“Our allies don’t seem interested in rebuilding or changing.” Sumira’s plea—and the response—was a central example of the status quo and they both knew it. Amarande drew in a stunted breath as her fingertips blanched white with pressure against her face. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they arrive at the Hand with far more pushback than we received yesterday—both publicly and privately. Anyone who is against the truth is against working together in any meaningful way.”
Amarande’s hands fell away, her expression shattered. All the joy evaporated, worry lining every angle and swoop of her face. That strong body of hers unwound as her eyes wearily crept to his, unguarded in the way that she only was for him.
“Is this what winning is, Luca? Constantly feeling as though you are a breath from losing it all?” Suddenly Amarande looked her mere sixteen years. Tears glistened, color in her cheeks from the pressure of her fingertips and the flush of so many emotions welling up under the surface. Love, frustration, need—disappointment. “I have everything I’ve ever wanted. You, my title, a chance to make real, true change, and yet… I feel as if the consequences of that happiness are pressing in, ready to tear us apart at any moment.”
“Nothing can tear us apart now, Ama.”
The gathering anguish in her expression cleaved a piece of his heart.
“Everything that could before can now. War, obligations, my mother…”
“We won’t let them.” Luca matched her tone, as stern as he could be, though he knew it paled in comparison to her own ability to be stern—something he needed to improve, maybe. Still, it got Amarande’s attention, her eyes flying to his and her rosebud lips parting with surprise. Luca lowered his chin, his stare as unwavering as his voice. “We made a vow to stay together and we will. What’s the pointof reshaping the Sand and Sky if we don’t change it enough to allow us to be as we wish?”
The surprise on her face faded into bitterness, Amarande’s thoughts deep and full of Geneva—and regret. Finally, she swallowed a steadying breath and answered him.
“As long as my mother breathes, we will never get what we wish. No matter how many lines of ink we rewrite. Our happiness is not safe, our lives are not safe, our people are not safe.”
It wasn’t an overstatement. Geneva was the biggest threat—to each of them, to stability, to peace.
They had yet to discussexactlywhat had happened between the queen and her mother when they’d been alone and armed in the hidden tunnel that ran from the Itspi’s council room to the library, though Luca knew the answer was more complicated than the stab wound to Amarande’s thigh and the fact that Geneva had slipped through her well-trained grasp.
So, Luca said: “Ferdinand will find her.”
In response, Amarande left him entirely, again, agitation coloring her movements as she crossed the meadow to her discarded sword. She hauled it up, and stabbed the blunt tip in the cracking, rock-strewn dirt, well-trod grass crumbling under its weight as she leaned upon it. Luca followed, watching as she warred with thoughts he knew had nothing to do with him.
“Do you worry he’ll join her?” Luca was never the skeptical one—that was always,alwaysAmarande’s role. Yet he had initially trusted Ferdinand precisely because she had. Now, well, it was worth a question. “Ama, if you have doubts, it’s not too late to locate theGatzal.It’s not yet been a day.”
“No… It’s not that I don’t believe he’ll find her—he will. Or that I worry he’ll join her—he won’t.” The cords of Amarande’s neck tightened and she raised her eyes to Luca’s, her mouth a grim line. “It’s that I am afraid he will do what I did—hesitate.”
“Ama, hesitation is not a weakness.”
“It is when knives are involved.” She bent to her boot and retrieved a dagger. “I hesitated and for my trouble she stabbed me with this.”
Luca was genuinely confused.
“That… that isn’t your boot knife?”
Amarande pulled a second blade from the other boot. “This is mine.”
In the chaos of finding Amarande in the library, wounded and nearly crushed by the hidden door, Luca hadn’t inspected the dagger lodged in her thigh. Hadn’t thought about how that fight would’ve gone. Hadn’t thought of anything but Amarande’s safety and survival. Nothing else mattered in that moment, or in the many that followed until this one here. Luca wondered what other questions he should ask about that day, though he did not. Instead, just as before, he waited as Amarande gathered her thoughts.
Finally, she straightened with an uncharacteristic sigh. “I hesitated more than once in that passageway. So much that she even mocked me for it. ‘Why haven’t you cut me down?… Why, darling daughter, why?’”
Stars,for as long as Luca lived, he wouldn’t believe that woman was anything like Amarande other than in appearance. “Did you intend to let her go?”
“No.” Amarande’s throat visibly tightened. “I wanted her to surrender. Geneva told me she wanted to win—and made it very clear she could not be victorious if I was. If you were. Yet I didn’t kill her.”
Amarande’s confident carriage wavered further, her shoulders stooping in a way Luca had never seen. When she lifted her eyes to his, it was as if they’d shattered into a million pieces, sharp and sad.
“Luca, how is it that I was able to kill Renard but I couldn’t kill her?”
Gently, he took a step toward her.
“For the same reason, I think, that she stabbed you in the leg and not the chest or throat.” Luca tipped his chin to Geneva’s blade, still tightly clasped in Amarande’s fingers. “Your mother wants to win, yes, but I don’t think she will kill you. Defeat doesn’t have to mean death.”
Amarande stared at the knife for a long moment. The morning breeze rustled in the junipers, and the hair about the queen’s face already struggled to stay in its braid though they had yet to cross swords. Finally, she sheathed the dagger, and stood straight once more.
“I suppose you’re right—I assumed it was a compromise to lock me in a cell instead of end me to make Ferdinand undisputed king. But perhaps death was never on the table.” Amarande drew in a heavy, pained breath. “However, though Geneva may relent when it comes to me—or Ferdinand—she will not be so kind to you, Luca.”
