—
Blaise’s eyes open moments later, and in that instant, all the tension wrapped around my heart unspools.
He blinks twice, dark brown eyes focusing on me.
“Theo,” he says, my name a prayer on his lips. I can see the memories flowing back to him. He must remember everything. He said as much when he lost control in Sta’Crivero—that he could see everything even though it felt like he wasn’t in his body.
“Is everyone all right?” he asks finally.
“There were no casualties,” I tell him, and his shoulders sag with relief. “The damage to the ship was easily repaired. We’ll be loading up the rowboats to head to shore any moment now.”
He nods, struggling to sit up. I wait for him to ask what happened, how he’s still alive. If he does remember everything before he lost consciousness, he must remember me, with the sword in my hand. I can see the knowledge reflected in his eyes, in the uncertain way he looks at me. I can see the question forming on his lips before he decides that he doesn’t want to know the answer.
Instead, he shakes his head as if trying to clear it. “Is there any update from the other ships we’re waiting on? The Vecturians and Gorakians?” he asks, changing the subject to easier, more practical things.
“No,” I say. “But they’ll be here. Even if they’re late, we have enough warriors to hold our own until they are.”
He’s quiet for a second, then asks, “Why do you trust him?” The question takes me by surprise but it’s clear that it’s been on Blaise’s mind for some time. “Chief Kapil I understand. You did him a favor and he’s repaying it. But Erik? What does he want? You don’t even really know him, do you?”
“He wants the same thing we do,” I say. “The same thing we counted on the refugees wanting. To rebuild our countries. To make a home and protect the people we love. And revenge, of course.” My chest tightens at the thought of Hoa. Erik doesn’t know yet. Heron offered to write the news to him through the gold piece, but I told him not to. Some things need to be said in person.
Blaise laughs, but there isn’t much humor to the sound. He winces like it hurts his head. “Revenge,” he echoes, leaning back against the headboard of his narrow bed. “Not exactly the purest of motivations, is it?”
The words prickle at me. “The purity of motivations doesn’t matter—the strength of them does, and there is no stronger motivation than revenge,” I say.
He looks at me for a long moment. “That sounds like a very Kalovaxian way of looking at things,” he says finally. And there it is, the barb of an accusation.
Blaise was ready to die, he was ready for Artemisia or Søren to drive that sword through him and end his life because that is who they are and what they do. But not me, it was never supposed to be me.
I shrug and glance away. “Maybe it is,” I say quietly. “Maybe that’s why Erik and Søren and I understand each other as well as we do—we were all raised by the Kaiser in different ways. It’s not an upbringing I would wish on anyone, but I don’t think you could call any of us weak.”
It’s not an apology, but after what Artemisia said, I can’t bring myself to give one.
“I asked you not to risk it, Blaise,” I continue, unable to meet his gaze. “You insisted—you and Artemisia and Heron and Søren. You thought it was worth it, maybe you still think that. But you almost killed us all and I would have done what I had to do to save us.”
“I asked Søren to do it for a reason,” he says, his voice low and hard. “His soul is already black; he’s killed before—”
“So have I,” I interrupt, startling him.
“That’s not the same thing. Ampelio—”
“It’s exactly the same thing,” I say, my voice strengthening. “I killed Ampelio to save myself and to save the rebellion. The same thing was at stake this time, only more so. Hundreds of lives would have been lost if I’d waited a few more minutes. I tried to bring you back like before, but you were gone and I couldn’t wait any longer. So I did what I had to do, and if you keep insisting on putting yourself and all of us at risk, I will do it again.”
He’s quiet for a moment, looking down at his hands. “Are you afraid of me, Theo?” he asks, his voice so quiet I can barely hear him even in the silent cabin.
I open my mouth to deny it but quickly shut it again. “Yes,” I tell him honestly. “I’m afraid of you.”
He’s hurt, but unsurprised. “I’m sorry. That’s the last thing I want.”
“I know,” I tell him. Part of me wants to reach out and take his hand, but a larger part holds back. I try to spin myself an excuse for why that is, but the truth is that I don’t want to touch him. I don’t want to feel his hot skin and look into his eyes and see him as he was earlier, nothing but an empty face and frightening power. A stranger with the power to kill. I am afraid of him and I don’t know how not to be.
“I’m asking you to stay out of the battle tomorrow,” I tell him.
His entire body stiffens but he doesn’t look at me.
“You saw my power, Theo. Imagine what I could do on that battlefield. The gods crafted me into a weapon and you have to wield me as one.”
I shake my head. “You’ll hurt too many innocent people in the process.”
When Blaise speaks, it’s through gritted teeth. “The gods wouldn’t allow that.”
“I might have believed that before today,” I say. “After we reclaim the Fire Mine, we’ll take the Earth Mine and we will pray to all of the gods that there is someone there who will know what to do, how to help you, how to train you so that you can use this gift without hurting yourself or us.”
“You’re my Queen, Theo,” he says quietly. “You could order me not to go.”
“I know,” I tell him. “I’m not going to do that. But I am asking you and I believe that you’ll do the right thing.”
He stares at me a moment longer, his expression unreadable, before he gives a sharp nod.
When I leave him alone in the cabin and close the door behind me, I let out a sigh of relief.
ROWBOATS BRING US TO THE shores of Astrea—they bring us home. Though it has been ruled by my enemies for most of my life, it still lifts my heart to see it. Those rocky shores, the rolling green hills behind them, the quickly fading night sky overhead—all of it is a part of me, deeper than bones or muscle or blood. Astrea is mine and I am hers.
It takes a dozen trips back and forth to unload all the warriors, if they can truly be called that. Though Søren and Artemisia say they’ve trained well in the last two weeks, they are still civilians—bakers and teachers and potters and such. Some of them are old enough to be grandparents; others are as young as fourteen—children. At least they would be in a different world, a fairer world. All of them asked to fight, they trained hard, and they are all going into this battle knowing that they very well may not survive it.
There will be more blood on my hands after this is done, no matter how it ends. I will have killed them by sending them into this battle.
“How did you do it?” I ask Søren from where we sit on a cluster of boulders, watching the warriors line up. He glances at me, brow furrowed, and I clarify. “When you led battalions. You knew that not everyone would survive, even when you led them into a battle you were sure you’d win. You knew there would still be casualties. How did you send them into battle anyway?”
He considers it for a moment, his gaze unwavering as he looks out at the assembling troops. His expression is unreadable, carved from stone. There was a time I thought that was all he was—a hard, emotionless shell—but I know better now. I know that expression is its own kind of armor, donned whenever he feels vulnerable.
“I suppose I never really thought of myself as their leader, even when I was giving orders. My men and I were a team and I respected them enough to believe that they knew the risks and were making a choice. I respe
cted that choice.”
“You fought beside them, though. What you asked of them was nothing you weren’t willing to give yourself. But I’m ordering them to fight while watching from a safe distance.” It’s difficult not to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
My eyes find Artemisia in the crowd, her shock of blue hair making her stand out. She shouts commands, arranging everyone into lines and groups. In a different life, could I have been as fierce as she is? Could I have charged into battle and cut my way through a sea of enemies with ease and grace?
That path must have existed for me at some point, but it’s long gone now.
“They’re following you, Theo,” Søren says. “You can’t fight alongside them, but you can still be the leader they need, and in order to do that, you have to respect the choice they’re making. You have to send them into battle and do everything you can to make sure as many of them make it back as possible. And then you have to honor the fallen as best you can by continuing to fight for a world they would be proud to live in.”
We’re both quiet for a moment and I think he’s done. Just when I’m about to thank him, though, he speaks again.
“I never really did that,” he admits. “I sent them into battle and I respected them, that much is true, but I don’t think I ever honored them the way I would have liked to. At the end of the day, we were never fighting for anything we really believed in. We were fighting for my father, because he ordered it. They died for his greed and his bloodlust and I let them. That guilt is mine and I’ll carry it with me forever, but it won’t be yours.”
My throat tightens. Though I appreciate his words, I’m not sure if they’re true. Even if we do win, even if we do manage to take back Astrea and destroy the Kalovaxians, I don’t think there will ever be a day I don’t feel guilty for every life I lost—Ampelio, Elpis, Hylla, Santino, Olaric, Archduke Etmond, Hoa. They were the beginning, but after today I won’t be able to recite all of their names.
It’s for the greater good, I remind myself. The deaths of a few in order to save the many. There are so many people enslaved in Astrea, so many people we can save, but not without this sacrifice.
The thought makes me feel better for only a moment before I realize “the greater good” was what the Kaiser used to say his warriors died for as well.
I turn to Søren. “Do you still worry that you’re the same as your father?”
He tears his gaze away from the warriors and looks at me thoughtfully.
“Not as much as I used to but still often enough,” he admits. “Why?”
I shake my head, pressing my lips together as if I can keep the words inside, but they slip out anyway. “Sometimes I worry I’m like him, too. He’s left his mark on me, not just my body or my mind but my soul as well. Sometimes I worry he shaped me.”
His eyebrows arch so high they nearly disappear into his hairline. “Theo,” he says, lowering his voice. “I have never met anyone so unlike my father as you. The fact that you’re worried about that, that you feel guilt over sending your people into a necessary battle, only proves that more.”
“But—”
He stops me by taking hold of my hand, his grip tight and urgent. “You aren’t who you are because of my father. You’re who you are in spite of everything he did, in spite of everything he tried to twist you into. Don’t give him that kind of credit.”
His words do little to ease the black pit growing deeper in my stomach, but I’m still glad to hear them. I squeeze his hand.
“He can’t take credit for you either, Søren,” I tell him.
Søren gives me a small smile that doesn’t meet his eyes.
I suppose neither of us really believes the other.
* * *
—
When the sun is a mere sliver over the horizon, I stand before the assembled troops on the shore, feeling small. I can’t let that show, though, so I draw myself up to my full height and survey my warriors like I am actually worthy of commanding them. I strengthen my voice so that I sound confident and regal. Like someone who deserves their loyalty.
“I want to go home,” I begin. “I know that all of you want the same, no matter where that home might be. And I know many of you have no home to go back to—it has already been destroyed in the Kalovaxians’ wake, razed to the ground so that life there is unsustainable. Goraki gives me hope that life after a siege is possible, that your countries can rebuild themselves. And if that is not the case, I would offer a new home in Astrea.”
I pause before continuing.
“Today, we begin our triumph over the Kalovaxians,” I say. “Today we tell them that they have trampled us for too long, they have taken too much, they have destroyed too many. Today we tell them enough and we begin to take our revenge.”
Cheers go up throughout the crowd and I stand a little straighter.
“Today, we show them what we are made of. For Astrea,” I shout. “And for Goraki and Yoxi and Manadol and Tiava and Rajinka and Kota. We will rise, together, and we will show the Kalovaxians how wrong they were to ever think us weak.”
This time, the cheers are so loud they are deafening.
THE BATTLE BEGINS AS THE sun bleeds over the horizon. Surprised shouts, alarm bells, metal clanging against metal, pained screams—all echo between the mountains that surround the camp, amplified tenfold at the cliff I watch from, flanked on either side by Søren and Blaise.
We can’t get too close, but the battle can change in an instant and we need to be near enough that we can adjust our strategy and get messages to Artemisia and Heron. We need to be near enough that we can order a retreat if we must.
We don’t go too high—none of us is dressed for mountain climbing. I wear my red gown again—the most queenlike outfit I have—while Blaise and Søren are dressed in heavy armor in case they’re needed in battle. I can’t imagine they will be, but neither enjoys sitting still.
Even I have to admit that it’s difficult to keep watch and do nothing. We have more warriors than they do, more than they’re prepared for, and in the hazy dawn light, the Kalovaxians are taken by surprise. For a moment, we are winning, our ramshackle army cutting down trained warriors, pushing toward the mine and the camp next to it—but that moment is over before the sun lifts away from the horizon.
Søren was right: the Kalovaxians are skilled enough to make up for the discrepancy in numbers. They fight with precision and strength that our warriors aren’t able to match. What I don’t think Søren prepared for, though, is the energy of our warriors—the rage and desperation that drives every one of their movements, making them stronger and fiercer than they should be.
“They fight like they know they won’t survive it,” Søren says from my right side, a sense of awe in his voice.
“They fight like they don’t care if they survive it,” Blaise corrects from my other side.
Every time one of our warriors falls, something inside me twists. The first few times it happens, I say a prayer to the gods, but soon there are too many of them, too much blood, too many bodies. Soon it becomes difficult to tell who is fighting for whom.
We are advancing, though, the fight inching closer and closer to the mine and the slave quarters next to it, both ringed by wrought-iron gates, with guard barracks set up around the perimeter. Not much of the slave quarters is visible from our vantage point, just flat tin roofs and thin spirals of smoke.
“Their objective will be to protect their assets—the mine and the slaves,” Søren said when we were plotting our attack. “They’ll know we’re there to free them. They’ll know that when we do, the battle is lost.”
He’s right. The Kalovaxians surround the perimeter of the mine and the slave quarters, holding their line fiercely even when that means they lose their barracks. As our army closes in on them, a few Kalovaxian warriors disappear into a building I didn’t notice at first. Small
and squat, it sits separate from the slave quarters, almost obscured behind the mine. The fence surrounding it is spiked at the top, and the metal gleams strangely in the sunlight, a brilliant red-orange.
Søren’s gaze follows mine and he swallows. “Iron mixed with crushed Fire Gems,” he says. “It’s a newer discovery; I’ve never seen it implemented in such a large quantity. It’s incredibly expensive to make. Whatever they’re keeping in there must be valuable.”
“Whoever,” Blaise corrects, nodding toward the building’s gated entrance, where the guards have reappeared, but they aren’t alone. Ten Astreans stumble in their wake, chains around their ankles binding them together and making their steps slow and sluggish. They shrink from the sunlight when it hits them, raising their arms to block the rays.
Valuable Astreans, ones the Kalovaxians would spend a lot of money to protect. No, not protect, not really.
“Berserkers,” I say, the word barely coming out a whisper. Blaise takes hold of my hand, and this time I barely feel how hot his hand is against mine. I can’t take my eyes from those people.
“We knew this was a possibility, Theo,” he says to me. “We prepared for it.”
I nod because I don’t trust myself to speak. It’s true that we knew the Kalovaxians would likely use the berserkers they had at the mine, and it’s true that we have a plan for how to counter it. It will limit the danger they do to our army, but it will not save them. Though I know there is no saving them, my stomach still ties itself into knots.
“I can’t watch this,” I say quietly.
“You don’t have to,” Blaise says. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that he’s gone a little green himself.
“You should, though,” Søren says. He swallows, forcing himself to keep his own gaze on the scene. He’s the only one of us who knows what we’re looking at, I realize. The only one who has seen berserkers in action before.
“She doesn’t need to see it,” Blaise snaps at him. “I think she can imagine it perfectly well after hearing about what you did in Vecturia.”
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