by Lyra Selene
“Because—”
“You’re not a prisoner.” A huff of impatience. “Leave, for all I care. The wolves are always hungry.”
“But—”
“Sunder should be here in a few days. He’ll deal with you then.”
She was nothing more than a flurry of velvet and fur disappearing into the labyrinth of her frosty home. I considered following her, but she clearly wanted privacy. To ice her heart or bathe in milk, or whatever girls like her did to look like that.
So I wandered the empty halls of Belsyre like an unseen ghost. Many rooms were closed off—tables and chairs draped in thick white cloth. Still more stood empty of anything, except perhaps ghosts. I passed through a great audience chamber, where two ironwood thrones stood proud, limned in dristic and polished to a sheen, as though their occupants had only just left and might return at any moment. Banners chased with the stark emblem of the marquisate hung silent on the walls, untouched by wind or time.
In another wing of the château, a vast banquet hall played host to nothing but shadows. Unlit lamps glittered like unshed tears between the frosted boughs of captive genévrier. Grand empty dining tables were lined with perfectly maintained crystal and silver. Not even dust dared sit where royalty once feasted.
Belsyre was like an enchanted palais from legend, stark and elegant and eerie. I half expected to find a beautiful dauphine sleeping upon a bed of thorns, or a penitent king disguised as a monster. But beneath the crisp austerity lurked something desolate, and the bare walls seemed to pulse with the remembrance of lost things. And with every step I felt as though I was forgetting something important.
Or perhaps it was just the feeling of being forgotten.
Finally, a blank-faced equerry cleared her throat and led me up a twisting spiderweb of staircases to a fine bedroom with a bed piled in furs and a curving window looking out over the shrouded valley. A great fire roared with heat, and a plush carpet warmed my frigid toes. Toasted black bread lay beside a steaming pot of stew. The scent of mulling spices reached my nose, and I was suddenly starving.
Only later, when I was stuffed and clean and warm and tucked into a lush bed, did I let myself fall prey to the gnarled knot of worry and fear and sorrow pushing crooked roots into my heart. And when I swiped at my wet eyes with trembling fingers, I couldn’t help but imagine my hands coming away red with the blood of lost lives.
I spent the next three days pacing the halls of Belsyre in a haze of anxiety. I didn’t catch a glimpse of my merciless hostess again, but Bane’s words echoed in my mind.
Sunder should be here in a few days. He’ll deal with you then.
Images of the fight in the hallway raged through my mind no matter how I tried to quell them. The scream of bones snapping. Petra and Denis dispatched with the ease of an assassin. Pain curdling Luca’s gaze as his head fell forward and he slumped to the ground. Sunder, eyes unforgiving as he sent his sister to incapacitate me.
You’re not a prisoner, Bane had promised. But then, what was I? Why was I here? The luxurious suite of rooms at my disposal was unlike any prison I’d heard of. I had food, and warmth, and a wardrobe full of gowns hastily altered from Bane’s castoffs. But the natural environment of Belsyre was its own ruthless fortress. I shivered just looking at the austere banks of bone-white snow, the cold, leaden mountains, the hungry trees. I was as much a captive here as if actual bars of steel hemmed me in.
I considered finding Bane and demanding answers, but every time I approached her wing of the château, a gracious servant intercepted my progress and led me away.
So I was left alone to obsess about what Sunder did, and why he did it.
And most importantly, what he was going to do to me.
The sound of footsteps jerked me from a nightmare of snapping jaws and breaking bones.
Furs fell away from my shoulders, and a chill kissed my collarbone. My eyes flew to the front of my room. A black silhouette skulked in the open doorway. Cold fingers ran the length of my spine.
Sunder stepped into the dim red light pouring through the window. He wore black furs and carried the scent of outside with him: ice and iron and pine. Melting snow puddled on the fine nap of the carpet, leaving dark stains beneath his boots. The flickering glow of the banked fire painted the angles of his face in shades of blood, and his eyes were forged dristic.
“Where have you been?” I asked, and immediately cursed my stupid traitor voice.
“Cleaning up your mess,” he growled, voice hoarse. “Explaining to the empress how a score of rebel thieves managed to break into the palais compound without a single Skyclad Garde noticing. There’s talk of canceling Carrousel.”
“What about—?”
“Your foolish assassination attempt? You’d better hope she never finds out, or your lovely head will find its way onto a very sharp pike.”
We stared at each other across the darkened room. Fear spackled my thoughts with mud and slowed the churn of questions within me.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked finally. I’d thought of little else besides crunching bone and bursting blood since that awful fight in the hall outside the Imperial Wing.
“Do to you?” His startled brows clenched. “What in the Scion’s name has Oleander been telling you?”
“Nothing,” I whispered. “I haven’t seen her since we arrived.”
Sunder muttered a curse, then tossed off his coat and slumped into the fat-armed chair beside the fire. He lowered his head into his palms. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he mumbled under his breath.
Hesitantly, I swung my legs from under the crush of blankets and stood up, wrapping a length of snowy fur around my bare shoulders. I moved on quiet steps to the fireside, hovering an arm’s length away from Sunder.
“How did you catch us? How did you know they were there, without seeing them?”
“My legacy. I can hear the throb of hearts, feel the rush of blood, smell the stink of fear.”
I smothered a flash of revulsion.
“Where’s Luca? Did you hurt him?”
“Your Tavendel beau is fine,” muttered Sunder, without lifting his head from his hands. “Better than fine. He’s back in the Paper City, probably planning the next ill-fated revolution.”
“He’s not my beau.” My hands trembled with relief. “What happened to the other rebels?”
“The ones who weren’t slaughtered by the Garde will be tried and executed as traitors.”
“What if—”
“They divulge your involvement?” He sighed. “One of Bane’s poisons blots out memories. It’s not as elegant as—as some legacies, since it blots out most other cognitive functions too, but it gets the job done. By the way, the court thinks you were grievously injured during the attack and had to repair to Belsyre for recovery. When we return, everyone will assume we’re lovers.”
Silence clogged the space between us. I attempted to sort through the roil of opposing thoughts and feelings. Sunder had protected the empress from our assassination attempt, but hadn’t told her of the danger to her life or the part I played. And if he was loyal to her, then why was I here, and not in some drafty dungeon awaiting my execution? Why was Luca alive?
“I don’t understand anything,” I said out loud.
“Never were truer words spoken!” He jerked his head up, fixed me with his sharp eyes, and barked a desperate laugh. “You inconceivable fool. You have no idea the trouble you’ve caused me these past spans. You have single-handedly and unwittingly dismantled tides’ worth of planning, just by being you. You’ve nearly ruined everything.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Annoyance chased away my fear. “And if you were planning something so important, then you should have told me instead of letting me ruin it so efficiently.”
“Tell you?” Sunder’s eyebrows winged up toward his hairline. “Tell you, an ignorant, unreliable, loudmouthed provincial with delusions of grandeur and an entitlement complex as big as this château?
Your grasp of the intricacies of intrigue boggles the mind.”
“If you’re just going to insult me, you can leave,” I snapped, wrapping my fur tighter around me to keep from throttling him. “I’m sorry if my ignorance offends you.”
“Everything about you offends me,” Sunder said, and though his words rang harsh the look in his eyes was unguarded, ragged with expectation. “I don’t understand how you can be the way that you are. You are brash, and thoughtlessly brave. You do exactly the thing that is the least expected and the most destructive. You are a puzzle and a curse.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I might think you were complimenting me,” I snapped, lacing my tone with poison as I turned toward the door. “I’d rather sleep with the wolves than spend another moment being verbally abused by a haughty lord with knives in his fingertips and deceit in his soul.”
“Stop.” Sunder was on his feet in an instant. His fingers whispered around my wrist, holding me back from the door. I spun to face him. In the shadowed archway, his eyes glinted like silvery coins. “I—I’m sorry.”
“Say it like you mean it,” I hissed through my teeth.
“I do,” he whispered, and the strain in his voice made me want to believe him. “I shouldn’t have said those things. But you must understand the chaos you have wrought in my life since the moment you marched into that cursed Atrium.”
“I don’t understand,” I said again. The familiar coil of ignorance and frustration soured my stomach. “You’re going to have to explain it to me.”
“I will.” He suddenly looked unspeakably tired, as if the weight of the daylight world rested on his shoulders. “But you’re going to have to sit.”
Reluctant, I did as he said sinking into an armchair and tucking my legs beneath me. Sunder tossed a log on the banked fire, which spat yellow sparks before flaring. He poured himself a tall glass of wine from a decanter, raising a questioning eyebrow at me. I gave my head a hard shake. He shrugged, and paced to stand across from me.
“I’m astonished you haven’t figured it out yet,” he mused.
“Assume I’m as stupid as you imagine me to be,” I managed around the resentment gluing my teeth together. “Start from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”
“If you’re certain.” Sunder cast pensive eyes to the crackling fire. “Dowser and a secret group of like-minded nobles have been plotting a coup against Severine almost since the moment she seized power. Recently, those plans have acquired a clearer sense of urgency and agency. Wheels are turning. Assets are in play. Everything is in motion to remove her from power. Or was, until you waltzed up the steps of the palais and announced yourself as a legacy in front of the court.”
“Me?” I asked, incredulous. I felt suddenly dizzy as my world shifted beneath me. Dowser, plotting against the empress. Sunder, on the same side as me? I clenched my teeth and tried to focus. “What do I have to do with your plans?”
“You mean besides leading a score of frenzied revolutionaries in a rash and ill-planned assassination attempt at the heart of the palais?”
I gritted my teeth so hard I thought my jaw might crack.
“You were never supposed to leave the Dusklands. Did it never occur to you that whoever hid you away at the edge of the world had a good reason for doing so? Did you never read the Writ of Guardianship Dowser left with the Sisters?”
“They burned it,” I whispered. Curiosity poured water over the embers of my rage, and brought with it a strange, dazed sense of inevitability. I knew there was something. I knew—
“Who am I?” I asked, a numb certainty breathing rainbows against my heart.
“You were supposed to be our secret weapon,” said Sunder, his voice bitter. “You, and that hunk of rock hanging around your neck.”
My hand flew to the familiar planes of the skin-warmed necklace. The bubble of anticipation exploded into a firework of nerves. “Why?”
“You’re the last surviving child of the dead emperor, and besides the empress, you’re the only living—if currently illegitimate—heir to the Sabourin dynasty.” Sunder’s voice was a kembric bell tolling in the dusk. “And that ambric necklace is a Relic of the Scion. Mirage, you alone have the power to change the face of the Amber Empire.”
Shock turned my insides liquid with heat.
“What?” I spluttered. “But I’ve had this since I was a child! It’s the only thing my—”
Sunders eyes sparked on mine, and things began to make sense.
“Oh.” My heart stuttered in my chest like some invisible force had a fist wrapped around it.
“Dowser was a junior advisor in the emperor’s cabinet when Severine reached her majority,” said Sunder, his voice pitched low. “Barely out of Unitas. He saw the warning signs of her rabid ambition before anyone else did, not least because he briefly shared the then-dauphine’s bed.”
“What?” My head jerked up. “Dowser was Severine’s lover?”
“He isn’t a monk, you know,” said Sunder, wry. “He grew even more worried in the spans following Seneca’s death.”
“Who?”
“The dauphin, the frail but well-liked heir to the Amber Empire. He was poorly throughout his childhood, but the fatal illness that struck him weeks before his twentieth birthday seemed suspicious to Dowser. He expressed his concerns, but the emperor was healthy and his Council busy administrating a vast empire Sylvain had largely left in their able hands in order to pursue … other interests.”
“His mistress,” I guessed.
“Mistresses,” corrected Sunder. “A veritable harem of official and unofficial concubines, spread across the empire.”
“My mother—?” The word was strange on my tongue, and I choked on the question before I could finish it.
“Is long dead.” Sunder’s eyes sliced back to the fire. “Madeleine Allard. A courtier. The Allards hailed from a charming estate in the Rose Valley. They’re all dead now, purged in the same cull that severed the roots of my family tree.”
Sudden regret for the family I never knew—and would never know—washed over me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“There’s no point in being sorry,” muttered Sunder. “Regret changes nothing. Only action can undo the ravages of the past.”
The fire spat sparks into the silence.
“Emperor Sylvain never legitimized any of his natural children,” he continued, “but he made his affection for a great many of them obvious to the world. And to an ambitious heir, such blood ties can be unpredictable and dangerous. Severine didn’t directly target her half siblings until after she dealt with her father, but she prepared for the moment in advance—making lists, identifying threats, keeping tabs on potential problems. Dowser tried to head her off. He counseled many of the emperor’s mistresses to flee, to protect themselves. But few listened, and the few who did were slow to run and ill-equipped to remain in hiding for long.
“Madeleine was barely pregnant when Severine seized the throne. Dowser smuggled her away to the edge of the world, hoping she would escape Severine’s notice. Madeleine arrived on the doorstep of the Sisters of the Scion in a dusty hamlet outside Piana with a squalling infant, a Writ of Guardianship carrying the Imperial Insignia, and a Relic of the Scion.”
“What is it?” I leaned forward, the ambric pendant thumping against my ribs. “And why is it important?”
“I hardly know,” said Sunder, scrubbing a hand across his tired eyes. “Dowser is the Scion scholar. But it’s been in possession of the imperial line for tides. When wielded by the right legacy, it supposedly confers untold power, especially when paired with other Relics.”
“Other Relics?” I frowned. “How many are there?”
“I don’t know. Some say as many as ten. Others put the number at three or four. Some don’t believe they exist at all. The Sabourins claim to possess at least one other.”
“Fine,” I said, trying to place all this information in order. “But if they’re so all-power
ful, why didn’t the old emperor ever use them?”
“Maybe he did.” Sunder shrugged. “Or maybe he didn’t need to. Regardless, Severine was cut from different cloth. Dowser didn’t want any more power falling into her greedy hands, so he sent the Relic with you. If nothing else, he hoped the symbol would inspire the Sisters to guard you with every superstitious bone in their bodies.”
“A true believer yourself, I assume?”
“Some call it faith. I call it credulity,” Sunder snarled. “When Meridian descends from the sky in a chariot of fire with the armies of Dominion at his back, I’ll believe in the Scion.”
I bit back a laugh. For once, I had to agree with him.
“So what happened?” I pressed. “Did Dowser’s plan work?”
“Madeleine is long dead, and you’re at Coeur d’Or instead of waiting patiently to be fetched when the time is right,” snarled Sunder. “So, no. Severine’s spies followed Madeleine to the Dusklands and slaughtered her on the steps of the cloister. They demanded the Sisters give you up, under threat of death. The Sisters obeyed.”
Confusion muddled through the churn of horror and regret.
“They did? Then I’m not—”
“Disciples of the Scion may be pious zealots, but they are willing to risk almost anything in the service of their idol. Sabourin blood flowed through your veins, direct from Meridian’s mythic line. You wore the Scion’s mark around your neck. In their eyes, the choice was clear.” Sunder swallowed, and looked away. “A child was handed over. A child was murdered. That child was not you.”
Disgust and outrage washed over me, tinged with creeping sympathy for the hard, distant Sisters who raised me without kindness or warmth. I remembered the desperate looks on their faces when I declared my intention to leave for the Amber City, the way they burned the writ and tried to lock me in my room. In their eyes, protecting me was their sacred duty, the thing that brought them closest to the man or god they’d devoted their life to worshipping. Nothing had been too great a sacrifice to keep me safe. And even if I didn’t believe in it, I could see how in their eyes, I had betrayed that faith.