Heavy footsteps approached from behind. “Everything alright in here?” Nova said, likely so Yemi would know it was a friend and not because it wasn’t evident that nothing was alright in here. Cutter sidled up full of menace, his cracked spearhead sparking as it singed the fresh enemy blood staining it.
“Whatever this is, we don’t have time for it,” he said in a low voice.
Dahlia fixed her posture and wiped blood from her nose. “You’re spirited, in a word. It’s admirable. Wouldn’t have pegged you for a brawler. I wish you’d taken our conversation more seriously, though. I have the throne. I have your crown—”
“The throne is a chair, and the crown is a fucking hat. I am your queen with or without them.” Here, Yemi smiled, took a moment to spit the blood collecting in her mouth onto the polished hall floors. “And I promise you will kneel before me at the very end of your life.”
Dahlia nodded, something solemn but resigned on her face. She walked slowly to where Orie knelt and plied her chin with the tip of her blade. “I need the ring. If you die here or try to leave with it, every remaining member of your household dies violently. Tonight.”
“A more credible threat, had your men not been sloppy and murdered most of them anyway.”
“Still.” She tilted Orie’s head up, exposing her trembling swallows. “It will be hard to stabilize without someone here who knows the ins and outs of this place, but I will persevere if you force me to.”
Yemi looked from the panicked Orie to the smug Drakes and the nervous, impatient line of nameless rabble with their smattering of clumsy weapons. This helplessness in the face of an enemy was a new and entirely unwelcome sensation. She imagined herself a dragon with a roar that would collapse the palace on top of them all before she gave up her ring.
But Orie was depending on her. And Enna’s time was just as limited, if it hadn’t run out already.
She twisted the ring off her finger, and the militia relaxed. She would give them this day. She would trust Nova and Cutter to get her out of this alive, and she would return to carve the map of her empire into Dahlia Drake’s flesh.
“When I return,” she said calmly, eyes boring into Dahlia’s, “and you are all begging your villain for mercy, remember which one of us gave up her birthright to protect her people, and which one of us was just standing in this room for dramatic effect while your mates were being slaughtered in the hallway.”
She tossed the ring onto the ground before her, the joyful tinkling sound it made as it bounced and rolled against the marble making light of the deed. If Dahlia killed Orie now, Yemi swore she would have every head in the room before she died.
Dahlia scoffed and gestured to the armed men around her. “Return from where?”
Cutter snapped the fingers of his battle-gloved hand, showering a fistful of cherry bombs in sparks that lit their fuses. He tossed them at the line of rebels, sending them scattering behind the pillars. In an instant and unfazed, Dorian Drake stepped in front of his daughter and raised his pistol. He fired just as Nova stepped in front of Yemiand slammed her shield together, the bullet glancing off its surface just inches from her eyes.
“Go.Now,” Novashouted over the din of explosions. Yemi hesitated, giving Orie a final, meaningful look that she hoped was read as a promise to come back for her, and took off behind Cutter with Nova covering her.
There was little fighting on the way back through the grand hall, but they cut quickly to the east wing ahead of a second menacing rebel mob stalking toward them from the front entrance. They ducked into the corridor to the crypts far ahead of anyone who would follow. Cutter pushed aside a heavy section of the stone mural to reveal a narrow sliver of passageway behind it.
“Do they know this is here?” Yemi asked as she and Nova stepped inside.
“There are six panels here, and six tunnels. A dozen more behind paintings and statues in the palace. They’d have to make more than one lucky guess.” Cutter groaned as he slid the panel back into place, leaving them in complete darkness until Nova found a torch on the wall. She struck it lit with a long match from a box in a cubby carved into the rock, revealing nothing but a narrow dirt path and more dark. “This one lets out on the coast.”
“And then what?” said Nova as Cutter took the torch from her and led the way.
“Can we make it to Muris?” Yemi asked, her mind still reeling from how she’d left behind Orie and Enna to uncertain fates, how she’d lost her mother, her throne, her home in a week. How something was almost certainly wrong with Dahlia. How natural it felt to slay people.
“Not quickly. But it’s our best shot. You’re not safe anywhere in Ixia now.”
“Oh, that’s temporary,” Yemi replied. “I promise you.”
PROLOGUE II
“Every god is a cursed being, obédi.
You must never strive to become one.”
Ursla had been warned as a child. Yes, she’d been a child once, born to a people whose magic was boundless if they wanted it to be, but discipline and selflessness had tempered it. They could have become weapons but had simply chosen not to.
To become a god is to be possessed entirely of hunger.
This clever, dangerous girl spent lifetimes in search of a world where the ancient wisdom was a lie.
It took centuries, sure, but the witch, knowing more of what Men were than what they tasted like, was meticulous in her work. She took the sea as her arena. It was too vast for Merrine to ever fully control—whatever that meant—and experience told her it was the one realm where Men in their natural curiosity would never stumble upon her. Mystique was key to godhood.
For a hundredth time, she had replaced living gods as a being who could not only give men immortal life but also a reason beyond worship to exist. And while her influence grew, the Old Gods of Ixia continued to devour men, not realizing the souls of those they’d killed returned to Ursla, increasing her power. She had learned some timeago that indeed the living would always die, and if death was her power, it was infinite.
