I suddenly knew how to beat Gavin and win back my throne.
Sunder, Bane, and Luca gathered in the slick, chilly dining room and looked at me like I might be mad. But I burst with exhilaration I had to share—exhilaration and triumph and a hundred fantastical dreams of a thousand impossible worlds.
“Scion’s teeth,” Oleander said, not unpleasantly. “It’s nearly third Nocturne. What’s this about?”
She’d still been fully dressed when I hammered on her door, and hadn’t been sleeping—the room behind her blazed with candlelight and perfume. The streaks of high color on her pale cheeks hinted she’d been drinking. When I’d told her I had news to share, she’d opened the door and beckoned to Luca lounging shirtless on one of her couches.
Sunder had also willingly come, but he looked weary and wary. His hand lurked by his side, where his timbre burned sullen through the fabric of his shirt.
“I’ve given too much power to Gavin’s ability to manipulate perceptions,” I began, “while half forgetting my own imperfect legacy—wonder.Gavin might be able to glamour everyone into feeling what he wants them to feel, but I have something better. I can conjure luster and imagine light. I have only to unleash the wild colors caged around my heart.”
“I thought your illusions weren’t working,” Oleander said, blunt as ever.
“I think that’s because I didn’t know what to use them for.”
“And now you do.” Sunder’s voice was tired.
“The Amber City didn’t want me as their Sun Heir. But I can show them what a true Duskland Dauphine looks like.”
Quickly, I told them about my theory—how the missing Relic, the Soul Relic, was made of diamond carved to look like the moon. I told them about my plan to discredit Gavin—to prove he’d won the Ordeals in bad faith, had allied himself with Sainte Sauvage and the Red Masks. Everyone looked dubious at first, but as I spoke Oleander’s lovely face ignited with a hard, sharp light. By the time I finished, she was smiling in a way I hoped never to be on the wrong side of.
“Excellent.”
Luca nodded slowly. “It might work.”
Sunder bowed his head. When he lifted it, I barely recognized the grim set of his mouth.
“Do you two mind,” he asked, “if I speak to Mirage alone?”
Oleander and Luca shared a loaded glance as they wandered toward the other end of the room. Sunder didn’t rise from his chair, but reached for me to join him. He caught my hand and twined our fingers together. Heat blazed against my palm through his leather gloves.
“This?” His voice fractured. “This is what will make you whole?”
“Do you doubt it?”
“No.” He smiled, brittle and brilliant, and a piece of my heart broke off. “You said you were no longer Sylvie nor Mirage. I believe you are both girls, and yet you are neither. There is strength in transformation—the things that bring us the most pain brings us the deepest perspective. Diamonds are not born—they are made.”
“And if this transformation demands I return to the city and fight for my throne?”
“It would be no less than I expected.” Sunder lowered his eyes. “Although it is not what I hoped.”
“What did you hope?”
Voicelessly, he buried his head against my waist. His hands circled my back, so softly I could barely feel them.
My voice was a caged moth in my chest. I stared in shock at his bright, bowed head. It was hard to think of Sunder as anything but aman, but in that moment I remembered he was barely out of boyhood. We were both barely more than children, and yet we had both been thrust into a world where we were expected to behave like adults. This rare moment of vulnerability felt almost childlike, and I hardly knew what to do with it. Slowly, I let my hands fall, my fingers sifting soft weightless strands of blond hair.
His voice, when it came, was barely more than a vibration against my stomach. “I hoped for an end to this pain. I hoped for an end to this bloodshed. I hoped for peace.”
I drew his head up, my palms against his jaw and my fingertips in his hair. Pain spangled up my arms, but I didn’t let go. I caught his gaze, full of alpine dreams and more love than I could fathom.
“Then you will have it.”
“How?”
“I’m not asking you to come with me,” I told him. “In fact, I insist you stay.”
His eyes yawned with anguish and savage hope.
