The Whitecloak escorting Shamaïra shoved her roughly to her knees. “Pay your respects, old Nandjian fortune-teller,” he barked.
Shamaïra held her head high. Yet as the figure approached, fear stretched its long claws into her heart.
The Glorious Empress of Cyrilia reined her horse and descended with a sweep of her cloak. By Shamaïra’s side, all Whitecloaks had sunk to their knees, their heads bowed low, their hands clasped in fists over their chests.
Morganya’s eyes swept over them—and locked on Shamaïra. She smiled.
Up close, she seemed to be carved in monochrome like a statue, her beauty even more terrible. And her eyes—Shamaïra had never seen such cold eyes. She thought of the paintings of the cold, deathly still Silent Sea of the North.
Morganya turned and walked into the dacha closest to them. The two Whitecloaks escorting Shamaïra sprang to their feet and hauled her forward. They stepped through a shattered storefront.
The inside looked like a ravaged restaurant. Debris was strewn across wooden floorboards, along with remnants of food. Booths stood silent and empty, tablecloths fluttering in a ghostly wind, faded yellow patterns layered thick with dust.
There was movement from the back of the restaurant. A man emerged. He wore a silvery fur cloak, his black hair parted over a long, pale face. Most disturbing were his hands: long-fingered and limp, like a monstrous, colorless creature. “Kolst Imperatorya,” he murmured, his voice soft and slippery, slithering around Shamaïra like a serpent.
Shamaïra’s fists clenched tighter. The winds that twined around her seemed to whisper danger.Deities give me strength,she thought, steeling herself.
The Empress turned, her gaze hooking into Shamaïra like claws. “Unlock her,” she commanded, her voice cutting like steel.
With a few clicks of keys, the manacles fell away, and it felt as though she were breathing again for the first time. Sound, color, light rushed through her in an endless river of Time, the whispers of the Brother and Sister filling the well of her soul again. She saw ghosts of the past flitting through the dacha: among them, a boy with sleek red hair that caught the burnish of lamplight.
She knew that boy.
Shamaïra’s knees almost buckled. This was Yuri’s home.
“Do you know why you are here, fortune-teller?” The Empress’s voice caressed her like a terrible lullaby, rooting her to the present.
“It does not particularly matter to me,” Shamaïra rasped, her voice gravelly from days of abandon. “I shall give you nothing.”
The Empress gave her a lovely smile. She was impossibly beautiful, as they all said, and Shamaïra wondered sadly what part of her journey had gone wrong. Glimpses of her past swirled like shadows behind her; whispers and shouts of abuse. She had been born into darkness, into hatred and fear, and she had chosen that path.
A second face came to Shamaïra: fierce brown eyes beneath the shadow of a hood. She knew another, she thought, who’d been born into the same circumstances.
And that girl had chosen light.
“This was the home of a leader of the rebels,” Morganya said. “Two days ago, they caught wind of my Imperial Inquisition and fled. I want you, fortune-teller, to find out where they went. Trace them, with your Affinity.” She gave a delicate pause and stretched out a hand. A poster dangled between her fingers: wet and smudged from snow and soot. But Shamaïra instantly recognized the figure painted on it, the curve of her crimson cloak. “I want you,” Morganya continued, her voice soft and dangerous, “to findher.”
Hope lit a fierce fire in Shamaïra’s heart. Ana had gotten away.
“I cannot track down a person without their possessions,” she replied, her words cut-and-dried. “More importantly, I simply won’t.”
Morganya’s eyes bore into hers. “Bring the mother,” she said.
Movement from the Whitecloaks stationed at the door and all around the restaurant; the sound of something being dragged, and a thump.
Shamaïra looked down and felt her face drain of color.
A body lay in front of her, but it wasn’t the corpse that she saw. It was the past: a woman, folding a young girl into her arms, her face crinkled with laughter, her fire-red hair tucked in a bun. The same woman, cooking in the kitchen, splotches of soups and sauces dotting her faded linen kirtle.
The scene shifted, and the woman was carrying Yuri in her arms and tucking him gently in the back of a small wagon, beneath bags of beets and potatoes. She was crying as she kissed her daughter over and over again, and then the wagon was pulling away and she was running after them, following for as long as she could until her old legs gave out.
Another scene, and she stood amid rubble, broom clutched in hand, frozen as her door creaked open and two men entered her house. One wore a pale white outfit and bore a tear mark on his cheek; the other was made of shadows and long, white hands.
Shamaïra cut off the visions. She didn’t need to continue to know how this story ended. “You sicken me,” she growled.
Morganya had been watching her closely, her eyes narrowed in cunning. She let out a laugh. “Oh, we’re just getting started.” She spun, spreading her arms. “Now that Goldwater Port belongs to me, I’m going to root out the rest of these rebels and stamp out the rebellion once and for all. The streets will flow crimson with their blood.” She smiled at Shamaïra. “Are you not proud to have a chance to serve your empire? To establish the foundation of a new regime?”
Shamaïra looked the Empress in the eyes. “I would rather die,” she said calmly.
