My fists tighten. Alex has so many allies, so many kings, queens, and governments who have taken his side. People who decided their golden prince’s breach of the sanctity of a duel was a lesser evil than a usurper king and an unknown girl with an unbeatable warship. But how will they feel if Sorsha’s curse takes over? It’s unlikely they know it even exists; I doubt Alex told them, and they’re probably so excited that they now have a way to keep Titania at bay that they haven’t stopped to wonder why the last of the great beasts has gone unseen for centuries. When they realize what Alex has unleashed on the world, will their faith in my golden brother crack? Or will they still cling to him for his skill, his power, and the benefits his victory will give them?
But what if they find out he isn’t as powerful as they think?
The glorious, golden myth of Alexi Rey was what allowed him to get away with murder. I want that myth shattered, his honor in shreds. I want him abandoned, alone. I want him to lose everything.
“Arcadia is a lie,” I say out loud. “It’s time to expose it to the world.”
Max turns. “Have you found a way past the shield?”
“No,” says Titania.
“Yes,” I say.
“What? How?”
I turn to look at Max. “With you,” I tell him. “You’re going to get me past that shield. If we can get into that palace, we can disable the shield and shatter the city of illusions.”
Max’s mouth crooks in a smile. “Valin,” he says.
“Exactly.”
I detach a tablet from Titania’s console and pull up one of her scans of Arcadia, comparing it to the current footage of Sorsha and the armies outside the city. I cut past the white noise of the false heat signatures inside the city, the outlines of streets and houses, the thriving farms, all those trappings of Maya Sura’s illusion. He told me the palace was the only real part of Arcadia, so it’s position on this scan is probably accurate. It’s right at the heart of the false city, and there’s no way to know what’s actually around it. Even if we can switch the shield off and expose Arcadia for what it is, it may be difficult to escape when there’s so much unknown ground to cover.
“We need a distraction,” I say, half to myself. “And we need everyone to see the moment the real Arcadia is revealed.” I look at the footage of Sorsha again. “They freed Sorsha. What would they expect me to do now?”
“They’ll expect you to be furious that they tricked you,” says Max, “and they’ll expect you to lash out.”
I’m amused. “You mean they’ll expect a temper tantrum.”
“I wouldn’t phrase it quite like that,” he says, mouth twitching as he squashes a smile. “More like a spectacle of rage.”
“Then let’s give them a spectacle.”
Titania opens a secure connection to Kali and I ask for Ilara Khay. I’m put straight through to her tablet and she sounds so relieved to hear from me that I feel awful for leaving without telling her. “Don’t be,” she laughs, when I tell her I’m sorry, “I would have felt it my duty to tell the king.”
I don’t mention to her that Elvar let me go. I tell her Max is safe so that she can pass this on to our family. Then I ask her to rally our legions, our mercenary fleets, and our allies from Shloka. “Get them all gathered in Kali’s skyspace,” I say. “Make it visible. Make it dramatic.”
“You want Alexi to see,” she guesses.
“Yes. I want them to think we’re getting ready to attack. I’m hoping they’ll gather all their allies to defend themselves. Titania will be with you, too. They need to see her there. That’s the only way they’ll think we’re serious.”
“It could work,” she says thoughtfully. “It’ll certainly attract attention. What happens if he calls our bluff? Our numbers are better now that we have the mercenaries, but we’ll be outmatched if Sorsha takes Titania off the board.”
“We won’t let it come to that.”
There’s a bang outside as Sybilla hammers on the rear hatch. Titania makes an irate sound and lowers the hatch so that Sybilla and Radha can get on board.
“Oh,” Sybilla says, stopping short when she sees Max. She gives him a wary look. “You’re here.”
“So it would seem,” Max replies, completely straight-faced.
“Can we call you Valin? Or do you have some pretentious title you prefer?”
Radha is mortified. “You can’t talk to a god like that,” she hisses. It’s all I can do not to burst out laughing.
“She’s right,” says Max gravely. “I could turn you into a toad if you annoy me.”
There’s a moment of dead silence. Watching Sybilla’s face shift slowly from confusion to realization is truly a thing of beauty. Then, on cue, she lets out a shriek. “You bastard. You’ve been pretending this whole time?”
I choke on my laughter. “Your face!”
“You knew?” she rounds on me. “Traitor!”
It takes a good few minutes for us to recover. Sybilla holds on to her outrage for several minutes after that, before relenting and throwing her arms around Max. When she’s done bombarding him with questions about what it’s like to have thousands of years inside his head (“Crowded,” he replies), I outline the plan for them.
Sybilla groans. “And here I hoped we could go home and get some sleep!”
“We have no idea how long that helmet will keep Sorsha’s curse under control,” I remind her, “And Max can’t pretend to be Valin forever. The ruse will collapse sooner or later. We have to act quickly, while we still have this small advantage. If we strike now, we can expose Arcadia, turn Alexi’s allies against him, and stand a chance at Amba getting Sorsha back to Anga before her helmet loses its power.”
“I know,” she grouses, but I can already see the battle light in her eyes. “I just really wanted a long, hot bath. Maybe in ten years or so. Where do you want me?”
“With Titania and the rest of the fleet, if you’re up for it,” I reply. “But you need to know that if they send Sorsha into battle, Titania is the one she’ll come for. You’ll be in the thick of it.”
“There is nothing I enjoy more than being in the thick of it,” she says with glee.
Radha, who has been quietly watching the footage of Sorsha on the screen, now speaks up. “I need to go home.”
“You mean to Wychstar?” I ask.
“Yes. I need to talk to my father. His resources are wasted at the moment and I want to see if I can persuade him to help you. I don’t know if I can make him listen, but I did what he wanted. Maybe he’ll give me something I want in return.”
Sybilla frowns like she isn’t happy about this, but she only says, “That’s a good idea. You’ll be safer on Wychstar.”
Radha gives her a surprised look. “You almost sound like you care,” she teases.
“I wouldn’t like you to be kidnapped or cooked in a pie, it’s true,” says Sybilla testily, “but to call that caring is a bit much.”
Radha laughs.
I turn to Max. “Where’s Amba?”
“Gone. I think she wanted to see if she could talk to Sorsha.”
“Then can we get off this moon?” Titania asks. “Amba will be able to find us when she needs to.”
Max goes back into the palace to say goodbye to Vahana, the wolves, and the servants. His reluctance to leave them is genuine; he may only be playing the part of their fallen god, but his love for this place and for all of them is very real. He’s going to tell them that the only reason he’s leaving is because Kali needs him, but I don’t think that’s as much of a lie as it’s intended to be.
I head to the galley to make coffee while we wait for him. I’ve been awake too long.
Radha follows me there. “Esmae,” she says softly, “Vahana told me you saw me.” She doesn’t specify when, but we both know what she means. “Can we talk?”
“You don’t have to explain.” I watch freshly ground coffee beans percolate and drip black into the pot. The beans come from Kodava, a kingdom on the edge o
f the star system. They grow the best coffee in the galaxy.
“You heard me say I hated you for living while he died,” she says, refusing to dance around it. “So I just want to say I never intended for you to know that. I never wanted to hurt you.” I appreciate that she doesn’t lie. Then she says, unexpectedly, “And for what it’s worth, I hate him, too. I hate him for leaving.”
At that, I look at her. “He didn’t want to leave.”
“I know that,” she says. “I know that was Alexi’s doing. The fact that Rama was there in the first place, though? You blame Amba for that, like she forced him to do it, but that’s not fair to him. He chose to take your place. He chose to risk his life. It was brave and stupid and wonderful of him. And you should place the blame squarely on him for that. Because if you don’t, if you erase the choice he made, you’re saying he wasn’t brave and stupid and wonderful at all.”
“Of course he was brave and stupid and wonderful. Of course he was.” But she’s right. I’ve spent so long blaming Amba that I have never really given Rama the respect he deserves for making that choice of his own free will. “I never thought about it like that.”
“All of which is to say,” Radha goes on, looking at me with anxious eyes, “you’re my friend, Esmae. He was my brother. And one day I won’t hate either of you.”
Titania calls to us over her speakers. Max must have come back. We go back to the control room to buckle in and she rises immediately into the air.
I watch Max as we leave the palace behind, as the blue towers and the ice forest and the cold seas get smaller and smaller as we fly away.
“You’ll miss it.”
“Always,” he says. As the Empty Moon vanishes completely and the skies turn to the starry black of space, the shadows on his face lift. “But I have another home now. How have things been on Kali?”
I think of the dead Blue Knights, the game of dice, Radha poisoning Rickard, and Elvar killing Lord Selwyn.
“Let’s go get a drink,” I say. “You’ll need it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Like a storm gathering, ships assemble in the sky above Kali. A hundred of them, big and small, corpse ships and starships and warships, engines humming. Satellites and drones watch from a distance, broadcasting the sight to the entire world, and if the flurry of movement across several kingdoms is any indication, Alexi’s called in all his allies just like we wanted him to.
Meanwhile, Max and I fly away from the storm, in a tiny, unobtrusive starship. He pilots the ship while I sit strapped into the seat behind his. As hard as it was to part with them, the Black Bow and my father’s sword are with Titania. I feel terribly, frighteningly vulnerable.
As we descend closer to Winter, toward the point on the map where Arcadia is, Max turns his head to look at me. “It’s time.”
I close my eyes and force my entire body to go slack under the buckles. “I’m ready.”
A moment later, I hear Max flip the switch that will lower the starship’s shield. “Kirrin, I know you can hear me,” he says, his tone and voice wry, even amused. “I’d appreciate it if you told your mortal friends not to shoot me out of the sky.”
There’s a pause. Then I hear Kirrin. “This is unexpected,” he says. “What’s happened to Esmae?”
“She’s unconscious,” Max says. “Regrettable, but necessary. I didn’t die for Kali a hundred years ago just for her to burn it all down.”
“So you plan to, what? Hand her over to Alexi?”
“Is that her brother? Then yes. I assume we can trust him to end this war quickly if she’s out of the way?”
Kirrin is silent for a moment or two. “You really don’t remember being Max at all?”
“I don’t even remember dying, but Tyre assures me that I did. And here I am in a woefully limited mortal body, so I suppose it must be true.”
“Well,” Kirrin says cheerfully, “the easiest way to end this war is to kill her. I can’t, of course, but you can.”
I don’t know Kirrin half as well as Max does, but even I can tell this is a test.
Max sighs, the impatience pitch-perfect. “You know I won’t do that. And if these friends of yours are just going to kill her as soon as we get there, I’ll turn this ship around and take her back to Kali. Your Alexi does not deserve to win this war if he ends it with the murder of one unconscious girl.”
There’s a silence, and my heart pounds so loudly that I’m sure they can hear it.
“It’s really you,” Kirrin’s voice cracks. “Valin.”
“I did tell you that.”
“I know. Vahana told me, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. It’s been so long.”
“Well, for me it feels like it’s only been a few days, but I’ll take your word for it.” A brief pause. “I’m sorry I left you.”
There’s a soft thump, as if Kirrin has dropped into the copilot’s seat next to Max. When he speaks, he says something I don’t expect. “You’ll remember being Max sooner or later, Valin. And when you do, you’ll hate yourself for this.”
“Why?” Max asks.
“He loves her. You love her.”
Max deliberately lets a moment pass in silence, as if he can’t decide how to feel about this information. “So what do you think I should do, then?” he asks Kirrin at last. “Take her back and hope that my other self can reason with her when he wakes up? There are fleets of ships above Kali right now. Without her, they may back down.” And then, with a sharper edge to his voice, he says, “You should never have freed Sorsha. Amba deserved better than that.”
“I know,” Kirrin says quietly, surprising me again. “There’s nothing about this I regret more than that I’ve hurt Amba.”
A few minutes later, Kirrin gives Max a code to get past Arcadia’s shield. My heart quickens. There’s a bump as the starship lands on solid ground.
“Interesting,” Max remarks. “So the city I saw from the sky isn’t real?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s a clever ruse.”
He unbuckles me and picks me up. I flop, limp in his arms, resisting the constant urge to lock my limbs. Cold air blows across my face as we leave the ship. I want desperately to open my eyes and take a peek at what Arcadia looks like from this side of the shield, but I don’t dare.
“This way,” Kirrin says. “Only Queen Kyra and a few servants are in the palace at the moment. We should be able to get Esmae into a room without anyone seeing you.”
“Why don’t you want anyone to see me?”
“You’re in the body of an enemy,” Kirrin says ruefully. “Better no one knows you’re here until Alexi has a chance to come see the gift you’ve brought him. He and Bear are outside the gates with the army, preparing themselves for whatever Esmae had in store for them when she got those ships to assemble above Kali.”
A door creaks open and we leave the cold wind behind. I can smell mangoes, fresh bread, and the distinctive scent of the honey cakes Bear brought to the yellow woods back when we used to meet there. Without my sight, I rely on sounds and movement to get an idea of what this palace is like. I hear footsteps. I feel the rise and fall of Max’s chest against me, the way his posture shifts depending on whether the floor is carpeted or not. I count his steps to calculate the lengths of the hallways, the number of stairways, the number of left turns and right turns. It’s the only way I’ll find my way out again.
Eventually, Max sets me down on what feels like a bed. The abrupt loss of his warmth makes me shiver involuntarily. Someone puts a warm duvet over me, tucking me in like a child. Max knows better than to show me any tenderness, so it can only be Kirrin. The small kindness is as touching as it is unexpected.
I wait for Max to speak. This is the only part of the plan he didn’t like.
“Our ships are only supposed to be a spectacle,” I reminded him when we argued about it earlier. “Once I’m in Arcadia and we have everyone’s attention, our ships have to back down. If they don’t, Alex might send his enti
re force up into the sky to meet them. He has to think you’re calling off the attack.”
I trust him. He’ll do what’s necessary.
It takes him a long time, but he does eventually say it. “I have to return to Kali. Everyone keeps telling me I’m the crown prince. I can order the fleet to stand down.”
“I’ll walk you back to your ship.”
Max hesitates, but he goes. The door closes. As soon as I hear a key turn in the lock, I open my eyes.
The room is simple, with a bed, a table, and a fireplace. The single window is large, letting in plenty of natural light from the setting sun, and it’s shut fast against the cold. I push the glass pane open, but there’s a golden grille preventing me from using the window as an escape route. I knew it would be there; Titania captured footage of Arcadia all those times she brought me here to visit my brothers, and some of that footage included distant shots of the white palace and the beautiful golden grilles on all the windows. While most of the visual information in those recordings is useless, we expected the palace itself to be exactly as it had appeared.
From this window, high up, I get my first glimpse of the real Arcadia. There’s a courtyard below, with a single, impossible mango tree in one corner, but I look beyond the cobblestones and the palace walls to the rest of the city.
I’m not sure what I expected. A desolate wasteland of snow and ice, perhaps. White grass, pale trees, and silver deer. Another yellow forest like the one outside the city. A few ships and caches of weapons, stored near the palace out of sight of any watching eyes beyond the shield. Any and all of those things.
What I see instead is a city.
Or something like one, anyway. There’s no life in it. No laughter, no voices, no movement. But I see a handful of tiled rooftops dusted with snow and glowing red in the sun, several more that haven’t been completed yet, neat piles of wood and steel ready to be used, smooth stones paving the beginnings and outlines of roads in the snow, the silhouettes of what look like they could be the first farmhouses, shops, and market stalls.
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