Thaane opens and closes his mouth several times, gnawing on the right words, before answering, “I am your friend, Adria. Through Azarii’s first uprising, through your claiming of the throne, and nowthrough his pathetic second stand. Please. I know you don’t want me at the mercy of the Shadow Court.” His skin is more white than blue, more veins than flesh. “Let me redeem myself. Put me on the front lines. Pelt me with freezeshot. Paint the darkness with my blood. I don’t care. But don’t let me waste away in this cage. Don’t let those sniveling cowards on the Shadow Court, who know nothing of what a soldier sees, decide what to make of me.”
My wings flap idly at my back, twitching with anxious energy. Thaane isn’t wrong. This thing he’s done, it wedges like a splinter beneath my skin, but I am no better. I can still taste rebel blood on my tongue. I can still feel the sick exultation in my belly, beholding the prisoner’s fear before I took her down.
I pin Thaane with my gaze. “The next time we take prisoners, you deliver them to a qualified questioner. Understood?”
“Yes, my lord.”
I tap the control panel with a singular claw. The freezing wall between myself and my friend flickers, then drops away into nothing.
“My first order?” Thaane says, all eagerness. But hesitance underpins his voice, as it should.
“Go back to your quarters. You stink of blood and Earthside bullets.”
“And then?”
“Wait until I call you.” I gesture down the hall, toward the prison exit. “I’ve been awake for too long, and unlike you, I didn’t have the pleasure of a private nap. I want to be alone.”
“As you wish,” Thaane says, and scurries out of sight.
Exhaustion gnaws at my mind, but I’m wound far too tightly to sleep now. After all the ugliness I’ve seen this sleep cycle, even the dark behind my eyelids encroaches like a looming predator, suffocating, threatening to swallow me whole. I suppose that sleep, even in irregular and forced spurts, is a luxury that princesses can rarely afford. Let alone queens. Let alone in wartime.
So in a world devoid of sun, a distant twinkle of stars will have to do.
The fortress’s balcony is a collection of eight parapets, linked together with narrow bridges. The bridges are ideal for a crouched sniper, just barely peeking over the wall, poised to pierce a bolt of freezeshot directly into an enemy’s skull. The parapets are broader, open, perfect for winged nightfolk to launch themselves headlong into battle or otherwise.
I’ve used these parapets for takeoff more times than I can count, simply needing to feel the wind beneath my wings, the gratifying snap when they prevent me from meeting the ground, my body arching upward, set loose into the sky, unbound by anything. But tonight, all I want is an unmarred view of the stars above.
I stare off into the inky dark to which my mutated eyes have long ago adjusted. The loneliness comforts me, even though there’s almost nothing to see. A smattering of stars like fragments of bone. The familiar, reliable hulk of the Shadowlands’ mountains, most noticeably the Crown—a quintuplet of similarly sized spires just beyond what could rightfully be called the fortress’s outskirts. And behind me, ever steady, the torch that lights our world illuminates the corners and edges of my chosen parapet like an unnatural sun. For an unnatural people, as Azarii would certainly say.
A streak across the sky, silver-bright, like a sliver of foreign moon. I whirl and lean forward on my elbows against the parapet’s edge, eyes gone wide, wings reflexively unfurling as if to jump. A starship? It could be nothing else. A dayfolk starship, just beyond the mountain range that contains my fortress, too close to be an accident.
What’s a dayfolk pilot doing in the Shadowlands?
A terrifying thought darts across my brain—perhaps the insurgents from the recent attack have allies beyond the Passage. Perhaps my uncle, damn him, determined that any opponent of mine ought to become his army’s friend. Perhaps, after the tenuous peace and strictdivision brought about by the Territory Wars, my own subjects have allied with the dayfolk to overthrow my empire.
I don’t know what the dayfolk could possibly promise that would make nightfolk trust them not to eliminate us. But no one ever said insurgents were smart. I remember that girl at Thaane’s mercy, knees curled to her chest, mutant spikes ripping through her flesh, eyes shut tight against the shame of what she was. Maybe the insurgents hate themselves enough to throw their own bodies on a pyre, if it means my rule burns. I don’t know. But I can’t afford to take any risks.
Up here on the parapet, overlooking my vast obsidian kingdom, I don’t have easy access to a comms tablet. I left it in my chambers, not wanting to be disturbed, knowing I ought to be sleeping. But if I return to my chambers to call for backup now, I’ll lose sight of the rogue starship. May never find it again. May let a spy or interloper simply slip, unhindered, into the Shadowlands.
The starship begins arching away, and only now do I register that the crude engine coughs a trail of smoke and flame, a shower of glass sparkling like glitter all around it. I’ve never been to the Daylands or seen their ships, but nothing about that seems intended. Shock and awe alike spear through me as the dayfolk ship collides, nose first, with the Second Spire on the horizon.
The pilot should be dead.
Then again, after committing regicide to cement my own claim to the shadow throne, I should be dead, too. For better or for worse, things are not always as they should be on Pagomènos.
If the pilot is dead, their technology may be salvageable and provide some indication of why a dayfolk pilot veered into my kingdom. If the pilot is alive … I can hardly fathom the thought. A Pagonian nursed by sun, rather than clawing for scraps of the Diakópsei’s glow; crowned by light, not shadow; heedless of what lurks in the dark, boldly venturing into the endlessly visible, endlessly possible bright world before them.
I should be infuriated that a dayfolk pilot trespassed into my kingdom, but despite myself, I know the clench in my gut is hope, not hatred.
They should be dead; I should want it to be so. If they’re alive, I should send a soldier to put an end to that. Thaane wouldn’t hesitate before slitting their throat, ensuring no rogue factors threaten my already-tenuous newfound rule. And I know that would be the wise course of action. I know full well. That’s why Thaane is one of my lead soldiers and why I proudly count him among my closest confidants—he sets his personal feelings aside and does what must be done, a straight arrow launched by logic alone, absent any distractions from his purpose.
But so help me, I want the pilot alive. I want to pull them from the wreckage with my own hands, see their strange heat-born body with my own eyes. Before I cut out their tongue for their insolent invasion, I want to hear with my own ears what it’s like to live in the day. For that, perhaps I’ll even send them home to the Daylands with their heart still beating.
My father would see the pilot executed publicly, brutally. Thank the Beyond, in this at least, I am not my father. Perhaps I remain more rebel princess than honored queen. Perhaps I will always be more monster than leader, ravenous with my own plans and eager for order. I spread my wings and leap into the black sky.
They may have crashed into the Crown, but I will show this trespasser why I am the one the shadows call queen.
Once upon a time,
