“Yes! Is that what you wanted to hear? I wish it had been you. I wish we’d never met you. I wish he’d lived and you had died. It should have been you.” Radha’s shoulders shake, but her voice is quiet now. “I know you’re not real, Esmae. I know you’re my test.”
“Then you know you have to listen,” the other version of me says. “That cruel, bitter impulse, the one you’ve hidden deep inside the shy, sweet, perfect girl you want everyone to think you are. Uncover it. Listen to it. And tell me what it says.”
“It says you’re my friend,” Radha says, tears sparkling white on her cheeks, “And you saved my life, but I hate you because you’re alive and Rama’s dead. If I could get him back right now by giving you up, I’d do it.”
In the silence that follows, the wolves retreat into the forest. I turn away, a hard lump in my throat. I shouldn’t have watched. This was a secret, cruel truth that was never meant for me.
“I need to find Sybilla,” I say to Vahana.
They nod. “I will stay here to guide Radha to the palace when she is ready. Sybilla is that way.” They point to the left.
I follow the path, a blanket of snow and wolf pawprints. The sky seems whiter than it was a little while ago, with traces of pink at the edges. It must be almost dawn.
When I find Sybilla, she’s on her knees in the snow like a prisoner about to be executed. Her hands rest limply on her knees and her head is bowed. There are pawprints all around her, but no wolves.
“Sybilla,” I say quietly, approaching her carefully.
She looks up at me. Her face is stained with dried tears. “I failed,” she says to me.
My heart stutters. “What?”
“I’m sorry, Max,” she says. “I failed the test. I can’t save you.”
I stare at her in stunned silence for a moment, then say, “Sybilla, it’s me.”
She shakes her head. “I knew you’d say that, but it’s not helping,” she says, in answer to something I never said. “I need you to be angry with me right now. Don’t be kind. I hate it when you’re kind. I failed, Max!”
I kneel in the snow in front of her, then put my hands on her shoulders. As soon as I touch her, she startles like I just shook her awake from a deep sleep. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I say, “It’s just me.”
Her body shudders, but her eyes latch onto mine. “Esmae,” she says. I let out a relieved breath and hug her. Her red hair tickles my cheek. Her hands clutch my back for an instant, like she doesn’t want to let go, but she pulls away anyway. “I failed.”
“What happened?”
“She was here,” Sybilla says shakily, and the way she says it makes it very clear who she is. “I didn’t get it until it was too late, but she wasn’t real. She was a test. She kept asking me questions. Why didn’t you want me to come with you and Esmae on this journey? I told her it was because she’s not like you and me. She’s not trained for this. She laughed, Esmae. And she said That was a lie. Try again. I told her I didn’t want her to come because she was going to get us all killed. Lie, she said. I told her I hated her. That’s only half the truth, she said. What’s the rest?”
“Oh, Sybilla.”
“Nothing I told her was the right answer,” she says, almost frantic now. “I don’t know what she wanted me to say!”
“You couldn’t look,” I say softly.
She shakes her head, quick, harsh movements, her breathing short and ragged. Her hands clench on her knees, likely leaving bruises. “I can’t look,” she whispers. “I can’t look.”
It seems to me strangely apt that the truths Radha and I wanted to bury were ugly, angry, and cruel, but Sybilla’s is just the opposite. Sybilla would never have tried to bury an ugly truth. She’s not afraid of cruelty; she needs it, she wears it like armor. And the truth she’s too afraid to look at will take that armor away. You fell in love, I say silently. It’s okay. It’s not a bad thing. I won’t say it out loud. It’s not my truth to tell.
The sound of footfalls in the snow makes us separate and look around. Sybilla tenses as Radha emerges out of the shadows of the trees, Vahana right behind her.
“You were supposed to meet us outside the palace,” I say.
Vahana lifts their shoulders in an oddly human shrug. “She insisted on coming to find you,” they reply.
Radha draws closer. Her eyes are raw and her face pale beneath the brown. She looks as bad as Sybilla and I do, ashamed and wounded by painful truths, but her brow knits in concern. “What’s wrong?”
“I failed,” says Sybilla without looking at her.
“Oh.”
“That’s it?” Sybilla asks, almost angrily. “I ruined everything. After everything I’ve said to you, you’re not going to use this opportunity to tear me to shreds for failing so badly?”
Radha sinks to the ground beside her. “This will probably come as a shock to you,” she says, with one of her shy, sweet smiles, “but you’re just as human as the rest of us. A revolutionary idea, I know, but I’m afraid you’ll just have to accept it. We all mess up. It’s okay.”
She holds her hand out, palm up. Sybilla stares at it for a long moment, then tentatively puts her own hand in it. They look at each other, and it’s such an intense, intimate moment that I gaze down at the glittering snow instead.
Then Radha asks the question we’ve all been avoiding. “What happens to Max now?”
No one answers her. As the hard, white sun rises into the sky, we’re little more than statues, just three girls and a garuda in the snow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Titania
I can see them on my radar, but I can’t communicate with them. There is only a crackle over the line when I try. Fourteen hours in, as the night cycle comes to an end, there is still no word, but I can see that they are alive and not far from the palace. So I wait.
In the first light of the sun, I see something move in the sea. I train a launcher on the movement and wait to see if I need to fire. A shape glides out of the sea. Esmae would probably describe it as a knife slicing through silk or something to that effect, but I am not very good at nonsensical poetry.
The shape steps onto the beach and walks toward me. It’s a man, tall and handsome, with golden skin and dark brown hair that ripples in waves around his head. He was naked when he came out of the water, but by the time he stops in front of me, a pair of trousers has materialized around his lower half and a gold disc hangs around his neck, carved with a picture of a sun.
Ah, not a man. A god. The sun god himself.
“May I come in?” he asks me.
I open my hatch by way of reply, but I am suspicious. “Whose side are you on?” I ask when he drops lithely into my control room.
“Neither,” he replies. “My sister and brother may be determined to interfere in the affairs of mortals, but I have no interest in getting involved.”
“Then why are you here?”
“We are about to have a problem that does concern me,” says the sun god Suya. “And you, my friend, are the only one who can help me get rid of it.”
“I am not certain you understand what a friend is.”
“It’s in your best interests to help me.”
I give a loud, huffy sigh, hoping it communicates exactly how irked I am. “Spit it out, then.”
He says one word: “Sorsha.”
“Hah,” I crow. “I see. You’re afraid she’ll come for you if Kirrin releases her from Anga.”
“I was responsible for her mother’s death,” says Suya, “so yes, I do think she will come after me if she’s freed, and neither Amba nor Kirrin will be able to stop her.”
“And you think I can?”
“No,” he replies. “A great beast is too powerful for even you to defeat, and this one has been cursed to be especially relentless. I suspect that you and she would be locked in battle until the end of the universe, neither able to defeat the other.”
I am not used to being told anyone is more powerful than I am, so
this assessment does not improve my mood. “So what is it you expect me to do?” I ask petulantly.
“Sorsha cannot be reasoned with, not with her curse,” Suya says. “Unless Amba can imprison her on Anga again, and I think it unlikely Sorsha will allow that to happen a second time, she will devour every star in her path. My life is not the only thing at stake, Titania. So is the fate of this galaxy and the lives of all the mortals in it.”
I huff. “I am aware of that.”
“The only way to stop Sorsha is to use one of the Seven to kill her.”
“You mean one of the seven ancient celestial weapons?” I ask. “Like the sunspear you used to kill Devaki?”
“Yes.”
“The weapons that are kept in the Temple of Ashma, watched over by Ash at all times? The same weapons that he swore never to allow any god the use of after you killed an innocent creature?”
At that, Suya smiles. It’s a very handsome smile. “No god is permitted to use one of the Seven, it’s true,” he nods.
“I see where you’re going with this,” I say, “And I can only say you are extraordinarily predictable. You want to get a mortal to use one of the Seven to kill Sorsha. You know that is more likely to kill the mortal than Sorsha.”
“There are a handful of mortals who could do it,” says Suya unrepentantly. “And you, dear Titania, have the power to persuade one of them to volunteer.”
I make the temperature so cold inside the control room that Suya’s breath comes out white. “I will not persuade Esmae to volunteer for an almost certain death.”
“Sorsha isn’t free yet,” says Suya, “so hopefully it won’t come to that. But don’t be too quick to turn me down. Consider the stakes. And,” he adds, in the tone of someone about to play a winning card, “if you speak to Esmae on my behalf, I will grant you a boon. I have the power to make your dearest wish come true.”
“I am a machine. I don’t wish.”
“You and I both know that’s not true.”
A stream of data resolves itself, before I can stop it, into an image I have tried very hard to delete. Feet that run, hands that touch, skin that feels. I banish it, but I was silent too long and now Suya knows he guessed right.
“Think about it,” he says. “The offer stands.”
I am furious with him, and with myself, but I cannot stop myself from saying, “Even if I did agree to talk to Esmae, which is a very big if, she would still need to accomplish the almost impossible task of getting one of the Seven.”
“Oh, did I not say before?” says the sun god, his smile broader than ever. “She already has one.”
“What?” I demand, astounded. “Which one?”
“The starsword,” he says, “but she knows it as Lullaby.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The palace rises above us, gleaming in the sun. It’s tall and narrow, reaching for the sky rather than sprawling outward, with three towers and arched windows and many balconies, all made of the same pale, shimmering blue stone. White frost clings to the balconies, the ramparts of the towers, and the edges of each flower, leaf, and thorn carved into the blue stone. Arched wooden doors stand in front of us, carved with the same flowers and thorns, and sealed shut.
It’s as beautiful as it is unreachable. We’ve pounded on the door. We’ve tried to climb the stone walls to reach a balcony. We’ve asked Vahana, Kirrin, anyone to let us in. We’ve had only silence in reply.
“You did not all pass the test,” Vahana said when we finally stopped. “The doors are closed to you. Only a god can let you in now.”
“You could,” I said.
“I could, but I am not permitted to. I’m sorry.”
Now I sit on a rock outside the palace walls as the sun climbs higher into the sky, peeling the bloody bandage off my wounded shoulder to check the stitches. Sybilla is still at the doors of the palace, hands pressed to the wood, speaking in a voice too low for us to hear. She thinks it’s her fault that we can’t get to Max, so she won’t leave the doors, and I expect she’s trying desperately to bargain with Kirrin in the hope that there’s something she can offer that he will want.
It’s futile. Only a god can let you in now. This is what they wanted. When Kirrin and Alex left Max here, they wanted this.
I have to choose. It’s the worst kind of choice, offered when there’s time to think, when there’s no way to blame the outcome on making a poor choice in the heat of the moment. There’s no heat; this is a cold, clear choice, with only the sea salt and the snow pressing close, and I have to make it.
“Esmae,” Sybilla says suddenly, stomping back toward me, “There’s no other way. You have to ask Amba for help. We have to get him out of there!”
“And then what?” I ask quietly, carefully slipping my shoulder back into the sleeve of my jacket.
“We’ll work it out. We’ll face Sorsha if we have to. Whatever it takes. We can’t leave Max there! We can’t lose him just because I was a coward!”
“If I call her,” I say, teeth gritted, “Sorsha could destroy half the world before this war is over.”
Sybilla explodes. “As if you care about that! You want the world in ruins! You want to punish everyone for siding with Alexi after what he did. You just don’t want to do this because if you do, your brother gets what he wants. You just don’t want him to win!”
I climb off the rock, wrenching my shoulder viciously back into place. “We’re in this position because of you,” I remind her, “so don’t lash out at me like this is all my fault.”
“Okay, you both need to stop,” Radha says, her eyes darting between us in worry.
“You can fix what I did,” Sybilla says to me, ignoring Radha. “Esmae. Please. This is Max.”
“I’m getting him back,” I snarl at her. “I’m not leaving the Empty Moon without him, but I’m not going to call for Amba either. This is Kirrin. Somewhere in this whole mess is a trick. That’s what he does. Max told me not to play his game, so we’re not doing it. We’re not giving him exactly what he wants.”
“Max is running out of time,” says Sybilla. “You know what Bear said. There may not be anything left to rescue if you waste time trying to spot Kirrin’s trick!”
I know she’s this adamant because she feels like she needs to make up for failing her test, but everything she’s saying only echoes my own fears. As the sound of the scream inside my head rises and rises, I can feel my resolve to wait weaken.
Don’t give them what they want.
He’s running out of time.
There’s a trick.
He’ll be consumed by this place.
Wait.
There’s no other way.
I think once more of the recording Titania showed me, of Max standing beside me as I lay dying. Come back to me.
Fists clenched, I glare at the snow. I’ll give you this one, Alex.
And I’ll make you regret it.
“Amba,” I say, so quietly it’s barely there. “Help me. Please.”
There’s a moment of utter silence, and then she’s there.
Sybilla makes a sound that’s part surprise, part relief. Radha gasps and curtseys. Amba stands before me, hair loose about her shoulders, brown skin glowing in the sun, in a beautiful gown with an armored breastplate. She frowns at me, like she’s not sure she likes what she sees, and then she takes in the scene. Vahana bows their head to her and she dips hers back in return, silent words passing between them.
“I see,” she says.
“Kirrin took Max,” I say. “He’s in the palace. There was no other way.”
“Yes, I see that. Kirrin is good at this. I love my brother dearly, but he really is something of a nuisance.”
“It’ll be okay, won’t it?” Radha asks nervously, rising gracefully out of her curtsey. “You can open the palace doors and then go back to Anga?”
“Oh, it’s too late for that,” says Amba. “Kirrin was waiting for this and didn’t waste a moment. Sorsha is already free.”
> There’s a moment of heavy, painful silence, then Amba strides toward the arched palace doors. Vahana lays one hand on my shoulder before taking off into the sky.
At Amba’s touch, the doors of the palace open. I stare into the open doorway for a moment, suddenly afraid of what I’ll find inside. Then I follow Amba in with the others a step behind me.
We cross the threshold and step into an empty entrance hall paneled with wood and lined with bookcases, with a balcony above and twin staircases leading up to the balcony from either side of the hall.
Sybilla cranes her neck to look up at the high ceiling, but I look at the books. There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands, most of which I’ve never seen before.
“This is the second oldest library in the star system,” says Amba. “Only the library in the Temple of Ashma is older.”
“The books,” I say. “There’s no dust.”
“Valin took great pride in this library. The palace servants have been meticulous about caring for it since he fell.”
There are two large paintings on the walls, above the bookcases, facing each other from opposite sides of the room. One is of Kirrin in a field of vivid saffron flowers, a boy with blue skin and mischief in his eyes, and the other is of a man in this very library with a sword on his back and a giant black wolf at his side. He has a proud, severe face, but his dark painted eyes are kind. Valin.
“Esmae, look at this.”
I turn to see Radha on the balcony above. I take one of the staircases up to meet her and follow Radha’s gaze to a third painting on the wall, positioned exactly between the two staircases. This one is of both Valin and Kirrin, and four others too. There’s Amba in the middle, in a carved chair with a bright circle window above her, her posture like that of a queen. Beside her is Valin, standing with one hand on the back of the chair. There’s a boy next to him, a little further back as if he was trying to fade into the background. He looks only a little older than Kirrin, which doesn’t mean much considering they each chose their human appearances, and he has a serious face, white skin, and very dark blond hair. Tyre. Kirrin is sprawled lazily on the step in front of Amba’s chair, and on her other side is a soft, lovely woman and a man with golden skin. Thea and Suya.
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