He faced me. “I know you don’t know me, cousin. But when I heard Severine had been dethroned, I wasglad. You have to understand—your sister was no friend to me. My time at court was fraught. But it made me the man I am today—without the difficulties I faced at Coeur d’Or, I’m not sure I would ever have invited in the Scion’s light. In a way, it was Severine who finally inspired me to banish the dusk. I just wanted to share that light with the person brave enough to finally defeat her.”
His words thudded with unwelcome familiarity in my ears. They were the Scion’s Vow, and I’d heard them a thousand times in the Duskland temple where I was raised.
Have you invited the Scion’s light to banish the dusk?
And the answer was always:I see his light beyond my eyes.
So Gavin d’Ars was a believer. And he’d come here with his holy light and his unerring faith to tell me how to run the empire I’d stolen with my own sister’s blood.
I swallowed the memories of my shadow-smeared childhood, hidden away in the dusk; my soul-deep certainty that I belonged somewhere else and would risk everything to find that place; shattered mirror glass and dim sunlight, grappling fingernails and the splash of blood. The scars along my arms ached.
Why couldn’t I remember what it felt like to besure?
My sunburst Relic throbbed against my chest, as if to remind me of everything I’d lost, and everything I had yet to find.
“I apologize, but I’m going to have to cut this meeting short,” I ground out.
“That’s too bad.” Disappointment wafted across Gavin’s face, then blew away on a breeze of excitement. “Will I see you again?”
“I’m sure you will. Have you spoken to the palais châtelaine about accommodations? I’m not sure we can house your entire retinue, but perhaps—”
“I’m not staying at the palais,” interrupted Gavin.
“Oh.” I frowned. “Then where?”
“The Sabourin town house in Jardinier.” He named a wealthy district outside the walls of Coeur d’Or. “Haven’t you been?”
Of course I hadn’t been. I’d only found out about it a few weeks ago, and only to discover it didn’t belong to me. I chained sudden resentment behind a carefree smile.
“Afraid not.”
“Well, you’ll have to come visit. I’ll have you over for tea and show you all the family heirlooms.”
I forced my creaking knees into a passable curtsy. Then I fled the Esplanade and my distant—but legitimate—cousin’s smiling air of grace and innocence.
Imarched back toward the palais, self-loathing and uncertainty churning my stomach. Calvet and Karine peeled away from the Husterri, pacing me. I pushed back into my makeshift throne room, but Sunder and most of my advisors had gone—only Dowser remained, reading a heavy book in the amber light from one of the windows. He looked up when I walked in.
“You weren’t gone long.” His refined bass filled the room. “Is everything all right?”
“Not really.” I felt off-balance and anxious after my little tête-à-tête with Gavin—like I’d stared too long into Dominion shadows and couldn’t remember what the staring eye of the Scion looked like. “He has me at every disadvantage. He inherited the fortune that should have been mine. He looks and sounds like the Sun Heir. And he’s so certain of himself—of his place in this world.”
“It wasn’t so long ago that you were that certain,” Dowser reminded me. “When you fought for a dream only you could see, and inspired others to fight alongside you. We all still believe in your vision for a better world, child. Gavin’s arrival changes nothing.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. The touch was meant to calm me—ground me—but instead it made me jump.
“We have to find the Relics,” I said. “I need the symbols of this empire to bolster my claim to the throne. I need something Gavin doesn’t have. I need to be undeniable come Ecstatica.”
“I may be able to help with that.” Dowser nodded to the book he held, a heavy tome literally coming apart at the seams. “Barthet found this at Unitas. We overlooked it before—it’s more or less a book of children’s stories.”
He handed it over, revealing broad pages covered in lush but faded illustrations. I touched a page with gentle fingers that came away dark with the dust of tides. Sudden melancholy struck a silvery note in my heart. Once upon a time, this book had been loved. It would have held a place of honor in a nursery, its pages pored over by generations of faceless, nameless, long-dead children. But it had been relegated to the obscurity of time.
“It dates from before the Conquest—”
“—When the Sabourins ambushed their neighbors, annexed their principalities, centralized the monarchy, and expanded the Amber Empire to its modern borders,” I supplied.
“You’ve been studying.” Dowser smiled. “Do you remember the version of the Meridian myth I told you the other day?”
“With the molten sword?”
