Yemi shook her head. “What’s worse is, I think everyone always knew how powerful I could become without their interference.Keep Yemaya away from blood. Keep Yemaya calm. Challenge her at every pass to do the peaceful thing. The quiet thing. Don’t let her out of your sight.” The last words came out almost as a whisper as she considered that Nova, too, had been conscripted into this scheme. The look on Nova’s face now suggested concern, perhaps, about being caught.
Yemi laughed darkly. “Imagine going your entire life being groomed to undermine yourself because realizing your full potential is read as a threat. That every thought, every feeling, every instinct must be subdued so as not to frighten anyone. But the wildest part is that it was all for nothing, wasn’t it? There wouldn’t have been a reason to worry about what dangerous Queen Yemaya would do, had I been allowed to be who I am and stop all of this before it even started.”
Nova finally exhaled and shook her head, undoubtedly trying to pluck the relevant information from the extraordinary.
“We’ll come back to the part where you’re certain everyone who ever loved you, including me somehow, was engaged in a conspiracyto keep you, what? Docile? That has to be sleep deprivation,” she said. Yemi bristled at the dismissal. “But these voices. Where are they telling you the line is, exactly? And what if the Kept are backing Dahlia, too?”
“They won’t when they see what I’m capable of.”
“The military, then. What if fucking Kespia jumps into this? You’re saying you’re willing to go through all of them to get your title back?”
“Howdareyou try and make it seem like this is some vanity play,” Yemi snarled as she closed the distance between them. “They took my family from me. My ancestral home. My legacy.Ourlegacy. A week ago, I wouldn’t have imagined you of all people could misunderstand me so fundamentally.”
“Weeks ago, I knew you better than anyone because you wanted me to,” Nova replied gently.
“If I don’t do this, who am I but the woman who used to be queen?” Yemi said, furious tears now rolling down her face. “Where do I go that that’s not a stain on my name? Nova, how do I live with myself if I just walk away?” She chuckled grimly, throwing up her hands in defeat and licking at the tears crawling along her lip.
“You deserve justice,” Nova said. “I would never deny you that. But you keep usingIlike you’re the only one in this when I’m trying to get you to see that the rest of us are prepared to stand with you like we always have. Trusting all of our lives, not just yours, to a deal with Ursla is the type of murder-suicide they write ballads about.”
Yemi grimaced. She hated this dependence on Nova’s faith, on her understanding of just how effortlessly they could be returned home and their world righted if only she were capable of understanding Yemi’s limitlessness.
But of course she didn’t understand. How could she? She was only human, after all.
A breeze picked up and whisked embers from the firepit into the space between them. “You know, all this time, Ursla’s been the only one to come out and say she understands what I’m doing here,” Yemi said.
“Oh, and she’s been getting her ass kicked all over the countrysidefor you, has she?” Nova said bitterly. “They’re just words, Yemaya. She’s manipulating you. That’s what she does.”
“Stop saying my name like that! Like I’m some child you keep having to explain the gravity of the situation to.”
Nova growled, incredulous, and spun as if to storm off but doubled back with a finger wagging violently as she brought herself inches from Yemi’s face. “You know what? You’ve always been an impossible pain in my ass, but it used to be worth it.”
Yemi scoffed. “Oh, I’m sorry, am I notworthy, guardian? Do I not deserve to be your fucking job?”
Nova’s jaw tightened, and her arm twitched to suggest she was ready to slap her. A part of Yemi genuinely wished she would. It might be the only thing to break her free of this mania.
“Leave, then!” Yemi demanded, her voice cracking. She glared at Nova as if trying to convince her she was serious even before she herself was certain she meant it.
“I never thought I would want to!” Nova hissed. “Fuck, everyone else can! Ihaveto stay. IfIgive up on you, ifIleave, you die.”
Yemi blinked. The world was silent but for their panting, the ripples of the lake lapping at land’s edge. It was true, then. Even Nova, at her core, believed she was a fool or, at best, a child. Unable to control herself, capable of making messes but never cleaning them up. The realization knocked the wind from her. When had Nova’s feelings for her changed? Or had they always been this?
“Oh,” Yemi said quietly. “There it is. You stay because you think I’m weak. Because I make it easy for you to be the hero.”
Nova shook her head. “I stay because I love you.You.Not whoeverthisis.”
Yemi had the eerie sensation she’d fallen inside herself again, only being encircled by a tepid, black void this time instead of the warmth of hunger. Nova’s words drifted through the void but never seemed to touch her. She knew loss. This was like every other death: premature, vaguely cruel. She turned back to look out over the lake and the mug of cooling tea perched on the river rock.
Her future. Whatever Nova had been or felt was now behind her in every way.
She bent and picked up the mug. It had been in the evening chill for a while now but was still scorching to the touch. Her deep breath came out easy but hollow as she turned back to Nova.
“I’m not going to be the person you want me to be. Not when it comes to this. I’m not going to abdicate. I’m not going to drop my family name and disappear to some country overseas, get a city cottage and a job as the local neighborhood book clerk. Take you as my champion wife. I can’t put this behind me. Everything has been stripped from me, and this,who I am, is what’s left.”
Nova’s eyes fell to the mug, and a heartbroken smile appeared on her face. It was a winded, crestfallen twitch of the corners of her mouth that said she wanted to move, to act, but that she was heartbroken at having to.
“You have the stone,” she said as it dawned on her. “Is Selah dead, then? Did you kill her?”
Yemi didn’t respond. There would be no explanation good enough for Nova. Instead, she tipped back the tea. It didn’t so much splash as ooze, thick, warm, and brackish, down her throat—quickly, as if alive and in a hurry. Her stomach cramped just once in protest, and her skin prickled as if her veins were thickening with each pulse of her heart. In a single, breathless moment, she stumbled as she felt herself being pulled beneath waves at impossible speed amid massive swarms of tiny blue lights in sunken graveyards as they exploded into ethereal skeletons and rapidly gained flesh. Hundreds of them. Thousands.
