“I also advise,” I say, venom on my tongue, “against condescending to me.”
“Adria.” Veins pulse and writhe, blue and bloated, in the tension of Thaane’s forehead. “Everything I’ve ever done in the line of duty, I’ve done for our people. If my methods were wrong—”
“They were.”
“Forgive me.”
Thaane shifts his weight, wrists still locked at his back, and falls to his knees before me. I have a solid foot of height on him under normal circumstances. Now I loom like a gravestone over his pitifully crouched form.
“I am not who you ought to ask for forgiveness,” I breathe. “The Shadow Court will decide your fate.”
“Must they? Can you not pardon me?”
“As your queen?”
“As my friend.”
I try to ignore the twist in my gut. “That only worsens the crime. You ignored procedure and defied my leadership, in wartime, no less. In service of a petty grudge against a convenient victim.” I shake my head. “We will not win this war by torturing its fallen.”
Pain, all too poignant, flashes across Thaane’s face. Quivers through his jaw. “The dayfolk already despise us. But to have one of our own deny what we are, cloak her gifts in shame, wear our people’s nature like manacles—”
“And you think she’s proud now?” I roar, despite myself. “Who wouldn’t want to be like you—so enthralled by your power, you simply must demonstrate by drawing blood?”
“I never touched her.”
“You tortured her. You didn’t make her believe we’re more than animals. You fulfilled her every fear. You became what our enemies say we are.”
Thaane lowers his head, eyes gone glassy as the interrogation room. “Adria.” His voice breaks. “We’ve fought together, haven’t we? Siblings-in-arms. Together amidst the insurgency, freezeshot all around us, rebels falling in our wake. I was proud to call you my princess.” A razors-harp intake of breath. “Even more so to call you my queen.”
Countless battles shimmer in his gaze, and for an instant, I’m back on the battlefield, eyes frantically scanning the horizon, not bothering to watch my back, knowing that my allies—knowing thatThaaneis there, prepared to fight.
Words build up in my throat, too many to break free. Everything tastes sour.
Softly, Thaane says, “I didn’t do it to torture her.”
“Thaane.” My trusted advisor. My loyal brother-in-arms. Thaane, who sided with me when I overthrew my parents. Thaane, the first to volunteer for my new militia. Thaane, whose gift is for breaking and shattering, but who has stood solid as stone through all this upheaval, trying to weld the nightfolk back together. Now all I can see when I look at him is that cruel curve of mouth, that shudder of laughter at the prisoner’s shame, forced to behold her own likeness reflected a thousand times. “Then why?” I snarl.
“I only made her look.” Thaane wrings his hands, not looking at me. “I didn’t tell her what to see.”
“You knew what she would see.”
“When you look into a mirror, Adria, do you tremble? Do you curl into yourself like a corpse in the Passage and hope to die?” Thaane saysthrough his teeth. He’s still kneeling before me, but his shoulders arch, body pulled taut. “I gave her a chance to behold her own strength, her own true nature, and claim it. She chose to cower. She chose to drive every shard of glass back into her own heart.”
I swallow. I can’t meet his eyes any more than he can meet mine. The captured rebel saw a monster in the mirror. That’s the crux of Azarii’s renewed rebellion: a total rejection of our gifts, my existence as an overcharged overlord serving as the ultimate evidence that the Diakópsei turns ordinary people into animals. I’ve told my people otherwise, raised a new empire against that very belief, but nevertheless, my chamber is devoid of reflections, littered with shattered glass.
“It takes time,” I growl, “to be proud you are a monster.”
“A princess of monsters, even.”
“A queen.”
Radiation spears through me from my forehead to my feet. It rings in my horns and claws, gleams electric behind my eyes as they drift shut. I offered myself to the Diakópsei like a living sacrifice to an unfeeling god. I am the greatest monster the nightfolk have ever birthed. My body exults in the thing I become in battle, feeds on the rage that yet pulses at my temples. But my heart aches, stone-cold, in my chest.
What would Father and Mother think of me now, stronger than they ever were? Still too weak to take pride in it?
Unsteady, Thaane rises to his feet. “Forgive me, Adria.” The freeze wall between us makes him flicker. Shimmer. An ice sculpture of a man. A mutant that a single punch could shatter. “It is no small thing, to look upon a face I’ve known since birth, and comprehend that now she holds our entire world in her hands.”
“It was no easier,” I say, throat raw, “to watch my childhood companion drive a prisoner to the brink.”
