“I need the sword,” I hissed, glaring at Arsenault. Behind him, Severine’s hulking ambric throne glowed dully in the low sunlight. “And then I need time.”
“Done,” Oleander promised. Her eyes flashed, and she raised her bare hands, stained with streaks of green and carmine. “Can I kill that bastard?”
“No.” I pushed away a visceral memory of blood on bright mirror glass: This time, when I gazed into my reflection, I saw Gavin’s face staring back. “I’ve had enough of killing. But can you incapacitate his powers?”
She flexed her fingers. “That, I can do.”
The four of us rushed up the stairs toward Arsenault. I went first, and Luca and Oleander flanked me—Luca lashing out with his dagger and dancing circles around Red Masks, Oleander spinning venom from her mouth and anesthetics from her fingertips. Lullaby came last, spilling her song behind us to deter any pursuers—Red Masks jolted against it, then fell away, looking pleasantly dazed.
We crested the steps. Arsenault saw us—fury melted his features. His raised the sword in his good hand and shouted something incoherent. Luca barreled into his broken arm and sank his dagger into Arsenault’s thigh. He screamed, bloody teeth bared. Oleander walked up to him, composed as always, and slid her hand around his neck. Lines of puce laddered his throat—his eyes turned black, then rolled up into his head. He collapsed on the boards, a pace away from Gavin’s lifeless body.
“Go!” Oleander cried, rounding on me.
“We’ll make sure he stays where he is,” Lullaby promised.
I shook myself, then bent to pick up the joined Relics where they had fallen from Arsenault’s insensate fingers. The sword was heavier than I expected—with the jagged kembric crown as its hilt, it weighted my arm. It was heavy with other things too—the burden of death and power. Still, I hefted it, trying to ignore the patina of blood drying along its already red surface. I drew the third Relic from my bodice—myRelic, the ambric sunburst I’d had since forever.
The Relic I’d touched a thousand times with hopeful fingers. The Relic I’d whispered my wishes to. The Relic that had made all my impossible dreams come true, then forced me to confront whether I wanted any of them after all.
Yes, I wanted the world I dreamed of.
No, it did not look the same as it once had.
But maybe that was what growing up felt like.
I lifted the ambric Relic to my lips. It glowed at my touch, then pulsed hard at my fingertips. A jolt of sadness bit into my heart, because I knew what I had to do. I’d known what I had to do from the moment I watched Arsenault join the first two Relics into one.
I lofted my ambric pendant. Low sunlight purred along its contours, lighting it from the inside.
I slammed it down. It fit perfectly into the pommel of the sword—its beveled edges sliding neatly between the sharp points of the kembric crown. A scrap of inky shadow slid around the hilt, welding the Relic in place. Echoes of ancient laughter and mythic blood and the forgotten scent of the Oubliettes gripped me.
Light exploded from the Relic.
It was pure amber at first, red as the sky above the palais. Then it took on the colors of a thousand skies—blasted orange and flat carnelian, sharp magenta and sheer blue. Metallic hues joined it, sharpening its curves into facets. Hammered kembric and bronze-bell hearts. Forged dristic and the sword of longing at the edge of love. And spooling through it, whisper thin, was a thread of moonlight, hard as diamond.
Abruptly, the light fell away, leaving a stunned crowd in its wake. Even the Red Masks had stopped to stare at the joined sword, which glowed a scalding, molten red. Silently, I lifted it for all to see. Slowly—just a few at first, scattered through the crowd—the Red Masks began to remove their disguises. And behind those masks they were just people—boys and girls, men and women, young and old and rich and poor. I stared down as the light from my Relics shone upon them, and tried to feel what they felt.
I stepped from the platform, sword balanced on my palms. Behind me, one of my friends made a noise in their throat. I ignored it, and took another step. Three. Four. The cobbles of the street rang beneath my heels, and I moved among the people. Husterri, diamond wolves, Red Masks, civilians caught in the conflict with nowhere to go—all crowded around me, tense as a bow with an arrow on its string.
I threw the sword down to clatter against the sun-glow street. Its light flared, then winked out.
Murmurs chased each other through the crowd.
“I am not your Sun Heir,” I said, harsh. “And I never will be.”
Silence rang loud. I stared at the Relic sword and tried to remember what I’d wanted to say.
“Four girls stand before you today,” I cried. “The first is Sylvie. She was born in the Dusklands, and grew up with shadows in her heart. She was taught to love the Scion, but not herself. And so she ran away toward the light, because she thought she could find a world where she belonged. She hadn’t yet learned that you belong wherever your heart lives.”
I lifted my eyes to Coeur d’Or, looming pristine and impossible above us. The crowd gazed with me, caught for a moment in the spell of my words.
“That first girl came here, to this palais, and became the second girl. They named her Mirage, for she was an illusion she had created for herself, an illusion of the person she thought she had to be—an illusion she didn’t dare find the edges of. She was taught that cunning and intrigue would earn her respect, and so she played their games of wits. She set traps with words and actions and laughed when they were sprung.”
I took a deep breath. The crowd inhaled with me.
“Then she learned of the taint in her bloodline, the sick beating heart at the center of all she’d ever known. And she became the third girl. She had no name, but she had violence in her eyes and deadly intent in her bones. She hunted down the woman who she thought was to blame for all her pains, all her sorrows. That woman was her sister. She carved out her ribs with mirror glass, and tried not to stare too closely at her own reflection gazing back from the shining blade.”
A little gasp ran through the crowd. Weight shifted. Eyes grew hard. I bit my lip and hoped I wasn’t losing them.
