He said: “The future of this city is cracked open, and I will be the first to walk through.”
I wanted to shout. I wanted to skate the length of the dais and jump into his arms and say, Yes, this, more of this, give them everything we have, but the city was silent, and the silence was the silence before a quake, the silence before a war.
The pillar behind the throne ignited.
The white of the cracks ran up the walls, into the ceiling, down the long length of the chamber, out through the open doors, into the city beyond. The gold of the realm took it in, blended it, made a new vein—red-gold, white-gold, the old royal blood and the new sunlight—and the fourth pillar was lit.
The city bowed, but it bowed not in worship. It bowed in shock. It bowed in fear.
The brothers watched.
Wrath’s hand curled around Lydia’s waist. Greed turned to his mate and, for a moment, let his own mask slip, and in the face was a hunger, a terror, a want. Envy did not look at anyone but me.
I realized, then, what we had done.
We had made a target.
The king watched me. He watched Lucan. He watched the cracks, and the light, and the court shifting in their seats, and he smiled the smile of a dying man who had just seen the beginning of the end.
The bond at my wrist flared. Lucan turned to me.
He was shaking, just a little, as I had shaken after the first clean edge, after the first clean skate, after the first real, unbreakable moment of my own life.
He held out his hand.
I went to him.
We faced the city, together, and in the silence I heard the sound of a thousand beings recalibrating what they believed possible.
But something was wrong in the room. Not the king’s smile, not the brothers’ reactions, not even the bond going hot in warning.
There was a cold.
Just at the back of the neck, at the edge of the hairline, the faintest trace of cool air in the hall.
I scanned the room.
I found him instantly, because he was the only being not reacting at all.
He was tall. All the brothers were tall, but he was the tallest. He stood near the edge of the dais. He wore a grey so pale it looked like stone, the fabric loose, the cut severe. His skin was the color of old paper, almost translucent. His hair was black, long, and tied back in a way that made his head look heavier, as if it took effort to hold upright. His eyes, when they found mine, were a pure, flat, winter blue. No ring. No fire.
He watched me.
Not Lucan.
Not the cracks, not the bond, not the future of the city or the war or the succession.
He watched me.
It was the most direct, most chilling attention I had ever felt, in this world or the last. Every other being in the room was pointed at Lucan; this one did not seem to know Lucan existed. His arms were folded, and his weight rested on one hip, as if he was about to fall asleep standing up.
He watched me.
Sloth.
The bond gave me nothing—no threat, no alert, not even the sense of a magical peer. He would neither hurt nor help me. He had already decided something, and the something concerned me.
He smiled, very slightly.
