Behind her came a clatter of hooves and rock. When the cliff trail widened, sloping down into the wooded foothills, she looked back.
One racer zipped by her, and then three more, so close she could smell their sweat. Behind them, a racer rammed his horse into the side of another, knocking both horse and rider off the cliff Rielle had just traveled. The fallen horse let out a terrible scream, then fell silent.
Rielle turned away, heart pounding, eyes stinging from the dust clogging the air. She exited the woods near the trail to the second pass that would bring her around Mount Taléa and back toward the city.
There, she found arbiters at last: seven of them, some distance ahead of her. They had thrown off their masks, letting their blond, braided hair fly free. They were letting out shrill war cries that Rielle recognized at once from one of Audric’s interminable lectures about Borsvall.
They were closing in on the rider nearest them—a man in black and gold, his cap and scarf fallen free, the wind ripping through his dark curls.
The world distilled to this single, terrible moment. Dread knocked the wind from Rielle’s lungs.
The arbiters, whoever they were, were no soldiers of her father’s. They were from Borsvall.
And they were surrounding Audric with their swords raised to kill.
4
Eliana
“But when the Empire forces came to Orline, the capital of Ventera, they were struck blind by a brilliant light. It was the Sun Queen, glittering and vengeful. She led the charge with King Maximilian at her side, and everyone she touched felt their long-forgotten magic awaken. They were sunspinners once more, firebrands and earthshakers. And the river that morning ran red with Empire blood.”
—The Sun Queen’s Triumph （Being an Alternative History of the Kingdom of Ventera）
As written in the journal of Remy Ferracora
June 14, Year 1018 of the Third Age
After the executions, Eliana saw Harkan home to his tiny apartment on the top floor of the building next to her own.
As she turned to go, he said softly, “El?”
She hesitated. If she stayed, they would share his bed, as they often did. His touch would be absolution—his strong, brown arms, the tender way he held her after and stroked her hair. For a little while, she would forget who she was and what she had done.
But then, Harkan would want to talk. He would look into her eyes and search for the girl she had once been.
The thought exhausted her.
“Please, El,” Harkan said, his voice strained. “I need you.”
He could hardly look at her. Was he embarrassed that he didn’t want to be alone? Or ashamed to crave the touch of a monster?
Unbidden, a memory surfaced: the boy’s defiant, tear-streaked face, just before the executioner’s sword fell.
Eliana’s stomach clenched. She squeezed Harkan’s hand. “All right, but I just want to sleep.”
His voice came gently: “Me too.”
They climbed through the terrace window and into his room—plain and small, strewn with rumpled clothes. The rest of his family’s apartment remained silent and shuttered. Since his mother and older brothers had died at the wall the day the Empire invaded ten years earlier, Harkan had not touched any of their things or sat in furniture they had sat in or used his mother’s pots and pans. The apartment was a tomb, and Eliana dared not enter it for fear of breathing ghosts into her body.
But Harkan’s bedroom was a familiar, untidy place. Over the years, Eliana had spent as many nights there as she had in her own.
She climbed into his bed, waiting. He pulled the drapes nearly shut, leaving the window open behind them. He lit the four squat candles he kept on a side table—one for each member of his lost family. When he had pulled off his shirt and boots, he climbed in beside her and drew her down into the warm nest of his arms.
“Thank you,” he murmured against her cheek.
She smiled, wriggling closer. “I always sleep better when I’m with you.”
He laughed softly. Then the room filled with silence. He worried the ends of her braid between his fingers. “Someday, we’ll have enough money to leave this place.”
Eliana closed her eyes. It was the beginning of Harkan’s favorite story, one he had told her countless times. She didn’t have the heart to tell him she couldn’t stand listening to it, not today. That this story had been a comfort when they were young and didn’t know any better but was simply cruel and pointless now.
So she waited until she could speak instead of yelling at him, and asked, as she always did, “Where will we go?”