That’s when it really hits me: this is a battle. I’ve never done this before. This isn’t a lesson. It’s not a carefully controlled simulation. This is real. My heart rattles in my chest, panicked.
“We need to get between them,” Max says.
The pilot gulps and swoops down between the two fleets and spins our ship around to face Titania. Princess Shay must have told her ships what to look for; the Sky fleet makes no move to attack us.
Our own fleet, however, does.
The pilot wrenches the ship upward as soon as the first launcher fires, and the shot nicks the corner of our tail. I crash back into a wall, but it doesn’t hurt. All I can think is that people I love would have died if that shot hadn’t missed.
My rage swells. There are lions in my heart, and bears and wolves, and they roar and growl and break free of the chains that have kept them at bay all this time.
“Get me close,” I say, teeth gritted.
“What?”
“Get me close to Titania,” I tell the pilot. “The only way to stop this is to make her stop. She won’t do that if she thinks I asked her to invade. I need to get inside her control room and speak to her.”
I open the hatch and climb up onto the left wing. Wind buffets me and the smoke in the air makes it difficult to breathe. I stay balanced, steady, as the ship flies closer.
Someone slams into me, and we both crash down onto the hard metal of the wing. It takes me half a second to realize a warrior from a Kalian ship has leapt aboard as we passed. He pins me to the wing and drives his sword down.
But his steel clangs against another. I look up and see Max. He pulls the warrior off me and pushes him away so fast that I don’t even have time to blink.
“Listen to me,” Max growls at him. “Listen.”
The soldier strikes back. “Wear your own face, imposter.”
“What?” Max says, startled.
“We know what you’re doing,” the soldier scoffs. “The generals told us. Do you think we’re stupid? We know you’ve been cloaked to look like Prince Max and Princess Esmae. You want to trick us into letting you steal Titania for Alexi. It’s not going to work.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snap. “The gods haven’t cloaked humans in years!”
“I guess they made an exception for precious, perfect Alexi,” the soldier shouts over the sound of the wind.
There’s no time to argue anymore; more of them arrive, a swarm on the ship. I see flashes of Max, Rama, and Sybilla in the smoke—Max’s sword spinning through the air, Sybilla’s hair whisking out of sight, Rama trying futilely to match the skill of soldiers who have trained all their lives.
I snatch the Black Bow off my back and reach for an arrow, shooting two soldiers in their sword arms, and then shoot a third who was about to stick a knife in Rama’s throat. Rama spins around as the soldier falls behind him and gapes at me in shock.
I fight past another soldier to get to his side and grab his arm. “Get back inside the ship. You can’t fight these people!”
“I’m not leaving you, Ez,” he says.
“And I’m not letting you die. Now get back inside the ship and lock the hatch!”
He shakes his head. Almost on cue, the ship veers to the side and we all have to scramble not to fall off. I use the opportunity to push Rama into the hatch and slam it shut.
My hand clenches on the Black Bow. The day Rickard gave it to me, he whispered an incantation in my ear and told me it would transform the Bow into the true celestial weapon it was meant to be should I repeat it. The incantation hovers on my lips. I could use it now. I could transform the Bow—
No. My priority is Titania. I have to get to my ship.
I slam the Black Bow onto my back and run.
Launchers fire, arrows fly. Faces and obstacles whisk past. As a child, when the blueflower was still new to me, I used to think it would make me unafraid. What did I have to fear if I couldn’t be hurt? Then I discovered that staying hurt and feeling hurt were two different things.
I take blows as I run across the ship and they slow me down. They almost break me. Blood, pain, smoke, fear, all cycling in a loop. I bleed and I heal and I run.
I don’t dare stop or look back at Max and Sybilla. I don’t dare look back to find out what’s become of them, because I’ll stop if I do and I can’t stop.
Just get me a little closer.
There’s too much crossfire. If the pilot gets any closer, there’s a good chance the entire ship will go up in flames. We’ve already skimmed death a dozen times. Every time one of Titania’s five deadly launchers has fired and nearly hit us, we’ve almost become ash, as completely gone as the three warships in deep space. The terror I feel every time I see a flash from her launchers is almost crippling.
We can’t get any closer, so I’m going to have to try to reach Titania from here. I move faster.
“Don’t!” I hear Max shout behind me. “Esmae! Stop! We’re still too far away—”
I leap.
For a moment, I soar, a bird taking flight against the backdrop of smoke and ruin. I fly.
And then I plummet.
My hands grab the edge of Titania’s wing before I can fall too far. I glance back, just once, just to make sure Max and Sybilla are okay. Sybilla is armed with a spear and smiling her angriest, deadliest smile. And Max has a knife at his throat. I see a flash of red, but I can’t help him, I’m barely hanging on—
He ducks out of the soldier’s hold. He’s alive.
I’ve lost too much time. As I try to pull myself up onto Titania’s wing, a warrior appears above me. His face is grim as he stomps down hard on my hand.
I fall.
And land on a ship’s wing.
The breath is knocked clean out of me. I gasp, hands gripping the metal loops beneath me. I need to get up. I don’t know whose ship this is. It may not be a friendly one.
A hand appears in front of me, to help me up. I look up into my twin brother’s face.
“Alex?”
“Fancy seeing you here,” he says. He gestures behind him, where Bear and Rickard are trying to make a Kalian soldier see reason. “Princess Shay reached out to me. We came to help.”
“Of course you did. Always the hero.”
“So what do you think?” he asks, a grin spreading across his face. He’s in his element, sunlight glinting off his armor. “Shall we show them what we can do together?”
I reach for the twin swords and grip them tightly. We spin, back to back, and fight. Swords catch the light; metal echoes like thunder; the wind roars past us. For just one moment, I forget how much I despise battle and it’s glorious.
“Get back onto Titania if you can,” Alexi calls over his shoulder. “I’ll cover you.”
His pilot steers us closer to Titania. This time I make the jump easily. Alexi fires arrows at the soldiers who try to stop me. Others emerge from inside Titania when they see me on the wing. I dart out of the way of the first warrior and disarm the second before leaping into Titania’s open hatch.
I scramble inside and slam the door shut. Two of the three generals stand inside the control room. They’re frightened but also determined. One snatches up a sword, but the other has more sense and gestures for his companion to put it back down.
“Excellent decision,” I say. “Now back away.”
They obey.
“Esmae?” It’s Titania.
“It’s time to stop,” I tell her.
“I saw you,” she says. “I saw Max. I wanted to stop, but they told me you were imposters. That your real orders were to invade.”
“It’s me, I swear.”
“Prove it.”
“Would an impostor know you took me to the Empty Moon?” I ask. “Would they know that you told me our hearts are the same?”
There’s a soft whoosh, as if Titania has just let out a breath in relief. The launchers abruptly stop firing. She pulls back, away from the Sky fleet, farther and farther, until the rest of Kal
i’s fleet has no choice but to do the same.
“I’m glad you came,” Titania hums softly in my ear. “I’m not a very bloodthirsty warship.”
I start to laugh, but it comes out sounding more like a sob.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Afterward, it’s the numbers I think about: thirty-seven dead, more than a hundred wounded. Some of the casualties were innocent bystanders who happened to be below when Titania shot the three Sky ships from the skies.
Everyone maintains the numbers could have been far worse, but I can’t shake the terrible, painful awareness that each number represents a real person. A person other people loved, who perhaps liked vegetables or didn’t think they looked good in the color red, an arrogant person or a kind person or, perhaps, a bit of both. Each number represents someone unique and individual and real. And it never stops—the little voice in my head that keeps reminding me that this is not a simulation.
Max promises to make amends for what’s happened, but Princess Shay isn’t interested. She asks us to leave. Rickard, who came here with Alexi, joins us for the journey home. As we fly away, I look back down and see her hugging Alexi. He came to her kingdom’s rescue in spite of having no stake in the battle; she’ll be grateful to him forever now.
When we return to Kali, the rest of the mess must be cleaned up. The three generals are exiled to off-ship prisons for treason, and the soldiers under their command are suspended for a year.
Holding Lord Selwyn accountable is far less successful. Elvar, weak but awake, insists that he gave Lord Selwyn permission to carry out the invasion. Lord Selwyn maintains that he did not give his generals orders to attack us and there’s no real proof to the contrary. “Why would I tell my men that you were cloaked imposters?” he says with exaggerated surprise. “Everyone knows the gods haven’t cloaked anyone in a hundred years!” I want to throttle him. And my spliced voice, used to trick Titania? That, he tells the king and queen, was a necessary measure to protect the throne. Could we really begrudge him that?
His false contrition is all Elvar and Guinne need to declare the matter at an end.
Rickard is furious with us. “How dare you?” he barks, as soon as he gets us alone. “How dare you go there by yourselves? How dare you put yourselves at risk that way?”
Max tries to explain. “But you weren’t here—”
“I’ll thank you to keep your objections to yourself, Max! I don’t care that you couldn’t reach me. Do you know how terrified I was when I found out? You shouldn’t have gone!”
And then, before any of us can reply, he walks away. I catch the glint of tears in his eyes.
When the dust finally settles, after endless questions from the war council and a series of doctors’ examinations, I escape to my suite and allow my composure to crumble at last.
I frantically scrub blood and smoke from my body. I stuff my clothes down the incinerator chute, and I scrub determinedly at my nails. Even after that, even with freshly washed skin and hair, and with all physical traces of the battle gone, I feel like I can still smell smoke and feel the heat and sharp edges of metal when I so much as press my palms against any surface.
—catching hold of the edge of Titania’s wing, the hot bite of the metal in my hands—
There’s a knock at the door. It isn’t loud and urgent, but my heart quickens anyway.
Max’s hair is damp and his clothes are clean, like he’s tried to scrub the battle off, too, but he couldn’t wash away the mark on his throat and the cuts and bruises on his skin.
—She had the knife at his throat, and would have sliced it open from ear-to-ear if he hadn’t twisted away in time—
It’s a terrible memory.
—I couldn’t help him, couldn’t help any of them, because I was hanging on—
And then one corner of Max’s mouth turns up and the memory vanishes into nothing. The smile grows in his eyes like the sun rising, at first a sliver and then a little more and then a final burst of light. “Hello.”
I step away so he can enter. He pushes the door shut behind him, then hesitates, uncertain.
I’m not. This time, I know the truth of him, the good and the bad and there’s no part of it I can’t live with. This time, I’m certain.
I kiss him. It tastes of desperation and sweetness, but then there’s also smoke and metal, and it makes me cry because I wonder if the darkness can ever be scrubbed away. Max crushes me to him and I bury my face in the side of his neck and breathe him in.
“It was so ugly,” I say at last.
I feel his jaw working. “Yes.”
I pull back so that I can take in his face. “Do you think that’s what it’ll be like if there’s a real war between Alex and Elvar?”
Max doesn’t have to answer. I already know. It isn’t yes or no. It’s It’ll be worse than that. So much worse.
“We can’t let that happen.”
“It hasn’t happened yet,” he says. And then, after a moment, he adds, “Today was ugly, but it’s over. Battles explode and then they end. Wars are always temporary. And the smoke and ashes they leave behind will blow away eventually.”
I know that, of course, but I still think I needed to hear it from someone else, because it’s only after I wrap the words inside layers of myself that I realize the smell of the smoke on the air has finally gone. And when Max brushes his thumb over my bottom lip and kisses me again, the only taste left is the sharp, sweet wanting.
I ask him to stay, and so he does. We talk about books and stories and birds made of feathers and twine. And when we have no more words, we still don’t let go. I want his hands on me; I want to touch him. I kiss the cut on his throat. He runs his thumb over the blueflower jewel in my hair, almost like he’s saying thank you. My whole body feels alive and taut, strung like a bow ready to snap, but even this can’t keep the exhaustion at bay forever.
“How long before Alex will be ready to start his war?” I ask, stifling a yawn.
“Kirrin says he isn’t far away.” Max’s eyes are full of shadows, as though he can already see the chaos of the war unfolding. “My uncle still wants to unleash Titania on your brother before he can come after us, but she won’t be tricked again. Alex is far likelier to start this war than we are.”
I swallow. I don’t know how I should feel. I want Lord Selwyn gone. I want my brothers to be able to return to their home. I want Alexi to take back the crown that should have been his. And yet—
And yet I’m full of dread, full of a terrible inevitability that I’ll lose no matter who wins.
“I didn’t know Alexi’s army had grown so quickly,” I say.
“Kali is a formidable enemy, but Alexi has an equally formidable reputation, and he’s won a lot of sympathy from the rest of the star system.” Max grimaces. “Skylark’s a small realm, but we were better off when Princess Shay wanted to stay out of the war. We made an enemy today. Or was it yesterday? I don’t even know anymore.”
“Yesterday,” I say, checking the date on my watch. I take a moment to absorb what it means.
Three weeks left.
My conflicted feelings don’t matter. Unless war breaks out in less than three weeks, unless I make the impossible words I swore to the gods come true, it won’t matter which side I’m on, because I won’t be here to choose.
I startle when I hear Max’s voice. “Three weeks,” he says, and at first I think I must have said it out loud. And then I realize he’s remembered Kirrin’s words the day he pretended to be a soothsayer. “What’s supposed to happen in three weeks, Esmae?”
I tell him.
And watch as the smile in his eyes dies.
“They can’t have seen that,” he says. “Why would you and Alexi ever duel? Duels are formal, planned in advance. You’d have to both agree to it. A duel is such an easy situation to avoid, so how could the gods have seen him kill you that way?”
“It’s inexplicable, but that’s what they say they saw.”
Max stares at me. “Is
this what you were really talking about that day you told me the story of Ness and Amba?”
I nod. I watch as he revisits everything he’s said to me, including that he doesn’t believe such things can be avoided forever. “Oh, Esmae.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. And I can’t understand it—”
“You could ask Kirrin.”
“He won’t come if I call,” Max says wryly. “He’ll know I’m angry and he’ll hide from me until it blows over.” This seems such an absurd thing to say about a god, and I open my mouth to say as much, but then Max says, “Amba?”
And there she is, standing a few yards away from us in her favored form, stern and beautiful, one eyebrow raised. “You summoned?”
“Is it possible to summon you?” Max counters.
She ignores the jibe and gives me a severe look. “Couldn’t you furnish him with all the facts?”
Max gives her an equally severe look. I would remind him that this is a goddess and he should probably be more polite, but it’s actually rather nice to have someone other than me refusing to be cowed by Amba’s ire. “You haven’t visited in some time. Have you been avoiding me?”
“You know each other?” I ask, surprised.
“Indeed,” says Amba. I notice that while she seems annoyed, she has neither pushed Max into the wall with the force of her annoyance, nor has she simply left.
“Is it true?” Max asks her.
“Of course it’s true.” Her eyes cut briefly to me and I see that same flash of sorrow that’s been there for weeks now.
He growls low in his throat. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“It isn’t up to me to make sense of it,” Amba snaps. “It is what it is. And it will happen.”
“You could stop it,” Max says.
She scoffs. “How? By taking hold of Alexi’s sword hand before can strike?”