One of the crew jogged out of the wide hangar doors and made her way down the pier toward them. “Captain! We’re cleared for launch.”
“That’s your signal,” Blaine said, managing a crooked little smile.
Honovi turned to face Blaine, wanting badly to kiss him one last time, but they’d said their farewells already. “You have the televox?”
Blaine patted his pocket, drawing attention to the square shape pressed against the striped fabric. The device wasn’t in widespread use yet, but Honovi found them exceedingly convenient. “Yes. Ring me after you’ve landed and spoken to theComhairle nan Cinnidhean. I doubt they’ll like what you have to say.”
“I will never apologize for saving you.”
“Yes, well, you may have to.” Blaine held up a hand, forestalling Honovi’s protest. “We both know you shouldn’t have come back for me. Not at the expense of E’ridia as a whole being accused of interference in a sovereign nation. Your father and everyone else will remind you of that.”
“I made a vow to my country, but I also made one to you. I aim to keep both.”
“As I keep trying to teach Caris, sometimes we aren’t allowed to follow our heart’s desire. Say whatever you must to extricate yourself from this mess. I won’t mind the insults. You know that.”
Blaine held out his hand, and Honovi could only clasp it in his own, grip firm. The veneer of a casual goodbye was all they could afford out in the open. It didn’t stop Honovi from stepping close and ducking his head so he could whisper in Blaine’s ear. “I’ll see you again.”
Blaine tightened his fingers around Honovi’s hand, as if he couldn’t bear to let go. “My road will always lead me back to you.”
They just needed to get through this deviation, but Honovi had faith the star gods would guide them true.
When Honovi left the town of Veran behind, prow of the airship pointing east, it was without Blaine by his side but in his heart.
Nine
EIMARILLE
Princess Eimarille Rourke had been born the heir to Ashion’s throne before fire stole that road from her. She’d grown up on a different path, knowing that Daijal would also be hers. The star gods willed it, after all.
Or at least, the only one that mattered did.
King Bernard Iverson had thought her a tool for him to use, and she’d let him. Eimarille became what he expected her to be when she arrived in New Haven as a ten-year-old child—demure and cowed, always bending a knee to a crown everyone thought would never be hers.
Except the blood of queens ran through her veins, and starfire burned in her soul, a mark of royalty no one could take from her. She’d kept the name Rourke when she’d been allowed to keep little else over the years. The Iverson bloodline could not claim what Eimarille’s ancestors had gifted her—it had guttered out in theirs long after the armistice was signed—so they had stolen it in a night of betrayal orchestrated by a star god.
Innes, the Twilight Star, had shined his light on her road that night, guiding her ever forward. It was only fitting he saw her be crowned, even if it was only the first of many Eimarille knew she would wear upon her head.
“I’d take the starfire throne if you’d let me,” Eimarille said as she studied herself in her vanity mirror. The soft glow of the gas lamps lining it highlighted the rouge on her lips and cheeks and the soft shade of color blended onto her eyelids.
Strong hands settled on her shoulders, fingers splayed over the bare skin shown off by her off-the-shoulder coronation gown. The warmth of the star god’s touch was like standing too close to a fire, though it didn’t bother Eimarille. Innes smiled at her in the mirror, but it never reached his eyes, which held a glint of aether in them that looked like stars.
“What did I tell you when you were a child, my dear?” Innes asked.
“That you’d guide me true.”
“And have I?”
Innes had taken her from Ashion during the Inferno and set her down a road she knew had not been the one the North Star had initially given her. But Eimarille had stuck to it—partly because there was no home for her to return to in Ashion, mostly because he’d promised her a future worthy of the queen she knew she still deserved to be.
She was a Rourke, after all, and the Rourke bloodline was meant to rule.
Whether by decree or by force, one way or another, Eimarille would take a throne and wear a crown.
“You have always guided me down my road. I would not be the queen I seek to be without your guidance,” Eimarille said.
Innes’ smile was sharp in the mirror, but the kiss he pressed to her temple was indulgent and soft. She thought she could feel the lingering heat of flames against her skin even after he pulled away. “Progress has always been hard fought for, especially in this Age. Aaralyn would see you wither like a flower in winter. I’d rather you shine like a star in the night sky.”
Eimarille pursed her lips, carefully adjusting a blond curl that fell artfully from the updo Terilyn had painstakingly set her hair in. The diamond- and sapphire-tipped pins keeping her hair secured sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the nearby window of her private bedroom. They matched the heavy teardrop earrings secured to her ears and the choker wrapped around her throat. She looked at herself carefully in the vanity mirror one last time, satisfied with her appearance. Innes’ hands dropped away from her shoulders, and she stood, smoothing out the skirt of her grand coronation gown.
