“I am the sword that culls with light.” Pierre LaRoche’s eyes glowed, and he smiled a vicious, broken smile.
My pulse thudded strange in my ears. I’d had the Scion’s Vow memorized for as long as I could remember. And the third line was:I am the moon shining deep in Midnight. LaRoche’s line waswrong.
“That’s the wrong line,” I said out loud.
“No, it’s not.”
“Who taught it to you?”
LaRoche’s eyes gleamed. “He who will crush you with sunlight and feed your bones to Midnight.”
Blood burst behind my eyes. I slapped him. His head twisted on his neck and bounced against the stone wall. I lunged for him again, but a pair of hands clamped onto my shoulders and dragged me back.
“I thought you had other methods of persuasion?” Sunder’s disapproval was a knife against my throat. “That kind of interrogation is a little more my style.”
I wrenched myself out of his grasp and paced to the wall and back, struggling to control my breathing. LaRoche still smiled, although a hand-shaped bruise bloomed on his smooth cheek.
“Your red masks,” I said without preamble. “They’re supposed to be Meridian’s flaming sword, is that it?”
His eyes flickered.Good.I knew something I wasn’t supposed to know. I leaned closer, pressing my advantage.
“Did you know Sisters of the Scion raised me in a temple on the edge of Dominion?” Pierre sneered, like he thought I was lying. “I have seen the edge of Midnight, Pierre. I have seen bloated red clouds slide away into blackness. I have dreamed the glimmer of impossible stars. I have tasted the smoky shadows creeping into the light to snatch away the living. And I can tell you firsthand—there is no Scion. There is no beacon shining light into dark. There is no solace at the edge of the blight. And there is no molten sword doling out justice.”
The smile dropped off his face.
“This prison reminds me of the Dusklands.” My voice rang harsh. “Except for one difference—I am here. I am your sun. I am your solace. I am your sword.”
“Sacrilege,” breathed LaRoche.
“You are the eldest of five children?” Fear blossomed in the boy’s eyes. “Living in this city is hard enough as an orphan, without the taint of disgrace that comes with a brother’s head mounted on a spike at the city gate.” I paused to let my words drip down the cage of his imagination. “Do you see? You have a choice, Pierre. Give me the name of your leader, and I will be merciful. Your siblings will see their brother again. You will not die a traitor. Deny me? Well, I think you’ve already met my friend.”
Sunder’s jagged expression could have cracked the world. LaRoche stared from me to Sunder and back again, indecision tangling his features into knots.
“Pierre?” I prompted.
“You’ll never find him,” he snarled. “None of you preening aristos know the Paper City well enough. And the sooner you kill me, the sooner my soul becomes one with the light. I banish the dusk. I renounce the night.”
I rose from my crouch, smoothing my skirts as Pierre LaRoche began to pray. I swept toward the door, pausing beside Sunder.
“Demoiselle?”
“See what more you can learn from him,” I ground out.
“I already tried.” His voice was hoarse. “And all this? Imprisonment without trial, multiple interrogations, using a suspect’s family against them? It doesn’t look much like the new world you dreamed of. It looks like everything you claimed to hate about Severine’s rule.”
Severine.Her name seared my tongue. Sunder was right—everything that happened these past two spans was because I’d dared to dream of a strange, lovely world where I might finally belong. But what had that dream bought but bloodshed and death, pain and broken promises? Pierre’s vitriol made me confront what I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself—this cityhatedme. But I couldn’t begin to rebuild what I’d broken when Red Masks lurked behind corners and spread lies about me. Severine’s ways may have been brutal, but they’d kept her on a throne for seventeen tides.
“Try again.” I made my voice like stone despite the raging bonfire spinning smoke across my heart. “He can either live for me or die for them. Maybe you can make his choice a little easier.”
I didn’t wait for his answer before I fled. I clawed up the stairs. And when I abandoned the midnight of the dungeons for the sunlight world above, I still felt cloaked in Duskland shadows.
I forced myself to bathe and eat after I left the dungeon, but something about that place—thatboy—had settled in my stomach like slow poison. The prison had felt so familiar—it had reminded me of the Scion temple I’d grown up in, but there was something else too, a faded sensation glossed over with memory. Torchlight embossed on smooth dark stone. A crystalline gleam. The creeping feeling of being forgotten.
I shivered, and concentrated on deciphering more of my sister’s diary. Each passing page curled sharp-fingered hands around my heart and drew blood. I could not plumb its depths without feeling a pang of sympathy for my fiendish half sister, but nor could I fully square its spider-fine words with my own knowledge of my dead family.
Severine told the story of a brutal father obsessed with power and drunk on lust, and his two heirs, as different as different could be. Seneca—the Sun Heir—was a frail, sweet, strange young man with a legacy of dreams. Dreams that came and went like ebbing tides, frothed with truth but touched with madness. And Severine, a devious but devoted sister who would protect her brother at any cost, pitting herself against a father and emperor who possessed a legacy I could not fully tease out from her writings. Whatever it was, he used it to try to turn Seneca’s dreams and Severine’s love against each other.
My sister’s words rang with truth. After all—as everyone had pointed out—it was her personal diary. Why would she lie? But I couldn’t forget how carefully my sister had crafted her appearance, how cunning her sense of spectacle. What if this—this little book that outlived her—was her parting shot, a way to absolve her sins after she could no longer defend herself?
