by Lyra Selene
“And Severine assumed she’d rid herself of the last of her blood,” I supplied. It wasn’t hard to guess what happened next—I lived it. “And I grew up on the edge of the darkness, never knowing who I was. Safe. Sort of. But what did Dowser intend for me? Was he ever going to rescue me from the dusk?”
“Eventually, yes,” Sunder said, with frustration. “We needed the promise of another Sabourin heir to motivate reluctant dissidents. Few are willing to overthrow a tyrant without the promise of a better ruler. But we also needed to keep you hidden, and keep you safe until Severine could be deposed.”
A better ruler. The full gravity of the situation hammered down on me. I wasn’t merely a legacy of the empire. I was royalty. Except for Severine, I was the last living descendant of the Sabourin line. Even illegitimate, I was the daughter of an emperor. And that came with responsibilities. Responsibilities I could hardly comprehend. A world of hard lines and vast promise bloomed at the edge of my imagination. I shook my head, tucking away the thoughts to revisit later.
“If you’ve been planning this coup for tides, why haven’t you let the sword drop? Why is Severine still sitting on that throne, bleeding her empire dry and culling her legacies one by one?”
Sunder’s eyes grated on mine. “Do not underestimate the difficulties of launching a secret coup on a ruler with a tyrannical death grip on her security, her advisors, and her nobility. You may think felling a regime is as easy as smuggling three illiterate rebels into the empress’s inner sanctum. It’s not.”
“We were almost there!” I bristled. “We could have succeeded.”
“You think you’re the first person to attempt an assassination on Severine?” Sunder’s laugh was a fingernail on slate. “Not by a long shot. The empress is wily, and she has secret weapons.”
“What weapons?”
“They wouldn’t be much of a secret if everyone knew,” Sunder said. “First: Dowser feels certain she has another Relic in her possession. She always plays her hand close to her chest, even with her closest advisors, so he isn’t sure what it is or what it does. Regardless, if it makes her more powerful, then it makes her a greater and more unpredictable foe.”
“Powerful at what?” I asked, thinking of Lullaby’s horrified look when I asked the empress about her legacy.
“That’s the second weapon,” Sunder said, and there was something like disgust muddying his gaze. “Her legacy—no one knows how it manifests. No one has ever seen her use it. Not her childhood playmates, not Dowser, none of her courtiers or advisors. But she has walked away unscathed from every attempt on her life. Poison. Dristic. Magic. No one has ever managed to harm a single hair on her head.”
“What about you?”
Something brittle splintered in Sunder’s eyes. “I prefer to keep my gift as a last resort.”
“You seemed more than willing to snap the necks of those rebels.”
“Yes.” Sunder surged to his feet. “Because you were about to march straight up to Severine and, once the assassination was inevitably foiled, announce yourself as a threat. Severine would have tracked your origins to the Temple and realized who you were. What you were wearing around your neck. Then everything Dowser and I had fought for would be ashes and dust. I consider that the definition of a last resort.”
I jutted my chin out.
“She’s already trying to trace you,” muttered Sunder. “She isn’t stupid. The second you walked into the Atrium she knew there was something about you. We all did. Even covered in dust, you were too powerful and beautiful and proud to be a fluke.”
Heat washed over me, and it wasn’t from the fire. I remembered that day in the Atrium, everyone laughing behind their fans at my common manners and dirty hair. Sunder stepping forward to sponsor me … for the opposing dynasty. I pushed down the old shame, trying to see the situation in a new light.
“You knew who I was,” I said slowly. “When you sponsored me. How?”
“Dowser’s legacy allows him to speak mind to mind,” said Sunder, as if it was common knowledge. Surprise jolted me back against the seat. “He saw your unexpected arrival as a miracle and a promise. I saw it as a curse. I tried to drive you away. I tried to make the palais miserable for you. I thought if you left we could still keep you hidden, safe until we needed you. But you were too determined, too sure of yourself. And by the time I started trying to help you, it was too late. You had your own plans.”
“Do the others know?” I asked. “Lullaby and the rest? Are they in on the plot? Was Thibo?”
“A few are,” said Sunder carefully. “It’s dangerous. Some in Dexter are sympathetic to the cause. Reaper was a great asset, especially considering his family connections. Some in Sinister too. But it’s easier to deal with nobles who don’t have an active presence at court. Most people are not adept at secrecy and espionage.”
“So what’s next?” I leaned forward. Now that I knew everything Severine had done, to me, to my friends, the family I never knew, Sunder’s family … I wanted to see her ruined, her power shattered, her sick grasp on her nobility dissolved. “What can I do to help?”
Sunder drained the last of his wine and ran a harried hand through his perfect hair, leaving jagged golden strands sticking in every direction. He looked suddenly too young, too overwhelmed, and much too tired to be carrying so much weight on his shoulders. A burst of pity cooled the eagerness climbing my ribs and knocking at my heart.
“I don’t know,” he said. He stood abruptly. The dull glow from the window turned his hair the color of rust. “I need to think. And you need to rest. We’ll all need our strength, whatever happens.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but the door whispered shut and his footsteps echoed away down the hall.
I turned back toward my bed, but my eye snagged on the heavy fur Sunder had tossed over an empty chair and forgotten. I stepped closer, hating the sudden impulse to touch it, to wear it. I ran my hand over the thick ruff, sinking my fingers into the coarse black fur. I raised it to my face and breathed in the scent of Sunder, faint but unmistakable. Crisp. Sharp. Genévrier and ice. A spark of desire ignited in my belly.
I dropped the fur to the floor and dived back into the pile of blankets on my plush bed. I buried my head deep between the feather pillows and willed myself to sleep.
But much as I wished I could drift away, thoughts of treason and assassination and legacy and dynasty whirled like snowflakes caught in a stiff wind, and it was many, many long hours before I found rest.
I spent most of the next day pacing in my chambers and avoiding both of the de Veres.
I replayed Sunder’s revelations from the previous Nocturne over and over again. Not only was I a legacy, and highborn—which I had always guessed—but I was the emperor’s sole surviving natural daughter. I kept having to sit down and force myself to breathe. Sunder hadn’t told me the entirety of his and Dowser’s plot to overthrow Severine, but if everything went according to plan my own future might look exceedingly different from what I originally had in mind.
Empress. Amber Empire. Empress. Sabourin.
The words were a litany in my head. I never wanted that kind of power. All I ever wanted was a world where I belonged. A world forged in reveries and quickened with wonder, as sublime as the kaleidoscope glow bathing my soul in light. I’d fought to be part of that world, and once I’d realized it was an illusion of someone else’s making, I’d fought to create my own worlds. And wasn’t that what royalty—what power—was? Building something—creating something—from nothing more than clear-glass conviction and ephemeral power?
But what did I know about ruling?
I felt suddenly, righteously furious at Dowser. Part of me understood that he had sent me to the Dusklands as the best chance of escaping my half sister’s campaign of fratricide. But couldn’t he have done more to ensure I wouldn’t grow up a half-literate rube from the edges of the world? Couldn’t he have given me some small hint that someday, someone would come for me? That I wasn�
��t a forgotten orphan destined for nothing but what I seized for myself?
I was staring at the spume of water feathering upward from the river gorge and feeling deeply sorry for myself when a tentative knock came at the door.
“My lady?” A servant poked her silvery head through my door. Everyone in Belsyre was pale and blond—as though the white landscape leached the color from all it touched, including its children.
“You don’t have to call me that,” I said, a touch unkindly. Uncertainty and anxiety had frayed my nerves to the point of snapping. “What is it?”
“His Lordship and Her Ladyship request your presence at supper, my lady,” she said. “I’m to help you dress and prepare, if you please.”
My mood grew forbidding as the black mountains crouching silent on the horizon. The last thing I wanted was to participate in some charade of politesse while the fate of an empire hung in the balance. But my only other option was to sit up here like a prisoner and sulk.
I honestly didn’t know which was worse.
I struggled to choose a gown from the haphazard selection of dresses the staff of Belsyre had culled from Bane’s wardrobe. They were all exquisite, but they were tailored for Bane’s willowy frame and designed to suit her icy complexion. Jewel-bright velvets; metallic satins. None of the light, soft Dexter styles that flattered my sable hair and warm complexion.
Finally, I selected an elegant, if slightly eerie gown. A pale skirt drifted like snow, etched in lines of pewter like the bare, spreading branches of a winter forest. Leafless twigs in dristic and charcoal crept up from the wrists and the narrow waist, branching across the bodice and twining around the arms.
The girl coiled my dark hair into a twisting braid and planted tiny, glinting jewels among the tresses. She glazed my lips and smeared kohl along the curve of my lashes. Diamonds like chips of ice winked from my ears. And when I stared at myself in the burnished mirror, I felt suddenly as though I’d become a part of this cold, lonely place. I imagined walking out those lofty doors and being swallowed up by the hungry forest, a pale dauphine made of nothing more than ice and brittle wood, blood and snow, frozen water and strange desires.
I descended the looping staircase with nerves tangling in my belly.
The Suicide Twins waited at the bottom, sipping ice wine and talking. They glanced up at the sound of my footsteps, Bane very pale against the deep violet of her low-cut gown, Sunder angular and polished in black and green. He cut a small bow and offered his free arm. I took it, laying light fingers against the cool brocade. I didn’t look at him, staring straight ahead with my chin high, but I felt his eyes graze my face, my neck. I was suddenly and intensely conscious of the transparent branches twisting across my chest, barely hiding the breathless rise and fall of my rib cage. I fought the flush staining my cheeks.
Dinner was an uneasy affair. We three sat at one end of the vast dining table in that echoing feast hall, barely talking. Servants served mountain hare doused in a rich sauce spiced with genévrier and sour-sweet lingonberry. Savory squash and roast vegetables. Smoked salmon with cream and dill. Cloudberries with cream.
Sunder ate quickly, his manners elegant but cursory. Bane cut her food into smaller and smaller pieces, then nibbled daintily. I was starving, but the second I piled my plate high, bile climbed my throat and I could barely eat a thing.
Finally, Bane pushed her chair away from the table.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced, turning on her heel.
“Oleander—” Sunder began, but his sister was already gone. His eyes cut to mine, and for a moment I thought he was going to say something to me. Then he too rose from the table and stalked away through Belsyre.
I sat mute and uncomfortable, suppressing another blush. Irritation and impatience sliced through my shame, and I shoved back from the table and stomped after Sunder.
He wasn’t hard to follow—his boots sent crisp echoes ricocheting off the cold tiles. I had a sudden, sharp memory of following him down another hall in another palais; a crimson storm and a jardin made of ice. I quelled a burble of nervous laughter.
Sunder stepped through a pair of tall glass doors onto a secluded balcony. I followed, bracing myself for a frigid bite on my nearly bare arms, but the air was only pleasantly crisp, not freezing. I glanced around the terrace. Hot water cascaded down the walls in crystal sheets before gathering in broad shallow basins at the base of the walls. Plumes of steam billowed up from the pools, heating the air above. Tiny red blossoms twined along swan-slim pillars, droplets of blood against ice.
Sunder stood in the shadow of one marble pillar, staring out across his estate. Two black-and-white mountains dipped low to the churning froth of a coursing river. The low sun peered between the peaks, sending vermeil fingers to caress the snow-draped hills.
“You call her Oleander here,” I remarked when the silence grew too heavy.
“It’s her name, demoiselle.”
“Should I call you Aubrey?” I asked. The name felt clumsy on my cold lips.
“No. That’s not who I am anymore. Maybe it never was.” His eyes rose suddenly to mine, and a tangle of indecision fractured his features. “I wanted—”
He hesitated. I waited.
“I wanted to apologize. For Lullaby.” His voice rasped, rough as unpolished marble. “The Nocturne of the Blood Rain Ball, after you left my jardin—”
Horror and rage flashed white-hot. I remembered her eyes swollen with tears as she limped to bed. Thibo’s haunted gaze: We are all thieves here.
“What did you do to her?”
“I broke every one of her fingers. Twice.” A drowning abyss opened in his eyes. “Severine commanded it, as punishment for your failure. I tried to dissuade her, but she was rabid with fury. She smiled as I—” He choked on the words. “But Lullaby never once screamed. She just wept silent tears. For hours.”
Wrath and outrage and misery pulped my heart. I wanted to blame Sunder, to scream and push and cry, but a cold, calculating corner of my mind tallied Lullaby’s torture and Sunder’s guilt and my own failure to protect my friend onto the empress’s ever-growing list of sins. Her debt was growing.
“Lullaby doesn’t remember,” Sunder added. “Reaper took the memory away. After. All she knows is she was punished, not how. But I thought you ought to know that it was me. And that if I could—if I could somehow take that pain away, take it onto myself, I would.”
Reaper took the memory away. I sucked in a deep breath of pine-scented steam, feeling as though it was I who took my friends’ pain onto myself, not him. That old ember of fury blazed up, but this time it was new. Different. It was hard as diamond and sharp as dristic. Polished and faceted as a ruby, it burned with a smoldering, scorching intensity. It burned like a spark that wanted to set the world on fire.
When the time was right.
“I forgive you,” I finally said. I didn’t think I was lying.
“Why?” Sunder’s shoulders curled, and he dragged his bleak gaze back to the expanse of snow. “How can I be redeemed for causing that kind of pain?”
“I didn’t say you could be redeemed,” I whispered. “I said that I forgave you. I’m sorry if that’s not enough.”
Hot water trickled. Red flowers shuddered in the breeze. I considered leaving.
“Have you decided?” I asked, instead. “What happens next?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sending you away.”
“Oh?” My hands curled into fists. “Where?”
“Somewhere you and the Relic will be safe until we find a way to deal with Severine.”
“No,” I said. The ember glowed red-hot. “I’m going back to the Amber City with you.”
Sunder cut his eyes to me. The blackness of his pupils seemed to swallow all the green. “Why?”
Why. I fumbled for some way to explain that ember smoldering within me. The rage, and the dread, and the steady throb of inevitability I felt whenever I thought about where I belonged. The world I’d fought for,
and now felt responsible for. I took a deep breath, and tried.
“Growing up in the Dusklands, all I knew was dust, and twilight, and the desolate edge of the known world. Out there, you can never trust your eyes. Distances are strange and difficult to measure. Shadows betray. Colors are dimmer, without light.”
Sunder turned his head to look back over the crags of his domain, but I knew he was still listening; his head tilted to one side, and pale strands of hair drifted in the steam-warm air.
“There were children, from the village,” I continued. “Grubby little things. Just like me, I guess. The Sisters let me play with them, sometimes. One boy bullied me: jabbed me with rocks, teased me, pulled my hair. Once, things went too far. He pushed me to the ground. Punched me, kicked hard at my ribs. I remember terror and anger and humiliation all curled up inside me, whimpering like an animal that’s been beaten.” I paused, letting the soul-etched horror of that moment wash over me and then drift away. “That animal snapped. Something let go inside me and there were colors all around. It wasn’t a thing, or a shape. It was a dream, a muddled collection of sounds and feelings and colors crushing and shifting against each other. It was vibrant, intense. Beautiful.”
I opened my palms, and that dream spilled out, as vivid now as it was then. A song in color, a gossamer impression of violet clouds and silver wind and the keening feeling of being alive. Sunder’s eyes widened.
“The children ran, screaming like I was a monster. And in that moment, I knew I was different. Not in degree, but in kind. I dreamed of a world graced with light and redolent with color, and I yearned for it. To see those brazen shades again, experience that strange joy, wield that kind of power: That’s what I wanted. That’s what I deserved.”
Sunder nodded, terse, as though he understood something he hadn’t a moment ago.
“I will not sit idly by while the world changes around me,” I murmured. “I don’t know whether my blood is a gift or a curse. And I don’t relish breaking the world in order to remake it the way I see it.” I took a deep breath. “But I will if I have to. Does that make me a monster?”