“And by letting her stay here,” Thaane says, “you’ve put your entire kingdom at risk. I see it. The Shadow Court sees it. What are you going to tell them when they demand your report of the sun serpent attack? Was it all worth it—to treat a trespasser like a princess, no ransom in sight, your fortress blown through by sand beasts, your army bleeding and afraid before a rebellion that only grows stronger? A rebellion that looks more and morerightwith every passing sleep cycle?”
“Howdare you,” I burst out, but Thaane simply continues to shout over me.
“How can you possibly hope to lead us? Where is your courage? Torn away by a foreign princess’s lips, perhaps? Lips you shouldnever have touched.” He glowers at Kori, who looks unbelievably small by comparison, even with Thaane being shorter among the nightfolk. He can’t possibly know that we kissed, but I suppose the tension between us has become impossible to hide. “Where is your armor? You should bedead.”
“ENOUGH.” My voice is a scream, a bestial bellow. My voice is a surge of rising energy in my throat, burning brilliant blue, and I almost choke from the effort of swallowing it down. “She just told you we don’t know what’s happened. And she’s exiting the Shadowlands. She’s going home to find answers, and to leave me to focus on our war.”
“Nowyou decide to focus?” Thaane scoffs. “And you expect me to believe she’ll stay away, when you look at her like the sun itself alighted in your open palm?”
Kori steps forward. I extend an arm to hold her back, but she brushes it aside, and I don’t have it in me to physically restrain her. “You’re right,” she says, sickness churning in me at her words. “I should never have come here. But when I come back”—and, oh, how my heart somersaults that she sayswhenand notif—“it will be with weapons, perhaps even with soldiers. If Adria hasn’t already ended your civil war, then even without a ransom payment, I’ll be the final push to finish it. To bring lasting peace.” She extends a bare hand to Thaane, open, as if he doesn’t tower over her, as if he couldn’t turn the ground beneath her to shattering glass with a mere twitch of his gift. “But for now, Iwill leave.You have my word. On all of it.”
Thaane looks from Kori’s outstretched hand to her wide pleading gaze to my own surely stunned face. He sputters. He spits and stammers.
Behind all of us, Aspect says wistfully, “Aspect—will miss—triple dog.”
Russ gives the robot’s face a big, wet, sticky lick.
Thaane turns his back in a whirl of dark robes. His shoulders heave, his head cast down toward the floor, his arms crossed over his chest, all four wings folded tightly at his back. “Since you don’t check your messages, my lord, I’ll tell you General Isek is in the infirmary. One of the serpents shook him by his right leg, tossed him into a wall that crumbled completely. He may lose the leg … if he doesn’t lose his life. I know you’ve grown fond of him.” He punches the button to reopen the door. “Perhaps his life in the balance will be enough to restore your priorities. I trust you will be prepared to defend as muchto the Shadow Court.” And with that, he steps out, the door sliding shut with finality behind him, blanketing us all in horrible silence.
After an unbearable stretch of quiet, the only words I can find are “I’m so sorry, Kori.”
“He’s right, though,” Kori says, stumbling back to sit once again on the edge of my bed. She buries her head in her hands, fingers tangled in her brown hair, the tight braid coming increasingly undone. “I should never have come here. And the moment I saw that my presence here was distracting you, putting you at risk in the war …” She stares at the floor. “I should’ve gone home a long time ago.”
“A-and then y-you would never have awakened Aspect,” I stammer. “Or discovered that the radiation said to kill you only makes you stronger.”Or pressed your mouth to mine and breathed into me again the will to be more, to be better.
“At the expense of so many lives.”
“None of this is your fault.”
“Whether by my mother’s orders or Azarii’s, the serpents were here for me.”
“And if I’d done a better job as queen,” I protest, another chill shivering through me, “there would be no rebellion and no Elysian oversights allowing access to a pocket of overcharge.” Russ brushes up against my leg, trying to offer some moral support, but nothing can slow my pounding heart right now. “This ismykingdom, Kori. When it bleeds, I’m the one stained scarlet. I’m the one who has to answer to the court for what my people have become.” A sharp exhale takes all my oxygen with it. “General Isek. So help me. Of all my soldiers … I will never forgive myself if he doesn’t pull through.”
“He will,” Kori says, rising defiantly to her feet, even though she can’t possibly know that. “You all will. You’re going to end this war, Adria. I’m going to find out what’s happened to me, before whatever secrets lie in wait lead to war for the dayfolk, too. And when all is said and done, despite all the wrongs we committed along the way, we’ll both havemade things right, made thingsbetter.For dayfolk and nightfolk. For everyone.”
Despite myself, I reach for Kori’s wrist. I need to feel the blood pulsing through her veins, the warmth of her skin, the promise that we are both still alive, still fighting. I wish it were just us. I wish there were another universe, a far-off galaxy, even just one planet where we could be together, hidden away from political conflicts and rising wars. I want to fall asleep and wake up in our own little pocket of private time, orbiting each other, spinning on the selfsame axis, our days and nights in sync until we have no more left to give.
“For us,” I say. “A better world for you and me, despite the desert between us.”
I know we need, at long last, to part ways; there’s no way around it. But I want to live in our kiss forever. For so long, even without having the words, I yearned to touch her. She should’ve died in my arms, and instead, she clung to me with newfound strength, with impossibly echoed want. She was delicate as light in my hands. The dip of her collarbone. The broad muscle of her shoulders. The shooting star curvature of her spine. The gentle dip of her hips under my fingertips. The unapologetic desire of her lips moving with mine.
I could taste her wordless promise that this is not the end, the memory immediately searing itself over all the others—a flame-bright burn across my entire brain, impossible even by the wildest imagination to remove.
“And Aspect,” Aspect says brightly.
I blink, lost in my reverie. “What?”
“You both—have Aspect.” They lift one hand, struggling to independently raise one finger in a facsimile of a thumbs-up. “Even at—the end—of the world. And triple dog—too.”
In evident approval, Russ lifts all three heads toward the ceiling and barks.
CHAPTER
25
KORI
Adria insists on one last proper sleep for me before I return to the Daylands, but I fear she will have no such luxury. The Shadow Court demands an explanation for the sun serpent attack, and with Azarii’s rebellion having taken public responsibility—naming me as the target, no less—it’s impossible to pass it off as a freak incident. I considered quipping that Adria was wrong to blame my mother for the serpents, but with everything I know seemingly in flux, even the confidence behind my teasing has faltered.
