“Those people who got hurt—that wasn’t your fault.” He paused meaningfully. I knew whose fault he believed it to be—Belsyre’s wolves. Dowser had disliked the Loup-Garou’s presence since we’d recaptured the city. He didn’t like theiroptics.
“Dowser, Sunder’s militia is the only thing holding this city together.”
“You can’t buy peace with weapons of war.”
“I’m not trying to buy peace. I’m trying to buy time. Until my coronation—until Ecstatica.”
Ecstatica—one of the high holy days of each tide, marking the rapturous moment Meridian caught sight of the Moon’s exquisite face and fell from the sky, ushering in the beginning of the longest day and the world as we knew it. We’d celebrated it in the Temple of the Scion where I grew up, but as a purely religious holiday, complete with periods of fasting, three days of silence, and hours of prayer that left me with bruises on my knees. The Amber City celebrated it as a secular holiday—gifts were exchanged, cakes were eaten, and plenty of wine was drunk.
The last three Sabourin rulers—Severine; my father, Sylvain; and his father before him—were crowned at Ecstatica. We hoped following suit would lend an air of legitimacy to my tumultuous rise to power. But the holiday was still nearly a span away. And the city had begun to gnash its teeth.
I decided to change the subject. “Did Sunder find the boy who attacked me?”
“I believe so.” Dowser retrieved a package from the door, and laid a blade across the foot of Severine’s bed. “He attacked you with this.”
Long and slender, the sword was forged of dristic, but a coating of bright red glossed the blade. At first it looked like blood, but when I dragged my fingertip along the balance it flaked away like paint.
“A painted sword?”
“I’m no expert on weaponry,” said Dowser, “but I know a few things about history and mythology. You’re familiar with the story of Meridian and the beginning of the longest day?”
“Of course.” Me and every man, woman, and child in the Amber Empire. The story of a wicked Sun enamored of an uninterested Moon, who tasked a powerful god-king named Meridian to slaughter the object of his affection. He flew across the heavens in a chariot of fire, with a golden net meant to capture the Moon, a silvery spear meant to pierce her heart, and a diamond vial meant to catch her blood. But when he saw the Moon, he could not kill her, and he fell to earth with his terrible tools. The net became kembric; the spear, dristic; and the broken vial, stained with mystical blood, became the ambric bones of an empire. And lost Meridian became the Scion, worshipped in many forms across the daylight world. “What does that have to do with this?”
“The legend didn’t spring into being fully formed. Like many stories, it evolved over time—each voice shading its meaning, each telling a new expression on a familiar theme. In a much earlier myth, Meridian did not carry a spear, but a sword. And because it was forged in the bosom of the Sun, the metal was molten—red-hot in Meridian’s hand. He was only able to carry it because in payment for his terrible deed, the Sun had promised him his own throne. He had named Meridian the Sun Heir.”
“You think this blade is supposed to represent that sword?” My head throbbed as if I’d slammed it on cobblestones again.
“That red mask the assassin wore too.”
That made sense—the pointed red nose did resemble a blade.
“But why?”
“I think it is an old image resurrected for a new problem.” Dowser hefted the blade. The skylight’s amber glow played over its contours. “Whoever these people are, they don’t believe you are the rightful Sun Heir. And they’re willing to die to try and stop your coronation.”
Dowser’s words fit sharp teeth around my heart, releasing a trickle of doubt down my ribs. Once upon a time I’d dared to dream of a strange, lovely world where I belonged. Jewels of memory gleamed at me from the dim—a dream of paradise and an empress’s sharp smile; a winter jardin and blood-red talons in the dusk; a kiss frozen in ice and a question that never had an answer.
But had that dream been nothing but illusion? I’d fought for that impossible world, but it had come with such steep costs. There had been bloodshed and death, pain and broken promises. The Skyclad banished to sprawling detention camps in the foothills of La Belladonne, replaced by Belsyre’s forbidding militia. A city chafing against the shackles of martial law. My own friends, broken and reeling, trying to repair lives shattered like the mirror glass I’d used to kill my own sister.
Almostkill.
Reflexively, I looked at Severine. Her continued existence was a threat to everything I’d fought for, every faint breath an accessory to my creeping doubts. I reached for the bright hope I’d welded to my heart these last spans. All of this would be worth it in the end. I just had to keep fighting for my dream of a more perfect world—a just, glittering world, where the poor had enough to eat, where magic created beauty instead of violence, where the promise of sunlight meant more than a wish.
That dream had once felt impossible. Now I just had to keep it from fading.
“We have to find the other Relics,” I said, wrapping my hand around the sunburst ambric pendant hanging from my neck—the only known Relic of the Scion, abandoned with me as a baby in the Dusklands. Dowser had searched for others during my coup against Severine, but had failed to find them. “With the Relics of the Scion, it won’t matter where I came from or what I did to seize power. They’ll have to accept me as empress, regardless of their red swords and old superstitions.”
Dowser nodded. “I’ll keep looking. I’ve been meaning to explore some old texts Barthet found in the Unitas library—perhaps one of them will give us an idea of what we’re looking for.”
“If only she had told you,” I hissed at my sister’s prone form.
“If only she had told me,” Dowser echoed. He turned toward the door, then turned abruptly back.
“One more thing—I nearly forgot.” He drew a sheaf of parchment from his sleeve. “It’s been nearly three weeks since you had me send the emissaries out. We’ve had some luck in the Dusklands—there was an outpost near Toulet with a few still alive. Near the sand ports in Dura’a too, although I hear more than a few defected to join Zvar corsairs in the desert.”
Severine’s lost legacies. Hope writhed hot and wild in my chest. “And?”
Wordlessly, he handed me the pages. I thumbed through them with trembling fingers, eyes scanning as fast as my brain could keep up.
