One of the Red technicians fusses with the camera, flicking switches while motioning for Ptolemus and me to remain still. I feel the vibrations of the machine cease as the broadcast ends, cutting to black everywhere but here. The Red lowers his finger and we are released, exhaling in unison.
It’s over and done with.
With a burst of concentration, I shred the steel chair behind me, letting my throne collapse into a pile of needles. It doesn’t take much energy—steel is familiar to me—but I feel exhausted afterward and lean forward on my elbows.
The Reds and the Scarlet Guard shrink back a little, wary of the outburst. The Silver nobles look only disgusted, though none would dare say so to our faces. With a sneer, Jerald makes for his daughter, but Elane avoids him neatly.
She is quick to take my shoulder, and her hand trembles against my skin, quivering.
“Thank you,” she breathes, so only I can hear. “Thank you, my love. My iron heart.”
The lights of the room seem to collect in her skin. She is dazzling, glowing, a beacon calling me home.
It wasn’t just for you, I want to say, but my mouth won’t open. It was for me.
In the window, the moth is gone.
And for her.
Like the rest of the estate, the sculpture garden is abandoned, and somewhat overgrown without a greenwarden’s touch. Carmadon could do wonderful things here. One side offers a commanding view of the valley, down to the Allegiant. Every statue seems bigger and more foreboding than I remember, frozen in arcs of steel and chrome, resolute iron, proud copper, even polished silver and gold. I draw my fingers along them as I walk, rippling each one. Some dance at my command, re-forming into swooping curves or spindles thin as thread. Using my ability for artistry is cathartic, a release of tension that I can usually only find in the training arena. I spend long minutes alone, molding everything to my liking. I need to relax as much as I can, if the next obstacle is to be hurdled.
I must face her alone. Without any crutch. Not Elane, not Ptolemus. It would be too tempting to let them fight this battle for me. And that is not a habit I want to make.
She is waiting for me in a place I love. To taint it. To hurt me. She looks small without her usual creatures, almost hidden in the shadows of a steel arch. No panther, no wolf. Not even the moth. She wants to face me alone. Even her clothes seem dull, an echo compared to the jewels, silks, and furs I remember. Now her dress is simple, a fine dark green, and I glimpse leggings beneath her skirts. Larentia Viper is on the move. I imagine she’s allied with Jerald and the other Silvers, opposing us in sentiment but unable to do so openly.
The wind rustles through her black hair, and I glimpse streaks of gray I’ve never seen before.
“You knew what they were going to do to him.”
The accusation hits like a sledgehammer. I keep my distance.
“You knew that woman, and that weakling, that coward of a librarian, were going to kill your father.” Her teeth gleam, a predator’s snarl. Without her animals to control, my mother is quite vulnerable. Powerless against me, in a garden brimming with my own weapons. It doesn’t deter her in the slightest. She moves swiftly, almost hissing as she stops inches from my face. “Do you have anything to say for yourself, Evangeline?”
My voice rasps. “I gave you both a chance.”
It’s the truth. I told them I was leaving. Told them I wanted no part of their schemes anymore. That my life was my own and no one else’s. And my own mother sent a pair of wolves to hunt me down. My own father sneered at my heartache. No matter how much I loved them both, or how much they loved me, it wasn’t enough.
My mother’s lips quiver and her eyes dart. She searches me down to the bone. “I hope the shame follows you into your grave.”
It will, I think. It always will.
“But that grave will be far away,” I whisper. I’m taller than she is, but she still makes me feel small. “On a mountaintop you will never see. With Elane right beside me.”
Her green eyes snap with fury. “And your brother too.”
“His choices are his own.”
For a moment, her voice breaks. “You couldn’t even leave me my son.” I wish I couldn’t hear her, or see into her eyes so clearly. There’s so much anger, so much pain. And realization too. My mother is alone in the world now, cut off from the pack. Forever. Despite all she’s done and all the hurt she has caused me, I can’t help but feel pity.
“One day, I hope you might see things differently.” My offer is shaky at best. Without any guarantee. “And there will be a place for you.” I couldn’t imagine her in Montfort if I tried.
She finds the notion just as preposterous as I do. “Not in that cursed place you call home,” she sneers, turning away. Her shoulders rise with tension, bony and sharp beneath her gown. “Not the way you are, without pride or honor or even your name. Living so openly. Where is your shame?”
I’ve lost count of how many times my mother has mourned my flaw. The person I was born as, the inclinations I cannot change and will never deny again. Still, hearing her disappointment never gets easier. To know she sees what I am as a failure—it is so difficult to bear.
I swallow around the lump in my throat, unable to speak for fear of crying. I won’t do that in front of her. She doesn’t deserve my tears or my pity or my love, small as it may be.
Larentia raises her head, her back still turned. Her body shudders as she heaves a delicate breath. “This is the last time you will ever see me.” Never have I heard a voice so empty. “I wash my hands of you both. My children are dead.”
In my hand, my bracelet twists and trembles, running lazy ripples over my pale skin. The distraction helps me think straight. “Then stop chasing ghosts,” I murmur. And turn away.
I don’t sleep again until I’m home, in the mountains, in Montfort, with Elane’s arms around me and the red light of sunset washing over my face. Thoughts of war and of our future drift and pass me by. They can wait. We’ll tackle them together, Elane and I. Find the middle ground and compromise.
For now I can rest, and heal my iron heart.
FIRE LIGHT
ONE
Mare
I had my pick of days, but in the end, the snow made the decision for me.
All the better. The choice was out of my hands. How long to stay, when to return to the Montfort capital—those questions disappeared when the weather turned. It was only six inches, barely a dusting for a place like the Paradise Valley, but more would follow. I’d been told the winters here were much harsher than those I was used to, worse even than the one we weathered at the Notch. Here the snowdrifts pile up ten feet deep; rivers freeze solid; blizzards last for days on end. Too perilous for transports or dropjets. Of course, we could stay for the season if we wanted. Davidson made it clear in his last communication that the cabin outpost was at our disposal as long as we needed, but I didn’t even broach the subject with the rest of my family. None of us, myself included, have any desire to spend the winter buried in snow with only the geysers and the bison for company.
Outside the cabin, Bree makes a show of digging out the front door while our father supervises, leaning on his shovel. They spent all morning clearing a path through the snow to the dropjet landing field, and their faces are red beneath their scarves and hats. Tramy helps Mom pack for the flight south, following her from room to room. She tosses clothes and he catches, folding them on the run. Gisa and I watch from the stone-walled kitchen, our things already packed away. We wear matching knobbly sweaters and curl around hot mugs for warmth. Gisa’s cup has cocoa thick as pudding and just as sweet. Though it smells divine, I stick to tea and honey. I’m getting over a cold, and I don’t want to return to Montfort with a scratchy throat.
Certainly I’ll have to make the rounds of speech and conversation once we arrive. While I’m happy to go back to Ascendant, the capital, it means returning in time for the growing chaos of a gala with the alliance. And I’d rather do it at full strength.
Especially if Cal is there, I think, taking another boiling sip. The heat makes me shiver down to my toes.
Gisa watches me shrewdly over her mug and stirs the cocoa with a spoon. Her lips curve into a smirk. “Counting down the seconds?” she asks, her voice low enough to not be overheard by the whirlwind in the next room.
“Yes,” I reply bluntly. “I’m already mourning the loss of some peace and quiet.”
She licks the spoon clean and somehow gets a fleck of cocoa over her eyebrow. “Oh please, you’re going insane up here. Don’t think I didn’t notice the little bit of lightning swirling around with the snowstorm yesterday.”
Insane. I wince. I’ve known very few people to whom that word could be properly applied, and one in particular still unsettles me to my core. The tea seems to freeze in my stomach.
When we first came here, I told myself it was so we could heal and mourn together. And so I could forget. Put aside all the things Maven did to me and I did to him. Instead, barely a day goes by without me agonizing over him and his fate. Whether he deserved it or not. If I made the right choice. If he could have been saved.
I still remember the small dagger in his hand, the pressure of him holding me down. It was you or him, I tell myself for the thousandth time this morning. No matter what, it always feels like a lie. You or him.
My sister reads my silence with a keen eye. She’s good at deciphering my emotions, as much as I try to keep them hidden. She knows when to push me on them. And when to let me be. Today must be the latter.
“Are you finished?” she says, gesturing to my mug.
I nod and drain the rest of the liquid. It scalds its way down my throat. “Thanks.”
She bustles to the deep sink and sets to scrubbing the last of our dishes. After a second, I follow, putting away the dried plates from breakfast. I wonder if anyone else will come up here in the next few months, or if we’re the last faces the cabin will see until spring. It must be lovely up here in winter, albeit difficult to get to. And difficult to leave.
“Has anyone seen my socks?” Bree howls from the sitting room, ignoring the chorus of protest from Mom and Tramy. He must be trailing snow all over the floor.
Gisa giggles into the soapy sink. “I burned them!” she yells back. “For the good of mankind!”
My laughter is silent these days, little more than a gasp of air and a tight smile that pulls at my scars. Still, my stomach tenses as I laugh quietly, almost doubling over with good ache. We were right to come here. To rebuild ourselves, to figure out who we are now, in spite of our missing pieces.
Shade might be buried a thousand miles away, but I feel him here with us. And for once, it doesn’t make me entirely sad.
There wasn’t much to pack. The furnishings, rations, everything down to the soap in the bathrooms, stays at the cabin. We only have our clothes and other personal items to worry about. Gisa easily has the most stuff. Her art supplies and sewing kit are probably the heaviest thing loaded into the dropjet waiting at the edge of the clearing. She worries over them like a nervous mother, keeping a close watch as the Montfort pilot tucks them in with the rest of our baggage. I’m surprised she didn’t insist they travel in her lap. Mom and the boys are already inside, strapping themselves in away from the cold.
Dad stands back a little from the craft with me. He scrutinizes the frosty ground beneath us. I think he half expects a geyser to explode beneath our feet and blow the jet sky-high. It isn’t an entirely ridiculous notion. Many of the clearings and basins throughout the Paradise Valley are pocked with geysers and hot springs, steaming even beneath the snow.
Our breath clouds in the air, a testament to the cold. I wonder if Ascendant will feel this frozen already. It’s only October.
“Are you ready?” Dad says, his voice a low rumble barely audible over the jet engines as they spool up. On top of the drop, massive propellers whirl around at a quickening pace.
I want to tell him yes. I’m ready to go back. Ready to be Mare Barrow again, where all the world can see. Ready to return to the fight. Our work is far from over, and I can’t spend the rest of my life surrounded by nothing but trees. It’s a waste of my talent, my strength, and my influence. There’s more that I can do, and more that I want from myself.
But that doesn’t make me ready. Not by a long shot.
The pilot waves for us before I can speak, sparing me the pain of lying to my father.
It doesn’t really matter. Dad knows the truth of it anyway. I feel it in the way he supports me as we walk, even though he’s the one with a regrown leg.
Each step feels heavier than the last, the safety belt like a chain across my lap. And then we’re flying, the ground disappearing beneath a bank of gray cloud as everything goes bright and empty.
I let my chin fall forward onto my chest, and I pretend to sleep. Even with my eyes shut, I can feel them all looking at me. Gauging my mental and physical state by the set of my shoulders or my jaw. I still have problems talking about the worries prancing around my head, so my family has to improvise. It’s made for some very idiotic questions from Bree, who is without any kind of emotional sense. But the others have found ways, Gisa and my father especially.
The roar of the dropjet makes speaking difficult, and I only catch snippets of their conversations. Most are innocuous. Will we be staying in the same apartments at the premier’s estate before moving to the new house? Is Gisa going to bring that shopgirl around to meet everyone? She doesn’t want to talk about her, and Tramy is good enough to provide a change in subject. Instead, he needles our sister about wanting a new jacket for the upcoming gala. She huffs but agrees to make him one. Something embroidered with the wildflowers that dotted the Paradise Valley—purple and yellow, green too.
The gala. I haven’t even begun to think about the specifics of the celebration. Needless to say, I’m not the only one returning to the capital this week. Part of me almost wonders if Davidson dispatched a storm up here to drive me back to the city. I wouldn’t be upset if he did. It gave me a good excuse to return right now, in time for a gathering of so many.
The snow made the choice, not me.
Not the party.
And certainly not the lure of a young man with bronze eyes and a broken throne.
Kilorn is waiting when we land at Ascendant, to the surprise of exactly no one. I don’t know if it’s possible, but he looks taller than when I saw him last, only two months ago. He said he would visit us up north, but he never got the chance between his duties in Montfort and building his own life here. Cameron might have something to do with it too. She’s acting as a go-between, with her father, bouncing between the Scarlet Guard, Montfort, and her home in the Nortan States, speaking up for the Red men and women of their tech town. They’ve been invaluable to the reconstruction effort in the States and smoothing over relations with the Republic. Kilorn waits alone, so Cameron must not be here yet, if she’s coming at all. As much as I’d like to see her and hear of everything going on back east, I’m happy to get Kilorn to myself for a little bit.
He grins widely when he sees us, a tall figure on the landing ground. The jet propellers cast a furious wind, whipping Kilorn’s tawny hair back and forth. I try not to rush to him and inflate his ego any more than it already is, but I can’t help it. I’m eager to see him. And eager to get out of the cramped metal box we’ve been stuck in for three hours.
He embraces my mother first, always a gentleman with her. She’s more of a mother to Kilorn than the woman who abandoned him years ago.
“You haven’t been missing meals,” Mom jokes, patting him on the stomach. Kilorn grins and flushes. Indeed he looks broader too, filled out by Montfort food and a less-than-lethal lifestyle. While I still kept to my running schedule up at the cabin, I don’t think he can say the same. He looks healthy, normal—settled.
“You shouldn’t call him fat, Mom,” Gisa says teasingly, poking him in the side with a grin. “Even if it’s true.” Whatever schoolgirl crus
h she had on him, born of proximity, jealousy, or good old-fashioned want, is completely gone.
Mom swats her away, scolding. “Gisa! The boy finally looks like he’s had a decent meal.”
Not to be outdone, Kilorn musses Gisa’s hair, sending red locks spilling from her perfect bun. “Hey, I thought you were the polite one in the family, Gee,” he shoots back.
Bree hoists his pack up onto his shoulder. Then he elbows Gisa for good measure. “Try living in an isolated cabin with her for months. You’ll lose all your illusions of the little madam.”
Our sister doesn’t bother shoving him back. Bree is nearly twice her size. Instead she folds her arms and turns up her nose as she stalks away. “You know,” she calls over her shoulder, “I was going to make you a party jacket as well. But I guess I shouldn’t bother!”
Bree is after her like a shot, already whining, while Tramy follows with a grin. He won’t dare jeopardize his own outfit, so he keeps quiet. Mom and Dad follow along with shrugs of their own, content to watch everyone else scurry ahead, leaving me behind with Kilorn.
Thankfully, no one points out that I’ve somehow become the proper one in the family, what with my court training, my time spent masquerading as a princess, and my new affinity for silence. Such a change from the Stilts thief always covered in mud, sweat, and a foul temper. And Kilorn knows it. He eyes me thoughtfully, glancing over my clothes, my hair, my face. I look healthier than I did when I left, just like him.
“Well?” I hold out my arms and spin on the flat tarmac. My sweater, jacket, pants, and boots are all shades of gray or green, muted colors. I don’t intend to attract more attention than I need to. “Are you done with your examination?”
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