“I don’t want to execute him.” Ididn’t. But I hadn’t wanted to torture him either.
I clenched sweaty palms and tried to ignore the specter of all the things I’d done wrong. All the things I hadn’t been able to do.
Sunder’s hands lifted toward my shoulders, then fisted to his sides. His need to touch me filled the space between us with palpable weight. “I’m usually the last person in the world to preach mercy for mercy’s sake, but if there was ever a time to show clemency, that time is now. His pardon might earn you grace with your people—enough grace to get you to Ecstatica with a head to be crowned.”
“He tried to kill me.” My voice came out hoarse. The memory of my head bouncing off cobblestones mingled with memories of red swords and broken mirrors and blood. Alwaysblood.
“And for that crime I’d kill him myself,” Sunder promised. “But there’s a bigger picture here.”
“If I pardon him out of hand, won’t they see me as weak?”
“They will see a future empress pardoning her assassin, and they will know you are fearless.”
“But I’d be doing it out of fear.”
“Sometimes fear can be a weapon.” Quickly, almost helplessly, he brushed an errant curl off my face—his gloved hand skimming my cheek and curling around my ear. Below, a bugle bellowed out from the pavilion, a trio of notes that sounded more like a warning than a summoning. Sunder’s hand dropped, his touch gone before I could learn to miss it. “And none of this is worth it if you’re dead, demoiselle.”
Sudden nerves pummeled my heart. “Will you be there?”
“I’ll be as close to you as you’ll let me.” His smile faded away like a dream. “Look for me on the platform—I’ll be with the Loup-Garou guarding LaRoche. If anything happens—well, they’ll have to get through me before they can touch you.”
He marched away, his spine straight in his Belsyre regalia.
I shivered, racked with too many doubts to count. I hadn’t been able to banish Gavin’s careless words from our ride into the city:We earn our place simply by shouldering our inheritance—the responsibility to something greater than ourselves.
I’d once felt the same way. But that belief had cost me too much. And in the aftermath of the pain, violence, and chaos my entitled actions had caused, I’d finally begun to realize—no one was born deserving anything.Ihadn’t been born deserving anything. Not a place to belong, not the love of a people, and certainly not a throne.
Those were all things that had to be earned.
I looked down at the Ambers gathering along the Concordat. They didn’t know who I was, or what I stood for, or what was going to happen next. And unlike me, Sainte Sauvage had given them something to believe in—a vision of a Sun Heir I’d never be able to embody. A Sun Heir who looked a lot like Gavin d’Ars.
But I didn’t care what I looked like. I wanted them to put their faith inme.
Whether as Duskland Dauphine or Sun Heir, I wanted to earn their love. And maybe I did that by showing them a little of the world I’d dreamed, so long ago in the dusk.
I walked up the steps of the covered platform feeling like I was going to my own execution.
The moment my slippers hit the deck, the crowd quieted. I took a deep breath and smoothed down the front of my gown. I’d chosen to wear the same dress I’d worn that day in the Marché Cuirasse, with a brilliant bodice falling away to a creamy skirt studded in kembric embroidery and ambric gems. Not all of these people would have been there that day—probably only a handful—and many would never have seen me before at all. But it couldn’t hurt to remind them that even if they didn’t see me as the Sun Heir, I was still a Sabourin.
My one concession to my sobriquet—theDuskland Dauphine—was a velvet cape dyed in twilight colors. It whipped around my shoulders in the stiff breeze, flashing smears of amethyst and sapphire at the waiting crowd. I turned my back on them, scanning the rear of the platform, where my advisors and friends sat stiff in painted chairs: Oleander and a rigid-faced Lullaby; Barthet and Lady Marta in hurried conversation; Gavin, golden-faced and smiling with an unreadable Arsenault at his shoulder; and Dowser. My teacher stood when I approached, reaching from his long sleeves to grasp my hands.
“Do you remember what we agreed?” We’d spent hours yesterday practicing my address to the crowd, what I would say to Pierre LaRoche. This was only my second time appearing before a large crowd of Ambers, and the first time I’d been nothing more than a momentary diversion—Severine’s captive legacy. “They don’t want to be convinced of Pierre’s guilt. They want to be convinced of your capacity to judge him.”
I released Dowser’s hands and stepped to the edge of the platform. I was ready.
“Good citizens of the Amber Empire,” I called, casting a simple illusion that carried my voice along the sloping boulevard of the Concordat. I could have used an ambric artifice to magnify my voice, but I liked the way the people near the back of the crowd started, as though I was standing just behind their shoulders. And if my voice sounded a little distorted—a littledusky—well, what was the harm in that? “Today you bear witness to something I take seriously as I move toward the day of my coronation—justice. My predecessor, Severine, cared little for these niceties—if your local magistrates couldn’t resolve your disputes, then you were either ignored or disappeared in the Nocturne by merciless Skyclad soldats.”
The crowd grumbled like thunder, and I raised my voice.
“But that ends today! I hear your discontent with this city’s current circumstances—Belsyre’s wolves patrolling the streets, strict curfews, soldats at the city gates. But the wolves are there to hunt Red Masks. Your curfews are to protect your safety. The soldats at the city gates keep out mercenaries and thieves who would loot your homes and businesses. And know this—even as we speak, I am drawing up plans to expand the role of magistrates in the lower city, to train a civil police force, and to institute a series of appeals courts for your legal issues. By Ecstatica, this city will return to its former glory, rule of law intact. I hold this public trial today to show you I have nothing to hide!”
“Then why’ve you been hiding up in that palais like a murderess?” someone shouted.
“Duskland monster!” screamed someone else.
The crowd roared.
I clenched my hands, but my palms slipped, slick with sudden sweat.
