He kissed my forehead, and I hugged him as long as I dared.
“Dowser.” I drew back. “Can I ask you to stay behind, tomorrow? To stay in the palais.”
“You want me to sit this one out?”
“I want you as a last resort. I’ll be sending nonessential legacies and soldats back to you. If anything goes wrong—in a worst-case scenario—”
I couldn’t tell whether my teacher looked rueful or grateful. Either way, he nodded.
“It won’t go wrong.” Even though I knew it wasn’t his promise to make, the words soothed me. “But no matter what happens, child, know that I will always be your first and last resort.”
The coronation procession proceeded up the Concordat, and we all waited and watched from the crowd, breathless with suspense.
Spectators lined the grand boulevard, decked out in Ecstatica finery. The ban on luxury goods had been lifted for the occasion, and it showed—the wealthy dressed in sparkling silks and luxurious satins, bright colors burning hotter than the honey-blush sky. Vendors moved amongst the crowds, offering up traditional Ecstatica fare: sugary demi-coquilles and decanters of crémant, the latter of which were being drunk at an alarming rate. The mood of the crowd seemed festive, with an edge—as though one wrong step or false word would set them to rioting.
It made me nervous.
It wasn’t long before Gavin drew close enough for me to see his face. If I’d thought he’d looked like the Sun Heir before, his costume today put everything else to shame. He wore a suit of armor that didn’t so much reflect the sunlight as expand it, shooting spears of incandescence into watching eyes. He had all three Relics on him—the blade hanging at his waist, the crown looped safely around his belt, and—
My chest contracted when I saw my ambric pendant dangling from his throat.
He proceeded slowly up the avenue, shaking hands and greeting people as he went. Arsenault stood at his shoulder, and a parade of Husterri marched up the Concordat behind him. For a moment, I was dazzled by Gavin’s light and his smile and the sense of goodness oozing off him. I shouldn’t be doing this. Who was I to question the outcome of the Ordeals? I wasn’tpositivehe cheated—
“Scion, what a rat,” Oleander snarled, from my shoulder.
Surprise jerked my gaze from Gavin, and when I looked back, the glamour had faded. Although he stood straight and smiled, his gaiety seemed forced and he looked strained. I noticed he greeted every person with a question I couldn’t hear—their voiceless response turned my stomach. They passed their hands in front of their eyes, as though wiping away a vision they couldn’t unsee. A Huster behind him passed out glittering gold écu to those who correctly completed the gesture.
Have you invited the Scion’s light to banish the dusk?
I see his light beyond my eyes.
I clenched my hands. Today, of all days—on Ecstatica, the high holy day marking a new tide—he was still forcing conversions. My bejeweled nails pushed against my palm, flaking paint from my skin. I forced myself to relax. This would all be over soon, one way or another.
The tenor of the crowd grew louder the closer Gavin came to the palais. A grand platform had been erected by the gates—uncomfortably similar to the one where Pierre LaRoche had been ruthlessly executed by his own compatriots—adorned in all the garish symbolism of my family line. Shining sunbursts adorned the corners; pennants of kembric whipped in the breeze; flowers tumbled in cascades from polished urns. And upon it sat Severine’s ambric throne.
Something ugly twisted in my stomach at the sight of it. Even after all this time, the ambric throne still felt likehers.But here it was, removed from the Atrium in all its erstwhile glory, plunked into the center of this pantomime like the symbol it was.
Gavin reached the steps leading to the dais. He took them slowly—the crowd roared. Arsenault followed close behind, with a half dozen Husterri. Gavin turned, lifted his hands. He was about to make a speech.
I turned to my people. I made eye contact with them each in turn—Oleander, Luca, Lullaby; Billow and Haze and the few Sinister courtiers I could see planted among the crowd.
“Now,” I said.
Haze and Shade joined hands and bowed their heads. Shadows immediately poured out of their joined palms, unspooling like liquid vapor through the crowd. Fingers of darkness curled into crevices and brushed along cobblestones, reaching and coalescing all along the Concordat. A wave of black crested over the crowd. Cries of fear mixed with cries of wonderment. The shadows curled upward, blotting out the sun, and I reached toward the edges of the vapor with my own power, tweaking the borders of the false night and making them go on forever. A haunting melody lifted up above the crowd, a dreamlike lullaby that muffled my doubts in an eerie serenity.
In the black calm that fell, I shucked off my cloak. Gloved hands touched my shoulders—Oleander, helping me adjust my gown by sight alone. Cloth sighed around my legs. Metal boning cut into my ribs and shoulders, painful but necessary. Heavy jewels weighted my steps. I looked toward Billow, nearly invisible in the dusk, and nodded.
My feet lifted off the ground and my stomach did a somersault as I rose up. And up. Andup.
In the darkness, I couldn’t judge distance, and fear pulsed hot between my ribs. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember all the times we’d practiced this. It had felt the same—the breeze whistling in my ears, my body lifting weightless as a feather, my balance focused on the corset clamped around my waist. Finally, I slowed, and I knew Billow had lifted me as high as she was able.
I opened my eyes, and straightened my spine. Below, the crowd was halfway to panic, wails of terror mixing with murmurs of confusion. I didn’t have much time before chaos broke out.
I rubbed my hands together, then filled the artificial darkness with stars. Specks of light appeared in the seemingly endless darkness, bright as diamond and just as perfect. Wails turned to exclamations; muttering to excited chatter. For a long moment, I let the stars glitter, distant and icy and pristine. Then I drew the light back into myself. It pulsed above my heart, once. Twice. And on the third heartbeat, I let it go.
Pure radiance cascaded down the front of my gown and beyond, illuminating a bright corona of moonlight around my figure. The dress itself was sewn from velvet the precise color of Haze and Shade’s false night, and decorated with constellations of diamonds. The jewels caught the pale light and magnified it against the dark, making it seem as though I floated among the stars. My hair was dusted with dristic and the diamonds embedded in my flesh sang. I hung, motionless and luminous, until everyone in the crowd had caught sight of me.
And then I opened my palm and showed the crowd something that wasn’t there—the lost Relic. I imagined it nearly as big as my palm, an enormous diamond of impossible beauty. It caught a lingering shard of moonlight and sparked with white light. Rainbow prisms danced across its face and scattered across the Concordat. It glowed, bright and brighter, until the entire space was pure luster.
