Someone knocks on the door again, louder.
More insistent.
I stand and begin gathering gowns for her. “I’m going with you to the trial, Mother. I won’t stay here.”
“And if they imprison me?”
“I’ll wait.”
“My star, it could be years.”
“Then I’ll wait years!” I stop packing and turn to her, defying the tears in my eyes. “I’ll wait as long as you need me.”
Her gaze warms, and she doesn’t protest. Perhaps she wants to keep me here with Reni, but knows better. She knows I won’t obey. Or perhaps she’s more frightened of all of this than she pretends, more alone than anyone can know.
“Then at least do one last thing for me,” she says softly.
* * *
She has me bury a box of photographs and letters. Even her wedding band. She refuses to burn these remnants, perhaps unwilling to let her past—her old world—go to ash, but it can’t stay here. It can’t be found. Too much evidence, like the photograph album tucked in my bag. As she finally surrenders to Dakar’s demanding men, escorted to the tarmac and aeroplane, I sneak her secrets out through the midnight doors, through the kitchens, and then lower them into the ground behind the stable, covered with earth.
Then I gather the weapons in my possession—Lark’s photographs of the children shot in Beraya, my photographs of countless Safire crimes in Resya and beyond. I’ll bring my battle—and Tirza’s—to the Royal League as I vowed, and I won’t let Dakar make the first move.
It will be me.
X
ESCAPE
50
AURELIA
Glorihall, Elsandra
Home of the Royal League
We arrive in Elsandra under cover of darkness. It’s not yet dawn when the General’s aeroplane touches down, a smattering of lights flashing past us in a sea of black, and I’m certain Dakar did this on purpose. I’m beginning to imagine the way the wheels of his deceptive mind work, the honourable image he must always broadcast before the world. It’s the lie I believed for too long, that he was different from the Commander, that he was something new and admirable. The rising eastern sun.
But it was only a sharp glare, hiding shadows.
Now, he brings my mother to the Royal League at an empty hour when she can be whisked away—no cameras flashing or crowds to witness her arrival.
She’s calm, a silent island of courage, but the first wrinkle of fear comes when we’re asked to remain on the aeroplane while Dakar speaks with a handful of uniformed men gathered on the tarmac. It’s a hushed moment, slithering with suspicion, and at last Mother’s gaze shifts with concern.
When Dakar comes back inside, he wears a grave expression. “Your Majesty, I’m afraid the charges have changed. It seems you’re not only to be tried for withholding your son’s inheritance. Tomorrow, you’re to be held to account for the murder of your husband.”
It’s a strange moment, because I’m not truly surprised. I knew this was coming, somehow, and it’s like being thrown into the frigid waters, falling forever towards the swells, knowing they’re waiting to consume you whole, and that inevitability frightens me most.
It was always there.
“Then this will be quite a trial,” Mother replies coldly, “since I am innocent.”
With that, we’re swept from the aeroplane and onto the runway, hidden by a herd of Safire uniforms.
51
ATHAN
Glorihall is freezing, even at high noon.
It’s the frosted inverse of the kingdom we just conquered, chilled mist hanging across the city, brittle wind stabbing through my wool coat as I run the icy streets, gathering the pieces of our escape. Clothes, food, anything we’ll need to get away. The train tickets alone are a small fortune, and my meagre pay is spent clean. I wish I could bring a plane, but I’d never afford the fuel, and it hits me then that I’m going to lose the sky. No more flying.
I tell myself it’s worth it.
I can live without wings. I’ll have her.
It still hurts somewhere deep.
The Royal League is a pristine building of white walls and grand chambers, nearly a palace itself, and in the small League apartment I’m sharing with Cyar, I write my letter to Ali. The pen shakes a bit with nerves and exhilaration, like taking off for a sortie. Adrenaline mixed with hysterical fear of the unknown.
“I know you shouldn’t ever forgive me. I understand that. So what can I give you to prove I never wanted any of this? That I only want you? This is what I can give you, Ali. I’m giving up my name. For you. I’m leaving today and I’ll never look back, as you asked. I’ll never wear this uniform again. I’ll forget the past, whatever they’ve done, whatever darkness I’ve inherited, and I’ll think only of you—my future. Bright and perfect as dawn.”
I say all of the things that have lived inside my head for too long. Perhaps they’ve been inside me my whole existence, a dream wanting to be known, struggling for breath, and I held it down. I ignored it and justified it and found a way to hide.
I won’t anymore.
But first, I have to explain it to the one person who deserved to know all along. He walks in as I’m folding the letter, a bag open beside me, and I don’t mince words. There’s no point.
“I’m leaving,” I tell Cyar.
It feels right saying it out loud, and I can see him trying to figure out if I mean going out for the day or the night or something more profound than that. “Leaving,” he repeats.
“Tomorrow … for good. This isn’t me. It never has been. All those years at the Academy, I wanted to fail.” My confession feels clumsy, a lifetime of half truths tripping me up. He deserves this said to his face. But it’s hard. “I mean, I didn’t want to leave you, of course. But I’ve tried to be this person that he wants, and it’s not me. It just isn’t. So I’m leaving, with Ali.”
This feels like the greatest and most terrible moment of my life, admitting this to Cyar. And the way he’s looking at me now, I’m seeing another confession. An unexpected one.
“You think I didn’t know that?” he asks.
I realize I did.
“Come on, Athan. Yes, you suddenly had a lot more reason to try last spring, but even that couldn’t have changed your landings from shit-shows to perfection.”
I don’t know what to say. I always assumed he saw Top Flight the way the rest of them did. That Mother’s death finally got my head on straight, got me to focus at last. Now I’m humbled by the truth. When we made Top Flight, he knew I’d been lying to him, that I’d been playing a game. And he never mentioned it once. He let me have that “secret” and followed me onwards anyway.
He’s always believed in my best.
With a sigh, he sits down on his bed. “Where will the two of you go? Valon?”
“Hell no,” I reply. “We’re going as far from my family as we can get. Somewhere with mountains, I hope. And you should leave too. Not right away, but before anything else happens.” I gesture at his uniform. “You don’t belong here any more than I do.”
His nose wrinkles in a familiar way. “Leave? Me?”
“Yes.”
He has to come. I need someone who can look at me exactly like this, remind me when I’m being stupid, laugh with me, tell me I can be better. I need him. And he needs me. Because after seven years, the fact is we’ve hardly spent more than a handful of days not sharing the same room, the same fears, the same hope.
“Good God, Athan. They’d shoot me!”
I shake my head. “They wouldn’t.”
I can tell he doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t understand—Father’s never shot someone for desertion. To Father, they never deserved to be there to begin with. They’re a weak link.
Like me.
I hold out the letter to him. “You have to make sure she gets this. No one else. I need—”
We both freeze as the door nudges open. Leannya stands there and I debate hiding the letter,
but her narrowed eyes are already on us. She clears her throat in a sarcastic attempt at delayed protocol.
“There she is,” I say lamely. “The hero of Irspen!”
She glares at me, as if it’s my fault she was left behind to miss out on all the fun of war. “I’d have saved everyone a lot faster if I hadn’t had to bribe Admiral Malek into letting me ride over on a damn destroyer.” Her gaze darts to the letter. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Is that for your girlfriend?”
“Kalt,” I say, the only name that comes to mind.
She’s still suspicious as I fold the paper, away from her hawk eyes. But then she holds out her own letter. “It’s from Katalin.”
I make a face.
“Athan, you didn’t write her once while you were away, so she just sent it to me instead.”
“I was concussed!”
“Yet still flying planes?” She raises a brow. “Read this. It’s important.”
I look at her standing stubbornly in the doorway, her fair skin tanned, blonde hair hauled backwards, strands breaking free. She’s an annoyed, scattered mess, and so much like Arrin it hurts. I’m going to leave her like this.
I’m going to leave.
I blink away the sting in my eyes. “Fine.”
“She’s smarter than you think,” Leannya insists. “And actually a bit funny at times.”
I take the letter and shove it into my bag, not feeling any overwhelming desire to read the words of the girl I don’t love. I’d rather look at my sister and memorize every detail of her anger, to remind myself that I’m not leaving her here helpless. I’m leaving behind a little weapon, one that Arrin’s spent years sharpening into his own image. The one he sat with on long-ago holidays at the beach, teaching her tank maneuvers with sea shells.
“You can forget sending that letter to Kalt,” Leannya adds. “He’s on his way back for the trial. We’re all going to watch that bitch finally brought down.”
It’s Arrin, again. The casual way she speaks of death. The acerbic hint of a smile. It makes me feel desperate. “You don’t always have to do what he wants,” I say, struggling with these last words I’ll say to her. “You have nothing to prove.”
She frowns, clearly confused by the barrel roll in my thoughts. But she keeps up. She always does. “I don’t do anything for him, Athan. I do it for us.” Her voice is offended, like I’ve implied treason. “I won’t watch all three of you die while I do nothing.”
The buried pain in her voice scrapes at my heart. “No one’s going to die, Leannya. It’s not going to last that long.”
Her eyes flicker again to my letter for Ali.
“No,” she says. “I think it’s only beginning.”
Then she turns on her heel, disappearing back out the door, and that’s going to be my last image of my sister—her furious and thinking everyone’s already dead. The sister I swore I’d never abandon, no matter what.
I rub my head.
I need those painkillers right about now.
52
AURELIA
There’s a knock at our doors late in the evening. A mostly untouched dinner sits on the carved oak table, and Mother stirs slightly in our bed. The “imperial suite” of the League is a lavish room of silk and satin, no bars on the windows, only luxe curtains and a view of the vast, frozen city drifting in snow.
It’s my mother’s gilded prison. A holding cell fit for a queen.
Closing the door to the antechamber, I tiptoe across the parlour, a tingle of fear trailing my skin. I’m certain I’ll find Dakar there. It makes no sense, but suddenly he’s a phantom ready to grab me and put me on the stand—force me to say the truth before the whole League, that my mother is Seath’s own sister and guilty of murder.
My heart is in my throat as I open the door.
But it’s Cyar. His familiar face is slightly embarrassed, and I’m so relieved, I fling my arms round him. He holds me. I’m sure the guards are perplexed by the sight of the Princess of Etania embracing a nameless Safire officer, but I welcome Cyar inside. He apologizes profusely, though his apology has no clear context. For everything, it seems, though none of this is his fault.
“Here,” he says at last, holding out an envelope. “It’s important.”
It isn’t difficult to imagine who it’s from, but I don’t take it. Instead, I sink onto the sofa that faces the window, waving Cyar to join me. He hesitates, but eventually surrenders and settles beside me. “I know you’re upset,” he begins after a moment, his Landori words spoken with their familiar, pronounced lilt. “And you have every right. You can be angry, Ali. But he does care about you. I promise you that.”
I shut my eyes.
I can’t be swayed, not even by Cyar, but he shifts beside me earnestly. “I’m not asking you to forgive him,” he tries. “I’m only asking that you hear what I have to say. I have one brother in this world, and that’s him. We’ve known each other since we were eleven. We’ve been together day in and day out ever since, and he doesn’t always make good choices, I know. He can miss other people entirely. I say that as someone who’s been there.”
I open my eyes and look into Cyar’s face. Still gentle, a bit hurt.
He means it.
“I told him not to do this”—he gestures at me—“but he didn’t listen. And I’m telling you—I know when he’s being honest and when he’s lying. It isn’t easy being in his position, in that family I mean. But he does care for you. I wouldn’t lie about that. I have no reason to.”
That lures a smile, since I can’t imagine Cyar Hajari ever speaking a dishonest word in his life. But he’s telling me this as if it’s a sacred vow before God and heaven, a solemn profession that insists I listen and trust.
“I won’t tell you what to do next,” he finishes, “but I believe Athan’s meant to be the best of his family, the one who can turn it around. I really do. He could do great things for Savient. For all of us. Please understand that one thing, if nothing else. I had to tell you before you read this letter.”
I reach for his hand. “I believe you. I’ll always believe you.”
Relief smooths his features, his strained brow, and we sit like that for a few more moments, facing the night horizon of Glorihall. I wear our togetherness like a blanket, a soft thing that has no rhyme or reason, two people from faraway worlds, but we have something in common, and it’s good.
There is hope.
When I glance at the day’s newspaper on the table nearby, it rouses some other flicker of reassurance. My mother’s story has made the front page, the high drama of a royal accused of murder, of stealing her son’s inheritance, but on the third page, hidden away, is an entire spread dedicated to the siege of Hady and the quelling of violence in the South, battleship guns coughing smoke, the shore and city obliterated in the murky distance. And they’re all Safire. Capturing a place that belongs to Landore.
It should be the grand story on the front page.
It’s not.
My mother’s trial is a welcome distraction. Gawain doesn’t want his people to focus on his loss of control, the wave of fresh revolts in the South, Savient reclaiming his own territory for him. And Dakar certainly doesn’t want anyone to question the sheer gall he’s exposed in making this siege, by his own order. Without the Landorians.
It means something. And if Havis were here, he’d say there’s an opportunity—both nations poised to potentially lose something irretrievable.
And I have a letter from a boy on the other side.
We have a chance.
Together.
I finally take the envelope from Cyar, ready to face it.
“I’ll leave you alone,” he offers quickly.
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it.
We stand and I kiss him on the cheek, this person who has kept Athan alive. I’m still grateful for that—eternally grateful. Then he’s gone, and I stare at the envelope, willing myself to open it, to confront the
truth. I do it very carefully, like I’m holding a living heart. The paper slides out.
“Dear Ali, I know you shouldn’t ever forgive me. I understand that.”
I can’t help it—I smile. These are the neatest words he’s ever written me, still half-scrawled, but more precise, like he was really trying for once. I want to want this.
I want to feel hope again, because anger is too hard.
Too exhausting.
“But we are not our parents, and we can do better. I have something to give you, to prove I never wanted any of this, that I only want you.”
I keep reading, my smile fading. I read the words over and over, until they’ve become a blur, caught in tears, and I sink onto the couch again. These little words have the power to uproot my whole world, to undo everything. Part of me wants to say yes. I believe Athan’s words, the desperate offer written here. Perhaps in his trapped loyalties it makes sense, a way for us to escape and survive whatever is coming. Perhaps it would be the best thing. To do better than these old wounds we’re forced to inherit and create a new life in Savient. To let him be the best of his family, as Cyar said, and wield that power side by side.
A princess from an ancient kingdom.
A general’s son from a modern nation.
Old and new forged together, like glittering iron.
But to be with him, like this, would only betray everything I know about myself, my mother, the very world as it is.
“Come live with me in Valon and you’ll be safe, I swear.”
But “safe” is no longer good enough, Athan.
It’s the end.
The place I can’t follow.
53
ATHAN
The winter sun’s barely up as I look into the mirror, wondering who the hell I am. It’s been too long since I’ve seen myself in civilian clothes, and I look like a stranger. Brown jacket, tailored pants, crisp white shirt. It all makes me look younger. Tired, spent, but wholesome somehow, and I feel better already. A lightness jumping through my veins.
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