I do.
But he can’t see my tears, and I keep walking for the palace.
48
ATHAN
Snow hovers like fog beneath the moon, Hathene Palace a graveyard as I walk the halls, a palace with no heartbeat, everyone hidden behind closed doors. Father’s plane is being fueled on the tarmac for the long journey to the Royal League. Somewhere, a queen is preparing to face her fate. But I try to remember the way this place looked last summer, with the colour and light and laughter, how it felt like a home—a home Ali wanted to share with me. Something that held love.
It’s too cold now. And she doesn’t want me anymore.
“I won’t bury you in hatred yet, Athan Dakar.”
Sinora’s voice follows me. It haunts my restless steps, firm, beckoning, and perhaps she planned it like this. Father said she was the master of confusion, that she could make an entire army wonder who was the enemy. She’s done a damn good job with me, because even though I don’t trust her, I still want to see her again. She told me lies, but she also told me the truth. And now she’s like the end of a battle. She’s like the end of a battle when my plane’s shot to pieces and the runway appears at last. I never feel very victorious in that moment. I never feel like I’ve done a great thing. But I know I have to land and finish this thing. I have to feel the earth again.
The bump and jolt of reality.
“You don’t have to live as a ghost.”
I don’t want to be one. I realized that somewhere over Resya, watching the world go up in flame. I realized that while kissing Ali and discovering that I was still precious to her—worth wanting, worth loving. It’s new to me, a goal within reach, but Sinora saw it long before I ever did, last summer.
And maybe I don’t want her to die anymore, either. It used to feel like justice, a target for my anger at Mother’s death, but now it feels wrong. It simply feels wrong, like a thorn lodged in my ribs, reminding me with every step how wearying and pointless this unending rivalry is. All of this will destroy Ali and break her heart forever. It will ruin them. Ruin us.
My runway tonight is Sinora.
Because if I don’t see her before we depart for the League, I’ll go mad with her voice in my head, hearing it every day for the rest of my life.
But someone else finds me first.
“Lieutenant.”
It’s not the voice I want to hear, but I turn anyway. The Prince is graceful as he strides behind me in the shadowed hall. I expect a battle. The last time I saw him, a coup was being thwarted, a forest burning, and I have the sudden acute awareness that he would kill me here and now if he knew what Ali and I did in Resya. But he doesn’t look leery of me, or even angry. He wears that calm, regal mask that feels indulgent of every muddy thing outside his royal sphere.
He doesn’t speak, so I begin.
“Why?”
It’s the only question that comes, the only one that matters now.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asks in return. “I’m on your side in this. You Safire have done an impressive thing. You secured a kingdom festering with corruption. I can admire that. And now, your father will help me secure the crown I deserve. The one that’s rightfully mine.”
“By betraying your own mother,” I say, hoping all of the servants and footmen hear it, if they’re eavesdropping. “And for what? A bit of gold on your head?”
He looks startled. “A bit of gold?” he intones.
And there it is. The eternal divide between our worlds. His expression changes, as if sensing my silent disgust. “Listen, Lieutenant. Do I admire the Safire? Yes. For a moment, I do. But you will never understand what a crown is. You will burn hot and bright for a day, but once that paper burns up, the fire will go back to its steady, constant flame. And gold melted is always gold. My right to rule was ordained by God himself. I’ve always had this crown. It was always mine.”
He doesn’t smile as he says this. There’s no gleam of pleasure in his eye. It’s simply his truth, unrolled before me with the steady certainty that he’s absolutely right.
“And that’s worth doing this?” I ask bitterly.
“You think I’m callous, Lieutenant, but I’m not overthrowing her, nor executing her. I’m simply using politics to remove her from the position she’s too stubborn to surrender on her own. She’s worn this crown for thirteen years and she’s exhausted. This burden needn’t be hers any longer.”
This Prince is more vain and blind than I thought. He thinks he’s going to depose his mother for the sake of family honour, but deposed to him means taking the crown from her peacefully, through political means.
Deposed to my father means something else entirely—a noose.
“Then you’re doing her a favour,” I say, unable to hide my sarcasm. “And will Ali appreciate it?”
Now I’ve touched a bruise of anger. His gaze flickers unkindly. “My sister will go along with whatever I say to go along with.”
“Do you even know her?”
He narrows his eyes, and I’ve gone too far, but I don’t stop. “I heard you’re not even going to the League. You’re letting your own mother wander into the wolf’s den alone.”
“I have to stay here,” he replies defensively. “The real wolves wear Safire uniforms, and I won’t leave an empty throne in Etania for their ambitious claws. Not after what happened in Resya.”
He folds his arms, and for some reason, this admission makes me fear him a bit. He’s part of the game now. Using my father to get what he needs, even knowing my father has an agenda of his own.
But this is not a match he can win.
He thinks this move will give him everything, but I can see the end he can’t possibly envision—Sinora dead, Ali despising him forever. Left with a crown and a kingdom and nothing else.
There’s only one right thing to do, and I take my chance, lowering my voice. “Don’t do this, Prince. Don’t trust my father. You’ll regret it.”
He stares at me.
“Renege now on whatever deal you’ve made, and let your mother keep the damn throne,” I press. “Tell him you don’t need his help and that you’ll go to the League if he continues to cause your family trouble.”
It’s the only way they’ll win. My father can’t compete against royalty, against the entire League, not when Captain Merlant warned me we’re on thin ice already. The Prince stiffens, ready to fight back. Then he seems to realize that I’ve just disparaged my own father, which I have no reason to do. It gains me nothing.
He looks at me a long moment, as if struggling to treat me like someone worthy of genuine conversation. “I had a vision,” he explains, more hesitant now. “I know you Safire don’t put stock in these things. You trust only in yourself. But I believe it’s important to listen to divine signs, and I’m trying to do what’s best.”
I realize he’s being honest. As honest as he can be with me.
“My father had a vision once,” he continues, “of his own death. He described it exactly as it happened, and I was there. I watched him the night he was poisoned, suffocating on his own bed. At the time, I didn’t understand it was poison, but I begged God to kill him. To end the suffering. I prayed that prayer, and I won’t wish the same for my mother if she falls into a similar trap.” He straightens, as if embarrassed by his own vulnerability. His deeply human fear. “I’m going to listen to this revelation, Lieutenant, and I’m going to do what’s best.”
“And if your vision isn’t right?” I ask.
“It will be,” he replies. His voice is certain.
I’d like a vision too, I want to say. Something clear and unmistakable to tell me what to do.
But I don’t have that. I only have this breath of a nudge inside my soul, and whatever he has … well, there’s a rotten thing at the core of this royal world, and I want to be away from it—so far away it won’t haunt me any longer. I want something else.
Gold of a different kind.
“Remember that I warned you,” I say at l
ast. “I tried.”
“I will,” he replies. Aversion weights his gaze again. “And you remember to stay away from my family—all of them—or your life will be forfeit in whatever comes tomorrow.”
On that dramatic note, he leaves.
With no choice, I obey.
* * *
Outside, everyone in Safire uniform stamps their boots against the snowy, lamplit tarmac to stay warm, ready for our midnight trip eastwards. I stand with my father, waiting for Sinora to arrive for her final journey. I’m half listening to him, half thinking about Ali’s lips, her hair, imagining us in a little wood hut on some evergreen mountainside. No uniforms, no crowns. Only a future that’s clear and wide and holds love.
An endless sky.
Escape.
“Take off your uniform and never wear it again.”
“Victory’s very near,” Father reveals to me quietly, his cigarette burning orange in the darkness. “Sinora will face her treachery at last.”
I don’t know why he’s sharing this with me. I guess because Arrin isn’t here, and I’m all he has, so I nod, like the good son I am now, the newly minted captain—not the star traitor—and listen to the larger plan at hand. Kalt has gone with our western fleet to lay siege to Hady, the port city which the Nahir captured last spring. Father gave Seath that city as a gift for his cooperation. A Free Thurn. But no longer.
I remember the way the Resyan coast lit up like fireworks beneath our battleship guns.
I remember Hady, a civilian city of men, women, children, life.
My stomach aches.
This is why I have to leave.
“They said we couldn’t change the past,” Father continues, “but we’ve done it. We’ve written our own legend.”
“We’re in opposite skies,” Ali said. “You just don’t see it now.”
What can’t I see? I try to search through every memory and find the secret she’s hiding, but there’s nothing there, only her smile, her joy in the world.
The Prince was right.
We all have visions, and I’m going to follow mine.
“Are you ready?” Father rests a hand on my shoulder. “I need you for this.”
I look up at him, our airplane engines being tested nearby, snarling, and I know what he’s going to ask of me, what he wants me to do before that Royal League in Elsandra.
“Yes,” I say.
But I’ll be gone.
I won’t let him use me again.
49
AURELIA
Like Rahian in Madelan, Mother is now confined to her quarters, ordered to prepare quickly for her trip to the League, and I glare at the soldiers posted there—Etanian men, professing their loyalty to my brother by imprisoning the soon-to-be-deposed Queen. They allow me inside with a sheepish look.
Choices.
We’re all making choices, from the smallest to the greatest. Helping to shift entire worlds. And tonight, there’s only one person who might understand me—only one who knows what it means to want someone with you and away from you at once. To know that no matter how terrible they are, no matter how dark, they’re still a piece of yourself, a mirror of your own soul.
I find Mother seated at her vanity, staring at the gold wedding ring on her finger. At once, I sense the endless grief we share, permeating this fractured home. She’s scarcely packed a thing. Her traveling trunk remains open, its emptiness exposed. Eventually she says, “Do you want the truth? I should tell you before it’s too late.”
Too late?
That frightens me, because the last person to say this to me—to imply there would be no chance for a fair trial, for history to be written properly—was Rahian.
And in the end, his prediction came true.
But before I can ask I see the portrait on her vanity—the blonde woman.
Sapphie elski’han.
Athan’s mother.
“I was in Masrah when that kingdom fell,” she begins in Resyan, “when my brother helped topple that once-proud monarchy. It was his greatest victory, and I saw it all. I saw more than I ever wished to see, and that was the day I knew revolution could not come like this. Not like he wanted. I saw those two little girls escape the palace, those two princesses who had everything in life I’d been denied. I let them go. Because even they didn’t deserve what happened that day. No one does. Certainly not children.”
I sink onto the seat beside her.
She saw Callia and Jali escape?
She let them go.
The strands are too tangled, stories from every corner, crisscrossing in an intricate web, but she’s not finished. “I’ve watched my brother lay a field full of mines for our enemies, but somehow, they never get the right boots. They get everyone else. The young. The old. The ones we never meant to kill.” She turns, facing me at last. “And that’s what you have to live with for the rest of your life, Aurelia. That is revolution. War. A deadly field that steals the innocent right along with the guilty, and those mines…” A tear falls, tracing her cheek. “No, I chose a rifle. My bullet only went exactly where it was meant to go. Every time.”
Any lingering bitterness in me retreats. I’ve never seen her like this, never known her fully. But suddenly, with that one admission, I know her heart is wide and deep even in the face of darkness, that she took her hatred and tried to do right.
“I’ve never forgotten them,” she whispers. “My brother, he burns for a cause I’ll never surrender. It began the day our home was stolen, our father imprisoned for trying to feed his family. Seath had to care for us younger ones, shepherding us from camp to camp, working whatever job he could find. Somehow, he always made tomorrow seem like a better place. I worshipped him once. I thought he could do no wrong.” Her voice catches. “And always, I have longed to show you and Reni both sides of this story, but you refused to see. You were suspicious of anything that came from my old world. And that’s how it is. You can shout the truth until your voice is hoarse, but rarely will another soul listen until it strikes close to them.”
She’s right. She’s always spoken of the necessary revolution in the South, but we refused to listen, to go deeper into her secret wounds. Perhaps she could have shared more. Or perhaps she did, and I was too blind to see it.
My eyes fall on the photograph.
“Did you love Dakar?” I ask, the question unexpected, unnerving.
I suddenly need her to deny it.
“Never,” she replies. “Not in the way you think.”
A shaky breath escapes my chest. I’ve learned to handle many things, but that might have been too much. “But you were friends?”
“Comrades. I knew his secrets, and he knew mine.” She flexes her fingers, studying the wedding band again. “But he will kill me for what I did, my star. Even if he doesn’t execute me, he won’t stop until he hears what he wants from my lips, and I won’t give him that. I’ll keep you and Reni safe. Whatever I do, I do for you.”
“Then why are you stealing Reni’s crown?”
My question is stark, and she looks at me, her eyes regretful. “It was your father’s idea. He wrote a decree to make it so, to allow me to reign to my death, and only Lord Marcin knew of it. But Marcin is dead, the sole witness. Now they’ll simply say it was a declaration forged in my hand.” She pauses, emotion suffusing her voice. Possibly grief, possibly rage. “Your father wanted to protect me, but the reality is, I’ll die with or without the crown. It doesn’t matter.”
Someone knocks on the door. “Your Majesty,” a muffled voice says. “It’s time to depart.”
We ignore the order. I put my hand on hers, longing to see her as the young woman in the photographs—fierce, unyielding, radiant. Sorrow made into courage. “Dakar knows who your brother is,” I state, a fact that must be coming to haunt her. Soon.
As soon as she walks out that door and goes with Dakar.
“Yes, but he has no proof,” she replies swiftly. “We burned the surviving records long ago, everything else lost in o
ur displacement. Nothing to say who Seath is to me. It’s Dakar’s word against mine, and I am a queen. Who would believe him? No, that’s not what he will use to bring me down. He wants me to confess another crime on my own. But do you know the best way to keep a proud man in a state of defeat?” I shake my head, and she leans closer. “It’s to hold the thing he wants most—his own longed-for legend, his pride—just out of reach. That is what I will keep from him, to the end. And you will be a princess forever.”
But what if I don’t want to be a princess forever? Not if it means inheriting all of this.
“I’m going to protect you,” I promise her. “I have a way.”
She smiles, sadly. “Your brother has your father’s heart, but you … I’ve always known that you have mine, and you must swear to me that no matter what happens at the League, you will always watch out for Renisala and keep his eyes open. He was meant to rule Etania—and he will.”
“And me?” I ask. “Am I not meant to rule?”
In her silence is the answer I’ve always sought. The answer that’s danced round the edge of conversations, in her resolve to marry me to Havis and send me to Resya even when everyone else claimed it was preposterous.
No.
She’s never wanted a crown for me. She’s always wanted more—for me to see the South, to find the things she could never say, the things Reni will never understand.
She wanted me to learn her secrets.
She wanted me to know her true home.
Somewhere, beneath my bitterness and hurt, my love stirs fearfully for her again, because it’s like looking at the horizon. I’m afraid of her, but I also want to follow. She’s watched this sky change a thousand times, lived a story I only know the edges of, and she’s still here. Entrusting her unwritten history to my hands.
I have to hold it forever.
“I want to go home,” she says. “I want to see it again. I want to visit their graves and remind myself that it still exists. I can hear them calling to me. My father and mother. My sister. I hear them, and they want me to come, but I can’t.” She looks at me, fervent. “I won’t. Not until I know you’re safe.”
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