Everything inside me clamps shut like the sphere in my palm. Ribs locking together. Overgrown muscles drawing back against my joints. My wings ache—a persistent, tired tug at my shoulder blades. The Diakópsei granted me many gifts, flooded my veins with power, birthed me all over again as a new, vicious creature from its poisonous womb. But my power only holds sway here, in the Shadowlands. I’ve never dared to venture beyond the dark.
I’ve never even glimpsed the fabled sun, save for faint traces in the Passage.
If I did, would I even be able to behold it? Or would my eyes melt in their sockets, my skin dripping off my bones, like so many living things that failed to survive the Cataclysm?
My claws have nearly dented the Morpheus sphere. If I shatter it, there will be no recovering the memories within. A moment as seen by the dayfolk. An instant bathed in ceaseless heat and light.
The sphere wavers and blurs. I brace one arm against the floor, practically on all fours now, to stop from pitching forward. I hunger for sleep. I should have been unconscious when I first spotted Kori’s ship, and I haven’t slept a wink since capturing her.
“My lord.” The voice from my doorway hits me like an electric jolt.
“Thaane. I would have met you at the Shadow Court.”
“The court is three floors up. Zalel saw you pivot away from the stairwell, back toward your chambers.”
“Then why isn’t he here?”
“He hesitated to confront you alone,” Thaane says, measured. “I volunteered.”
A hollowness settles in my stomach. Zalel is still more boy than man, more servant than soldier, and he’s seen far too many of my private rages. Swept up far too many of my shattered mirrors since my overcharge, and all the bodies left in the wake of it. Part of me pities him for being assigned to me at all. No doubt, I looked ashen and hauntedwhen I left Kori’s cell. It’s no wonder Zalel didn’t want to confront me. The boy is doubtlessly tired as well; it was he who used his gift to heal the prisoner’s mangled arm before her awakening.
I blow out a breath, its tendrils curling stark white from the constant cold. “Fair enough.”
“Adria … I’m not here on orders.” Thaane’s voice wavers. “I’m here as your friend.”
Your friend.There were times I suspected Thaane would’ve preferred to be more than that. But he knows full well I could never feel the same; there isn’t a man anywhere on this planet who could make my heart race, make my legs wobble, like the few female warriors in my parents’ army always have when they walked by. My heart is not attuned to men. Father blamed himself, once, when I tried to tell him. I retorted that he might as well blame Mother, too, if we were going to treat my heart’s inclinations as an aberration—earning me a blow to the cheek and a permanent ban on such conversations.
Thaane is still watching me. I pull myself out of my thoughts. “I’m fine.” The shape of the Morpheus sphere is all but imprinted in the flesh of my palm. “I needed a moment. Much has happened since … since everything.”
Thaane’s eyes flicker to the sphere. “What is that?”
“The dayfolk heiress was carrying it.”
“Could it be …?”
“A Morpheus sphere, yes.”
Thaane’s gaze goes wide, pupils dark and swimming. “Do you know what sort of memory is inside it?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you know how to open it?”
“I do.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
I shake my head. My horns feel heavy, more collar than crown. “This is the first dayfolk trespasser under my new reign. When myparents—when the last leaders ruled, they didn’t deign to bargain with dayfolk. But whatever is inside this sphere …” I catch myself blinking in time with its red light. “Only the prisoner can open it.”
“And what does she want in exchange?”
I rise to stand on two feet, swallowing hard. “Nothing,” I breathe.
In a world where dark and light each hold court on their assigned planetary side, where creatures of the day and the night never mingle, where every victory is bought in fire or in ice, born in hidden shelters or unnatural fortresses, this girl—Kori—would trade something for nothing. A memory of sunlight for my trust. And what is my loyalty even worth? What mercy do I have left to give?
“Nothing at all,” I say.
The red light gleams against my palm, and for an instant, I’m slick again with my mother’s blood. My ears ring with my father’s screams. What I wouldn’t give to remove that memory, prying it out with my own claws if I had to. I wonder what its physical shape would be; presumably a bloody, writhing thing, like the root system of a poisonous tree, the foundation of my newly claimed empire rooted irrevocably in death.
