I’m so lost in my reverie, caught up in historical heresy and impossible possibility, that I proceed to walk directly into another archives visitor. My skull rings against my helmet as I collide with a nightfolk boy’s chest, then stagger back, dazed and frantically apologizing. This boy is shorter than Adria by a not-insignificant margin, but he still has over a foot on me, so I have to crane my neck to meet his stormy-gray eyes. He’s leaner, more angular, sporting dual pairs of wings with a body that could cut through heavy winds or carve through sheer stone without even trying. But Adria’s eyes, despite their unnatural purple, hold galaxies. The stranger’s are clouded, unreadable, and narrowed with obvious annoyance.
I’m so busy trying to apologize that I almost don’t notice when he simply looks past me to Adria and says matter-of-factly, “Precisely what is the prisoner doing in the nexus of our entire historical record?”
Adria’s voice is a low, wolfish growl. “She’s with me, Thaane.”
“With you in thearchives, which requires considerably more explanation.”
Thaane.I heard this man leading the soldiers to the gate. Heard him pin one to the wall and threaten to split him clean open. My heart careens against the inside of my rib cage.
Adria moves to put her body between me and Thaane, which would be a welcome source of protection if not for the fact that her bulk completely blocks my view. I shimmy sideways to maintain a visual on the stormy-eyed nightfolk. Maybe it’s the fact that my protector is at an obvious physical advantage, maybe it’s the way her hand almost catches me by the shoulder to hold me back, or maybe it’s just that I’ve had my head in this sun-forsaken helmet for far too long, but boldnessspikes through me despite my pounding pulse, and I answer before Adria can.
“We’ve reached an agreement regarding my time in the Shadowlands. I’m less than eager to return across the Passage, and the longer I’m gone, the more my return is worth. Everyone wins.”
Thaane’s flat eyes roam over me from head to toe. Where Adria’s gaze made my heart skip beats, Thaane’s succeeds only in raising my blood pressure. This is the fear response I should’ve had the first moment Adria illuminated her face for me, on the other side of my prison cell. Later, when I have a moment alone, I’ll have to untangle where my survival instincts went so awry.
“The last time the nightfolk made a treaty with the dayfolk,” Thaane says, abject, “you drove us from the Passage like festering vermin.” He turns back to Adria, teeth gritted. “When were you planning on telling me this?”
“A queen doesn’t need anyone else’s approval,” Adria protests.
“You have my loyalty. You have that of many old-guard generals: Isek, Agabon, Myla. But a coronation in blood does not, in the eyes of everyone, make you a queen. Not while Azarii’s rebels stalk our steps, preparing for full-scale war in the fringes.” What color exists in Adria’s face has drained away, but Thaane only barrels forward. “The Shadow Court has tolerated you well enough thus far. What will you do when they deem you insolent, a brash child, a hazard to your own people’s safety?”
“Do you truly think I haven’t considered that?” Adria protests. “Every move I make now is inevitably entangled with the court. I don’teatwithout wondering if they think I should be elsewhere, strategizing, rousing the people, doing anything but resting.”
“Do they know Kori is planning an extended stay?”
“They will.”
“And you think they’ll approve?”
“I amqueen,” Adria says, wings flaring wide, “not merely a soldier nor a council member. Try as they might to order me about, and try asI might to maintain our tenuous partnership, they could be torn down with a moment’s decree. And they know it.” Her violet eyes blaze something fierce. “So, as their queen, I will make them see my side.”
Groaning, Thaane presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Adria, please. Listen to me. Azarii’s soldiers will catch wind of this. A ransom for the sun’s only heiress could just as easily outfit the rebellion for prolonged resistance. How long can you keep this up? A court on the verge of calling for a coup? An uncle prepared to execute you himself? A daylight trespasser masquerading as a tourist?”
In the blink of an eye, in barely more than one long stride, Adria moves close enough to chest bump Thaane, her wings splayed like bared teeth, that growl rising to a rumbling near-roar. She holds Thaane’s gaze without blinking until the smaller nightfolk averts his eyes. “And I’m sure it will stabilize my regime,” she says, every word like cut marble, “for our first dayfolk visitor in generations to witness my right-hand man challenging my every choice.”
I can believe that Thaane believes he’s pushing back on her authority to protect everyone else. But it doesn’t make it any easier to watch him question both Adria’s leadership and my presence here in one fell swoop. I chew on the inside of my cheek, resisting the urge to speak even more inadvisable words than I already have.
“As your friend, Adria,” Thaane says, very slowly, “I would be abandoning my post if I didn’t question a decision so reckless.”
The difference between Adria’s reaction to Thaane’s protestations and my own is immediately striking. Our banter is like sparring; if our words are weapons, then those we’ve chosen to employ are blunt instruments. It’s quickly become clear that we want the same things, if for very different reasons. I don’t want to go home; Adria wants to establish authority in her own. For now, at least, our interests align.
This may be the first time I’m properly meeting Thaane, but there’s a bite in his voice that I can’t ignore. He’s not the unafraid advisor, dutifully offering his insight, as much as he’s trying to perform it. Hisweapons are real, freshly sharpened, tipped with poison, and prying for a break in Adria’s armor.
When Adria collapsed outside my cell, overcome by the vision of the sun, I saw her without her armor altogether. Only now, watching her apparent confidant struggle to pinpoint a single weakness, do I realize the gravity of what I was allowed to see. A queen brought low by a single glimpse of light that shone into and illuminated every open wound.
“I try not to make calls I’ll regret,” Adria says, not backing away from her opposition. “You skirted trial by a hair’s width, Thaane, by my command that you scorn. Don’t forget it.”
Thaane holds his queen’s gaze, head deliberately lowered in deference. False contrition, if my instincts are to be believed. I still remember how calm, how unshaken his voice was while I heard that lesser soldier squirm and gasp against the wall, his life held tenuously in his commander’s clawed hands. Thaane is more than capable of separating his emotions from his actions and from his presentation. There is appropriate awe in his bent, supplicant posture, willing submission behind his eyes, but of all the emotions I can read in this boy, none of them even remotely resemble respect. That is not how an advisor looks at his queen.
That is how, when I know she isn’t looking at me, I look at my mother.
I don’t tell Adria what I saw in Thaane. Maybe it’s because a lifetime thus far under my mother’s steady, relentless hand has taught me to table thoughts and theories that might be unwelcome. Maybe it’s because Thaane, if he does hold resentment toward Adria, is my last real weapon should my fragile alliance with the queen turn ugly.
I may be an invited guest now, rather than a prisoner, but I’m still trapped here until my mother comes to retrieve me—or Adria lets meleave. If things pivot to a dangerous collision course, I’ll want to have a concealed weapon. Thaane is my hidden blade, and he doesn’t even know it. If I need to outwit and escape Adria at any point, now I know who to manipulate.
It feels slimy, though, this illicit knowledge tucked away like a flask of poison in my sleeve. Aspect would never look at my (admittedly limited) human connections as potential weapons with which to defy me. I wonder if that will change when I install these nightfolk records into their mainframe. Do I want them to change, in my heart of hearts? I feel less human than Aspect has ever been.
Adria watches while I pry off a panel below Aspect’s chin, power down their mainframe, and proceed to open their head on an internal hinge to access the blinking, spark-spitting memory core. “Is that what your … memory chip … looks like?” She points at the mass of confused wires. “The one in your head?”
