“I… My Light, I’m sor—” the old priest stammered, apparently surprised.
She turned on him with what her mother would have called a heavy unpleasantness in her eyes. “You dare approach me during our queen’s—my mother’s—funerary rites with a bid for power?”
“My Light, you misunderstand. We have no time to lose—”
“Youhave no time to lose, ancient one.Iam only getting started.” She hoped it felt like a threat, because that was how she meant it. “Leave me. If I see your face again before my coronation, Lain will have your seat, and I will inflict you upon some other continent.”
Cerro bristled, the lines of his dark lips turned white as he pressed them together in indignation. He inevitably bowed and took his leave, ocean wind billowing his robes unceremoniously as he descended stone steps on the side of the palace to make the trek back down to the temple.
These people and their plots,Yemi thought as she watched him in disgust. Good to know even a funeral wouldn’t stop their ambitions. She wished her mother was there to laugh with about the snakes in their midst. There were so many of them now.
Her father had died during a war when they all seemed stalked by death. She remembered the whirlwind of her world, being shuffled off to ceremonies and lessons, the way she was never left alone except at night when she would cry herself to sleep and wake screaming from every dream she’d had for weeks. And then her mother had gotten sick and there was no longer any time for that, not while Yemi played keeper to her nightmares.
She hadn’t expected grief to stall her so long this time, to make her own body and mind foreign places for her to exist. And yet, when she sat after sunset, tuning a hand radio between the corpses of her parents’ armor for yet another night, she didn’t remember how she’d gotten there. And when the paper lanterns of the faithful drifted above the cliff, the chill of the wind that brought them carved its way between the tombs and reminded her that this was what it felt like to be alone.
Torchlight and the clicking of boots crept up behind her.
“My Light,” Nova’s voice said quietly.
“Hmm?” Yemi grunted, twisting the knob of her radio until barely decipherable commentary presented itself.
“I came to light the braziers and ask on behalf of the staff if you’re eating tonight,” Nova replied.
Yemi climbed to her feet, brushing the dust from her pants. Nova looked dapper in her new queensguard uniform. Gold chain enclosures made stripes across her chest and the cuffs of her slate-blue jacket. The black subarmor crept above its high collar. She looked tired, too, in the whipping firelight.
“I’ll do it. The braziers. Tell the kitchen to leave out a stash of fruit or something I can pick at without bothering anyone.”
“It’s not a bother. You’re their queen, and they want to take care of you.” There was no hint of irritation in her tone, even though she’d said this same thing a hundred times over the years.
“Just as well. Fruit will be fine.” Yemi gestured for the torch.
“Are we going to talk?” Nova asked without giving it to her.
“What about?”
Nova looked at Yemi as if waiting for her to acknowledge that she knew the answer. “How everything’s changed and what that means. How you haven’t looked me in the eye since—”
“No, we’re not,” Yemi replied.
Nova clenched her jaw the way she always did when she was frustrated but unable or unwilling to articulate it. She shook her head as if to free herself of any nagging thoughts and moved to bow and dismiss herself.
Yemi drew a hand long over her face as if rubbing the bone-deep fatigue from it and forced herself to speak. Nova deserved answers, even if no one else did.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I don’t blame… us. But I am trying to find something to blame. It’s like I can’t feel anything unless it’s anger now. I’m empty unless I’m vibrating with rage, and I don’t have a place to put it that isn’t on everyone’s heads. If I rule now? Before I’ve figured that out? I’m a despot. I’ll squander my parents’ legacy and lay waste to everything to atone for what has been taken from me.”
Yemi dropped her head. Her own words felt like an admission of being some monster her mother had successfully taught manners and kept chained for years, only to have it all come undone in a single moment. Nova took her hand and waited for her to look up again. Her skin was warm, and Yemi realized it was the first time in days that anyone had touched her.
“Look. Come train with me in the morning,” Nova said. “We’ll work until you’ve knockedmyass in the dirt for once. By that time, maybe you’ll find some clarity or at least be hungry enough to eat something. Then we’ll work on getting you an animus and get you out of this house.”
Yemi kissed her, if for no other reason than she needed more of her warmth. And sure as the moon was high, she finally felt something that wasn’t anger.
Nova palmed her face and looked her in the eye. “I go wherever you go. Rampage or not.”
Yemi nodded.
“Let’s lean toward ‘not,’ though. I like the uniform and want to wear it for a while.” Nova winked. It was the first smile Yemi had managed in weeks.
Through the catacomb archway, the paper lanterns were now far enough to appear as flickering stars over her mother’s statue. She’d never put much stake in the lore of the Kept’s faith, but she hoped fleetingly that there were prayers in those flames and that some of them were for her.
