“Oh, she’ll punish me, all right.”
“She needs an heir to her monarchy.”
“And who’s to say it has to be me?” I say, almost yelling now. “Maybe I’m not the perfect daughter her position demands. Maybe I’m not the heiress the Daylands deserve.” I shake my head. “Maybe they should pick someone else.”
“But she won’t,” Adria says, resolute. “If there’s one thing your people resent above all else, it’s change. It has to be you.” Her purple irises bolt me in place. “And she’ll pay to see it be so.”
All the oxygen whooshes out of me. “So you aren’t trying to kill me.”
“As a matter of fact,” Adria says, stepping close to the freezing wall between us, “I’m dedicated to keeping you alive.”
“What payment from the Daylands could you possibly want?”
“Why do you need to know?”
“Why shouldn’t you tell me?”
Adria snorts. The flame in her open palm wavers. “Because you’re set to inherit the only opposing power on our shared planet?”
“Right now, I’m caged like an animal, without my pistol or my mech,” I say, every syllable deliberate. “If I ever get out of this place, Adria, rest assured that no matter what I know of the Shadowlands, I’ll be terribly eager to forget it.”
“And profit off the memory? Return to my territory with a fresh Morpheus sphere, when my eyes are cast away?”
I should say,No, if you let me go, I’ll never come back.But spite is a hell of a thing, so instead I snarl, “Maybe.”
Adria laughs again. The freezing wall between us shimmers in the firelight, making her form flicker in bursts and starts, lending her whole body the unsteady half presence of a flame. “Frankly, Kori, I have no idea just what you’re worth yet.”
My throat clenches. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why would I lie? I could simply withhold information altogether. I still need to consult with my advisors, then communicate with your people.”
If only I could get out of this damned cell, surely I could shake free of nightfolk chains. “You could send me back,” I venture, forcing confidence into my voice despite knowing that the mask will filter it regardless. “Send me bound, broken, to kneel before my mother. Beg her to take me back. She’d give you whatever you wanted.”
My stomach twists. My mother values me because of what I represent, because I hold the Daylands’ future in my hands, because I alone can rule when she passes on. But the Daylands would never accept a criminal for a queen. If I returned home in chains, I would be disgraced. The people would riot. I doubt I’d be worth a ransom. I doubt I’d be worth remembering at all. Maybe my mother would simply force allrecollections of me into a Morpheus sphere, see it buried deep in the scorched earth, and try to move forward with another heir, chosen based on skill instead of blood.
But Adria doesn’t know that. Her forehead creases as she considers my words. “You’re a bold one, heiress.” Her voice drips with contempt. “No doubt planning an escape. I will have you know, in no uncertain terms, that your mechanical friend will not survive if you evade my grasp.”
Despite being nearly pitch-black, the room nevertheless seems to spin on its axis. My voice bursts out of me, so loud that it emerges from the mask laced with static. “Aspect. No, they didn’t do anything, they’re only here because of me, they’re practically property—”
“Property,” Adria says. “And yet you gave it a name.”
“For ease of pronunciation. Aspect’s code is 45P3C7. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”
“You’re a practiced liar. I’ll give you that. But a lifetime spent in the Shadowlands teaches a woman to look more closely at what true intentions lurk in the dark.” Adria crosses her arms. “You won’t leave without your mech, and I won’t let you see it unless you comply.”
My gloved hands curl into fists. “Everything I’ve read about your people … that you were cruel, heartless, hardly human at all anymore … it wasn’t true.” I glare without blinking. “You’reworse.Embracing mutation made you a thousand times worse. Is there no compassion left beneath your wounds and wings?”
Adria wheels, her back turned to me, her wings flaring wide as her false torch collapses into darkness. Her voice hisses down my spine in the dark. “I could scrap your friend for parts, but I haven’t. I could deliver you to your mother minus your rebellious tongue, but I won’t. Tell me what’s more monstrous, heiress: Giving a trespasser a second chance at returning to the light? Or creeping like a spirit through the shadows, confusing my people with memories never meant for them?” Her snarl shudders through the floor. “I could’ve slit your armor and watched theplanet take you, turn you, make you like me. You’d see there’s not so much difference between us, once you peel away your armor.”
My mouth tastes like salt. “I’m nothing like you.”
“If you want to return to the Daylands in one piece,” Adria says, “I sincerely hope you’re wrong.”
I blink hard, half against tears, half in a vain attempt to adjust my eyesight to the darkness. But the blackness is total, this place like the planet’s stomach, soon to digest me down to bones.
Somehow, I find my voice. “I’ll prove it.”
Adria says nothing, but wind rushes as her wings clench, coiling like fists against her shoulder blades.
