their sons and daughters were mutilated and, like magic, they became the danger in the shadows.
I understand their choice. I do. But when you make that kind of choice—as I’ve learned—there are inevitable consequences.
Five feet away, Ali and Sinora sit together, and Ali won’t look at me. We’re back to that game. The hours pass, an endless journey that feels like it has no end as they press together on their seats, Ali resting her head against Sinora’s shoulder—pale in the grey light, dark hair a shield across her face. Eventually they both sleep, and I look on from some other world.
“What are you doing to her?” I ask.
Father doesn’t need to clarify who I mean. “It’s the end, at last. She knows it.”
I don’t let him see my heart flinch. I have no idea how he’ll do it, but it seems possible finally—he’s actually killed a king.
She’ll be next.
“You might not be able to do this twice,” I say, as if this logical fact might actually sway the man who just ordered a dozen bullets fired into Rahian’s royal chest.
He glances back to where Sinora sleeps, unknowing of her fate. Or perhaps entirely knowing. “Oh no, Athan. It won’t be me this time. It will be the Royal League—and I have her son to help me.”
IX
BETRAYAL
47
AURELIA
Hathene, Etania
When Etania appears below the aeroplane, it looks different to me. The rolling mountains are leafless and dead, dusted with fresh snow, peaks stretching far—though not as far as I once imagined. No longer limitless and untouchable.
A mighty fortress that bombs can too easily turn to dust.
We made a brief stop in Madelan, where frantic servants brought our things from the palace, and for a breath, I was terrified someone might have searched my bags and found my pamphlets and photos. Mercifully, they were still there, evidence hidden away beneath silk blouses, unnoticed. As a few of the Safire officers disembarked, Trigg tried to smile at me on his way off the aeroplane. But even his strange humour couldn’t lighten the moment. He knew it. I saw it in his eyes—a small, confused apology—and there was no time for any of us to witness the retribution being inflicted on Madelan by the Commander. I could only imagine the bloodshed.
People accused, lined up to be shot.
No rules, only vengeance.
And Tirza …
I close my eyes tightly. I refuse to think the worst.
As we land at our Etanian airfield, the frigid air shivers with apprehension, the haunted feeling that something has happened that cannot be undone. We walk the cold tarmac, lazy flakes drifting down, my mother marching for the palace without falter. She’s wrapped in a wool jacket offered by Dakar, her long black hair catching flecks of white.
Betrayal.
It’s on the servants’ faces. In the courtiers’ hurried pleasantries. Hathene Palace feels as stark and frozen as the mountains, guilty eyes occupied with marble floors. Dakar follows at a distance until Mother stops abruptly in the main hall. A warrior asking the battle to come to her. A mountain that cannot be passed. I stand behind her, my nausea growing, the realization that she expected this. Whatever has happened here with Reni, she knew it was waiting to happen.
She left for Resya anyway.
For me.
Reni appears at the top of the grand staircase, and his familiar face is a beacon of hope—a flare in the darkness, briefly rescuing. Then it’s the exact opposite, a confirmation of treason as more Safire uniforms flank him, already here. Uncle Tanek as well.
“Do whatever you must to protect Etania.”
“I will.”
What the stars have I done?
“Mother,” he says, so formally it insults the love between them. “Welcome home.”
She glances over her shoulder at Dakar, then at the Safire uniforms up the stairs, standing at Reni’s side in a show of alliance.
“Am I under arrest?” she asks bluntly.
“Not at all,” Reni replies, still polite. “Let’s speak together, shall we? It’s not what you think, Mother. I promise we’ll find the best resolution for all of us.” He pauses. “As Father would want,” he adds, softer.
“This is nothing your father would want,” she hisses in Resyan.
Her words wound sufficiently, and Reni can only stare a moment. Uncle Tanek also looks stunned. I wonder who he really is. I always thought he was the enemy, sniffing out trouble, but perhaps he was only ever trying to protect us. Trying to keep Dakar away from our home, and Havis as well, impressing the danger of foreign interference on Reni at every turn.
My other uncle was the true trouble.
Dakar steps forward, his wicked voice remaining neutral. “Listen to your son, Majesty. We’ll settle this in a civilized manner.”
Mother laughs. It’s loud in the echoing hall, a radiant defiance of the men before her, this false conversation, and everyone shifts uncomfortably, the maidservants watching in mute horror. The courtiers glance back and forth between their Prince, their Queen, and the uniformed General who just brutalized a kingdom and executed a king, and yet wishes to settle things in a “civilized” manner.
When Mother has recovered, she manages a smile that’s equally defiant.
“Very well, General,” she says. “Let’s settle this once and for all.”
My mother, I think. A rifle in her hands.
* * *
There’s a long meeting after that—a respectable meeting, with the Royal Council to witness, yet it’s all behind closed doors. Heathwyn whispers the full story to me, that Reni has uncovered proof of Mother’s desire to hold his crown until her death. She wanted to keep it from him, to stay in power, and even Heathwyn shakes her head at this, like my mother’s to be pitied for even considering it. But neither she nor anyone else knows the reason why.
Mother’s sole protection, as Havis told me long ago.
It’s flimsy armour, yet all she has. I see that now. As a Northern queen, there’s little Dakar or Seath can do to exact their revenge, not while she wears it. Before the Royal League, she’s greater and more formidable than the General—and if he was found guilty of hurting her it would only make things worse for his still-fragile grasp at power. And she’s certainly more useful to Seath like this. A royal who could be threatened into helping like Rahian was, not just a traitorous sister to be punished.
In my room, I change out of my oil-stained dress, fabric crumpled from our desperate flight from Madelan, and Heathwyn offers me a stack of envelopes. “These are for you,” she says hesitantly.
They’re written with familiar, messy words, the kind that once made my heart swell with joy. I take them reluctantly, read them swiftly. So many words, so many fears, and at the end of it all, the truth. Athan did try to tell me. He tried to tell me right about the time he thought he might die.
I can’t decide if I despise him or long for him.
My own traitorous heart.
As soon as there’s opportunity, I hurl myself at Reni in his private wing. It’s a righteous rage, and I’m calling him fasiri, over and over again, until I realize he has no clue what this means, a Resyan insult lost to his ears.
He holds me back from him, alarmed. “Ali, you need to let me explain.”
“Explain? There’s nothing to explain,” I bite back. “You’re ruining her. You’re ruining her for your own gain!”
I’m spitting all of these things at him, because even if he doesn’t know the truth—the General, Mother, Seath—he must at least see this.
&nb
sp; But Reni appears pitying, the way Heathwyn looked earlier about Mother. It only infuriates me more. “Things are not what they seem,” he tells me carefully. “You don’t know what I know.”
“And you don’t know what I know.”
“Don’t I?”
His question stops me, his expression grim, hardly victorious. “Tell me, Ali. What you found in Resya, would it destroy everything? Would it damn each one of us—Mother, myself, even you?”
I have no answer.
It would.
“I’ve seen the world she left behind,” I say hotly. “So many horrors, and not once has she spoken up. She was trying to protect us, to keep us innocent of her past, but I’m going to—”
“I know what you want, Ali,” he interrupts, “and you’re mad if you think I’m going to let our family burn for that. If we tell the truth, if we stand before the world and try to defend the Southern cause, it will be the end of our line. Mother’s past would imprison her for life and steal my right to rule. Yours, too.” He steps closer. “You want to throw our entire kingdom away for people who don’t even know your name? Who will never care that you sacrificed everything for a chance—a very small, frail chance at that—of defending them? You can’t change what’s happened, Ali. You can’t undo the past and bring back the dead. Whatever happened there with Mother and her family—it happened, it’s done, and I swear to you I won’t take the fall for her decisions.”
I stare at him. He knows enough of her history, and he’s not going to do a damn thing about it. Forget Mother and Dakar and the past. We are the new generation, the ones who have the chance to do things differently. And yet my brother’s simply going to take his throne. He’s going to defend his right to it and never mind anything else.
A gulf that separates us.
“I promised you I’d protect Etania and Mother,” he continues, gentler, “and that’s what I’m doing. Uncle Tanek said I have to let her go to the League. It’s the only way she can defeat Dakar once and for all, before the entire world. Then it will be over.”
I rub my hands across my face. I can’t look at him. Traitors everywhere, it seems. Traitors I love so deeply that it hurts when I breathe.
“What are you planning?” Reni presses, uncertainty in his tone now.
“Oh, don’t worry,” I reply shortly. “Nothing that will reflect badly on you.”
My viciousness works. His wounded gaze is confused, but I don’t care. He’s let Uncle Tanek talk him into this charade and I don’t know what end they’re envisioning. Perhaps Mother really can defeat Dakar at the League. Expose him for what he truly is, at last. She knows his secrets. But it’s a selfish risk. And a dangerous one.
Reni’s quest for his damn crown has fogged up all his good sense.
Frustrated, I march away from his imploring words, headed for the entranceway that leads to the eastern gardens, the mountains beyond that I need suddenly like air.
My hand is on the door when a Safire officer calls out, “No one’s to leave the palace, Your Highness!”
He doesn’t smile, his command frigid, and it adds evermore fury to the storm of my heart. He picked the wrong day to treat me like this, the wrong day to be in that rotten uniform.
I push the door open.
I see him reach for the weapon at his side, but I keep going, wondering if he’ll actually shoot me and upend this whole madness, spark something larger.
Perhaps it might be worth it.
But no gun fires, and I continue through the gardens, shivering in my dress, past the bed of dead flowers, taking the path that leads to the stables. My cheeks and arms sting with the nipping breeze, and behind me, boots crunch through snow, rapidly gaining on my stride. I don’t have to look to know who will be there. The one who certainly ordered the soldier to stand down.
Is there anywhere Athan won’t follow me?
When I finally turn to face him, we’re deep in the skeletal forest, only brown branches and a scattering of snow. He’s still wearing the uniform from the reception, every bit the General’s son. In a cap, no less. That damn fox sneaking through swords. He looks older, but perhaps he looked this way before, too, and I only see it now in light of the truth. I see Dakar in the angle of his nose. In his strong chin and grey eyes. In that smile he’s always given me—slightly crooked, somehow calming.
A Dakar smile.
White peppers his grey uniform, his skin sun-golden in this colourless world. “Ali.”
That’s all he says, and I find an equal silence in myself. There’s so much to share, and yet I don’t even know where to begin. We’ve seen each other’s nakedness, and surely there should be an intimacy between us now, an inherent familiarity. But in the winter woods, fully clothed, it’s only an awkwardness left behind. The feeling of something unfinished.
I knew him.
I also didn’t know him.
He strikes the first move anyway. With a few steps, he’s before me, removing his cap, his rebellious hair falling free to brush his forehead, and he’s a boy again, not an officer. Not Dakar’s son. It happens so quickly, the transformation. Now I see only his eyes, the same ones that teased me as we hiked up our mountain, that adore entirely.
His coat is next, round my shoulders before I can protest.
Safire wool I don’t want to wear.
“You’re cold,” he states, drawing me nearer.
I’m freezing. I wandered out into winter half-dressed, but there’s also an entire sun bursting inside of me, and when he pulls me towards his warmth, his mouth finding mine, I surrender, wanting to see what will happen.
I kiss him as he is.
The General’s youngest son.
My friend.
My enemy.
It tastes the same. Warm, gently hungry, his hands in my hair. That steady rising desire, all of me expanding at his touch. Wanting, wanting …
I pull away abruptly.
“No.”
I sound hollow and sad even to myself, and his disappointment is a mirror.
His confusion, as well.
“Who is my uncle?” I ask him.
At least if he knows about Seath, I don’t have to hide any longer. He’ll know who I am. What I have to do next. It might even make sense to him.
But his confusion only deepens. “What?”
“Who is my uncle?” I repeat.
He stares at me, then shrugs towards the palace, towards Uncle Tanek, and I want to laugh at the whole calamity of us. He doesn’t know—and I can’t tell him. I can’t admit who my uncle is aloud, not with his family about to take mine before the world, angling to expose our dark history once and for all. I can’t admit that I hate his father for marching into the South no better than any Northern king, and his brother for the countless war crimes. That I helped rouse a revolt in Resya, killing so many in Safire uniform, and I’m not even fully ashamed of it. In fact, it felt right, watching those tanks burst to flame, and now I’m going to maneuver quicker than them, bring down his whole family before the Royal League. I’m going to ruin the Dakar name forever and save my mother.
So, where does that leave us?
Where does that leave me?
I’d love nothing more than to kiss him and kiss him and say nothing. To pretend I don’t have these secrets inside of me. But that isn’t fair to him, the same way it was never fair to me, and I see now how hard it is.
How easy, too.
His eyes plead with me to believe. “I didn’t want to love you, Ali, but here I am.” His warm hands cup my numb face. “What can I do? Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. Anything.”
He needs some kind of answer. He deserves that at least, so I give him the one that has always been true, the one my mother understood months ago. “Take off your uniform,” I reply softly, “and never wear it again.”
I feel the wrongness of it as I say it.
You must stop being you is what I’ve asked.
But how else could I ever believe a Dakar? How else could I
believe his love for me is greater than any loyalty to his family? I’m demanding of him the same thing that I now despise Reni for. I’m asking Athan to choose himself over them, and my command hangs in the air. I see his thoughts shifting in little loops, like a plane in the sky. He’s considering it. He’s truly considering it.
“I know you’re not like them,” I continue. “I know why you lied to me, and while I’m not sure I’ll ever forget how much that hurts, the truth is, I don’t hate you. I don’t. You were right when you said there’s too much about you I don’t know, and that’s the trouble. I can’t…”
I trail off, unsure how to explain this expanse inside me. I preferred Athan when he was only a boy who flew an aeroplane. I thought I loved him, but perhaps I only loved the idea of him. Now he’s too much, too complicated. And I don’t know how to grapple with all of his pieces, the broken ones, the dangerous ones. How do you undo something that’s been ruined since the beginning? How do you start over and make something better from that?
I don’t know.
I hate this, but I don’t hate him.
My limbs begin to shake, the cold as deep as my bones. As deep as my spirit. “My mother isn’t innocent,” I say honestly, “and no matter how we try, I’m simply not good for you. We’re in opposite skies, you just don’t see it now.”
“You’re not her,” he insists.
“And you’re not him. But we’re still ourselves.”
He reaches for me again. “I can be good for you. I don’t care about any of this. Only you.”
“You don’t know me,” I whisper, stepping away.
You don’t know what I want from this world.
You don’t know what I’m willing to do for it.
I hand his coat back, then turn away.
“Please, Ali. You’re the only one who knows my heart!”
I believe him.
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