"I'll give you until sunrise to reconsider." Erlik's voice came from somewhere behind me, already fading. "That should be enough time to say goodbye. Or to make the smart choice and save everyone a great deal of unpleasantness."
I didn't turn around.
"Think about it, my son. Power. Knowledge. A kingdom of shadows. All of it yours, if you simply stop fighting the inevitable." His laugh echoed through the hall as he dissolved into darkness. "And do try to keep the melodrama to a minimum. The Screaming Galleries are quite loud enough already."
He was gone.
I knelt on the cold obsidian floor and held my mother and didn't speak. There wasn't anything to say. She wept quietly, the way people weep when they've used up all their composure and there's nothing left to hold the grief back with, and I held on, and the screaming never stopped, and somewhere above us the obsidian ceiling stretched up into darkness with no end.
Somewhere in the Light Court, Ada was standing outside her father's door with the truth in her hands, hoping he would be the man she believed him to be.
Somewhere on the other side of a sealed portal, Milan was already standing. Already thinking. I knew that the way you know things about people you've trusted for a very long time — without evidence, without reason, just the bone-deep certainty of it. He would find a way. He always found a way. Not because he was my father by blood — he wasn't — but because he had chosen to be my father by everything else, and men who make that choice don't stop when a god throws them out of a room.
"We'll find a way out," I told my mother. Told myself. "We always find a way out."
But my voice echoed hollow against the obsidian walls, and the screaming never stopped, and I held her tighter and waited for sunrise and tried very hard not to think about what I was going to have to decide when it came.
CHAPTER 21
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
Ada
The corridors of the Light Palace stretched endlessly before me.
I moved through passages I had known since childhood, past tapestries woven with threads of captured sunlight, past windows that overlooked gardens where I had played as a girl. Servants pressed themselves against the walls as I passed, their eyes wide at the sight of the Light Princess striding through the palace with purpose burning in every step.
My father needed me. And the man I loved was waiting for news that could change everything.
The guards outside my father's chambers moved to intercept me, but I did not slow. My light flared in warning, a corona of pure gold that sent them stumbling back with hands raised to shield their eyes.
The doors opened onto chaos.
Gün Ata's receiving chamber had been transformed into something between a sickroom and a council meeting. Healersin robes of white and silver clustered around tables laden with herbs and crystals and implements I did not recognize. Advisors in the formal attire of the High Council stood in tight knots, their voices low and urgent. And everywhere, everywhere, the smell of burning incense meant to mask something else, something that smelled like fading light magic.
I pushed through them all.
My father lay in his bed, propped against pillows that seemed to swallow his diminished frame. The sight of him made my breath catch.
He had always been the sun. Not metaphorically, not poetically, but actually and truly a being of such radiance that to look upon him was to understand why mortals had once fallen to their knees before gods. His hair had shone like spun gold, his skin had glowed with inner fire, his eyes had burned with the light of a thousand dawns. For three thousand years he had ruled the Light Court, had watched empires rise and fall, had stood as an eternal beacon against the darkness that crept at the edges of the world.
Now his hair lay lank against the pillows, more gray than gold. His skin had taken on a pallor that made him look carved from pale marble. And his eyes, those ancient eyes that had witnessed the birth and death of civilizations, seemed tired in a way I had never seen before.
He looked diminished. He looked weary.
Something was very wrong.
The advisors noticed me first. Lord Cevdet, my father's main advisor, curled his lip in that particular expression of disdain he reserved for my presence. Lady Zehra, who had served onthe council since before my birth, exchanged a significant glance with Lord Osman. The High Priest Mehmet, resplendent in his ceremonial robes, actually stepped between me and the bed, as if to shield my father from the sight of his own daughter. I wanted to backhand him for this, my anger flared and sparks of light escaped through my fingers.
"Princess Ada." His voice dripped with false sympathy. "This is not an appropriate time. Your father needs rest."
"You have no idea what my father needs." I kept my voice level, but allowed my light to pulse beneath my skin, a reminder of exactly who they were addressing. "Please step away. I need to see him now."
"With respect, what your father needs is not for you to decide." This from Lord Cevdet, who had never troubled to hide his opinion that a woman had no place in the line of succession. "The council is managing his care. You may return when we determine it is appropriate."
I stepped closer to him, close enough that he had to tilt his head back to meet my eyes. "When you determine? He is my father, Cevdet. My blood. And I will be the one caring for him, not a group of politicians who see his illness as an opportunity to position themselves for power." I let my gaze sweep across the assembled advisors, letting them see the steel beneath my words. "Unless one of you would like to explain to me exactly what is wrong with him and what you have been doing about it?"
Silence. Of course none of them knew, and none of them were prepare to do anything about this mysterious illness.
