Yemi didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. Her mother ran her fingers over the symbols carved into the surface of the game tiles.
“It’s possible. It’s not like I had a blueprint. Your grandmother… she wasn’t great at this,” she said with a sigh. “Everything was an opportunity to explore this new world and experiment with it. I think that’s why I was born, too. It was just a new experience for her. I don’t think she thought about what it meant. She loved me and she did her best, but she didn’t grasp the concept of consequences. Even by the time she died, well after the first war was underway, I don’t think she understood that her actions had this ripple effect on everyone. That she was the root of something so destructive. But I did, and I tried to be the antithesis of everything Ixia thought about us as Mer. I wouldn’t be incompetent. I wouldn’t be a monster. I would try to be human, and maybe this place would accept our family. We didn’t have another home to go to if they didn’t. I worked, and your father gave his life so that you would have a place in this world. And you’re going to throw it away because you can’t direct your hate from a massacre?”
Yemi did remember her grandmother. Her bright red hair had been streaked with swaths of white by the time Yemi could form memories. They said she aged quickly—something to do with the magic that made her human. She’d taken Yemi dancing and horseback riding, taught her the Mer language and told her stories of the underwaterkingdom at night as they curled up in bed. They would run on the beach because Arielle loved the sensation of running. She always smelled vaguely of sea-foam and honeysuckle. There’d been a manic energy about her, a vibrant love of life that Yemi had never translated into being a reckless parent or capricious queen. But then again, she hadn’t asked.
“I’m sorry,” Yemi said quietly. “And I’m sure you’re right, as usual. But just like the country made you—through the names they’ve called us, the wars against us—they’ve made me. I am angry,all the time. And I’m not allowed any space to stop being angry, because every quiet moment is an opportunity for a new attack. Don’t you see that?” She wanted so badly to choose the right words so her mother would know how to guide her out of this simmering rage, the sickness she felt when she looked at her mother’s stone skin encroaching on her beauty.
The queen looked tired but spoke firmly. “We don’t apologize for who we are, but we are held accountable for it. You were born into this, just like I was. I can’t make you choose a path it’s not in you to take, but I do know that the one you have your heart set on ends in pain. It ends our bloodline, our history. It ends in Nova dying violently as the last person alive who loves you. And if you’re lucky, you’ll die before you have to s—”
The queen erupted in a violent coughing fit, covering her mouth with the hand holding the game tiles and gripping the edge of the couch with the other. Yemi leaped to her feet, banging her shin on the table and scattering the rest of the game across the floor.
These fits were happening with increasing frequency lately, and Yemi never felt useful during them. She crossed the floor to a credenza and poured a glass of water with shaking hands. Her mother waved it off when she offered it to her, and it sat useless on the table beside her instead. The coughs were wet and rattled from her throat. Yemi was worried she was unable to breathe between them.
“Guards!” Yemi called, and Enna and the maids burst back into the room flanked by the two men stationed in the hallway. “Infirmary, now. Call Selah.”
The queen dragged breath back into her body, dropping the tiles as she forcefully grasped Yemi’s hand. Spit clung to her lips, and her eyes were bloodshot as Yemi peered desperately into them.
“I will be fine. Stay,” she ordered, pushing Yemi away.
“What are you talking about?” Yemi shrieked.
“My Light,” Enna said gently. “I won’t fight you. But she means not to have you see her this way.”
Yemi collapsed back on the couch, knees shaking and heart pounding. The impotent fury she felt was with herself. Every word her mother used was a breath she could have saved for herself if only Yemi didn’t insist on arguing.
She moved to put her head in her hand and was horrified to find her mother’s blood in it. Her eyes went to the mess of the rest of the room and fell on the tiles the queen had been clutching. They lay cracked and blood spattered, dotted with flecks of black gravel.
6
• YEMI •
Chairre was an undulating mass of violet banners and sweeping flower petals as the day’s parades and festivities got underway. The Bear Queen was turning forty-eight and had long outlived anyone’s expectations. Even less expected was that everyone seemed pretty happy about it.
The evening was met with bonfires in the streets. In the quiet moments before the arrival of friends and dignitaries to the palace, Yemi could hear the thrumming of drums and the echoes of fireworks launched from rooftops. She could only imagine the throngs of birds being startled to death or fleeing to take equally startled shits over the fields beyond the city.
The palace itself lit up as the sun set. Cutter had been conscripted to force Yemi to leave her mother’s side after her last episode. She stood on a west-wing balcony overlooking the tiered gardens where the guests mingled, issuing courteous if perfunctory greetings to everyone as they entered, bowed, complimented the decor, asked after her mother, and finally left to bore someone else. Paper lanterns floated like fireflies over the grounds, and live music echoed from unseen pockets of shrubbery.
“I shouldn’t be here. They should have canceled,” Yemi muttered to Luzon, king of Muris, as he stood beside her.
“You know I’m with you,” Luzon assured her with a squeeze of her hand. “But consider, maybe Circe needs a party. You know how stifling it is living up here. However bad her days, it might be welcome to her toseehow loved she is rather than being told in the paper.”
Yemi stewed. Love was unlikely to have anything to do with why anyone was here.
Luzon had what her mother called “exquisite bone structure”: tall and neatly bearded, with high, sharp cheekbones; a strong jaw; a beatific smile; and thin, angular, amber-colored eyes circled by wire-framed glasses. He was resplendent in robes of gold and green, dark hair slicked back into a topknot. They hadn’t seen each other in years but had grown up together, chasing one another around the grounds of each other’s palaces and playing in corners of war rooms as their parents conducted their summits. He’d been king of Muris for two years now, and Yemi hadn’t seen him since his coronation. Once upon a time, it’d been thought they would make a royal couple. Turned out neither was quite the other’s taste.
“I never know the names of seventy-five percent of people who attend the ceremonies in my honor,” Luzon muttered behind his glass of champagne by way of changing the subject.
“You’re better than me. I’m at around ninety,” Yemi replied. “And it’s always the same faces, isn’t it? You’d think you’d catch on eventually, but no. It’s always Lord Something of Somewhere who will inevitably need a favor.”
“Oh, you get the requests for favors, too? The country’s doing well. How are the nobles always in some state of peril only a royal can get them out of? Yes, Lord Someone, I understand you’re a cocksman, but when your king can ramble off your affairs like they’re letters of the alphabet, it’s a problem. Button it the fuck up,” Luzon said behind a smile.
A gruff grunt sounded behind them. His personal guard, Kuro, was tall and bald but only a few years older than the king. His delicatelyembellished long jacket hid the arsenal of weapons harnessed around his torso. He gazed beyond them to scan for potential dangers in the familiar way Nova always did. The distraction of work didn’t keep him from disapproving of Luzon’s language, however.
“Which one was it this time? Thecockor thefuck?” Luzon ribbed him.
“You laugh, but Sumire is picking up on your language. Chef caught her screamingfucks in the garden after a beesting,” Kuro deadpanned.
“MySumire? She’s only eight.” A smile twitched on Yemi’s lips.
