“I have now.”
“Thank you for agreeing to see us,” says Queen Fanna with a small smile. “Even if it was somewhat under duress.”
“Yes, well, I’ve vowed to be less disagreeable than I used to be,” I inform them.
Katya lets out a giggle that she quickly turns into a cough.
“Does your father know you’re here?” I ask her.
“Yes,” she says. “He has mixed feelings about it, but he did not try to stop me.”
“You do know this is terrible timing?” I point out.
At that, Princess Shay, who is even younger than I am, has the grace to blush. “We were very sorry to hear about Prince Abra,” she says. “Please accept our sympathy. We wouldn’t have come at such a time if we hadn’t felt it was important.”
Bear’s small, rueful smile the last time I saw him flashes across my mind, and I clench one fist into the arm of my chair.
“I’m listening,” I say.
Queen Fanna speaks up, quiet but clear. “Did you kill my father?”
I tilt my head at her. “Yes.”
“I see.” Her poise doesn’t crack for even an instant. “You did it yourself?”
“Yes.”
She nods. “Very well. What do you need?”
“I—what?”
“What do you need to defeat your brother quickly and win this war?” she explains. “It is in all our best interests that this war ends as soon as possible. So, what can we do to help?”
I feel like my brain must have turned to mush while I was on Ashma because none of this makes any sense. “Your father gave us the gold we needed to hire a fleet of mercenaries,” I tell Queen Fanna, bewildered. “They’re somewhere over the Aqua Nebula as we speak, cutting off Alexi’s supply chain from Tamini. That was the extent of the deal your father and I struck. As for you two”—I blink at Katya and Shay—“last time I looked, you were both definitely on my brother’s side. What’s going on?”
“Fanna, Katya, and Shay came to see me,” says Prime Minister Gomez. “They know I have been your uncle’s ally for some time now, and they assumed, correctly, that I might have some insight into your character.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “And?”
“Alexi lied to us,” Shay says quickly, the words tumbling out. “I sided with him after what happened to Skylark last year, but it was a mistake. I think he means well, but he lied about Arcadia. He even lied to King Ralf about you, in spite of how extraordinarily kind Ralf has been to him. Prime Minister Gomez says you’re not like him. She says if you make a promise, you’ll keep it.”
I should keep my mouth shut, I really should, but, reluctantly, I say, “Alex doesn’t usually lie. He wanted to tell Ralf the truth.”
“Kyra has a lot of sway over him,” Princess Katya says shrewdly. “We’ve noticed.”
“Prince Max told us that Sorsha would not be a threat for much longer,” Queen Fanna says. “It seems that he, too, can be trusted. She’s gone, like he promised. You stopped her.”
“Alex killed her.”
“We know what really happened out there, Esmae,” Prime Minister Gomez says, shaking her head. “Everyone does. Titania recorded the whole thing. Apparently, she backed up all her data to external servers before she became human. Prince Max showed us the footage.”
“We know you tried to save her and the rest of us,” says Fanna. “As far as I’m concerned, that is worthy of far more respect than the act of killing the last of a species.”
How long has it been since that day? While I was carved hollow, during all those days I could barely breathe, the world shifted.
And, against all odds, it shifted to side with me.
I was a pawn. I was no one. Alex was the golden son. Even after I won Titania, even after everything went wrong, I was still the dark to his light. How, then, has that turned upside-down?
“You understand I’ve done terrible things,” I say, floundering in my confusion.
“You killed my father,” says Queen Fanna. “That may seem like a terrible thing, but it was not.”
“I did that to get what I wanted.”
“You had what you wanted,” she reminds me. “He’d already given you the gold. You didn’t kill him to get what you wanted. You know as well as I do that you killed him to stop him from ever hurting another girl like he hurt my mother and my stepmothers.”
“You saved Teresa,” Katya adds.
I stare. “I don’t even know who Teresa is!”
“You don’t know her name, but you do know her. She’s a servant. She was the kitchen maid in Arcadia, the one you sent running from Alexi’s palace in terror.” Katya smiles. “Her sister works in our kitchens. She told me what you did. And it occurred to me that maybe you sent her away to save her. Because you were willing to let hundreds of soldiers die when Arcadia burned but not one unimportant servant girl.”
Princess Shay huffs impatiently. “For heaven’s sake, Esmae. You may not be charming and heroic and sparkly like your brother, but you must think we’re all fools if you imagine for one moment that we haven’t noticed the quiet things you do.”
“Sparkly?”
She blushes. “You know what I mean.”
“And you’re saying I’m not charming?”
“Now you’re just teasing me.”
I smile in spite of myself. “I would very much appreciate your help. All of you.”
Katya hesitates. “I—I can’t actually help. My father made Alexi a promise and we can’t betray that. I just came here to— well, I—”
I think I understand. She came here so that I would know that she may not be my ally, but she’s choosing to be my friend.
“Thank you,” I say softly. “I promise this will end. I’ll make sure of it.”
But end how? I’ve always believed that this can only end when either Alex or I is dead, but is there another way? Max said I could choose how this ends, and Ash said he would give the mortal world one more chance to choose how we go on if I could show him that we can choose peace over war, and both of those things feel like riddles I don’t know the answers to. How can you choose peace when the other side will not? We’ve gone too far for that now. So how can you choose an ending when it’s not just up to you?
I don’t know how I feel about my brother anymore. Love, jealousy, and hate are too tangled up to pick them apart. But I do know I don’t want to kill him. I never did. I also know that after everything that’s happened and everything I’ve done, he wants to kill me. And when our final battle comes around, that’s how he’ll fight. He won’t give up.
But what if I can make him? What if there’s something I can do to persuade him to surrender? I don’t know what that something is, but maybe it’s not something I have to do alone. I have all of Kali, Shloka, Skylark, Elba, and Wychstar behind me now. Maybe that’s enough to make a difference.
Because if there’s some way I can make Alex stop, then perhaps, just perhaps, this will end without more blood, without more death.
Unexpectedly, the stubborn, persistent seedling of hope in my heart tips its face to the sun again. What if this is how I can show Ash that we deserve to choose how to live our messy, short, glorious lives? If I can win without destroying everything, if I can salvage what’s left of all of us, maybe the war will be over, everyone left will live, and the astra will go back into the stone where it belongs.
After all, I’m not the girl in the shadows anymore, a mere pawn in the game, desperate to prove herself, longing to be seen. I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve made my way across the board. I’ve lost family, and I’ve found family. I’ve fallen in love. I’ve fallen into the dark and come back out again.
So why, then, shouldn’t I be able to change the ending of this story?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Esmae
The Night Temple is an old, almost forgotten place. Once, it was considered sacred, a quiet, holy sanctuary where those who were ill and wounded in a multitude of ways
went to heal. Where those who felt they had done too much wrong went to pay penance.
There also used to be a tradition that when a child reached their eighteenth birthday, they went to the Night Temple to pray for clarity as they began their journey into adulthood. Almost no one does that now, mostly because, these days, most of us leave our childhoods behind a whole lot sooner than at the age of eighteen, but it would seem that Ash wants me to revive the tradition for some reason.
When I arrive at the temple, tucked deep into the mountains on the planet Kodava, a fine mist hangs in the air, painting the rolling green hills with puffs of white. It’s just after midnight, on the anniversary of my birth, and a fat golden moon perches above the mountains. I breathe in, and the air smells like tea, coffee, flowers, and rain. It smells impossibly pure.
After a short trek up the side of the mountain to the temple doors, I find them open. There’s no one in sight, though I can see lit windows in the turrets and towers behind the temple.
I know this place is still sacred to those who live here and those who actually care to visit, but, still, my nerves are all on edge as I step inside. I’ve been ambushed too many times to trust any place.
The temple is empty. It’s a smallish stone room with a high arched ceiling and narrow windows, a room designed for quiet worship and meditation rather than for large gatherings. Warm, dim light spills into the room from tall lanterns in the corners, casting long shadows into the nooks and crannies. Tapestries hang on the walls, each with a painting of a god, and there’s an altar at the end of the room with statues of Ash and Bara on it.
There’s something on the three steps leading up to the altar. Curious, I step closer, only to pull up short when I see what it is.
It’s a Warlords board, with the pieces all laid out in their starting places.
This can’t be a coincidence. I sit cautiously down on the step beside the board, touching the beautiful pieces with careful fingers. This was left here for me.
But why?
As if I’d asked the question out loud, I get my answer.
There’s someone else here. I hear his breathing, quiet and a little unsteady.
Alex steps out of the shadows.
I’m not really surprised.
“You,” he says, teeth clenched. “Is there no escape from you?”
“It’s my birthday, too,” I point out.
As he draws closer, I get a better look at him. I’ve never seen him in such a state. His eyes are hollowed out, ringed with shadows so dark they’re almost black, and his face is drawn, pale and unshaven. There’s a jittery look about him, in the way he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, like he hasn’t eaten or slept in days. Worst of all, there’s a look of mania in his eyes that’s unsettlingly, painfully familiar.
“Happy day of our birth, then,” he rasps, with a bark of a sound that I think is supposed to be a laugh.
This is not an Alexi Rey I’ve met before. Gone is the charm, the friendly earnestness, the irritating arrogance. This Alexi Rey has lost his best friend, his one constant companion, his brother. He’s—
Well, he’s me.
“You didn’t come to his funeral,” my brother says.
“I wasn’t invited.”
“I thought you’d come anyway. Since when do you do what you’re told?”
I could point out that while Bear was burning to ash and rejoining our ancestors in the celestial world, I was trying to persuade the most powerful god in existence not to send us all to the celestial world. Instead, I bite my temper back and gesture to the Warlords board. “I think we’re supposed to play.”
Eyes fixed on me with a resentment and hatred that would have terrified me if I didn’t understand it only too well, Alex sits on the step on the other side of the board and nudges one of his pawns forward. “Why are you here?”
“I was ordered to come.”
“Funny, that,” he says. “So was I.”
“Who asked you to?” I ask curiously.
“Kirrin.”
But I know Ash must have told Kirrin to. He wants us both here tonight. I don’t know why, but he does.
Was this what Ash meant when he told me he’d give me time and another chance? Am I supposed to do something here, with my brother, that will somehow make an ancient, powerful god change his mind about ending the world?
I move one of my horses, leaping over the pawn in front of it and moving two spaces ahead and one space to the left. It’s an unusual move this early in the game and Alex glares at the piece. He seems to be using the board as an excuse not to look at me, which is fine by me because it’s hard to look at him, too.
When I think of the proud, confident boy I met at the competition last year, and the way he’s changed over these past months, it’s hard not to understand why my mother was always so afraid of me.
I have destroyed him.
“You were right,” he says unexpectedly, moving another pawn. He’s so jittery that he almost knocks his king over.
“About what?”
“Mother.”
I look up at him then. “She told you what she did? To our father?”
“She’s not even trying to keep secrets anymore,” he says, waving a hand. His voice is bitter. “She doesn’t care enough to bother. When I asked her about Father, she told me. No lies, nothing. With Bear gone, it’s like she doesn’t care about anything anymore.”
“I’m sure she still loves you,” I say, feeling only a little sympathetic. I know what it’s like to feel betrayed by our mother.
“Yes,” he says with such dismissive certainty that I wonder what it must be like to grow up never doubting that you’re loved and wanted. “But she’s not afraid for me anymore. You told her she’d have two children. She has two children. She doesn’t think she’ll lose me now, so it’s all over for her. She might as well have died, too.”
“Do you wish she had?”
“No, but maybe that would have been better. I don’t know. How can I ever look at her the same way again? She killed my father.”
“Our father,” I remind him.
He makes a dismissive sound, like that’s irrelevant. I suppose, to him, it is.
I move my chariot. He takes my horse. I move my king’s pawn forward.
After a long silence, and several more moves, his voice shudders out of him like he couldn’t contain it anymore. “Why?”
I wait.
He takes a shaky breath. “Why did you tell her she’d have only two children by the end of this? Why would you swear such a thing?”
I clench the fingers of my right hand over my prosthetic thumb. “Do you really think what I said sealed Bear’s fate?” I ask coldly. “Not, perhaps, the fact that Leila Saka couldn’t resist attacking the Hundred and One when she should have stayed away? Why was Bear even with her?”
“He went with Leila to try and talk some sense into her,” Alex says flatly.
“And now he’s dead.” I move my pawn, almost slamming the piece down on the board. “He was my brother, too, you know. I loved him.”
“He’s dead because you said—”
“It was supposed to be you or me!” I snap. “It was never supposed to be Bear. If I’d actually gotten what I wanted when I made that vow, it would have been you or me. I hate that I was careless. I made the same mistake Grandmother and Mother did. I threw those words out without considering the many ways it could end. And for that, I’m sorry. But I didn’t kill our brother.” I should stop, but I don’t. “Our mother, your general, and your ambition did that.”
He puts his queen down just two paces from my king. “Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you dare blame me for this!”
“Bear died because you wouldn’t let your crown go,” I say ruthlessly. “You can pretend otherwise, but you know it’s true.”
“I was ready to let the crown go,” he growls. “I told you we’d stay in Arcadia. But you couldn’t let me have that.”
This is a cycle without an
end. It doesn’t matter what it costs us. Somehow, sooner or later, we end up back here, full of fury and sorrow.
Those mad, burning eyes stare into mine. I wonder what he sees. The same kind of madness, I expect. We may have just turned eighteen, but we haven’t been children in a long time.
“This has to stop, Alex,” I say.
“I agree. The next time we meet, this ends.”
He’s been so busy trying to get his queen to corner my king, he hasn’t noticed the rest of the board. I move my pawn one last space, turning it into a second queen.
“Warlord lock,” I say, tracing the lines between his king and my two queens. “You really should pay more attention to the pawns.”
He lets out a bark of laughter, standing. “This game is the only way you can beat me, Esmae. You know that. You can’t win this war.”
“No, Alex. You can’t win. Your allies are on my side now. You drove them away.”
“I don’t need them,” he says. “When you lost Titania, you lost this war. I’ve already won. You just don’t know it yet.”
As the temple doors slam shut behind him, I can’t help feeling that if this was Ash’s idea of a test, I must have completely and resoundingly failed.
“Well,” says a voice from a dark corner of the temple, making me knock the Warlords board over in surprise. “That was dramatic. Tea?”
It turns out our great-grandmother, the old queen Cassela, knew we were coming and came to see us.
Peering with misgiving into the unlit corner where she’d stayed hidden the whole time, I shake my head in confusion. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“And interrupt such a fond interaction?” she replies, dry as dust. She beckons me out of a side door I hadn’t noticed before. “Come along, Ez-may, and be quick about it. My old bones don’t do as well with the cold as yours do.”
Still reeling from my conversation with Alex, I follow her obediently out of the temple, across a courtyard, and up a flight of stairs leading into one of the turrets set into the mountains. We don’t see anyone else on the way.
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