Mask of Shadows

by Linsey Miller

Elise shook her head, tears dripping down her face, and eased back toward the door. “The worst part of this is I’m not surprised at all. But thousands. Do you even know how many you killed?”

  The tiny little piece of me that still woke up screaming at night and pushed Seve off the roof was shrieking in my mind, anger and need coursing through my veins like blood. I wanted him dead, and I wanted him to suffer.

  Elise would hate me. I wasn’t fair at all.

  “Winter.” I turned to him, pushing Elise from my mind, and felt the cool wind of autumn whipping through the window at my back. Eastern winds dragging the scent of the sea with them. They’d crossed Nacean lands. Nacean graves. “You want to tell me anything else?”

  “No.” Elise shifted toward me, gaze stuck on the bloodstained knife in my hand. “You can’t kill him.”

  I sniffed. This was the end then. A home for a home. Life without Elise wouldn’t be pleasant, but I’d live. I could live with her hating me.

  Hopefully.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said and lunged.

  Winter jerked his sword toward me. I raised one arm to take the hit, rearing the other back to tear through his arm. Elise slid between us.

  “Stop!” She grabbed my wrist and squared her shoulders, neck even with her father’s blade. She took a step back and forced us farther apart. “Just stop.”

  The two of us froze, but Winter didn’t drop his arm. He didn’t even tremble as he held a sword to his daughter’s neck.

  “Don’t kill him.” She rubbed her thumb along my wrist, the memory of her warmth and words on my skin rising to the surface. “Trust me.”

  “Elise,” Winter started, but she cut him off.

  “You don’t speak. I can’t even look at you.” She stepped from between us. “Don’t kill him. People need to know what he did.”

  “What?” My knife dropped to his shoulder.

  Elise turned to her father slowly and said, “We failed Nacea and you, and I’m sorry, but he can pay with his life in court. Let everyone find out what he did and know it was wrong. You can have justice with that. Trust me. If you kill him like this, no one will know and nothing will change.”

  Would it be justice if his death wasn’t by the last Nacean hand? They’d hang him. They’d have to. But she’d be sending her father to the gallows.

  “It’s what he deserves,” she said softly to me. “Please, for me.”

  She’d no part in this. This was justice, vengeance, everything I’d been breathing for laid out right in front of me, flesh beneath my blade and heart beating at my command. I could stop it. I could end this.

  And it was only the beginning. His death would give me everything.

  Except Elise. Except Maud. Except my new place at court. No matter what he’d done, they’d never forgive me for killing him. And Elise, Lady, she’d never forgive me for murdering her father. Not after she’d asked me to stop.

  Nacea for Elise. A home for a home.

  A home Winter didn’t deserve. A comfortable, wealthy lordship he hadn’t earned and should never have kept. He deserved a thousand deaths, the skin stripped from him and a decade of haunting nightmares filled with faceless friends all clamoring for attention. For revenge.

  They’d bled me that morning while I watched my siblings die and heard my parents murdered, and there was nothing left in my veins but vengeance.

  Till now. Till Elise had seeped under my skin like ink on paper and swept my loneliness away. I could have the home that was taken from me. I could have Winter paraded out for all of Igna to see and watch him hang. I could be Opal, he could be dead, and Elise wouldn’t hate me.

  I’d have someone who cared about me—what Winter stole. I could have that back.

  I opened my hand, knife clattering at my feet. “I trust you.”

  She stepped away from me. Her father surged forward, arms outstretched and sword slashing through my stitched side. I stumbled back, crashing into the windowsill, and he grinned. He tipped me up and over.

  And I fell and fell and fell, the image of Elise’s terrified face framed against the night sky scorched into my mind.

  Forty-Nine

  There was ash on my lips and blood on my hands, and no force in this world could cleanse me. The fire burned lower and lower, embers red as the rising sun, and the last support beam snapped. I shuffled forward, all fractured bones and stitched-up skin. Heat licked the hem of my funeral clothes.

  The brimstone stench of burning hair and the bitter taste of bone dust crept under my new mask till each breath was thick with death. I’d never attended a proper pyre—no funerals for Nacea and no money for the felled members of Grell’s gang. I’d never known the taste of ash.

  Not like Elise had.

  “He hated tawny wine,” Emerald muttered.

  Amethyst tossed her glass of it into the fire, mask streaked with soot. “He loved wine. He hated funerals.”

  I poured my wine on the ruined shirt in my hands, Ruby’s dried blood dark as night against the white silk, and threw it into the fire. It caught in an instant.

  Dead and gone and never coming back.

  I peeled back my sleeve and took out my knife, scoring seven long marks down the inside of my arm. Seven dead by my hands, seven bodies left to burn, and seven ghosts howling in my head. It wasn’t justice.

  It was necessity.

  There was no peace without death, and there was no justice at all. Nothing true. Nothing real. I was what Erlend had made me—killer to Our Queen—and they were what history made them. The lords screaming for my head were what I’d made them with Five’s death.

  Fernando.

  His name was Fernando. He was like me, and he was dead.

  I dropped my arm, blood dripping around my feet. I could bleed for years and never clear their names from my soul. I deserved nothing but the weight of their deaths. Elise deserved so much better.

  “How do you live like this?” I asked. “How do you live and look at other people when they know what you’ve done?”

  Elise was too caring for me. For the callous lands of Erlend.

  They’d eat her alive. They’d break her down bit by bit, till she was jaded as they were, and she’d never recover. Winter might not kill her, but he could use her to further his needs, and they knew what she meant to me, and that might…

  I shuddered. Elise couldn’t die—not yet. She’d so much to do, so much she deserved. She’d be a better noble than her father ever was, and she’d turn the old Erlend traditions on their heads. She’d do everything to stop a war.

  Elise had fought. Claw marks lined the wall where her father dragged her away, nails tearing through paint till she bled. I’d so many better memories of her—ink and ice and orange blossoms—but all I dreamed of now was her face framed against the stars. Her screaming.

  And unable to escape the never-ending echo of her crying my name, I broke as bones break.

  “Carefully. Sadly.” Amethyst wrapped an arm around me, pulling me to my feet, and wiped away the tears dripping down my neck. “Because we must. Because those who care to know us understand.”

  “Because if it wasn’t us, it would be someone else.” Emerald unclenched her hands, copper nails now tipped with red.

  I sniffed, throat tight, and nodded.

  Amethyst sighed. She lifted my new mask to the top of my head and wiped the sticky mess of tears and wayward ash from my face. “We are the Left Hand of Our Queen, no one else. You are Opal. We’ve a sad, sorry job that should not exist, but this is our world and we are what we are.”

  And I was what I was—what Nacea had made me, what Erlend had made me, what Our Queen had made me. There was no innocence left in this world, left in me, not after all we’d done. I’d killed seven people, wiped them from this earth, and I’d kill more. I had to.

  I could not let someone else, someone clean, someone who didn’t wake at night with a weight on their chest and no air in their lungs, the ghosts of those they’d killed clawing at their throat
, know the terrible unease deep within my bones.

  I would be Opal from now till I died so no one else had to be. I would kill the lords whose heritage was built on war and hate, and I would never be free of it, but the world would be free of them.

  Amethyst slipped my mask back on and squeezed my shoulder. She turned me around.

  Our Queen nodded to us. “Are you well enough to be walking?”

  “Well enough, Our Queen.” I knelt, Amethyst on my right and Emerald at my left, the only three to stay by Ruby’s side till the sun rose and his pyre crumbled to smoldering ash. Our Queen’s voice and quiet footfalls left me shivering. “I had to see him off.”

  The three days since my fall and Winter’s betrayal felt like three decades to my shattered arm and fractured ribs. I moved so slowly that the world passed me by with each blink.

  “I’m glad you are well.” Her fingers traced the edges of Ruby’s bloodstained mask. “You are new, my Opal, but you know the troubles that plague our young nation and threaten the peace so many died for.”

  I winced. My blank mask only twitched. “Yes, the war criminals you let fester in your court have finally risen against you.”

  Emerald’s hand closed around my arm. I swallowed. Elise had been spirited away by Winter to the ice-ridden peaks of old Erlend for some last-stand war she wanted no part in, and if Our Queen had even tried, Winter and his cohorts wouldn’t still be alive. No forgotten Nacea, no lords threatening chaos and war, and no civilians left floundering under Erlend rules.

  “Yes, they have.” Our Queen waved Emerald off. She wore no gauntlet today, no metal corset. Soot and mud hemmed her plain gray funeral dress. “And it is time they were purged from our lands. You will bring me their heads.”

  Emerald and Amethyst nodded. I only stared, bones aching and rage gnawing away the last of the fear within me.

  “Emerald, tell Nicolas and Isidora I need to speak to them.” Our Queen dismissed her with a nod and a frown, not taking her eyes off me. “Please wait by the gate, Amethyst.”

  She might’ve freed our land from the grip of magic, but she used us as a substitute. We were little different from her shadow, taking her every order, killing who she pleased, and whispering secrets in her ear. She’d lost nothing and gained a throne.

  “I have a job for you, Opal.”

  “Your wish is my command, Our Queen.” I bowed, back straight and broken arm snapped to my side despite the pain.

  Eight out of ten, surely, if Ruby were not ash and bone.

  “Is it really?” She shifted forward, dark dress littered with dried ash. The runes across her eyelid folded. “You’ve lost so much, Sallot, and I—”

  “I used to love you.” I shuddered, memories of runes and shadows and paring knives slipping under skin fresh in my mind, and shook my head. “I adored you. I would’ve died for you. I thought you were Lady-sent to save us, to pull us from the chaos magic and greed had brought down upon us, but you’re just like us. You’re not any different from them, maneuvering people like pieces to keep your power.”

  She flew at me, fingers curling around my collar and pulling me close. My mask clattered to the dirt at our feet. “I am nothing like them. The decisions I made, everything I gave up, I did it for you, for each and every one of you, and you have no idea of the costs. You may be able to repay your debt in blood, but I’ll take mine to the pyre. I will never be free of what I did for this country.”

  And I would never be free of what her people did to mine.

  I grabbed Our Queen’s hand, prying her weak fingers from my throat one by one. Weaker than me, and poppy tincture still flowed through my veins. Her last act of magic had left her with more than scars. She stumbled.

  “None of us will.” I let her go.

  She picked up my mask with trembling hands, gaze stuck on the rough interior. “We cannot let our people suffer through another war.”

  “Your people.” I helped her to her feet. “My people are dead.”

  “Lord del Weylin has made himself a king and raised an army of drafted civilians and Erlend allies. His rebellion must be crushed before it becomes a war, and the people he would throw unprepared into battle must be freed.” She held out my mask, the finish bone-white and blank. “And our Elise was taken against her will. We cannot abandon her.”

  The brittle calm my wrath had brought broke.

  I took my mask and hid my face. “You’ve never managed to kill Lord del Weylin.”

  The last Erlend lord clinging to the past. To tradition.

  The source.

  “No, it was our previous Opal’s final assignment. The three of you will go to Erlend. Weylin and his allies will die.” She gestured for me to turn and tied my mask back into place. “Understand?”

  He expected assassins. He expected the Left Hand and Our Queen’s attempts on his life, but they’d never kill him like that. He’d sent Five here and knew even more about the Left Hand’s tactics now. Emerald and Amethyst would fail. But I was more than Opal.

  I was a thief and a killer, trained by a childhood of fear and violence, and Weylin was not prepared for me. No walls or armies could protect him.

  “Understood.” I tried to pull away, but her nails dug into my skin.

  “And Opal, my Opal,” she whispered in my ear. “I will forgive your bitterness today, but if you ever treat me like that again, you won’t make it out of this city alive.” She released me. “Now kill them or die trying.”

  “Of course, Our Queen.” I turned and swept into a bow, the names gouged inside my mask pressing into my flesh like brands.

  North Star. Deadfall. Riparian. Caldera. Winter.

  They would know me. They would know Nacea, and they would never forget it again in the short, short lives I granted them before they died.

  They’d taken my country and my life, and I would take their heads.

  For Sal

  The history of Igna is long and divided—by people, by religions, by language—and Our Queen has tasked me, as well as many others, with connecting this history. I have attempted to distill it into one shortened time line for quick reference and one historical analysis detailing what I believe are formative events. To ensure that all who have need of this history are able to make use of it, I have decided to use the common as opposed to the academically accepted terms in the time line. The expressions most commonly used by historians will be expanded upon and their origins explained in the book proper. Versions in both Erlenian and Alonian reside within the same binding to, I hope, promote a common understanding between readers of various backgrounds.

  Erlend and Alona exist no longer, but the division remains. The last ten years have been wrought with skirmishes, battles, and one-day wars between Our Queen and Lord Gaspar del Weylin, and few are of note when the larger picture is not taken into account. Many of these clashes I have left out of the time line because they are as frequent as they are repetitive, and we have neither the time nor the presses to list them all within this brief time line. Given the increasing appearances of ghost towns and increased nighttime raids by the north, a number of favorable and sensational rumors have taken root within Igna. I will state what is known and not theorize given that these events are still unfolding. For now, it is simply important to know that the struggle between Igna and Erlend—or some would say between Alona and Meredan’s displaced—is still ongoing.

  —Elise de Farone

  Spring 295 RA—The monarchy of Lona—the precursor to Alona—is formed from the Sun-drenched Coast and its city-states.

  Summer 308 RA—The Great Migration—Meredan refugees travel through Berengard and are granted land north of Aren after Berengard denies them asylum due to their role in the Whispered War.

  Spring 346 RA—The War of Twelve Gods begins between Lona and Berengard.

  Who needs twelve gods? I can barely keep up with your Triad.

  Winter 354 RA—The War of Twelve Gods ends when the Religious Rights treaty is signed by the three Head Priests
of Lona and the Queen of Berengard.

  Winter 397 RA—The northern lords of Aren—del Weylin, de Seve, de Farone, and del Aer—withdraw from the country and form the new nation of Eredan.

  Of course they did.

  Spring 398 RA—The last surviving noble house of Aren, the de Contes family, surrenders to Eredan. Lona declares war on Eredan after a series of border skirmishes to the east of Nacea.

  Winter 398 RA—The Three Stars of Nacea agree to pay tribute to Eredan in exchange for military protection. Nacea becomes a territory of Eredan.

  Spring 400 RA—The first civil war ends with the Eredan–Lona Treaty outlining the terms of surrender.

  Autumn 400 RA—The Thrice-Blessed School opens on the border of Eredan and Lona to promote civility between the nations.

  Summer 405 RA—Lona becomes Alona after the monarchy of Lona is dissolved and the High Council elected.

  Summer 435 RA—The first victim of the Ash Plague dies. Alonian citizens head north to avoid the plague. The Eredan town of High Water allows them to settle outside of the city gates. Nacea stations quarantine healers along its borders to monitor visitors. Mizuho closes all its ports and recalls its ambassadors.

  Winter 436 RA—The plague spreads through the Bay of Glass. Eredan closes its borders but continues to send aid.

  Autumn 438 RA—The First Star of Nacea succumbs to the plague. The northern cities are isolated to prevent further spread.

  Spring 439 RA—The Royal Physician system of medicine is adopted from Berengard after Physician Serrat Ansleigh visits Alona during the Ash Plague and trains with the Priests of the Body at the Thrice-Blessed School.

  Summer 440 RA—The Third Star of Nacea sends ten handpicked students to the Thrice-Blessed School to study medicine and quarantine procedures.

  Autumn 501 RA—During this century of peace, Eredian undergoes several small linguistic alterations (detailed more thoroughly in my passages on how language widened the Erlend-Alona-Nacea divides) and the name “Eredan” begins appearing as “Erlend” in historical documents.

  Winter 502 RA—Mizuho reopens its ports for foreign trade.

  Summer 542 RA—The Berengard borders along the eastern mountain line are activated. Mages attempt to penetrate the borders but fail. All contact with Berengard is lost.