“Give Sara a second,” I hear Kilorn say, his voice close at my ear. He stinks of sweat and smoke. “Don’t move if you can help it.”
“Okay,” I rasp, and that hurts worse than anything before.
He laughs a bit. “Don’t speak either. Might be a bit difficult for you.”
Normally, I’d hit him, or tell him how wretched he smells. But feeling rather restrained, I elect to keep my eyes shut and jaw clenched against the ache. Sara shuffles around the bed, her touch lingering as she weaves around to my left side.
She puts her blissful hands to my neck, and I realize that the gash on my ribs must be gone. I can’t feel it anymore.
She tips my head just so, forcing me to lift my chin in spite of the pain. I wince, hissing a little, and Kilorn puts a steadying hand on my wrist. Sara’s healing ability quickly mitigates my discomfort, pooling over the bruises and swelling.
“Your vocal cords aren’t as bad as I expected,” she muses. Sara Skonos has a lovely voice, light like a bell. After so many years without a tongue, one might think she would make up for lost time, but she still speaks sparingly, her words chosen with careful intention. “They won’t be difficult.”
“Take your time, Sara. No rush,” Kilorn mutters.
I snap my eyes open, glaring at him as he grins.
The lights above are bright, but not harsh, hardly the fluorescent sharpness one might expect from an infirmary. I blink, trying to place myself. With a jolt, I realize I’m not in the infirmary of the barracks at all, but in one of the palace bedrooms. No wonder the bed is so soft and the room is so quiet.
Kilorn lets me look around, giving me the space I need. I shift, turning my wrist so I can take his hand in mine. “So you’re still kicking around.” Already my throat hurts less, only twinging. Hardly enough to keep me quiet.
“In spite of my best efforts,” he replies, giving me a reassuring squeeze. I can see where he tried to wipe his face, leaving streaks of clean skin edged by dirt and blood. The rest of him is just as filthy, which makes him stand out like a sore thumb against the elegant trappings of the palatial bedroom. “Mostly, I just stayed out of the way.”
“Finally,” I mutter. Sara’s fingers continue their dance across my neck, spreading a soothing warmth. “Someone beat some sense into you.”
He chuckles. “It certainly took long enough.”
The smile, the easy manner on him, even the way he holds his shoulders without weight or tension—it can only mean one thing. “So I’m guessing we won,” I sigh, too surprised to even comprehend what that means. I have no idea what a real victory would even look like.
“Not entirely.” Kilorn rubs a hand over his dirty cheek, smearing the grime across the clean parts of him. Idiot, I think kindly. “The mersives were enough to scare off the armada, and the Lakelanders managed to limp back out to sea. I think the big shots are still negotiating a cease-fire now.”
I try to sit up a little, only to have Sara press me back down gently. “But not surrender?” I ask, forced to watch Kilorn from the corner of my eye.
He shrugs. “It could become one. But no one tells me much of anything,” he adds with a good-natured wink.
“A cease-fire isn’t permanent.” I grit my teeth, thinking of the Lakelanders returning a year from now. “They won’t let this last—”
“Could you just enjoy being alive for one damn second?” Kilorn chuckles, shaking his head at me. “You’ll at least be pleased to know there’s a joint effort under way to start cleanup of the city. Silver and Red.” He puffs out his chest, very proud of his report. “Cameron and her father are on their way down too. They’re coordinating with Cal for worker compensation.”
Worker compensation. Fair pay. A symbolic gesture, at the very least. Even if Cal is no longer a king, and whatever control he had over the country is gone. I doubt he has much, if any, say in what happens to the Treasury. And frankly, I’m not concerned with that right now.
Kilorn knows it. But he dances around the information I want, trying to lead me away.
Slowly, I shift my gaze to Sara as she works. Up close, she smells as soothing as her touch, carrying a fresh scent like clean linens. Her steel-gray eyes focus on my neck, finishing up the last of my bruises.
“Sara, do we have a casualty count?” I ask quietly.
Kilorn shifts uncomfortably in the chair next to my bed, coughing a little. He shouldn’t be surprised by the question.
Sara certainly isn’t. She doesn’t break her rhythm. “Don’t worry yourself with that,” the skin healer answers.
“Everyone’s alive,” Kilorn offers quickly. “Farley, Davidson. Cal.”
I already knew as much. He wouldn’t be smiling, and I would have woken up to a great deal more chaos, if any of them had died. No, he knows exactly what I’m asking. Who I’m asking about.
“All done,” Sara says, ignoring my question fully. Instead she offers a tight-lipped smile as she steps back from my bedside. “You should rest now. You need it, Mare Barrow.”
Nodding, I watch her go, seeing herself out of the bedroom with a sweep of her silvery clothing. Unlike the other healers I remember, she has no uniform to speak of anymore. Probably ruined in the battle, when she attended to so many dead or dying. The door closes softly behind her, leaving Kilorn and me to weather the heavy silence.
“Kilorn,” I finally mutter, prodding at him with tentative fingers.
He glances at me, watching with a pained expression as I draw myself up against the pillows. Ashamed, his eyes flicker to my healed side. Even though the wound is gone, his expression darkens.
So does his voice. “You were bleeding to death when we found you,” he whispers, as if even the memory is too horrible to recall at a normal volume. “We didn’t know if you would . . . if Sara could . . .” His voice trails away, laced with a pain I know all too well.
I’ve seen Kilorn bleeding to death too, when he nearly lost his life in New Town. I guess I repaid the favor. Swallowing hard, I touch my ribs, feeling nothing but unbroken skin beneath the folds of a fresh shirt. I guess the gash was worse than I thought. Not that it matters anymore.
“And . . . Maven?” I can barely say his name.
Kilorn holds my gaze, his expression unchanging. Giving no indication of an answer for an agonizing moment. Long enough for me to wonder what answer I’m hoping to get. Which future I want to live in.
When he drops his eyes, focusing on my hands, my blankets, anywhere but my face, I realize what he’s saying. A muscle twitches in his cheek as he clenches his jaw.
Something in me unwinds, a coil finally springing loose. I sigh and lie back, shutting my eyes as a storm of emotions rolls over me. All I can do is bear it as the world spins.
Maven is dead.
Shame and pride battle in equal measure, as well as sorrow and relief. For a second, I think I might actually throw up. But the nausea passes and I open my eyes again to find everything in its place.
Kilorn waits silently. It’s odd for him to be so patient. Or it would have been, a year ago. When he was just the fish boy, another kid from the Stilts with no future but whatever tomorrow held. I was the same.
“Where is the body?”
“I don’t know,” he says, and I see no lie in him. He has no reason to lie about this.
As with Elara, I’ll need to see the corpse. To know it’s well and truly finished. But his body frightens me more than hers, for obvious reason. Death is a mirror, and to look at him like that . . . I’m afraid I’ll see myself. Or worse, see him as I thought he was.
“Does Cal know what I did?” My voice breaks as I speak, suddenly fraught with emotion. I press a hand to my mouth, trying to calm myself. I refuse to cry over him. I refuse.
Kilorn merely watches. I wish he would hug me, or hold my hand, or maybe bring me something sweet to stuff in my mouth. Instead he pulls away to stand up. He looks on me with such pity, it makes me wince. I don’t expect him to understand and I don’t want him to.
>
Like Sara, he crosses to the door, and I feel suddenly abandoned.
“Kilorn—” I protest, until he turns the knob.
And someone else steps into the room.
Cal fills the chamber with warmth, as if someone just lit a crackling fire. His gleaming red armor is gone, replaced by simple clothing. He wears a mismatch of colors, without a stitch of black or scarlet. Because they aren’t his colors anymore. Kilorn slips out behind him, leaving us alone.
Before I can even wonder if Cal heard my question, he answers it.
“You only did what you had to do,” he says, slowly taking Kilorn’s chair. But he keeps his distance, letting the inches stretch between us in a gaping rift.
It isn’t difficult to guess why.
“I’m sorry.” He goes watery before me as tears rise in my eyes. I killed his brother. I took him away. I killed a murderer, a torturer. An evil person, twisted and broken. A man who would have killed me if I hadn’t stopped him. Killed everyone I love. A boy, made into a monster. A boy with no chance and no hope. “Cal, I’m so sorry.”
He leans forward, one hand on my blanket. Careful to keep out of reach. The silk beneath our fingers is smooth and cold, a long road of blue-gray embroidery. He stares at the pattern on the blanket, tracing the thread without speaking. I fight the urge to sit up and touch his cheek, to make him look me in the eye and say what he wants to say.
We both knew this would happen. We both knew Maven was beyond our help. It doesn’t stop the pain, though. And his is so much deeper than mine.
“What now?” he whispers, as if to himself.
Or maybe we were wrong. Maybe he could have been saved somehow. The thought cuts me apart, and the first tear falls. Maybe I’m just a murderer too.
Only one thing is certain. We will never know.
“What now,” I reply, turning away.
I stare at the window, the sky spotted with haze and weak starlight.
Minutes stretch and pass. We don’t speak. No one comes to see me, or find Cal to pull him away. I almost wish someone would.
Until his fingers move, brushing against mine. Barely touching.
But it’s enough.
EPILOGUE
Mare
“Are you sure you don’t want to go back and see it?”
I stare at Kilorn like he’s just grown a second head. The suggestion is so absurd, I almost don’t answer. But he looks at me, expectant, innocent as a child. Or at least as innocent as he can be. Kilorn was never particularly innocent, even when we were children.
He shoves his hands in the pockets of his Montfort uniform, waiting for my response.
“See what?” I scoff, shrugging my shoulders as we walk across the Archeon airfield. Clouds hang low on the horizon, obscuring the setting sun, as well as the smoke still trailing from parts of the city. It’s been a week, and they’re still putting out fires. “A house on rickety sticks? It’s probably ransacked, if someone else isn’t living there,” I mutter, thinking of my old home in the Stilts. I haven’t been back and I have little desire to ever return. I wouldn’t be surprised if the stilt house were no longer standing. I can easily imagine Maven destroying it out of spite. When he was alive. I don’t care to find out either way.
“Why, do you want to go back to the Stilts?”
Kilorn shakes his head, almost bouncing in his steps. “Nope. Anything I cared about isn’t there anymore.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” I reply. He seems oddly eager to return to Montfort. “What about Cameron?” I add, careful to keep my voice low. Currently, Cameron and her parents are helping everyone else coordinate with the tech towns. Obviously, they know the former slums best, and how to repurpose them.
“What about her?” Kilorn smirks down at me, offering a shrug of his own. He’s trying to throw me off. A hint of a flush dusts his cheeks with color. “She’ll be coming out to Montfort in a month or so, with the Red Nortan contingent and some newbloods. Once things are a bit more settled.”
“To train?”
His blush spreads. “Sure.”
I can’t help but grin. Must remember to tease him later, I think, as Farley approaches with a few Command generals in tow. Swan nods in greeting, bowing her head.
I extend a hand to her, nodding. “Thank you, General Swan.”
“Call me Addison,” she replies. The older woman matches my smile. “I think we might be able to do away with code names for a while.”
Farley just glances between us, pretending to be annoyed.
“If only this jet were powered by hot air. We’d never have to charge up between the two of you,” she says sharply, her eyes betraying one of her rare good moods.
Smiling, I take her arm. She leans into the embrace. Hardly like her at all. “You act like I can’t actually charge a jet, Farley.”
She only rolls her eyes. Like Kilorn and me, she’s ready to go back to Montfort. I can only imagine how excited she must be to leave Norta behind, and return to her daughter. Clara is growing bigger in leaps and bounds, happy and safe. With no memory of what came before her.
Not even her father.
The thought of Shade always darkens even the brightest of days, and now is no different. But the pain is less somehow. Still an ache, still bone-deep, but not so sharp. It doesn’t take my breath away anymore.
“Come on,” Farley urges, forcing me to match her quicker pace. “The faster we board, the faster we’re airborne.”
“Is that how it works?” I can’t help but retort.
A cluster of people stands by the jet idling on the runway, waiting for us and the rest of the group departing for Montfort today. Davidson is already gone, having returned to his nation a few days ago. Some of his officials have been left behind to coordinate, and I spot Tahir among them. He’s probably relaying all this to his brothers right now, allowing the Montfort premier to track the rebuilding process in real time.
Julian stands out from the pack, wearing new clothes for what is possibly the first time in his life. They gleam, golden like his house colors once were, flashing brightly in the late afternoon sun. Sara waits at his side, as does Anabel. The old woman looks incomplete without her crown, and she regards me with naked disinterest.
“Make it quick, Barrow,” Farley says, gesturing for Kilorn to follow her onto the jet. The pair of them nod at the Silvers as they pass, giving me the space I need for my own farewells.
I don’t see Cal with his uncle or grandmother, but I don’t expect him to stand in line. He waits farther down the jetway, separated from the rest of them.
Julian extends his arms to me and I embrace him tightly, inhaling the warm scent of old paper that still seems to cling to him through everything.
After a long minute, he pushes me back gently. “Oh, come on, I’ll see you in a month or so.”
Like Cameron, Julian is scheduled to visit Montfort in a few weeks. Officially, he’s an envoy of the Nortan Silvers. But I expect he’ll spend more time combing through whatever archives Davidson puts at his disposal, utilizing the time to investigate the emergence of newbloods.
I grin up at my old teacher, patting him on the shoulder. “I doubt you’ll be able to tear yourself out of the Montfort vaults long enough to say hello.”
At his side, Sara raises her head. “I’ll make sure he does,” she says quietly, taking Julian’s arm.
Anabel is not so understanding. She glares at me one last time before scoffing aloud, disgusted by my presence, and walking off at a brisk pace. I don’t blame her. After all, in her eyes, I’m still the reason her grandson denied a dynasty, cast away a crown for something as stupid as the love of a Red girl.
She hates me for that. Even if it isn’t true.
“Anabel Lerolan may not see reason, but she does see logic. You’ve opened a door that can’t be closed,” Julian says quietly, watching the old queen clamber into a waiting transport. “She couldn’t put Cal back on the throne now, even if he wanted it.”
“What about the Rift? The Lakelands? Piedmont?”
Julian cuts me off with a gentle shake of his head. “I think you’ve earned the right to not worry about such things for a while.” He pats my hand kindly. “There’s rioting; there’s movement, Reds crossing our borders by the thousands. Know the stone is truly rolling, my dear.”
For a second, I feel overcome. Equal parts happy and afraid. This can’t last, I think again, knowing the words to be true. Sighing, I let go of them. This isn’t over, but it is for me. For now.
I have to hug Julian one more time. “Thank you,” I whisper.
Again he pushes me back, his eyes shiny. “Yes, well—enough of that. My ego’s already bigger than it should be,” he stammers out. “You’ve wasted enough time with me,” he adds, giving me another push. In the direction of his nephew. “Go on.”
I don’t need any more prodding than that, in spite of the nerves currently wreaking havoc on me. Gulping a little, I pass the rest of the dignitaries from our reforged alliance, smiling as I go. No one stops me, allowing me to approach the former king unimpeded.
Cal feels me coming. “Let’s walk,” he says, already moving. I follow him under one of the wings of our jet, stepping into shadow. Farther down the runway, an engine roars to life, close enough to shield us from anyone who might bother to eavesdrop.
“I’d come with you if I could,” he says suddenly, turning around to watch me with burning eyes of bronze.
“I’m not asking you to do that,” I reply. The words are familiar. We’ve had the same discussion about a dozen times by now. “You have to be here, to pick up the pieces. And there’s work to be done in the west. Ciron, Tiraxes—if we can do something . . .” I trail off, imagining those far-off countries, vast and strange. “It’s better this way, I think.”
“Better?” Cal snaps, and the air warms around him. Gently, I put a hand on his wrist. “You think walking away is better? Why? I’m not a king anymore. I’m not even royal. I’m—”
“Don’t say ‘nothing,’ Cal. You’re not nothing.”
I see accusation in his eyes, his skin hot beneath my fingers. It hurts to look at him, to see the pain I’m causing.