Ruin of Stars

by Linsey Miller

  “Yes, I do.” I grasped her shoulders. Froze. “Have you seen Lady de Arian?”

  Her eyebrows bunched together. She nodded. “In Lady de Farone’s room. I brought them tea.”

  “Tie him up,” I said, darting around Maud and down the hall. “We’ve been found out. She knows.”

  Riparian knew.

  She and North Star had set Winter up to die, but Elise—was she worth more dead or alive to them?

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The door to Elise’s room was open. I flew through it, knives in hand. There was no one there, only empty seats and pinched-out candles, the woody scents of tea and smoke still in the air. I crept forward, quiet, shaking. Riparian, for all her faults, loved Elise. She would be fine. She would live.

  I pushed open the door to Elise’s sleeping quarters. Elise was laid out in bed.

  Unmoving. Fully dressed. An empty set of cups and two damp bags of tea leaves sat on the table. My world narrowed to the stillness of her chest, the redness around her eyes, and I dropped my knives. Her chest didn’t fall. I picked up the cup nearest her bed. Her chest didn’t rise.

  Mold and mice and must beneath the bitter scent of black tea.

  Poison parsley.

  I let the empty cup fall and dragged myself to the edge of Elise’s bed. My shadow crossed her face, darkening the tired dips of her eyes beneath her spectacles. I couldn’t shake the memories of her moving, writing, smearing ink across her cheek and down the underside of my arm. The image of her, bloody and brilliant, kicking me out of the carriage the night we first met. The ruddy flush of heat in her cheeks as she recited poetry I didn’t know and danced in the circle of my arms, avoiding my clumsy feet.

  I am safe.

  I was broken.

  And a great, yawning nothing opened up in me, the shadow of my soul ripping free from my bloody body and finding some new, safer home where no one died and death didn’t linger. I was a child again, running through the mire of corpses and grief. I was alone again.

  “Elise?” The rusty freckles dotting her nose were paler now. Tears stuck her lashes together. I laid my hand against her cheek.

  “Sal?” She opened one eye.

  My heart stopped. “What?”

  “Sal.” Elise—alive, moving, speaking, no poison-stillness in her skin—shot up from bed and threw her arms around my neck, breath warm against my neck, heart pounding against my shoulder. She gasped. Sniffed. “Is Lena gone?”

  I nodded. Touched her arm.

  “It was a trap.” Elise let me go—moving, taking in breaths as though she’d been holding hers, gnawing at her cold-cracked lips and drawing blood. Only the living bled. “Lena knew you were alive. She knew you were plotting something tonight. They’re running.”

  Let her run.

  I touched Elise’s lip.

  “Sal?” She stopped, half out of the bed. Her shoulders slumped. “You thought I was dead?”

  “There’s poison parsley in your cup.” I smeared her blood between my fingers. Hot. Red. “You weren’t breathing.”

  She pulled my hand into hers and wiped the blood away with the edge of her skirt. “I didn’t drink it.” A watery, uneasy frown pulled at her face. “Lena tried to kill me.”

  I nodded.

  “She prepared my tea,” Elise said, voice low and flat. “Just like she did when I was a child and we had first arrived in Igna, but it wasn’t right. She wasn’t right.”

  I glanced back at the cup on the floor, Elise following my gaze, and she laughed. Barely. Painfully.

  “I grew up with the Left Hand,” she said. “I know how to make it look like I’m drinking something I’m not.”

  I laid my forehead against her shoulder. “I need a bit.”

  Wasn’t time for this. Maud was on her way with Winter to Moira while Riparian and North Star got farther and farther away. To where? Were they abandoning Lynd? Erlend? For what?

  What could anywhere else offer them?

  “Lena said they were giving you my father.” Elise’s voice cracked. “Did you—?”

  “No.” I took a deep breath and pulled myself up. Together. “We were killing North Star tonight, publicly making him confess, but your father was there instead, so I sent him to Moira Namrata, the Last Living Star of Nacea. He was alive then.”

  Elise kissed her three fingers and pressed them to her heart, tears splashing against my hands. I brushed the tears away.

  “A confession. A public execution.” I let her go, the mess of our lives shaking in my hands. How could we live like this? After this? “I have to go after North Star and Riparian. They knew, they must’ve have known, and they left Winter in his place. They tried to kill you. They’re tying up loose ends, but we got Winter. We got Lynd. Everyone will know what they did.”

  Elise nodded. She kissed my cheeks. “It’s high time Weylin’s reign ends.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  I raced out of the building, mask on, knives in hand, and no one stopped me. The city streets were lit with lamps and flecked with people whispering back and forth, limping away from the gate separating North Star’s estate from the city proper. A small crowd shouted at the poorly manned gate. I grabbed a man near the wall and yanked him down to face me. He yelped.

  “Weylin just left,” I said. “Which way and how long?”

  “Straight out.” He pulled away and crossed his arms before himself. His eyes couldn’t settle on my face or my knives. My mask was a full moon in his dark eyes. “Ran through the amphitheater line.”

  The show. The execution.

  Moira was having Adella collect people to watch, and North Star hadn’t been able to escape without passing through them. But if he was up to angering Lynd, his home, his people, he wasn’t coming back.

  I ran faster.

  The streets closer to the main gate in and out of Lynd were chaos. Soldiers and citizens crushed together in a many-armed battle that was getting nowhere, and in the distance, at the edge of the gate, one small carriage built for speed forced its way through the small crowd of people trying to get inside and home before the night was too dark to travel by. Rangers decked in scars and steel shoved the confused crowd out of the way. I darted into an alley.

  The streets were too crowded. I was too angry. They didn’t get to just leave. They didn’t get to be free of this. I climbed onto the roof of a nearby building, stumbling across the clay tiles. Erlend didn’t keep roof gardens or balconies. The buildings were sloping works of wood and thatch and tile. I sprinted across them toward the carriage.

  People shrieked, horses neighed and reared, and the rangers cleared the way as I cleared the last roof. The carriage took off.

  I slammed on top of it, knives digging into the roof. The driver spun round. We were racing down the road out of Lynd, rangers on each side, and an arrow ripped over my head. Too high.

  Too much going on too close to North Star and Riparian.

  I ripped out my knife and pushed myself up, stabbing down into the roof a good hand’s width ahead of where I’d been. Shouts I couldn’t make out echoed around me. A sword tore through the roof where I’d been laying.

  Rath would’ve loved seeing this.

  I dragged myself to the front of the carriage. The driver pulled a sword. I threw myself at him and caught him around the middle, knocking us both to the floor. The carriage jerked to the side. He stood over me, sword in hand. I kicked his knees out.

  The driver crumpled, falling off the side with a thump and rattling crack. I stayed crouched. The rangers riding on either side kept their arrows nocked.

  I needed a shield.

  “Horse!”

  The carriage door burst open. A ranger edged their horse as close to the carriage as they dared. They went stumbling off, and North Star hauled himself into the saddle. Riparian’s pale face appeared in the doorway.

  North Star, Gaspar del Weylin, the man who’d plotted with Riparian to let the shadows destroy Nacea so Erlend’s army could escape, wasn’t g
oing to risk his escape to save her.

  I laughed and cut the carriage horses free of their bonds. North Star glanced back, gaze slipping from Riparian to me, and he turned away from her. The carriage toppled forward, tossing me to the ground. The carriage skidded passed me. The Lady’s constellation flickered above me. Riparian shrieked.

  Her lips to the Lady’s ears.

  I sat up and watched all but three rangers ride on.

  “You and me, Riparian,” I shouted, cackling through each word. “You, me, and the Lady judging makes three!”

  I forced myself to my knees, my feet, and rolled out the soreness settling in my bones. The nearest ranger was the one who’d given up his horse for North Star. He pulled the pole weapon from his back—more Mizuho blade than spear. I glanced back.

  No one from the city dared get close.

  I flipped one of my knives down and balanced my stance. “Sorry,” I said to the ranger, “but the dead don’t count.”

  He lurched forward, feet slipping in the mud and blade going high. I dropped to my knees and kicked my right leg out. His ankle cracked, buckling his knees. I leapt onto him.

  The blade clattered to the ground next to us. I slammed him into the dirt back first and slipped my knife into his throat. He was dead before he could blink. The other two rangers approached on horseback. One held a crossbow, the other a spear.

  “I’m killing Lena de Arian tonight.” I pushed my mask to the top of my head, wiped the blood from my face, and pulled the mask back on. “And I wasn’t planning on killing all of you, but you’re making a real compelling argument.”

  A crossbow bolt cracked against my mask. My ears rang. A heady, bright-eyed pain shot through the left side of my face and white flecked my vision. My head snapped back so fast my teeth clacked together. One chipped.

  I picked up the dead ranger’s blade and walked backward to the carriage. Riparian’s uneven breaths and frantic nails-on-wood clawing rang in the small confines of the crash. I risked a look back. Riparian was pinned beneath the broken carriage floor.

  My blade pricked her neck. “You two—drop your weapons and get off those horses.”

  They did. One ran. One stalked to me, shoulders back and gaze narrow. I drew the blade from Riparian’s throat, blood welling across the wavering steel, and jammed it into the earth too far away for her to grab. The ranger drew a short sword from the sheath across the small of his back. I advanced and grabbed my knives. The ranger attacked.

  I let him, only slipping aside enough to avoid the worst of the blow. The blade cut through my leather vest and nipped my side, and I grabbed the ranger’s wrist, pulling him close and driving the sword farther through me. A flesh wound.

  A debt repaid.

  “Your lady already killed me once—drowned me.” Rath’s dead eyes open and staring. Hia and Shea rotting beneath the safety of my tree as shadows slipped their faces from their skulls. She’d left me to tread in a sea of grief. “What makes you think you can kill me now?”

  The hilt of the sword hit my side. He swallowed.

  I slipped a knife into the crack between his leather chest armor and belt. He gasped. A gurgling, lung-pricked breath bubbled in the back of his throat. I yanked my knife free and stepped away. He collapsed.

  Riparian was still stuck in the carriage wreckage, shoving, scratching, screaming at the boards holding her to the ground. I knelt behind her.

  “You want me to call your Erlend friends to help with this?” I asked. “Or think they’re a bit sore after you running them down? Think they’ll support you now?”

  She threw a handful of dirt and splinters at me. I laughed.

  “They’ll get over it,” Riparian said, words hissing through her teeth. “No Erlend will follow your shadow-making monster of a queen.”

  I twirled my knife in one hand and tipped back my mask with the other. “Not till they find out who Weylin made into shadows before you sent him Naceans, they won’t.”

  She turned her head to the side, staring at me from the corner of a bloodshot eye. I grinned.

  “I’m not killing you.” I laid the point of my knife against the hollow of her throat. “Not yet. Not till all of Lynd knows all your little, bloody secrets.”

  Not till her soul was flayed and bare and every Erlend knew how much she thought they were worth compared to her. We didn’t have North Star, but we’d two.

  Winter.

  Riparian.

  And Erlend would know them as well as I did.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Maud and Moira met me at the gates of the city, Namrata hovering over their backs.

  The people of Erlend hid in the dark corners of their shops and streets, and I didn’t blame them one bit.

  “Well.” Maud handed me a bandage. “That was the most foolish thing you’ve ever done.”

  “Don’t joke. We both know it isn’t.” I yanked Riparian before me and pushed her to the ground at Moira’s feet. “And I’ll say this with words you understand.” I knelt down till I was staring Riparian dead in the face, her eyes staring through the holes of my blank opal mask. Blood dripped from the crack between mask and skin. “Worth it.”

  “Worth.” Namrata’s rotten breath brushed my cheek. One long, crooked finger cut a line across Riparian’s cheek.

  Moira nodded. “You will confess before your citizens, Lena de Arian, and we will let them decide your worth. After all, you and Weylin taught them that confessions under torture are the most trustworthy confessions of all.”

  Namrata marched Riparian to the city square, where the other eight shadows stood watch over the gathered crowd. There were few guards and fewer nobles, but Elise and her gaggle were standing at the bottom of the amphitheater steps. Adella sat with a group of families nearby, pointing out Moira in the crowd. We descended the stairs slowly. I stopped at the edge of the stage.

  “Come.” Moira held out her hand. “You are Nacean, and you are my blade. You have a place here as much as me.”

  The other Naceans—I hadn’t spoken to them, didn’t know their names, and couldn’t when my vengeance was so fresh and my clothes still bloodied—stood runed and still along the edges of the stage. One of them pulled shackles from their belt and closed them over Riparian’s wrists. Winter was tied to a chair in the center of the stage. Moira met me before him.

  “We needed North Star for this,” she muttered, as though the rest of the crowd would’ve been able to hear.

  I shrugged. “Your shadows might catch him. I can’t.”

  “Take off your mask.” She glanced at Winter and Riparian, black eyes glittering like a night full of stars. “I’ll trade you. We will put them on trial, and you will kill North Star.”

  Fury rose in my veins. Winter was mine. He’d killed Ruby, nearly killed me, kidnapped Elise, and wreaked so much havoc I didn’t know enough words to express my hate for him. He was mine.

  He should have been mine.

  “It will be better this way,” Moira said quickly. “They’ll have a trial. People will know.”

  She was right. If they went on trial, if Moira got them to confess in North Star’s place, everything could change.

  She touched my arm. “And North Star will be yours to kill.”

  I handed her my mask, the red-smeared names inside of it facing her, and she ran her thumb across their gouged names. She led me to the center of the stage, behind Riparian and Winter, and left me there. The Nacean nearest me, their tall frame more failed runes than flesh, smiled and mouthed, Hal Avery. They touched their chest.

  I tried to smile but it only made me cry. Another Nacean whose name and face I knew. Another Nacean not dead.

  “Lynd!” Moira sliced open her finger and drew a line of blood along her throat. “Tonight, Gaspar del Weylin was going to show off his newest weapons, his newest way to win the war against Alona, but instead of facing his creations, he ran. So I will show you what he made instead.”

  She said it without screaming, but the words stretch
ed across the space, impossibly loud and everywhere at once.

  The torches around the square sparked to life, magic prickling in the air, and I gasped. Nine shadows, dark and looming, encircled the theater. The crowd screamed. Adella grasped the hands of the Erlends around her. Elise’s gaggle shifted.

  “They won’t hurt you unless you try to hurt us,” Moira said. “They are the weapons your dear Lord del Weylin wanted to show off.” She lifted her head, the bloody runes at her throat a bright, vivid red in the light. “Tonight, Lord Gaspar del Weylin was going to provide his noble court with a demonstration of his last decade’s work, but I realized it would be more fitting if instead of showing off his work, we listed the names of every Erlend, Nacean, and Alonian citizen he killed to fuel his work.”

  A handful of people leapt to their feet and moved for the stage, but the Naceans around me raised their hands and runes, black as the void above us, and bound the people to their seats. The families near Adella whispered to their neighbors, to anyone they could reach.

  “Weylin fled once he realized he had again created shadows out of his control.” Moira ripped the gag from Winter’s mouth.

  He lurched and spat. “I’ll kill you!”

  “Unlikely.” Moira backed away to the box sitting across from him. “Weylin wasn’t capable enough to kill my mother, and you weren’t even capable enough to realize he was setting you up tonight.”

  “You’ll eat those words.” He struggled with the ropes and shackles holding him to the chair.

  Moira grinned, teeth bared. “Good. I’m ravenous, and you’re not even the one I wanted. But tell them, Lord Nevierno del Farone, why you are here.”

  He stared at her. The crowd thrummed, an uneasy half silence of whispers and quick breaths at his name. My skin tingled with it.

  “You always used torture and told your people it revealed the truth.” Moira pulled out a long-bladed knife curved like the crescent moon. “So if torture reveals the truth like you always said, what’s your truth? Or were you a liar?

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked, leaning close to him.