“It took me too long to realize I was using you,” I whispered. “You, and the legacy you loathe. Just by making you my commandant I was asking you for violence, yet willfully ignoring the things you would have to do on my behalf. You carried the burden of all that sin alone, never asking me for redemption.”
He made a noise. “Iwantedto protect you. You never took anything from me I wasn’t willing to give.”
“I know. But now I want to protect you.” I took a deep breath. “I won’t ask you to hurt or kill for me again. I won’t be your pain. I release you from my service. I set you free.”
The relief in his eyes was the knife I needed to cut me from him. I took one—two—gasping steps backward. He stood and bowed, piercingly formal. And then he clasped me to him, brief and tight.
“I will be there for your coronation, dauphine.” His lips were in my hair. “I will be there at Ecstatica. I will see you in victory. I will see the dawn of your reign.”
And then his sharp footfalls carried him away from me.
I scraped tears off my face and mastered my breathing. Then I walked to the end of the hall, where Oleander and Luca were sipping wine and pretending like they hadn’t been trying to eavesdrop.
“What happened to Sunder?” Oleander asked.
“He won’t be joining us this time,” I replied, wooden.
Her red mouth opened in surprise. “Why in the daylight world not?”
“Because for once …” I murmured, echoing what I’d told Sunder. “For once I want to protect him, instead of the other way around.”
She gave me a weird look that almost looked like respect.
“If that means you don’t want to help me,” I said, “I understand.”
“Are you kidding?” She grinned. “I can’t wait to see that fanatic imposter get what he deserves. I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.”
I looked at Luca. “Luca?”
“She took the words right out of my mouth,” he said, with a glint in his hazel eyes.
And so the three of us began to plan. We planned the clothes, the illusions, the words, like directors of a play where the actors had no idea they were onstage. And when at last we were satisfied, I stared away to the east, where I imagined that eternal seething border of Midnight.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, I’d run from that darkness at the edge of nowhere, toward the light at the heart of the empire. This time, I was winging back toward the dusk—in mind, if not in body. And I would earn back what was stolen from me, even if it meant chasing away sunlight with shadow, and finding the luster that lived inside the dark.
We left Belsyre two weeks after arriving.
Sunder returned to the mine at Wolf’s Mouth the Matin after our conversation. He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t need to.
Still, two weeks was barely enough time. Luca and I rested and regained our strength, while Oleander arranged the bulk of the preparations. She stockpiled food, weapons, and other supplies from Belsyre’s well-stocked stores. She convinced twoscore Loup-Garou loyal to her to return to Coeur d’Or with us. She sketched countless designs for clothing, then sewed through the Nocturnes with a dozen Belsyre tailors, making sure each stitch was a vision, each seam like a knife. When I discreetly asked whether she was paying them overtime, one of them overheard.
“We are simply returning a lifetime of favors,” the woman piped up. “Last tide I sent my eldest to Unitas, and it was Lady de Vere who paid his tuition.”
“My husband and I just expanded our home,” added a younger fellow. “We never would have been able to afford it without my lady’s steady stream of commissions.”
Oleander raised her eyebrow at me, as if to say,Does that appease your tender sensibilities?
I had to confess, it did.
Properly attired and well-supplied, the journey back to the Amber City was marginally more pleasant than Luca’s and my mad trek. Belsyre’s sturdy horses knew the passes well, and Oleander’s sleigh glided over the thick snow. Luca and I mostly rode with her while she sewed, although I did brave the elements on horseback when their company grew too cloying.
The snowy steeps gave way to evergreen forests and rolling foothills dotted with scrubland. We camped a league outside the city. Oleander rubbed a paste of roots and herbs into her bright hair, temporarily dying it an alarming shade of red. Personally, I thought it made her look even more conspicuous than before, but I decided to hold my tongue. Luca and I tucked our hair into peddler’s caps, and dressed in cheap clothing we’d bartered for in a foothill village. The forty-odd Belsyre wolves who elected to join us wore simple chain mail and kept their black swords hidden.
But sneaking back into the city was easier than I anticipated.
We needn’t have tried so hard to keep our identities secret. With less than a week until Ecstatica, the Amber City was teeming with people of every nationality, race, and religion. The main gates were thrown wide open, but I only noticed people moving inward. When I discreetly glanced at the Husterri station beyond the gate, I saw a family of five being violently detained as they tried to leave—their packs were roughly hauled off their shoulders and dumped into the street, and a donkey cart had been overturned, scattering pots and pans and household goods to the ground.
I looked away before anyone recognized my face. But the sight of free citizens being prevented from leaving the city had ignited a spark of fury in my chest, tempered with growing resolve. I hadn’t been the perfect Sun Heir, I knew that now—I’d listened to my councillors when they suggested martial law, never argued with curfews and travel bans and Scion knew what else—but it was time for that to change. The people who lived in this city—in this empire—had been without a voice for too long.
