But I’m not the same girl Lady Ariadne found in his bed just a week ago. That girl didn’t know anything about Ophir, nothing about our history. That girl believed she was nothing but a gutter rat, content to live on scraps. But after what I’ve seen today, I can never be that girl again. I could never live in his shallow palace of gold. That kind of comfort is never satisfying. There’s always an emptiness to it. An undercurrent of guilt. One that the nobles try to erase by piling on more and more of the same. More food. More wine. More opulence. Like this very palace, full of bizarre toys, far more than necessary to be interesting, past extravagant, bordering on terrifying.
All those automatons that could finance food and shelter for the thousands of poverty-stricken Ophir children begging in the streets. Really, actuallyfeedthem, not just throw them a candy, like Rollo does whenever he needs to tell himself he’s a good person.
It was wrong of me to accept his handouts then, and it’s even more wrong now, after what I’ve seen and learned. Rollo doesn’t understand that, which means he doesn’t understand me. I’m still just a pet to him. A project. No—a toy, like the automatons in House Dominant. Like those toys, I’d be relegated to the discard pile of a dusty storage room once I cease to amuse him anymore, or work exactly the way he wants me to. It only confirms my feelings that much more. Rollo isn’t the man I thought he was. He never was.
“I wish you would change your mind, Gin,” he says. “I thought I knew you.”
I clench my jaw and my eyes narrow. “No, Rollo, you don’t know me at all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENGIN
“Tadhana! Assist me in summoning the power of the goddess.”
It’s about time! Thought you’d never ask. You were just letting him drone on and on…
With that, Tadhana’s voice fades away and my skin begins to glow, starting from the center of my body and spreading out until it reaches my fingertips, like warm water flowing through me. My eyesight sharpens. I see more clearly; colors are more saturated. I detect the slightest movement around me, like a predator in the wild. My eyes must be glowing now, too. If only I could see what the others do.
Rollo staggers backward, nearly falling over his own feet. He looks at me with awe and fear. I smile wide as the energy continues to flow through me.
Then he smiles. “Yarima, are you in there?” he says, but it’s not his voice, it’s another voice.
Oh no, Tadhana says.
-Oh no?
Yarima was always in love with Dokpilan, the trickster god. I can feel her feelings through our bond.
“You’re not going to hurt me,” Rollo says. “You’d never hurt me. Yarima, you love me. You’ve always loved me,” he croons. “You can have me now. I’m all yours.”
-Yarima! No!I scream.Tadhana, help me resist!
I try to push Rollo, but he fires back, and the wind is knocked out of me, and my entire body throbs with pain. My vision wavers. Everything looks hazy, and the room spins. It can’t end like this. I won’t allow it. I haven’t come this far only to lose. I try to shake off the pain and struggle to get to my feet. No matter what happens, no matter the outcome, I’m not going down like this. I’m going to fight to the bitter end.
I close my eyes as I stand, my legs threatening to give way beneath me. I must shut out the pain. The dizziness. Shut out the world around me, if I can, if only for a moment. Because if I can tap into the power, I will win. The Ophir will win. I feel it there, dormant, waiting to come alive, like when I went through the trials. I had to cut through the pain then, too. I can do it again. I simply need to focus, and draw on the strength deep within me. I know it’s there.
“Yarima,” Rollo croons. “Come to me. Come with me.”
-Don’t listen to him, I beg.Don’t give in.
“Gin, you don’t have to do this,” Rollo says. “This isn’t you.”
I spit in his face, enraged.
He snaps his fingers and I’m frozen, I can’t move.
“Stupid girl. I offered you the world and instead you cling to a fairy tale. The Ophir fell and the Kingdom of Waves will never rise again. The only way is to work with Lacon. Our future is Lacon, don’t you understand?”
I’m crumpling to the floor, defeated.
Tadhana appears before me now, in her full living form, as she was in the trials. “Remember what you learned,” she implores. “Remember who you are.”
The memories come to me again, of the day Ophir fell into the enemy’s hands. The atrocities committed against them. The elders systematically slaughtered, all their knowledge and wisdom gone with them, and with the manuscripts that were burned in massive bonfires in the town square. Women clutched children by the hand, another on their hip, running away from danger, despite there being nowhere safe to go. Others fought bravely, for as long as they could. My ancestors, who perished in the battle. Warriors, all.
And me as well. I’m a warrior, too, and I’m not going to let them get the best of me. I must do this for all of them—the ones in the past, and the ones who stand before me now.
But maybe there’s another way to fight.
I hold up my head and smile at him. “You missed me, did you?”
