by Natalie Mae
And then an emotion brushes the back of my mind, light as a feather: anticipation.
I freeze. It’s most certainly not mine. For a moment I wonder if I imagined it, but it comes again, a little stronger. And a little stronger still, like a flame working on wet tinder. A flare of Kasta’s own magic trembles through me, just as faint. The shackle warms on my arm, and a hairline crack works over the surface, slow as a water drop.
Our power must be overwhelming it. Whatever energy this amount of forsvine is made to absorb, the both of us are too much for it.
I focus on that tiny thread, and shove.
My magic surges. The shackle burns my wrist, glowing red, and Kasta hisses as it sears his arm, but I push harder, and he drops me. I jerk the burning metal off, yelping at the heat, and then it’s in two pieces, melting into the floor.
My power returns like the flow of fresh blood. Kasta gapes at the ruined shackle, and his gaze slides slowly, disbelieving, back to me.
Rie, he thinks, his voice strong in my head. And I can’t help but smile.
He bolts for the binding cuff, but his urgency, his panic is so strong it’s like catching a rope that’s already sliding through my hands. And unlike when I did this with strangers, I know the very fibers of this rope. All of Kasta’s hopes, his desires.
His fears.
I pluck that single strand free, and pull.
Leave it, I command him. You don’t want the cuff anymore. Leave it.
The invisible bridge between us surges. Centimeters away from the cuff, Kasta snatches his fingers back. And turns wide eyes on me.
I stand, shaking, power humming through me like wine. Holding his fear at this level is intoxicating. I reach for other threads: worry, anticipation. I imagine him bowing, apologizing; begging for my mercy as I once begged it from him. I wish he could feel even half of my frustration with him. For every time he’s pulled me in, every time I hoped for him, only to find he still hasn’t let go of this—
Kasta turns on his knee, his head low. “Please forgive me, Zahru. I—”
My focus slips. I’d expected those exact words, strange as it is to hear him say them, but I don’t understand how he’s also kneeling in the way I’d pictured. As if I have control of so much more than his words. Kasta shakes his head. The binding cuff glints several paces away. He jumps for it, overriding the command I’d given him—and with a jolt I picture him stopping in place.
He does.
His fear spikes. On its own this time, not from me. My power sings; I am a goddess, I am a monster. I want him to rise to his feet, so he does. I want him to pick up the hammer. I want him to crush the binding cuff beneath it until it’s flat.
With his teeth gritted, he complies with my wishes. Every one of them. Anger simmers now beneath his fear, as does a sharp dread that makes something terrible smile inside of me. My Influence must work differently on him, with his mind half-animal. But that only means he knows what I’m doing, not that he can resist it.
And now I have control of him.
Is this what it feels like, to be him? Even before he was a Shifter, to know his strength was enough to command me, to pass by weapons and know he wouldn’t need them? I do the same now. I stop across the workbench from him, where he glares down at me, the cuff smashed beneath the hammer.
My smile curves. “Does it make you feel better, to know you created me?”
“You can’t hold me,” he growls. “You’ll tire before we reach the priests.”
“And what will you do then? Kill the guards? Hold me for ransom?” My scar burns, and my anger with it. “Maybe I shouldn’t give you the chance.”
A terrible new scene flashes through my mind, unbidden: Kasta walking toward the melting vat . . . Kasta pulling himself in.
“Zahru,” he says.
“It would be easy,” my magic whispers, though the words come out of my mouth. Kasta must be able to sense what I’m imagining, or maybe see it in his mind as I can. My power thrums; it plucks at my anger like a puppeteer lifting strings. “I wouldn’t have to take your curse. I wouldn’t have to worry every day how you’d get back at me, or who you’d hurt next.”
His fear flickers. “You wouldn’t. You’d never—”
“Kill someone?” My stomach tightens, part of me screaming to stop, the other wondering what choice I truly have. He turns . . . and starts walking. “But that’s what you’ve taught me, isn’t it? That sometimes, for the greater good, others have to die.”
My blood is made of lightning. A brighter, deeper fear blossoms in Kasta, heavy and chilling.
“You don’t want to do this.” Kasta shoves back on my commands, but my hold is too strong. “This is your magic pushing you . . . it has to be. I know you’re still in there.”
“Because you don’t think I’d hurt you?” Something is wrong; the words feel distant. “I thought that way in the caves, too. I thought I could still reach you. But now I’m starting to understand: it’s not really about that at all.”
“I was still wrong.” He presses against my will. I walk at his side, unafraid. “The lives this war will take are inevitable. It’s not the same as this. And I’ve listened to you . . . I’ve been doing better. But the gods won’t recognize that if you do this. If I’m not crowned, if I’m not made a god . . .” He pushes again, and his voice cracks. “You can’t truly want this. I am so close to living a life that I don’t have to fear. Don’t send me somewhere worse.”
We stop an arm’s length from the vat. He’s referring to a Shifter’s afterlife, of course, because even the Forsaken, fated to eternally wander the sands outside the holy city of Paradise, wouldn’t envy the Burning Fields: the place for the soulless, a prison of eternal fire. If he’s crowned, he’ll earn a place among the gods, Shifter or not. And though he’s made it clear he’s not afraid of the gods in this life, given how far he’s been willing to go—he clearly doesn’t share that confidence for what they’ll do to him in the next.
And no, even with my magic pulling at me, of course I don’t want to kill him. Not for spite. Not at all. But this must have been what he was thinking on that altar, when he held the knife to my chest. That he didn’t want to, that he wished there was any other way, but that there were more important things at stake: his own future; Orkena’s. And now it’s the same for me.
I flex my hands, shivering.
Because I’m recognizing that I’ve indeed become the worst parts of him. I’ve gone to extremes to get what I want, and justified it with my pain. I’ve let fear drive me, and allowed it to overshadow everything I do, no matter the expense.
I close my eyes. Maybe I’m more like him than I want to admit. Maybe I’m not the same sweet, starry-eyed girl from Atera that everyone expects me to be. But that only means I know that I have to do better, too.
“Then let it go,” I say.
Kasta falters. He accidentally takes a step closer to the vat—and jerks to a stop. “Let what go?”
“All this fear. This obsession with believing what you are, not who, is all that matters.”
He clenches his jaw. “Because it is. If you only knew—”
“What it’s like to feel utterly and completely powerless?” I turn on him, and he flinches. “I know that well. But you have got to stop letting it control you like this. You are so much more, and if this is what it takes to finally get through to you, so be it.”
I reach out with my power and find those tangled strings of fear. They recoil from me, as Kasta would too, I imagine, if I let him. But he can only stand before me, wincing, his arms trembling with the effort of trying to resist.
“What are you doing?” he says.
“You’re letting go.” Static builds at my fingertips, razor-edged. “You’re not going to care about magic ever again.”
“You can’t,” he says. “I can’t—”
“You
will.”
I bring my fingers to his temples, and Kasta cries out and falls to his knees, his hands gripping my wrists. Power surges between us. I am fury. I am vengeance. I am the pain Kasta’s inflicted and the pain he’s endured. I command him to give me the fear that’s driven him, warning that I will pull it from him if he doesn’t, and suddenly I’m before the Mestrah, learning that if I’m Forsaken, I’ll walk the streets; I’m drinking tonics that make me heave, desperate to make my magic surface; I’m in Kasta’s laboratory, trashing the tables, shredding equations, chucking that beaker at Jet’s head when he comes in—
Something shatters in the connection between us, and my strength leaves me in a gasp. Kasta wrenches free, and I collapse onto my hands and knees, every muscle screaming like I’ve been drained of blood.
Kasta drags himself backward, until he stops a few paces away, his chest heaving.
I can only watch him, his memories swirling at the edges of my vision, flickering in and out like shadows.
“You . . .” He pushes up to his elbow, wincing. “What have you done?”
“What you couldn’t,” I whisper, a relieved smile pulling my lips. I feel terrible. I can’t move without my bones shrieking, but the pain feels cleansing, like draining the infection from a wound.
“And what am I now?” Kasta looks at his trembling hands. “What’s left of me?”
“You tell me.” I slowly sit up. My magic slips from my reach when I ask for it, and I swallow a surge of nausea. “What could you have ever wanted more than magic?”
Kasta doesn’t answer. But I hear the catch in his breath. I see the shift in the way he looks at me, and my heart jerks.
Someone bangs on the door, startling us both. “Zahru!” comes a muffled voice. “We’re coming in; hold on!”
Jet? The General must have appealed to the priests—or otherwise convinced them to check on us. I lean upright against a table leg, pain still throbbing through me.
“Wait,” Kasta says. He tries to gain his feet, but whatever I did has drained us both. “Tell him to wait. It’s done now, right? You’ve broken me. You win. I’ll yield the throne . . . I’ll go as far from here as you command. But please don’t—” He grimaces and rips the binding runes from his neck. “Please don’t make me serve.”
He tosses the necklace into the vat. The stones float for a moment, gleaming red, then they sink and spread, little pools of ink on the molten surface. If I turn him in, he’ll be more than punished for what he did during the Crossing. He’ll be bound and shackled in Shifters’ armor; sentenced to serve the army as a weapon for the rest of his days.
I could let him go. The horror of what I almost just did is sinking in, wrapping cold hands around my ribs, making me shake. That was definitely enough for me. I have nothing more to gain from imprisoning him, too. And his plan with the knives was still just a plan—I might yet have convinced him not to do it. Even his plans for me might never have formed if I hadn’t gone after him first.
That’s how the heroes would do it, in the stories. Strike a truce, let him leave.
But all I can think about is the complex equations he came up with for the knives. The kingdom leaders yielding to his silver tongue. How much better he’s truly been doing with the right focus. We do work well together, and it would be foolish of me to let that go to waste.
I tell myself those are the only reasons I don’t want to lose him.
Maybe this is a cruel mercy, to spare him from servitude only to chain him to me instead. But then, this is almost exactly what he planned for us, isn’t it?
I really have learned too much from him.
“All right, Kasta,” I say, holding my aching head. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
XXXII
NO ONE questions me, of course.
After Jet literally breaks into the armory with the help of his mother and an Earthmover, they find Kasta and me standing together, having calmly talked through our issues without the use of shackles or melting vats, wherein Kasta definitely decided to cease his research on the knives, and—benevolent future queen that I am—I forgave him graciously, but also determined he should probably abdicate to be my advisor. To which he responsibly agreed. This explanation earns more than a few raised eyebrows from Jet and the priests, especially since Kasta does not do well with looking agreeable while he’s wincing and holding his head. But if he doesn’t play his part, I have the option to either make him say what I want or reveal him as a Shifter, and he wants that even less.
Jet glances between us like he knows exactly what I’ve done. But Kasta is not getting his crown, and so he says nothing.
It almost looks like he approves.
* * *
And that is how I come to stand at the top of the palace stairs again, not in the foyer, but the ones that lead outside, where the Stormshrikes and Wraiths can better watch the crowd.
In the exact same place I stood at the start of the Crossing in a sacrificial gown.
Now I’m in a golden jole embroidered in crimson scorpions, my arms painted with Cybil’s crossed swords, my hair pinned to hold the weight of the upcoming crown. The High Priests, with a concerning amount of intensity, refused to postpone the coronation even an hour more, so here I am, barely ready for what’s about to happen. I’m still exhausted, even though Melia did her best to restore my energy. She’s the only one who knows just how much magic I used to overcome Kasta.
What did you do? she whispered when she sensed the extent of the damage in my body.
I couldn’t answer. I’m still not entirely sure.
“Ready?” Jet says from behind me.
Twisting silver leaves crown his black hair, and a tunic of royal blue sets off the flecks of green in his eyes. The rest of my friends, and my family, wait nearer to the raised platform at the center of the stairs, where I can just see Hen leaning into the aisle, waving with Melia. I wonder if Kasta can hear the horns from his new room, where he is to stay until this is finished. The grumpy High Priest makes the last of his announcements: that Kasta has abdicated under new direction from the gods, that our allies are eager for my ascent.
I thought I would be nervous when this time came. Thinking of myself becoming an actual goddess is still overwhelming on so many levels. But I have fought, bled, and nearly died to be here. I have my friends, I have my family, and as much as I feared changing . . . I’m still me.
And as long as I have that, I’ll be fine.
“I’m ready,” I tell Jet.
He takes me in, that strange mix of pride and sadness in his eyes. That new distance still swirls between us, and I have yet to ask what he’s afraid I’ll feel from him if we touch. But I think I know. I think he’s just realizing, like I am, that maybe this is all we were ever meant to be, and that I’ll feel that hollow in him where there used to be warmth. I still can’t imagine doing this without him.
But when we smile now, all that stirs in my chest is gratitude.
“We’ll get through this,” he says. “I promise. The war, everything. Just as you stopped Kasta, I know you’ll stop this peacefully, too.”
I think of the awful truth behind that statement . . . of the magic I used on Jet that I still haven’t admitted to. And I force a smile. “Thanks. I have good help.”
He chuckles. “Not that you need it. You know, you’re actually slightly terrifying now.”
My blood jerks. “You mean that as a joke, right? As in, Hey, I know you knocked out an entire room full of assassins and intimidated a Shifter into abdicating, but I also know you’d never use it to do anything shady?”
“Zahru.” Jet snorts. “If you’re still worrying about using Influence at the party, stop. It was one time. And anyway, you could have done far worse to Kasta, and we found you two just . . . standing around together, talking.”
“Right.” My laugh is nervous. “Completely vol
untary on all counts.”
His lip quirks. “I know it was more than that. But I said I trust you, and if this is where you feel Kasta is best, I won’t question it. And with you checking in on him, I might just get my brother back yet.” He straightens the shoulders of my cape. “Don’t worry about it. You’re almost up.”
Anticipation flashes through me as the grumpy High Priest raises his arms and the crowd erupts like a storm. People cheer from the stands, from the streets, from the bridge arcing over the river; from the market square beyond. The noise vibrates through my body like power. My gods’ mark thrums on my chest. As tired as I am, I assumed it would take days for my Influence to fully recover. But I already feel it again at the edges of my mind, as sharp and ready as an arrow.
Tell me there’s no difference, echoes Kasta’s voice in my head.
I take one step down, remembering the silence from before, when this same crowd bowed their heads, so easily accepting I was meant to die. But I grit my teeth. I will prove to Orkena that there are things more powerful than magic. I will prove to Kasta it can be done without reinforcing the current system.
Tell me you would give it back.
I hadn’t answered. But just as I’m thinking that of course I would give Influence back, that I don’t need it . . . something new presses into my mind. Something foreign and unwelcome, a shadow made of teeth.
For without this power, would I even be here at all?
And the answer shifts.
“No,” I whisper, feeling strangely like I’ve just woken up. “I couldn’t.”
EPILOGUE
—Kasta—