Her army was alive.
She inhaled once, desperately, and was thrust back into herself on the edge of the lake between the fire and Nova’s dread.
The world settled around her. She felt awake, in a word. Serene and clear of mind, even if the knot of sadness within her would not move. Her vision blurred a moment before becoming the clearest it’d ever been. She blinked and could make out the topmost leaves on trees a mile away, the things hidden in the dark revealing themselvestinged in violet light. Beside her stood a towering specter, built not unlike Cutter, staring down at her with piercing gold orbs for eyes, set in a face and body made of shadows but limned in an eerie, luminous green. A ghost, wearing a stoic expression and a prisoner’s tatters, the scars of his torso and the brand on his neck highlighted as if she was to know him by them. When he bowed at the waist, he extended a thick hand in the direction of the house. A gold thread issued forth, marking her path past the house, back through the forest to some unknown destination that Yemi understood implicitly she was to follow.
Nova’s shoulders slumped in defeat as the cup thudded on the soft ground and a dense fog began to descend overhead.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it,” Nova said quietly between sniffles. In Yemi’s new sight, she seemed to be crying incandescent tears. “All of this was a lie. You always intended to use Ursla’s power; you just needed it to look like a last resort. But it wasn’t, was it?”
Whether she was right or wrong didn’t seem to matter now. If Nova didn’t understand, she never would. It was clear from her lack of reaction that she couldn’t see the ghost patiently waiting to usher Yemi away. Time was of the essence.
“This,” Yemi started, her voice deep and legion and divine, “is not the part where I allow your love to transform me into some agent of peace content with something less than what’s mine. Come dawn, you’ll have a decision to make. But I think we both understand now that I can do this without you.”
She said it with love and remorse, the way a god might bid farewell to the world she’d created and was leaving in ruin. Whether Nova received it that way was no longer a concern. Yemi moved past her to follow the ghost. The thousands of thoughts, plots, and ideas swarming her mind had aligned themselves into a neat, manageable order. It was as close to calm as she could remember ever feeling.
“Ursla got inside of Dahlia somehow. You sure she isn’t doing the same thing to you?”
Yemi ignored her. Ursla had everything to gain from Yemi’s success. Their missions were more aligned than Yemi’s and Nova’s ever were.
“Consider letting Luzon’s men go, at least,” Nova called when she didn’t reply. “They don’t deserve to be wrapped up in your shit.”
Nova’s voice had the effect of momentarily shattering the thread. Yemi had to shake her mind free of it to get the clarity back. She turned to face her love in a way that felt, in some ways, final.
“Sunrise, take the vehicles east to the lighthouse, using the fog as cover. When you and Cutter arrive, you may dismiss the Gold Guard at your discretion. But make no mistake: Whatever comes next, that was the last demand you’ll make of me.” She gave Nova a moment to debate the idea, to enter another plea. Instead she was met with a bitter silence and a steel in her eyes that felt like she was watching Nova’s heart harden against her in real time. “If you intend to stay, your orders are to take back the Rock. Find the Bear Queen. Leave the Harpy for when I arrive.”
“Arrive from where?”
“I’ve made the city my business, since you lack the stomach for it.”
Yemi continued following the thread toward the coast where Ixia and Kespia touched. The closer they came to water, the more Yemi felt her body fill with electricity, an almost nauseating sense of power that seemed meant for a larger vessel than her human form. She couldn’t move or think or use it fast enough.
This must have been the overwhelm Selah mentioned.
She emerged from the tree line onto the small pebble beach where Yemi’s grandmother had insisted she learn to swim. Kespia and its sleeping highlands loomed in the distance on the other side of the craggy bay. Moonlight illuminated a lone skiff, abandoned and bobbing against the shore before them. She approached it, and when the toes of her boots touched the water’s edge, a hush fell over the ocean, familiar in the way lines of her soldiers once stood by to await her command. She was the center of the sea’s attention.
21
• NOVA •
It was hard for Nova to be present in her body. She was mourning Yemi already, and the fight hadn’t even started yet. She felt sick, not knowing where Yemi was, sicker even than the thought of everything Yemi might do because Nova hadn’t stopped her. It had been a joke of the Blackgate household that to stop Yemi from doing something she’d set her mind to, you’d have to kill her. That would never be funny again. But right now, she had a mission: Find the Bear Queen. She clung to that instead.
The roar of the ocean was loud on the other side of the thin rock wall. Wind whistled through cracks worn into it over time, creating slivers of sharp cold and dust as Nova and half the Murisin Gold Guard inched sidelong through the tunnel. Cutter came to a halt ahead of her, feeling for ridges that would indicate an exit. With a grunt, he pressed on a segment of the wall and it fell away, permitting a salty gust and filtered moonlight to wash over both of them.
Nova peered anxiously out over the sea with little but the dark, jagged rocks of the Fanged Coast far beneath them. The rear palace gardens and the place the Bear Queen’s statue used to stand were atopthe cliff some distance overhead. There would be climbing involved, and the sea awaited them in its churning chaos if they did it poorly.
“This exit? Ofallthe exits,” she shouted.
“You rather fight your way in?” Cutter asked.
“That a trick question?”
“We’re about fifty feet from the top of the cliff. A lot farther from the bottom,” he called to the Guards in the wall. “They’ve been alerted, so security may not exactly be light. But they’re looking for ships, not for us.”
“Clear the gardens,” Nova ordered. “Assuming we find the Bear Queen, we evacuate her through another tunnel near the crypts. You’ll join us there on my signal. When you’re there, you’re done. Your obligation to us is completed.”
“We’ll stay until the queen is back on the throne,” Shiro assured her.
Nova wished there was some subtle way to tell them it wasn’t worth it, that Yemaya’s goals were unsound curses and they’d be better off with their hands clean.
