Just as she was.
Elena drew her jacket tighter to fight off the chill. Although the sun had set, people still milled around the platform. News of the war had delayed several hovertrains, their connection included. Now they huddled underneath a steel pillar, and she studied the faces of the people she had been taught to distrust. She spotted a young girl with a lopsided smile; an old man with eyebrows thicker than a sandstorm; a woman who paced across the platform, talking rapidly into a headset.
They were, in short, far more mundane than she had imagined.
All her life, she had abhorred the Jantari. Her father called them zeemir-slinging oppressors, bent on robbing Sayon of her riches and turning her people into machines. But here, she saw only men and women tired after a long day of work, tensing at every new war-ridden headline. Mothers and fathers impatient to get home and wrap their arms around their family to make sure they were safe.
“Here,” Yassen said, breaking her thoughts.
Elena turned as he handed her a hot cup of tea from the vendor at the end of the platform. She cradled it between her hands, letting its heat chase away the cold. Yassen leaned against the pillar, sighing.
“The train should be here by now.”
She began to tell him that their train had been delayed by another hour when a gasp rippled across the platform. Elena turned as the holos flashed. A brief headline warned viewers of gruesome content, and then it was replaced by a video.
Elena instantly recognized Alabore’s Passage, the route of her parade.
The buildings, once adorned by marigolds and streamers, lay in shambles. Walls were missing or blown out. Ripped orange banners and debris littered the streets. But it was not the smoke or the ruined buildings that made Elena’s blood still.
It was the body.
A tank rolled across the fallen banners, dragging a blackened form behind it. Though most of the corpse was burned, Elena could tell that it once had been a tall man. It wore long royal-red robes that dragged across the broken ground. Soldiers dressed in black, with the silver snake of the Arohassin on their jackets, marched beside the tank. Their faces were streaked with ash, but their eyes burned with conviction as they shouted: “Long live the king.”
The video cut to the White Lotus. The Arohassin soldiers looped a rope around the neck of the corpse. They climbed up the stone sculpture, pulling the body, and then flung the corpse over. It bounced, swaying in the air.
A soldier turned to the camera in mock salute.
“Long live the king.”
And then it hit Elena.
She made a sound, something caught between a sob and a scream. People turned. Yassen draped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, burying her face in his chest. She tried to pull away, but he only held her tighter.
“My fath—”
“It’s not him,” he whispered fiercely in her ear. “There’s no way they could have fished him out of the Eternal Fire. The Eternal Fire, Elena. He would have burned to ash in a moment.”
But the body, the robes. It was her father. They dragged him through the streets like a criminal, like an animal. She struggled against him.
“Elena, think,” he pleaded. “If that really is Leo, then where is the crown? They were in the same room. How could they have found his body but not the crown?”
She slumped into him. He was right. She had lost the crown at the same time the Eternal Fire had claimed her father. The body the Arohassin paraded down the streets was merely a decoy.
When she stopped struggling, he let her go. Elena pulled away and drew in a deep, long breath, but her throat hitched. How dare they dishonor the Ravani king? How dare they eventhinkto desecrate his body?
“King Farin has issued a statement,” a reporter was saying. “All Ravani within Jantar must report to the authorities. If you do not report willingly, you shall be detained. Find your nearest hovertrain station and report to the police. Do not bring your belongings.”
A murmur rippled across the platform. The girl with the lopsided smile hid herself within her mother’s skirts. The old man snorted, his mouth twisted in disdain. Workers glanced furtively at each other, at her, and for once Elena felt grateful for her awful visor.
Yassen gestured. “Let’s move to the other side of the platform.”
They turned to leave, but a man stepped in front of them. He was dressed in black, with a winged ox across his chest. A Jantari policeman.
“I need to see some identification,” he demanded.
At the other edge of the platform, Elena saw more police officers sauntering through the throng. The crowd split away, revealing those who hid within. There were confused shouts. She spotted a policeman yelling at a young man. When he did not produce a holo, the officer grabbed him by the back of his neck. Elena stiffened, but then Yassen stepped forward and held out his holopod.
“The name’s Cassian Newman,” he said to the policeman.
