Movement in her periphery startled her as she turned. It was only a flash as they disappeared behind the drop-blossom trees, but the moon had shown her someone crouched, creeping quickly along the back wall of the palace, edging toward the crypts. Yemi kept herself hidden as she watched through the swaying branches, her heart quickening with every moment she couldn’t identify them.
A loud blast. The ground rumbled beneath her. Smoke and the sound of tumbling debris roared over the west wing.
This was an attack. Her legs remembered the trembling of the world at war. She was the queen. Someone was here for her. The Drakes. The pieces clicked into place in her mind. She was alone outside. There was no one around to shoo her to safety, to prevent her from rounding the hedges of the lower gardens as she followed theshadow to the crypts. Nova, Cutter, what remained of those she called family were all inside, likely seeking her out to protect her. Running was not an option.
She kept herself low, squeezed between the low arcing wall of the crypt and the tombs of dead kings as she watched the shadow wander the center aisle and search for the palace entrance by torchlight. A quick glimpse at his face revealed he was some nameless no one, all sweat, dust, and anxiety with a long-barrel pistol jostling against his hip. A shouting voice echoed, muffled on the other side of the stone. As he moved away, Yemi felt the surface of the tombs for her father’s spear and quietly lifted it from its dusty cutout beside his armor.
She had never killed anyone before. Not in a conscious, premeditated sense, anyway. She’d never had cause to do it by her own hand, and it wasn’t the sort of thing to come up in casual conversation with those who had. All she knew of it was what she’d heard once when Cutter was training his soldiers.
Best to treat them like a target,he’d said.In a pinch, there’s no room to consider their humanity.
She repeated the words to herself, crouched there in the corner. And when she’d steadied her breathing and readied her grip, she stepped out of the shadows, whistled once for her target to turn around, and launched the spear clean into his chest.
He stumbled back, all gargling and ragged breaths until he met a wall and dropped his torch.
Yemi approached behind her father’s shield in case he managed to get the pistol off his hip.
“How many of you are there?” she demanded.
He lifted his eyes, and a slow smile crept over his bloodstained lips as he made out her face.
“Enough,” he rasped, a chuckle becoming a labored cough. Yemi wrapped her hand around the spear and extracted it with a sharp tug. A squelching sound and a brief torrent of blood pumped in time with the beating of his failing heart, and his eyes listed to the left before going vacant.
Yemi stared at him for a long moment, the shouting on the floors above her drowned out by what sounded like the ocean in her ears. How strangely still he was now, no more alive than the wall on which he slumped. His skin puckered like gooseflesh as the blood that kept his body warm leaked into a puddle spreading in the brick grout around him.
She’d done this.
Her stomach churned, and she vomited at his feet. Twice in one night. She wished she’d eaten more lately.
There was no time, though, to wonder about his name, whether he’d left behind children or parents, who he had been before the Drakes had corrupted him, or whether he knew more words thanenough. If he was meant to open a door, someone would be along after him soon.
Quick as she could with fumbling fingers, she donned her mother’s bear mask and stripped her would-be killer of his pistol, hoping her subarmor would be enough for what she was about to walk into. The drone of a horn created a vibration in her chest, and she silently thanked the Old Gods that someone had been alive to sound the alarm. She skipped up the stone stairs and took a breath before opening the heavy door, hoping its loud iron squeak didn’t give her away to whatever waited behind it.
9
• NOVA •
Nova muttered every curse she knew as she scrubbed the deed from her hands. Her mind raced to cut off any repercussions, close any gaps of knowledge before the news of the man’s de-tonguing spread and became something larger than she could protect Yemi from.
“That girl and her fucking temper,” she hissed. “Whydid he have to spit?”
Captain Balast appeared in the doorway, the limp and paling tongue in the palm of his giant hand. “What should I do with this?”
“Pitch it,” Nova snapped. Balast flinched but nodded his reluctant understanding. Nova took a breath and dried her hands on a shop towel. “You and I have a secret to keep now, don’t we?”
Captain Balast swallowed visibly and nodded.
“This will need cleaning up. If this—if it gets out… I need your word that it won’t. Her Majesty is still grieving. Everything is unstable. Please say you understand.”
“Yes, Commander. You have my word.”
She eyed him a moment and took his measure. He seemed trustworthy. If he said he could handle it, she would take him at his word.
“I’m sorry to put you in this position,” she assured him.
He sighed. “Not your fault.”
Well, it’s got to be someone’s,she thought. She wondered at the training of jailers and if their consciences were as primed for killing as guardians’. His post was not a peaceful one, but there was still an innocence to him, as if this was a vocation but not a passion.
