“We met three days’ ride from the city,” Sunder supplied. “He’d heard nothing of Gavin, or the Ordeals. We decided to ride in together.”
“We ambushed your wolves,” Thibo corrected him, with a laugh. “And you bribed me here with promises of a bath and a half-decent cocktail.”
Sunder inclined his head. Thibo strode forward and folded me into an embrace. I gripped him tight, inhaling his unfamiliar scent of dust and sweat and fading Duskland shadow.
“I looked for you.” Tears threatened to choke me.
“And now,” he said, “you found me.”
The crowd churned restless. I looked around and nearly laughed—how many different armies clogged this boulevard? Three? Four? Uncertain Husterri and sour-faced Red Masks gripped weapons and looked for escape routes. But between the palais and Sunder’s and Thibo’s soldats, everyone was pinned down.
Perhaps it was time we all stopped trying to fight each other.
“Build a pyre.” I drew myself up to my full height and ignored the nervous glances. “Use the wood from the podium. Any Red Mask who throws his disguise into the fire is free to leave this place of death and betrayal. Any who doesn’t—”
I glanced at Sunder. His glittering eyes gave nothing away.
“Any who doesn’t may leave too. They will answer to the Scion. But I will no longer rule this city with swords and violence.”
I turned and faced the broader crowd. “That goes for all of you! Husterri—you have done nothing wrong but follow orders. You are free now to do as you please. Ambers, this city has been a closed fist for too long. As of now, I declare all gates open, all trade routes resumed, all purchasing bans lifted. Everyone else—?”
I looked at my friends—myfamily. My ribs unclenched around my heart. A trickle of color spilled out to dance along my bones. I smiled.
“I think it’s time to go home.”
Thibo let out a whoop, and leapt into his saddle, dragging a laughing Lullaby up behind him. Horses stomped and whinnied. Oleander and Luca clasped hands and grinned. Sunder swung onto his destrier. He held a hand out for me.
“Coming, demoiselle?”
I shook my head.
“I think this is something I have to do on my own.”
I turned, squared my shoulders, and walked into my palais. And for just a moment, the sword resting heavy on my shoulders didn’t feel like such a burden.
My new Relics roused me from sleep with a premonition of death.
I fumbled through gloom. My fingers found the edge of my circlet, discarded by the bed—the metal was cold to the touch, and I flinched away. I found the hilt of my sword a moment later. I gripped the ambric sunburst at the pommel, and it glowed—sunlit warmth flooded through my veins, and behind it strode the twin comforts of strength and rationality. I breathed deep against the bloody push of images I didn’t understand.
I was beginning to intuit the power of these joined Relics. The ambric Relic had helped me earn all the things my heart desired. The dristic Relic gave my hands strength. The kembric Relic kept my wits sharp. Together in my hand, they made me stronger, smarter, and wiser. It was a feeling I wanted to lash to my bones. It was a feeling I wanted to reject. It was a feeling that made me want to take over the world.
I levered myself onto my elbow and glanced over my shoulder at Sunder. He slept sprawled on his side of the bed. His limbs kept just enough distance from me that I knew, even in sleep, how carefully he kept himself in control. I reached out, slowly, until my hand rested a hairsbreadth from his fingers. A spark zipped between us—pain lashed up my arm toward the elbow. I curled my hand away. I watched for Sunder’s steady breathing, then slid out of bed and padded from the room.
The palais was silent in the hours past Nocturne. Ambric globes pulsed light into creeping shadows, and I kept to the center of the halls. No black-clad wolves stood guard at corners or doorways. In the weeks since Ecstatica, I had refused to return to the martial law I’d relied on after my coup. There had been unrest, yes, and more than a few skirmishes. And this empire would never be free of swords. Half of the Husterri had chosen to defect to my ranks, and a few Loup-Garou too. I smiled when I remembered Calvet’s declaration of loyalty, his bowed head and dristic sword.
Sun Heir or Duskland Dauphine, he’d promised.Either way, your light shines my way.
I didn’t think Sunder had minded. Much.
But I didn’t want soldats posted in these halls. I’d realized they made me just as nervous as the potential threat of unseen assassins. And there had been none of those since Sainte Sauvage had been exiled to Aifir with a strongly worded missive to the high commander and a hefty dose of Oleander’s legacy-numbing poison in his veins.
Besides, something told me I wasn’t defenseless anymore. With each step I took, the power of the joined Relics whispered in my bones—each pulse of my heart pushed their influence deeper.
It had been generations since they’d been joined together. They wouldn’t let me die so soon.
I slipped into Severine’s chambers unnoticed and unseen. The room had been dimmed for Nocturne, but ambric light spilled in from the open skylight, painting the pale walls in shades of ruin. I stared at her still form, half hoping for her to finally be dead. But the bloody vision my Relic had shown me wasn’t true. I had seen her death, seen her dying, yet she just lay still, captured between life and death.
Perhaps it had just been a bad dream. I sank onto the edge of her bed with a sigh and looked at my sister.
