Amber & Dusk

by Lyra Selene

  Her blood-slicked fingers brushed through empty air, dissolving the illusion like mist and leaving smears of red across my chest.

  “Not that stupid,” I croaked. I launched myself at my half sister, barreling into her with all the force of the rage and fear and pain boiling up inside me. She screamed as she fell, and we tumbled across the floor, shredding our gowns and flaying our skin. She scrabbled at me with sharp fingernails, slashing across my face. My head snapped back. I fought for a grip around her wrists, but she was stronger than she looked. She slapped my fumbling hands away and jerked her clawed hands toward my neck.

  “Nothing that is mine will ever be yours,” she snarled. “But know that I will steal everything you ever loved.”

  Her fingers encircled my neck. Her nails dug sharp grooves in my skin, and she squeezed. She was strong, viciously so. The room blurred.

  Nothing but a thief.

  My hands flailed at my side, even as my vision darkened. Distantly, I felt the prickle of tiny shards against my fingertips. Prick. Snick. Slide.

  In the weightless, vital space between breath and blood, I heard an echo of Thibo’s voice: We are all thieves here.

  A long laceration along my hand jolted me. I blinked at the ceiling. A chunk of the central mirror remained intact, and I saw a woman in a kembric dress throttling the life out of another woman in a kembric dress. Blood-tipped nails left welts against her bare throat.

  Nothing but a thief.

  I thought of disappearing courtiers, of sand and blood and bramble, of Thibo’s empty, staring eyes. And then I felt as though I was being lifted out of myself, my colored heartbeats separating and floating apart. Weightless, as though something warmer than air and more vital than blood was being lifted from my chest.

  I am the scythe they least expect.

  Thibo had stolen memories. What if—

  A firework epiphany exploded in my mind. Severine wasn’t trying to murder me. She was trying to steal my legacy.

  My hand closed around a shard of glass.

  Somewhere, someone dreamed of dying.

  That someone wasn’t me.

  We are all thieves here.

  I tightened my hand. Pain carved through my bones, but I bit down on the final scrap of myself left and lifted the shard. It slipped against my bloody palm.

  I shoved it home.

  Severine grunted, and loosened her grip. Air rushed into my lungs. Warmth spilled down the front of my dress, but it wasn’t my blood.

  It wasn’t my blood.

  Consciousness returned in a spiral of pain so agonizing and brutal that for the sparest moment I wished I had died. I rolled my sister’s jerking body off me. She flopped back onto the glass-littered floor, staring at the ceiling. A long needle of broken mirror winked at me from its home deep between her ribs. Her mouth worked. She coughed, wetly, and a bubble of blood splattered down her chin.

  “Scion curse you,” I spat at her. “I hope our siblings are happy to see you.”

  I limped to my feet. The door swung open at my touch. Outside, the world was red and smoke-tinged, stained with distant sounds of screaming. My head spun, but I sucked in deep breaths of air until my wooden limbs moved and I didn’t think I was going to collapse.

  The trek back to Coeur d’Or was torment. I could barely move; every inch of me hurt, and each step sent flares of pain smashing against the back of my skull. My slashed palms dripped steady rivulets of blood onto the grass. My dress was so shredded that it hardly counted as clothing, but I wouldn’t have cared even if my body didn’t feel like someone had flayed me, then boiled me.

  Finally, the trees cleared and the Esplanade swam into view.

  What was left of the Esplanade.

  A whole wing of the palais was burned away to nearly nothing. Splashes of red marked where fire still burned amid the rubble. Thick black smoke climbed away from the charred hunk of what was once expensive marble and gilt.

  Luca’s diversion, timed precisely to coincide with the finale of my illusory drama, and set to blast its way into the vault buried at the heart of the palais. The vault where Dowser suspected the empress’s other Relic was stashed. It was the other half of our careful plan, and the signal to Lullaby and all the other sympathetic legacies to drop what they were doing and keep the Skyclad Gardes from getting to Severine, Dowser, or Luca.

  Sorrow and regret and a blistering disappointment stitched cold threads down my spine. Was this what it took, to remake a world? Was this what change looked like, in a world forged of metal and stone instead of flimsy wishes? This wasn’t what I’d dreamed.

  I tried to hurry my hobbling pace. I skirted the worst of the damage, ducking into an unharmed hallway and coughing against the spume of black smoke clogging my lungs. The palais churned in disarray. I heard the sounds of distant shouting. Servants and Gardes sprinted by me in the opposite direction, but I couldn’t tell what was going on. How long was I gone? My clash with Severine felt like an eternity, but it could have been mere moments, or an hour. I had no idea.

  Anxiety pushed through the haze of pain clouding my thoughts. Sunder was supposed to come to the Solarium when he was done rallying Sinister to his cause. Luca too. Anyone who wasn’t fighting was supposed to retreat to the Solarium, in case I needed help against the empress.

  No one had come.

  I quickened my steps, pushing through the agony tearing me from the inside out. Hallways flashed by, marred by grim scenes of destruction. Skyclad Gardes, facedown and bloodied. Courtiers, unrecognizable beneath the curling feathers on their fine velvet hats. Smoke. Ash. Blood.

  Too much blood.

  I recognized the golden torches grasped in motionless hands. Dowser’s chambers. I limped faster, reaching for the dark wooden door that had become so familiar to me.

  “Mirage!”

  The voice was distraught, thick with tears. I spun. Lullaby nearly barreled into me, a flurry of black hair and blue skin and blood. Blood on her hands. Tears cutting long trails through the soot on her cheeks.

  A slab of iron sank into my stomach. Bile surged toward a throat already tightening with fear.

  “Everything went wrong,” she wept. “Come quickly. Sunder’s hurt.”

  I forgot my pain and flew on my friend’s heels as she dashed through the palais. She hurried me through the vast doors of the Atrium. I heard the thunder of them being barred behind us.

  Entering the Atrium was like plunging into a nightmare. The cavernous chamber was thick with smoke. Sooty sunlight crept in through shattered windows; colored glass lay smashed on the floor. The cinders of burnt flowers hung like shrouds from the walls, filling my nostrils with an acrid stench.

  Sunder lay halfway up the dais, prone in Bane’s lap. Her shaking hand held a bloodied bandage to his ribs. Red stained his lips, and his breath rattled.

  “No,” I whispered. I fell to my knees beside him. My hands fluttered, useless. I grabbed one of his limp hands in my own. “No!”

  “He was badly hurt,” murmured Dowser, and I jumped to find him looming behind me, grave and severe. “His injuries are beyond my medical abilities. We need to find a healer at once.”

  “How—?” I choked on a bitter mixture of tears and blood. “What happened?”

  “The explosion collapsed one of the passageways,” spat Luca. He paced along a shallow tier, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He looked unhurt, but bitterness twisted his features. “Sunder’s legacies were cut off from La Discorde. It was a bloodbath. The Skyclad Gardes slaughtered my men out of hand.”

  “What about the dissident legacies?”

  “The ones that weren’t killed in the blast dispersed,” said Lullaby. “It was the right thing to do—in all the chaos the Gardes won’t know which courtiers aren’t loyal to the empress.”

  “And you?” I glanced up at Dowser. Dismay slowed my blood to an anxious trickle. “Did you find the other Relic?”

  The older man gave his head one hard shake. He lifted my ambric necklace out of
his pocket, the velvet-wrapped Relic I’d left with him for safekeeping. “This is still the only one I know of.”

  “Then it was all for nothing?” My voice came out high and hysterical as I took the amulet from Dowser. I squeezed Sunder’s hand, hard. “Nothing happened the way it was supposed to.”

  “You’re alive,” groaned Sunder. His eyes glinted between slitted lashes. “And strong enough to crush the bones in my hand to dust. So that’s something.”

  My hand flew to my mouth. Tears burned the back of my throat.

  “Lullaby!” I called. She was at my side in an instant. “Do you know if any of the legacies still alive are healers? Vida, maybe?”

  “Maybe.” Her mouth flattened into a line. “But they’re scattered. I don’t know where anyone is.”

  “Please,” I whispered. A tear squeezed beneath my eyelids. “Please find someone to help him.”

  Her eyes flickered toward the blond lord, leaking blood on the marble. I could almost hear the mental tally of Sunder’s past sins as Lullaby pondered my request. Finally, she nodded.

  “For you, Mirage.” And she disappeared into Coeur d’Or.

  “What happened to you?” Bane snapped. “I hope Severine came out worse for wear. If that’s possible.”

  “I killed her,” I whispered. The dam broke, sending a waterfall of pain and misery and ashy disenchantment gushing down my cheeks. For a long while, all I could do was cry, replaying the moment like a bad dream. Her hands digging into my neck. The shard of mirror lacerating my palm. Stab. Gush.

  Finally, I tuned back in. Thunder shook the Atrium doors: the stomp of boots and the shouts of Gardes.

  “We’ll stay with you.” Bane wept over her twin brother. “Lullaby’s finding you a healer.”

  “Dowser and I will be fine,” croaked Sunder. “Go with Mirage. She needs your help more than I do.”

  “What?” I jerked my head up and dashed the tears from my cheeks. “No one’s leaving. The empress is dead. I’m Sylvain’s daughter. I have to declare my intention to ascend the throne immediately.”

  “That’s too dangerous,” said Dowser. “The Skyclad have taken the palais. If they see you, they will kill you.”

  “He’s right,” growled Luca, still pacing like a wild animal. “Even looking like you do, that dress is too recognizable. If the empress is truly dead, the best thing we can do is retreat and regroup.”

  “Astonishingly,” managed Sunder, “I agree with him. You need to go. Belsyre. Our militia can protect you. Wait until I send word. You’re our jewel in the crown, our one shot at doing this right. We need you to stay safe.”

  “And I need you to stay safe!”

  “Dowser is above suspicion,” Sunder croaked. “As for me, even if I was seen with the dissident legacies, we’re all too valuable to be butchered out of hand. And I’ve never met a dungeon guard who couldn’t be bought with the right amount of kembric.”

  “But—” I leaned closer, fighting another spill of tears. “I can’t leave you. Not like this.”

  His free hand drifted up to hover over my cheekbone, where crinkled kembric foil peeled away like burnt skin. “I’ll survive,” he said, and smiled. Even though his teeth were bloody and his hair was black with soot, he was beautiful. “I always do.”

  “We need to go,” urged Luca. “Sylvie.”

  “That’s not my name,” I cried, fighting back anguish. A cool touch brushed against my wrist, soothing.

  “Come here, demoiselle,” whispered Sunder. His eyes were distant, clouded with pain. I leaned in, and he wrapped shaking fingers around the sides of my face. An ache numbed my skin and clenched my teeth, but for once I didn’t care. I was wracked with so much pain already that a little more wouldn’t kill me.

  “I’m here,” I choked out, resting my forehead against his. His eyes fluttered shut.

  “I know this isn’t what you wanted,” he rasped. “This isn’t the world you dreamed of, long ago in that pallid dusk.”

  I choked on a soot-stained hallucination of a perfect city, a perfect life.

  “But you deserve the chance to live in that world,” he said. “You deserve a chance to create it. And even if I can’t be redeemed, I know you can be.”

  He struggled to sit up, propping himself onto his elbows. He leaned forward, and brushed his lips against mine.

  I plummeted into the kiss. I didn’t care that we both tasted of blood and desperation, or that pain needled my skin from a hundred shallow wounds. I fell like I’d never dared to fall before—through a riot of bright, fragile hopes toward a cool promise of belonging.

  “My monster,” he whispered against my mouth. “Show me what you dream, when you dream of new worlds.”

  And he cut his gaze to the hulking ambric throne sitting empty at the top of the dais.

  I climbed the shallow steps with shaking footsteps. I brushed my palm against the smooth beveled surface, polished smooth and glowing from within. It hummed against my hand. The amulet between my breasts throbbed. I turned, hesitant, and sank down onto the sleek, curving throne.

  Radiance painted my bones in sunlight and drowned my eyes in dusk. I roared with the prismatic pulse, sending threads of light and shadow toward the corners of the room. A covenant of colors: Dominion’s black heart, warming to violet; crimson glow against pale ambric; sanded kembric and sheer towering blue; dristic and genévrier and cold white. And at its center breathed a city. A city gilded with kembric and bathed in amber light. A city sharp as a wish and dazzling as a secret. A city where I dreamed of belonging, and where that dream came true.

  I smiled into the blinding promise of what might never be. I smiled, and engraved an oath upon my heart with lines of amber fire.

  It might not be today, or tomorrow. I would wait a thousand tides if I had to. But I would show this world my dream. My dream of a world that was lovely, and strange … and just a little bit monstrous.

  Publishing this book is a dream come true for me. But there were times I felt like I was sleepwalking more than anything else, and if it weren’t for the incredible support of so many people, I would probably have fallen to the bottom of a (metaphorical) well.

  To my amazing editor, Lisa Sandell, for seeing what this book could be, instead of what it was, and easing me through that transition so smoothly that it almost felt effortless. I cannot thank you enough for your enduring faith in Mirage’s world, even when it felt like mine was flagging. To Olivia Valcarce, for always knowing what I was trying to say even when the words on the page weren’t quite there yet—your intuition is invaluable. And to Scholastic, for taking a chance on me, and this book I love so much.

  To the entire Curtis Brown family, but especially my agent, Ginger Clark: I am in awe of your humor, experience, wit, wisdom, and strength. Whether I need tough love or pep talks, you’re always a speedy email away. There will never be enough wombat photos to thank you for your help in bringing this book into the world.

  To my critique partner, Roshani Chokshi, for reading everything I write in record time and never failing to gently eviscerate my drafts with your genius. You are eternally gorgeous and flawlessly wise, and I would never have made it without your lengthy emails and perfect GIFs. To M. Evan Matyas, for being a roommate, friend, sounding board, commiserator in chief, and for holding my hand since the beginning—thank dog for Craigslist, amirite? To Spellbound Scribes past and future, but especially Shauna Granger, Nicole Evelina, and Liv Rancourt—your experience, humor, sophistication, and scholarship cannot be overstated, and I feel lucky to count myself among you. To the Table of Trust, otherwise known as PitchWars 2014, for being an unparalleled wealth of information and advice, as well as an excellent place to vent.

  To Tammy Meyers, Ann Dunn, Dr. Ewert, Dr. Harpold, Kevin Hyde, Dragan Kujundzic, Professor O’Neill, and all the other educators who attempted to mentor me despite myself.

  To Jess, for bone crushing, Darcy-ing, and infinite snuffa loving—arf arf arf! To the Marshall “frat,” for mead hall
s, horsey dances, and late-night games of Fishbowl. To Michelle, for never reading all the words. And to Hannah, Lauren, and Sonia, my F4: for a decade and a half of weird fan fiction, inappropriate Dracos, dollar-store prank gifts, black licorice in my shoes, too much Frontera, Bachelorette fantasy leagues, and unconditional love.

  To my parents, Monica and Michael, for teaching me the value of a library card from such a young age, always reading to me at bedtime, and listening to all my wacky dreams. To my siblings, Sarée, Erik, Siobhán, and Shane, for never not giving me a hard time. You keep me sane and grounded. Our expanding family makes me feel so wealthy in music, laughter, and limitless love.

  And finally, to Steve: for castle Christmases and woodland wanderings, for black-and-white music and midnight musings, for anticipating plot twists and always sympathizing with my villains. I love you to Olympus Mons and back.

  LYRA SELENE was born under a full moon and has never quite managed to wipe the moonlight out of her eyes. When she isn’t dreaming up fantastical cities and brooding landscapes, Lyra enjoys hiking, rainstorms, autumn, and pretending she’s any good at art.

  She lives in New England with her husband, in an antique farmhouse that’s probably not haunted. Amber & Dusk is her debut novel.

  Copyright © 2018 Lyra Selene Robinette

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data