The former void demon didn’t reply. Adrian wasn’t sure if that was because she hadn’t heard him over the life-or-death struggle she was locked in with the Princess of Sorrow or if she was just being her usual taciturn self. He was wondering if he should ask again when a reply came over the speaker.
“Five seconds.”
Again, Adrian wasn’t sure what that meant, but he got the trap ready, lifting the heavy weight over his head with both hands as he watched Nemini and the carved copy of the Queen of Sorrow careen around the room. Mara must have been getting desperate by this point, because her eyes were open again, and she was begging her sister to kill her. It was heartbreaking to listen to, but Nemini bore it with the same stoic blankness as she bore everything, dodging the princess’s lethal swings with careful steps as she led her back around to the opposite side of the circular throne room from where Bex was fighting.
The moment they reached the far wall, Nemini changed tactics. Instead of dodging the princess’s punches, she got in close and grabbed her arms. Snakes erupted out of the floor as she did so, passing through the gold like ghosts only to become solid again when they wrapped around Mara’s thrashing body. No single snake seemed strong enough to stop her on its own, but together with their queen, they held the princess in place, forcing her to be still for a critical second as Nemini said, “Now.”
The second her voice spoke over the comm, Adrian threw the trap. It wasn’t a particularly good throw. The ball of wood and fir sap was heavy and unwieldy, and while Adrian was in decent shape thanks to all the yardwork his craft required, he’d never been good at sports. Fortunately for all of them, this spell didn’t require accuracy. All he had to do was break theball somewhere close to the princess, and the trap did the rest, exploding on impact to cover the white weapon of Gilgamesh from head to gilded toe in thick, dark, inescapably sticky fir sap.
The blast caught Nemini too, but in the time it took Adrian to realize that, she’d already used her movement power to get free, reappearing behind him before he’d even noticed she’d vanished. She was still covered in sap, though, so much that it immediately stuck her feet to the ground again. Adrian was digging through his pockets for a solvent when Leander rushed toward Mara.
“It’s okay,” he said, stopping just before he got stuck in the explosion of sap as well. “It’s all right, Mara, it’s over. You’re safe.”
He leaned as close as he could get, but Mara’s gold eyes were still wild.
“It’s not over,” she insisted as her doll-like body fought the sap with superhuman strength. “It willneverbe over. Even if you kill the Crown Prince, that order was given with the Blade of Ishtar.”
“Then we’ll take the sword from him and cancel it,” Leander promised. “I’m going to save you!”
The princess’s frantic expression grew soft. “If you truly mean that, then kill me.”
“What?” he said as his face grew desperate. “No!You said we’d run away. That we could be together for—”
“There is no forever for us,” she said, her voice quiet and calm even as her hands strained against the sap toward his throat. “I wanted to believe in it, but after having my mind erased and then returned, I know exactly how much this life doesn’t belong to me. Even if you revoke the order of Ishtar’s Blade, I’ll always be a puppet. Gilgamesh’s voice willneverleave my head, and I… I…”
She dropped her golden eyes with a sob. “I’m tired of being someone else’s weapon,” she whispered. “Even if you’re with me, this body will never be my own. I want to be myself again. I want to befree, Leander, and we both know there’s only one way for that.”
The prince took a shuddering breath. “I know,” he said, dropping his mirrored gaze to the floor. “I’ll always fight for whatever makes you happy, but if the Queen of Sorrow’s hand is returned, what happens to you? Will you forget everything that happened? Everything we…”
His voice trailed off, and Mara’s golden eyes softened. “I hope I forget,” she said. “I hope we can both forget these centuries of suffering and humiliation, but just because this cursed existence will finally stop doesn’t mean my love for you will end.”
“I don’t see how it could do anything else,” Leander replied bitterly, placing a hand over his bandaged chest. “I’ll always be the son of your most hated enemy, while you’ll go back to being Ishtar’s weapon. There’s no way we can—”
“Of course there’s a way,” the princess said, giving him a smile so warm and genuine that it made her carved face look almost real. “All princesses love their princes, but I loved you more than I was made to from the very beginning. I loved you so much that Gilgamesh considered it a flaw and tried to fix me, but he could never make it go away, because it wasn’t a princess’s love. It was mine. I wanted you for myself, Leander, and that’s why I’m not afraid. I know that whatever form I end up in, there will never be a version of me who doesn’t love you.”
Leander didn’t make a sound, but tears were rolling down his face by the time she finished.
“Is this—” He stopped to swallow. “Is this really what you want?”
“Yes,” she said, her gold eyes moving nervously to the white hand that had almost broken free of the sap. “Keep your promise, Leander. Set me free. Break this prison Gilgamesh built and let me be myself again.Please.”
That “please” was the final straw. As soon as his princess begged him, Leander started muttering under his breath. Adrian’s ancient Sumerian wasn’t good enough to follow what he was saying, but Mara’s must have been, because she started sobbing in relief. Her carved body heaved against the sap prison as the spell went on and on, building in power until Adrian could feel it crackling over his skin like electricity.
Even Alexander glanced away from his fight with Bex for a moment, but he either felt no need to stop it or couldn’t take the risk, because the Crown Prince didn’t interrupt his brother as a crackling ball of power built in Leander’s hands. It grew until it looked like he was holding a miniature black hole, spinning above his fingers with a high-pitched whine so sharp it felt like a knife was stabbing into Adrian’s ears. Then, just before the noise became unbearable, the prince pointed the crackling ball at Mara.
“Royal Verse Fifteen,” he said in a shaking voice. “Heavenly King’s Eternal Banishment.”
Adrian ducked and covered as Leander finished, but there was no explosion. All he heard was apopas the crackling ball floating in front of the prince’s palm vanished, and so did the princess. There was no shattering of enchanted ivory, no scream of pain. The Princess of Sorrow was simply gone, and stuck to the sap where she’d been was a woman’s elegant hand with a thick black ring on its graceful finger.
Leander fell to his knees in front of it and dug his bloody hands into the sap to retrieve the only part his beloved had left behind. This, of course, got him stuck immediately, but he didn’t seem to care. He just knelt there, clutching the queen’s handuntil Adrian finished unsticking Nemini and moved over to start rubbing solvent on his brother.
“You did the right thing,” he told him softly as he worked.
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Leander muttered, staying perfectly still even after Adrian got him unstuck. “She was my world, and I destroyed her.”
“You put her happiness above your own,” Adrian said, patting his brother on the shoulder. “That makes you her prince in a way Gilgamesh’s power never could, and I’m sure the real Mara will feel the same way when we bring her back.”
Leander’s shoulders were still shaking, but he nodded, clutching Mara’s hand to his bandaged chest like a talisman. He did not, however, stand up.
