I tell myself it’s her terror’s overdue arrival. I tell myself I don’t somehow know, in my entire body, that her unknown eyes are holding mine fast, hardly blinking, unable or unwilling to look away.
“I should hope so,” I counter, but I don’t draw back just yet.
I feel like an ice sculpture, frozen in place, but heat waves roll through me all over. Might as well use this to further the lesson—order her to squirm free, maybe even to retrieve the freezeshot gun.
“Your one and only advantage, Kori, is that nightfolk know what we are. What we’ve evolved to be capable of. So any one of us might make the mistake of underestimating you.”
“But not you.” The sarcastic edge is gone, exposing the raw underbelly of sincerity.
Her chest heaves with heavy breaths and mine rises and falls in sync, and I swear, I can nearly feel the shape of her through the armor, curves that would fit so neatly into mine despite what I’ve become.
“Kori …” I shake my head, trying to clear it. “You smuggled sunlight to my door. You’re on a quest to breathe being into metal.”
You could break me in ways I can hardly express. You’ve already pried my armor loose and swept your eyes across wounds even I hardly dare to see.
“I know better than to expect any less,” I conclude. I set my jaw, refocus myself. “Now break away from me. Pretend it’s life or death. Get that shotgun back,” I instruct, gesturing in the freezeshot’s direction with one wingtip. “Regain control.”
Time passes at an unbearably slow speed. I’m coiled like a spring, waiting for her move, but not at all prepared for what she actuallydoes. Just one arm, reaching up toward my face; one gloved hand, resting delicately, tenderly, against the high arch of my cheek.
She can’t feel me, I’m sure, through the layers of armor and fabric that guard her from the planet, but she knows I can feel far too much of her. Braced on her other arm, she leans up so that her mask’s filtered breath brushes hot and fast against my swollen throat. “And what makes you think, Adria … that you’re the one in control?”
I close my eyes. Images dart past me in the darkness. Mother’s skull, caving in like old wood. Father’s throat twisted and snapped like dead branches. I’ve seen what I am now if I dare to lose control. I have a civil war to quell, a kingdom to uplift, a ransom to earn.
And by the Beyond, damn it all, I want to know what her face looks like under the mask.
My tongue blessedly sticks to the roof of my mouth before I can say anything I regret. Less blessedly, but nevertheless conveniently, there’s a shout down the hall, and the unmistakable whizzing blast of freezeshot freshly fired.
Shortly after my parents’ reign ended, I discussed a tracking chip—or, less invasively, a bracelet—with my advisors, should I require immediate assistance. Father always had Mother, but I, an unpartnered queen thus far, too often found myself alone. Thaane wisely warned that a tracking chip could be hacked and exploited. But now, what wouldn’t I give for the assurance that help is coming?
Footsteps and freezeshot thunder in calamitous conflict down the halls.
“Move,” I snarl through reflexively bared teeth, stumbling back and away from Kori, on all fours like a thoughtless beast.
My head is hazy, fogged with useless want that quickly transmutes into anger instead, the only emotion that still feels safe. That anger thunders through me in a hot bolt of adrenaline.
Somehow, I let the only girl I cannot crave distract me, invade me, begin to dissect all the most private parts of me, without even a proper glance from her eyes or a touch from her unguarded skin. And now, judging by the sounds of struggle echoing down the cavernous hall, the unblinking eye of the Beyond has seen my absurd abandonment of royal duty and ensured that we’ll both pay the price for Kori’s presence in the dark.
I step forward, wings spread and claws bared, casting Kori into total shadow at my back. “Stay behind me.”
“We’ve established I can fire a gun,” she retorts.
“Then stay behind me with the gun”—I sigh, even as she lunges for the fallen weapon behind me—“if it makes you feel better.”
Kori fumbles with the freezeshot gun’s weight distribution, ultimately electing to hold it balanced against her shoulder with two hands, despite the intended one-handed grip by a nightfolk wielder. Her breaths, even filtered by the mask, come hard and fast. My own thoughts pinwheel with equally threatening speed. Infuriatingly, precious little of them are about the political significance of another attack by Azarii’s rebellion.
Kori is here because of me. I am alone, and far from well rested, with my pulse pounding in my throat, because of her. We will both suffer for this almost, for this fleeting impossibility, and should her blood fall on my head … will it even be distinguishable from all the lifeblood I’ve already shed?
I am sick and tired of visiting graves, atoning in salt water for necessary sins that will never wash away.
“Consider this another history lesson,” I say, fighting to keep my own voice steady and assured. “Once, the records will report, Azarii’s rebels came for his queen when he thought her distracted.”
The footsteps rattle along the stone hallway, echoing off the molded walls, growing ever closer. My enhanced hearing catches the rumbling reload of freezeshot canisters, theclickof fingers wavering against triggers, the heavy exhales of rebels who think they are finally close to their prize. Battle lust roars through me and blacks out all else.
The planet’s own energy pulses, sparks, and crackles at my clawed fingertips, rolls into dark projectile orbs against my palms. “And then the girl from the sunlight truly saw what the shadows can do.”
In the following instant, several things take place at once.
A cluster of armored rebels lunges through the training room’s doorway, firing a flurry of freezeshot rifles. I thrust my hands forward to unleash my gathered energy. And Kori gives the freezeshot rifle anothersincere try, her own bolt careening off an attacker’s helmet. The weapon’s recoil once again drives her to her knees; the rifle slides back across the stone in a clatter of pebbles and dust.
