“This is not the real world, this is the chaos my father deliberately created. Is this how you want to live for the rest of your life? Didn’t you have enough pain and death in Syr? How much war is going to satisfy my father? What do you think?”
“What would you have me do?” Ferisa asked. “Say no to him? Say no to my goddess?”
Melia looked around, to the fire rising to the darkening sky, to the bound Seragian princess, to her father’s guards, to Ferisa, who’d once cared for her. “Help the carevna reach the palace and leave the rest to the royals to sort out. And then just walk away, from my father, from Abia, from the war. I’ll follow you.”
“After all this time, little raven, you still harbor that fantasy?” Ferisa’s voice was almost gentle. “The carevna is our path to the revenge your father has dreamed of.”
The revenge? The whole kingdom at war? “What has my father ever given you to make you follow him like this? All he does is demand—obedience, sacrifice, pain.”
“He promised to marry me.”
Melia stumbled backwards, horrified. Ferisa and her father? Never a trace of warmth between them, of understanding, of mutual liking—not so much as a speck of interest. If anything, they had always despised each other, avoided each other’s presence. How could it be?
“I thought you hated men,” she whispered, feeling like a stupid child.
Ferisa smirked, deeming her unworthy of an answer, and turned to the guards. “Let’s go!”
“No! Wait.” Melia reached once again for Ferisa, but she pushed her away.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Melia, but stay out of my way.”
“Ferisa!”
There was nothing to do but watch them drag the carevna towards the wall. The garden had no exit: They had to climb.
In a cloud of smoke, stinking like fire demons, a group of the king’s guards burst through the door of the embassy and, without a single word spoken, rushed after Ferisa’s men, the sound of their footsteps muffled by the roar of the fire.
Melia only saw them because she was looking in that direction. The Elmarrans had their backs turned, and by the time they realized what was going on, the guards were already upon them.
“I thought you went to talk to your father.”
A hard grip on Melia’s shoulder, Amron’s angry eyes on a soot-smudged face.
“He didn’t want to talk to me. But I persuaded Aratea to waitand give Amril another chance…”
There was no time to explain. Escaping the bloody melee, Ferisa grabbed the carevna and pulled her to her chest like a shield. She bared her teeth at Amron. “Who did you come to save, your wife or the emperor’s daughter?”
Amron pushed Melia behind him, a sword in his hand. “Surrender,” he said to Ferisa. “You can’t win this one.”
At the wall, the Elmarrans were still fighting Amron’s men, and losing. Ferisa cut a fine figure in her black suit, tall and wiry, with a blade in her hand, but she was an herbalist, a hedge witch, a poisoner, not a soldier. Melia couldn’t understand what mad bout of bloodthirst had made her pick up a sword and go out in the streets, looking for conflict. It was an act—a lethal, senseless act. Did she do it to impress Melia’s father? To create the illusion that she had command?
“Let her go,” Melia cried as Aratea struggled in Ferisa’s grip, kicking and biting. “She didn’t do anything, she was only trying to help. Take me instead if you want a hostage.”
Ferisa ignored it. She brought her sword to Aratea’s neck. “Stop struggling, it’s poisoned. One scratch and you’re dead.”
“And how do you plan to climb the wall with her?” Amron asked.
“I’m not,” Ferisa answered, “there’s another route. And if you try to follow me, I’ll kill you just like I killed your father.” She pulled Aratea towards the burning building.
The moment she disappeared through the smoky entrance, Amron ran after her, Melia at his heels.
Inside, the heat singed her hair and skin. The stone stairway wasn’t burning, but it was filled with black smoke. She could see nothing but Amron’s boots before her.
Surely, no one could get through it alive.
She pressed a handkerchief to her nose, but the smoke still burned her throat and made her head spin. The heat wasunbearable. Melia fell to her knees, unable to go on. Amron was nowhere to be seen, his footsteps swallowed by the roar of the fire.
“Help,” she whispered, certain that no one would hear her.
