There was something different about her face, about hereyes,though. Once, Ana had looked into them and seen kindness, gentleness, the love of an aunt. Those had been farcical. The ravaging anger and ruinous wrath that had spilled through during the Coronation when Luka had appointed Ana as his heir had been shocking, but truer to who Morganya might have been.
Those emotions, at least, had been human.
Now, those eyes stared out, and in them was something profoundly hollow, as though in place of her soul, there was nothing left.
Morganya waved a hand. “Leave,” she commanded her Imperial Patrols. “No—you stay, dear Kapitan.”
A sharp fear pierced Ana’s chest.Leave. Don’t listen to her,she thought, looking to Markov, but he remained by Sadov’s side, a puppet on strings.
The door clicked shut, and at last, Morganya turned to Ana. For a moment, they looked at each other.
The blow came out of nowhere, slamming into Ana’s face so hard that she saw stars.
“You littlebitch,” Morganya hissed. “I ought tokillyou for what you did in Bregon.”
The second blow filled Ana’s mouth with the metallic taste of blood, hot and foreign where her Affinity might once have stirred at its scent. Her head spun, but in the fog of pain, a realization cut through like the blade of a sword.
Blinking the black spots from her vision, Ana focused on the Empress’s wrists. They were covered by the sleeves of the kechyan she wore, but Morganya’s fury could only mean one thing.
Both siphons were still lost—for the moment, at least. Sorsha had disappeared since the Battle of Godhallem over one fortnight ago; if she was indeed alive, it seemed she hadn’t reached Morganya yet.
As though thinking along the same lines, Morganya clenched her fingers around Ana’s throat. Her nails gouged into Ana’s flesh, sparking pinpricks of pain. “Where is it?” Morganya hissed.“Where is the siphon that was meant for me?”
It was the first time Ana had seen Morganya in such an unbridled state. As she took in her aunt’s wild eyes and savage snarl, Ana realized just how deeply the cracks ran behind Morganya’s façade of control and domination.
And, as Ramson would have said, cracks were weaknesses, tobe used as leverage. Better yet, Morganya had just confirmed the greatest advantage Ana held against her: that Morganya was only aware of a single siphon’s existence where, in reality, there existed two.
Ana split her mouth in a grin. Warmth dribbled down her chin. “What’s wrong, mamika?” The moniker, once used as a gesture of affection, tasted like rot on her tongue. “Things aren’t going as well as you’d planned?”
Morganya’s face paled. For a moment, she looked nearly unhinged. Then her gaze shuttered, and she gave a laugh. “You know, I wanted to kill you, at first,” she said softly, her voice velvet poison. “Just like, at the very start of it all, I tried to fight you. I sent my forces from town to town, searching for you. I thought that if I got rid of you, I would secure my place as Empress. Thatif you were dead, the people would turn to me.” Her eyes flicked up, and in them was an old cruelty, an ancient wisdom.
“But, even as my soldiers marched across the Empire, rooting out traitors and filthy non-Affinites, the rebellions didn’t stop. And a movement began to spread from town to town. TheRed Tigress.” Her lips curled into a sneer and she spat the words. “You see, Anastacya, the people weren’t in love withyou.They didn’t believe thatyouwould lead them to a better future. No—they were enamored of theideaof you. That you were a savior, a rebel, a revolutionary. It was their ideology that was corrupted, that I needed to change.
“I have spent years of my life dedicating myself to the study of history. And what I’ve found, Anastacya, is that most wars are not won on a physical level, but on an ideological level. The people are no more than sheep, their thoughts malleable to misdirection. And I, as their divine shepherd, must guide them the right way.”
“By controlling their minds?” Ana croaked. “That will never last.” She thought of the jeers and boos of the crowd earlier; of the ordinary people she had met in Goldwater Port, downtrodden and powerless, yet still fighting. Still resisting. “You cannot seize power, just as you cannot force loyalty. Both must flow from the people themselves.”
Morganya’s sharp laugh rent the air. “ ‘Flow from the people’?” she repeated. “The people see what they are told to see. Whether history writes us as monsters or heroes has never been up to thepeople,Anastacya. It is up to us. And when the time comes, I will be the one narrating the tale.”
Monsters or heroes. The words washed over Ana with chilling familiarity. Hadn’t she once thought herself the monster? Hadn’t she questioned every single one of her actions, weighingthe benefits against the costs, wondering if bloodshed was merely the means to an end, a necessary precursor to justice and good?
And yet…throughout it all, she had never sought to take her people’s free will. Whether they viewed her as a monster or a hero in the end, she had always left it to the people to judge.
“You see, Little Tigress,” Morganya continued, “we are on the precipice of a great change—one of the greatest revolutions of humankind. I speak not of the battle between us, nor of the mundane cycle of dynasties that we wheel through every few centuries.” She waved a hand. “No, Little Tigress. With the siphon, I am going to restore the balance of the world.”
Ana gazed at her. The words sounded familiar—she had heard Linn speak of the harmony of the world according to her Kemeiran Wind Masters. And she had heard these words spoken by a dying man in Bregon—a scholar named Tarschon who had been responsible for inventing the siphons.The siphons…can be…destroyed,he’d whispered just before he’d stopped breathing.Restore…the natural…order…
“Wielding the siphon willdestroythe balance of the world,” Ana rasped.
Morganya was gazing at a spot over Ana’s shoulder, and when she spoke, it was as though she was barely aware of Ana’s presence. “When I took the throne, I knew I had far more work before me than any of the previous monarchs. I am an Affinite, and the order of our world seemed to have been madeagainstpeople like me. Yet I wondered: Why is it that we, Affinites, born more powerful than any regular mortal, have suffered for so long? Just like the syvint’sya and the Deities’ Lights, we are created with the touch of the Deities; our Affinities are remnants of the gods themselves.”
The Cyrilian Empire had long forgotten these sayings, believing Affinites to be demons—yet it was Morganya who had first told Ana of this tale. Ana recalled the times she’d found her aunt praying in the temple behind the Salskoff Palace, her tea-green eyes a pale puzzle.
And you, Kolst Pryntsessa,her mamika had told her back then,were chosen by the Deities to fight the battles that they cannot in this world.
The words drew out another memory: Scholar Tarschon, outlined beneath a ceiling of holy paintings in the Great Scholars’ Library of Bregon.Long ago, the gods parted from our world. Yet they left traces of magek in their wake…in us, in the magen.
“I threw myself into the study of our Deities, of all the folklores and myths and legends recorded in our lands,” the Empress continued. “And I found traces of what we know as alchemical power—but what I believe to bemagic,left over by the Deities. Ancient powers, left to us to use, to control. First: blackstone, to suppress Affinities in the case that we grew too powerful.”
