By then, it was too late.
Terilyn hauled herself up into the passenger seat of the ornithopter, the hair on the back of her neck prickling as a sound rent the air between the booming noise of explosions. It rose like a storm wind, raspy and animalistic, tens of thousands of the walking dead screaming for a release they couldn’t comprehend, driven onward by the spores ravaging their desiccated flesh.
For all that she was a Blade, Terilyn was no warden, and the bone-deep fear of revenants almost everyone on Maricol grew up with made her want torun.
The volley stopped minutes later, engines thrumming as the soldiers frantically undid the support struts to quickly turn the trucks south. Their evacuation route was in the wetlands, where the Urovan submersibles waited to ferry them out of danger.
TheKlovodappeared on the other side of the ornithopter so suddenly that Terilyn was half drawing a stiletto from the sheath in her boot before she recognized him. He smirked at her, as if he knew how tightly wound her nerves were. “Your queen will be pleased.”
“Just get us in the air,” Terilyn said coolly.
The sooner they left the land behind, the better.
TheKlovoddid as ordered, deftly getting the engine up and running, the blades spinning with a speed that vibrated through the framework of the ornithopter. Soon enough, they were in the air, the thrum of the engine making her teeth ache.
Terilyn leaned to the side and craned her head to peer down at the rapidly distancing earth below them. In the last vestiges of the fading sun, she could see a darkness spilling out of the shattered walls surrounding Rixham, spreading ever outward.
Solaria would learn the lesson of burning their dead instead of burying them far too late.
Three
VANYA
In the weeks since Soren’s disappearance, Vanya spent most of his days trying to tire himself out so he wouldn’t dream about the nightmarish possibilities of his lover’s fate.
Taisiya had made it a habit to bully him out of his office on a nightly basis. On one such occasion, Vanya was having an after-dinner drink with Taisiya in the private inner courtyard of the Sa’Liandel estate in Calhames when Caelum interrupted them with a troubled look on his face. “Apologies, Your Imperial Majesty. Governor Delani is insistent that she speak with you.”
Vanya frowned and set his glass of brandy down on the table, gesturing Caelum to come closer. “This late?”
“She informs me she tried to reach you at your desk, but when that failed, she called my personal line.”
Vanya stood, a knot forming in his stomach, wondering if it was about Soren and, distantly, Lore. He’d had spies scouring Calhames and elsewhere for any hint of where Soren might have been taken, but still no leads had shown up. He hadn’t yet dared to initiate communications with Joelle, not wanting to give her any leverage. Vanya had to believe that Soren wasn’t dead somewhere, that he would come back to him, as he always did when he left for the poison fields.
Caelum approached, holding out his hand with the televox resting in his palm. Vanya took it and pressed the small device to his ear. “Delani? Did you find Soren?”
“I’m not calling about Soren,” Delani said in a tight, raw voice. “I’m calling with a warning for Solaria. Someone attacked Rixham tonight. I got the call from those on duty at the watchtower.”
Sound disappeared into a high-pitched ringing in Vanya’s ears. He had to lock his knees so as not to stagger backward. “What?”
“Rixham has fallen. You need to warn your people.”
Vanya opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find the words. Every sound was stuck in his throat like shards of glass, the horror of something he never thought would pass rising up to ruin him.
Rixham is a dead city. There is nothing living in Rixham.
The mantra was a warning his mother had given voice to in the wake of his older brother’s murder decades ago. She’d fought to keep Solaria whole and left the traitorous city still standing but its people dead inside walls that kept them imprisoned. Every House knew what they risked if they targeted what was essentially a grave.
“Why didn’t your wardens stop them?” Vanya finally got out.
“Theytriedand died for their efforts, but they got the warning out first. Make no mistake, this problem lies with your House. We wardens could have eradicated the threat if your mother had been willing, but she wasn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I wasthere,” Delani snarled, fury lacing every bitten-out word. “I warned Zakariya about the risks, even after she pulled back as some of the city burned. She would not heed any of them.”
There’d been a warden at the front lines back then when Rixham fell, Vanya vaguely remembered. He’d never known her name, could not place her face these many years later, but to now know it was Delani underscored, perhaps, why she’d seemed to take news of the royal crypts with such anger.
“You changed the maps. You made Rixham a border. You never dealt with the city, proving my mother right—it was too risky to burn it to the ground.”
