Red Tigress

by Amélie Wen Zhao

Sorsha beheld Ana through narrowed eyes, licking her lips. “The blot magen,” she crooned, her voice soft with desire. “The most coveted magek of all.” She brushed herself off and straightened. “I’ll finish this later, Blood Bitch and Brother Dearest.”

  Without another word, she turned the corner and disappeared.

  Only then did Ramson let himself slump against the wall, panting. He swept a hand to the wound on his shoulder. The iron splinter Sorsha had pierced him with was still there, and his fingers came away sticky. His blood, he realized, had spread all the way down to his elbow.

  A rustle of fabric; Ana came to stand next to him. Droplets of rainwater clung to her dark lashes as she pressed a hand below his injured shoulder. “Deities,” she murmured. “That’s a lot of blood.”

  Ramson’s chuckle was rough. “I thought you enjoyed seeing me bleed.”

  “Only when I’m the cause of it,” she said, deadpan.

  “Careful, Witch. You’re starting to have a sense of humor.”

  She threw him a glare and ignored him. Her fingers were cold against his skin as she deftly peeled back his ruined shirt. She smelled of wind and storm and sea, and he was giddy in a way that he couldn’t tell whether it was from the blood loss or from her proximity. “This is going to hurt.”

  Without warning, she pulled the shard of iron from his shoulder. Ramson’s head grew light with pain; the floor tilted beneath him. He was aware of her arms around him, catching him as he swayed, gently propping him back against the wall.

  “Mmf,” he grunted, feeling warmth drench the sleeve of his shirt. There was a tingling in his shoulder, a warmth in his veins as Ana placed a hand over his wound. Blearily, he cracked an eye open to look at her.

  Her irises were crimson, her brows furrowed in that look of concentration he’d come to treasure, and she worked on his wound, utterly unaware that he watched her.

  He could have stayed like this forever, drinking in the sight of her and knowing that he’d almost lost the chance to ever see her again. I see the way you look at her, his father had said. Love makes us weak, boy.

  His thoughts swirled, sluggish. There was a truth buried deep in the most cowardly parts of his heart that he simply didn’t want to see yet. For love, as his father had always taught him, was something to be destroyed. There was no room in love for selfishness.

  And Ramson had always vowed that he would live only for himself.

  As though she’d heard the turbulent mess of his thoughts, Ana looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “I’ve stopped the flow,” she said. She pushed back a strand of hair from her face. “You’ll still need a healer, though.”

  “No time for that.” He tested his shoulder gingerly. The pain was fresh but beginning to recede into a dull throb. The world around him steadied. “We have a coup to stop.”

  He peeled himself from the wall and limped down the corridor. Ana followed, picking her way through the rubble and mess of iron. “She took off her collar,” she remarked.

  Ramson was about to reply, but the words stuck in his throat. They’d reached his father’s chambers.

  Ana peered in through the open doors. “There is a lot of blood in there,” she said quietly.

  From this angle of the hallway, Ramson could see beyond the guards’ bodies through the slightly ajar door into his father’s study. “Give me a moment,” he found himself saying as he straightened. As though in a dream, he crossed over the hall to his father’s chambers.

  Details he hadn’t noticed earlier now flooded his mind as he swept his gaze around the room. The walls were the exact shade of maroon as they had always been. The dark cherrywood desk that he’d sat before so many years ago no longer seemed to loom; it came up to the height of his hip.

  It seemed like both a lifetime ago and no time at all that he’d thrown his mug against the wall, looked upon his father as both god and monster and sworn to never become like him.

  Ramson knelt by his father’s body. There was a pool of blood around him, spreading on the floor, but all that Ramson saw was the strange bend of his arms and legs, the way his eyes stared and his mouth was still open in surprise.

  Lying on the floor like this, he looked less like the monster in the shadows. He was simply a man, one who bled and died all the same.

  Ramson reached over and closed his father’s eyes and mouth. In death, the Admiral’s facial muscles had relaxed, and for the first time Ramson could recall, his father looked at peace.

  A sudden movement across the room caught his eye. At the windowsill, petals from the small white flowers fell, like snow. They twirled in the air for an ephemeral moment before landing on the floor.

  I loved your mother, too, you know.

  “You loved her, too,” Ramson muttered, the words tasting strange in his mouth. Too.

  It was a possibility he had never considered—that he could stop thinking about himself for a moment to care for someone else. That he could put someone else’s needs before his.

  Did monsters and men who made bad choices have the capability to love? And did they deserve love in return?

  Ramson stood. “Ine verron tane aust Sommesreven,” he said. It was a Bregonian parting phrase for the dead, one murmured at funerals as they lit candles and set loved ones afloat on winding rivers or the great, weaving sea.

  I will see you at Sommesreven.

  Ramson was about to leave when something on the floor caught his eye. It was the remnants of his father’s gold ring, the key that Sorsha had used on her collar. She had completely melted it earlier; the gold clung to the floor, no more than a blob of metal. She’d destroyed the key, the symbol of control that Roran Farrald had held over her.

  But Ramson wasn’t thinking of keys and symbols. His gaze traveled back to his father’s body, to where the blackstone band lay on the floor, cracked open like a lock.

  An idea struck him: insurance should their plan go awry.

  Ramson crossed the room and picked up the collar, unscathed from the intensity of Sorsha’s fire. It was colder than ice against his skin as he unbuckled his belt and looped it through. It weighed heavy against his hips.

  Ramson turned and left the room, shutting the door behind him with a soft click.

  Ana was waiting for him outside, her arms folded. She straightened at his appearance.

  Ramson nodded. “It’s time.”

  Ana kept her Affinity flared as they hurried through the Naval Headquarters, their footsteps echoing unnaturally loud in the otherwise silent halls. The building had emptied. Most courtiers would have gathered in Godhallem, waiting for her negotiation.

  Which made them sitting ducks for Kerlan’s coup.

  As they walked, Ramson filled her in on Admiral Farrald’s Affinite trafficking scheme with Morganya, on Sorsha’s betrayal of her father and her kingdom.

  The impossibility of their task felt like a noose coiling tighter and tighter around their necks. “Linn and Kaïs are freeing the trafficked Affinites as we speak,” Ana said as they turned a corner. “But Sorsha has two siphons—one she is wearing, and another that she carries.”

  Ramson’s eyes were narrowed in a way that told Ana he was coming up with a plan. “We need to launch the Bregonian Navy,” he said at last.

  Ana nodded, their task settling deep into her belly. “We must ring the War Bells.”

  They had reached the end of the Naval Headquarters. Beyond the ironore doors were the courtyards leading to Godhallem. Rain was lashing down full force upon the Blue Fort when they emerged, the wind whipping mercilessly against buildings and trees. Within seconds, Ana’s clothes were soaked.

  Ana squinted through the night, doing a quick sweep of the courtyards around her for blood. By her side, Ramson cut a striking form through the rain: tall, lean, and long-limbed, Bregonian doublet all sharp lines and hard edges.

  He
turned to her then, rainwater carving tracks down his cheeks. The only light came from the lamps burning through the windows of the buildings across the courtyard.

  Ramson grasped her arms. “Ana,” he said, his voice rough. “I don’t know how all this is going to end.”

  She closed her eyes briefly, relishing the way his hands were at once firm and gentle on her, his touch searing heat through the soaked fabric of her shirt. Time trickled away from them, eddying into a distant future where the path of the world split between their success and failure. But right now, in this moment, it was just the two of them.

  Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder rumbled as Ramson closed the gap between them. Rainwater dripped down the sharp planes of his face. There was something new to his gaze, something wild and untamed that sparked a fire inside her. His grip tightened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for anything that I’ve done to hurt you.” His wet hair was plastered to his face, his expression open and vulnerable in a way she had rarely seen it. “I’m sorry that I lied to you; I’m sorry that I used you; I’m sorry if I ever made you feel unsafe, I—” His voice caught. “I’m sorry, all right?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t say that. No matter how this ends, Ramson, I’ll be with you.”

  He was looking at her in a way that left her breathless. And as another streak of lightning tore across the sky, Ana closed the last step between them. Their lips met with all the hunger and desperation of the winds that howled around them, and she dug her fingers into his hair, tasting the salt and heat of his mouth mixed with rainwater.

  He made a sound deep in his throat and pulled her against him. The hard planes of his body pressed against hers through the fabric of their shirts and the burning of his skin ignited a fire deep in her soul. He was water and ocean and rain twining around her fierce flame of a heart, and as she kissed him, she had the sensation that she was falling into a bottomless abyss.

  When Ramson drew back, he was panting, his hair tangled and dripping water down his face. Ana had never seen his eyes so clear and so bright, his face so open and so confused. His hands trailed heat across her skin as he held her.

  In another life, in another story, Ana found herself thinking, they would have all the time in the world to spend with each other, to talk through the confusing tangle of desire and emotions that burned between them right now.

  But such tales were for storybooks, and this was not one.

  She took a step back. If she stayed with him any longer, she feared she would not have the strength to leave.

  But Ramson leaned forward and, this time, pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. There was a clarity to the way his eyes came to rest on hers. “You ready, Witch?”

  Ana nodded, and their fingers clasped tightly together. “Try to keep up, con man,” she said, and, turning, pulled him into a full sprint toward Godhallem.

  The main waterway to Godhallem was rushing and roiling like the ruthless currents of a river in flux. Some of it had flooded onto the marble walkway leading to the entrance. Ramson gripped Ana’s hand more tightly in his as they began to wade through the torrents of water. Once or twice, she slipped, and even Ramson stumbled in the tides several times, correcting his balance with the trained instincts of a Bregonian sailor that he’d honed long ago.

  The first warning sign Ramson came across were two ships smashed against the huge pillars that held up the structure of Godhallem. They were eerily empty, hulls bared and broken, strewn across the marble pavement like bones. Gone were the magen who had controlled the flow of water. Gone were the guards who had lined the steps leading to the Godhallem.

  Ramson found them piled at the door, bodies slashed, their blood streaked violently across the floor and the walls. He could guess at the culprit.

  Sorsha.

  The ancient ironore doors to Godhallem stood half-open, unmoving even in the winds that howled through the walkway. A sliver of yellow light fell across the pavement. Ramson and Ana inched up to the doors, flattening themselves against the wall.

  Ramson drew a deep breath and peered in.

  The scene was more dire than he’d imagined.

  The courtiers of the Bregonian Three Courts were scattered in a loose ring around the edges of the hall. They were all on their knees, their heads bowed, their bodies rigid.

  At the center of the hall, Nita stood before the searock dais, her fists clenched, her eyes narrowed in concentration. She was holding the Three Courts hostage.

  By her side was Sorsha. A cord tightened within Ramson at the sight of his sister. She wore her weapons like ornaments: daggers studding the belt at her hips, boots that curved and ended in the tip of a blade, knives dripping blood in both hands. Her auburn hair had come loose and framed her sharp face—where, like a foggy reflection in glass, he saw traces of his own.

  Sorsha grinned as she looked around the hall at the men bent at her feet. Her black eyes glinted dangerously as ever, yet there was something different about them, something unchained. If Sorsha had danced around the edges of madness before, she was now locked inseparably with it.

  And, sitting on the throne, rings of precious stones glinting on his fingers, was Alaric Kerlan. Ramson had seen many different expressions on his old master’s face, but now, there was only unbridled triumph in Kerlan’s eyes.

  Ramson’s gaze roved behind the dais. “Kerlan’s men,” he murmured in Ana’s ear, nodding to the figures who stood in the shadows. Some of them were from the group he’d encountered earlier tonight at Sapphire Port. Others were unfamiliar—meaning Kerlan had had to have planted them in the Blue Fort in the days before. Unease stirred in his stomach as Ramson realized there were more of Kerlan’s men roaming around the Blue Fort. There were definitely some ex–Order members whom he thought he’d glimpsed earlier tonight who weren’t here among these men.

  “I see twenty,” Ana whispered.

  Ramson did a quick count and nodded. “Some were my fellow Order members,” he said with a grimace. “Some, I don’t recognize—they could be Affinites.”

  Ana’s eyes narrowed, and he thought he saw the faintest stirrings of red in her eyes. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” she muttered back.

  She was tense, pressed against the wall in front of him, and Ramson felt a sudden sense of panic at the thought of something, anything, happening to her. “I think you should stay back,” he began, but Ana turned and pinned him with a glare.

  “Not a chance, con man,” she hissed, swiping rain from her face. “What are you going to do? Shovel water at them?”

  He frowned at her. “Is that all you think I’m good for?” he whispered back, but Ana prodded him into silence. She jerked her chin back at Godhallem, her face suddenly paling.

  Sorsha was pacing the dais, a maniacal smile curling her lips. Metal spikes hovered behind her, crowning her head like a twisted black halo. “Who’s next?” she shouted, and only then did Ramson see the bodies at her feet. Rivulets of red ran across the smooth floor. The gossamer curtains lining the open wall behind them, leading to the cliff and the precarious plunge to the oceans far, far below, twisted like phantoms as the storm outside continued to slash at them. “Oh, this feels so good!”

  Kerlan wasn’t going to attempt to convince the Three Courts to support him. He was simply going to eliminate those who didn’t.

  Ramson glanced up. The War Bells hung above the hall, wind swirling through their great metal rims and filling the hall with a low, melodic humming tone. Almost like a warning.

  He wasn’t here to take down all of Kerlan’s forces, Ramson reminded himself. He was just here to ring some bells.

  He shifted his angle so that he was looking at the wall to his right, where the stallion symbol of the Earth Court gleamed from the wall. Beneath that was a giant brass lever.

  All he needed to do was to get to that lever.

  He narrowed his ey
es, took measure. Twenty, maybe thirty steps—and he’d have to get there without anyone spotting him. Otherwise, Nita would seize him like a rag doll, Sorsha would riddle him with iron-spiked holes, and his plan would be over before it even began.

  “Ana,” he said, his tone urgent. “I’m going to ring the War Bells. Once I do that, I’ll be discovered, and all hell’s going to break loose. I’ll need your help to fight Kerlan and his Affinites. And if something happens to me…” He drew a breath and looked straight into her eyes. “I need you to ensure that those bells ring at all costs.”

  There was rain running down her cheeks, but her gaze was like fire. She remained stubbornly silent, staring at him, ensnaring him with those eyes.

  Ramson reached out and brushed back a strand of her hair. “Promise me,” he said.

  “I thought promises weren’t your thing,” she said quietly.

  “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” he said just as softly, then turned and slipped into Godhallem.

  Immediately, Ramson dropped into a squat, and the dais—along with Kerlan, Sorsha, and Nita—disappeared from view. Behind the rows of kneeling courtiers, he wasn’t visible to anybody.

  Sorsha continued to speak, her voice twisted in bitterness. “For my entire life, all of you have been watching my father use me, experiment on me, and then clap that vile collar back around my neck once he was done with me.” She gave a sharp laugh. “Today, it’s finally my turn! My turn to watch the expressions on your pathetic faces as I destroy this perverse legacy my father and previous men before him have created.”

  Ramson could sense the ripple of fear even as the courtiers’ bodies were held frozen by Nita’s Affinity.

  Quickly, quietly, he shifted his belt, turning it so that his dagger and Sorsha’s blackstone collar were at his back. He couldn’t have them dragging by his side.

  “Enough.” Kerlan’s voice rang out. “Well done, my daughters. You and I—we are paving the way to the future.”

  Ramson could imagine the sick little smile playing about Kerlan’s lips. Drawing another deep breath, he gathered his wits, dropped to his hands and knees, and began to crawl toward the Earth Court.