Only it wasn’t wine, of course. It was blood. His blood. It ran in rivers down his arms into the pool, and as she watched, the people dipped their empty glasses in the basin, and drank, drank it all up in single gulping swallows, their mouths stained red.
“Stop,” she said, but no one listened.
“STOP,” she shouted, in a voice that should have shattered the glasses in their hands, should have snuffed the lanterns and split the marble floor. But nothing happened. No one seemed to hear. The party continued.
Kosika staggered back, away from the horrible fountain. Away from the bodies, which parted now, to let her go. Only the Vir turned their heads to watch as she fled the hall, and flung open the castle doors, and surged out into the night.
She stumbled, body lurching as she missed a step, because the step wasn’t there. The castle was gone. So were the voices and music and laughter. Instead, she stood in the center of the Silver Wood, bare feet sinking into mossy earth.
It was so quiet. So still. Only the whisper of her breathing, the steady thud of her heart. Only, it wasn’t her heart thudding. The beat came from somewhere beneath her feet. The eye-shaped knots in the trees watched, unblinking, as she sank to her knees and began to dig, fingers clawing at the soft, dark soil.
She dug and dug and dug, the beating below as steady as a fist against a wooden door, until at last, her fingers found the heart. She swept away the dirt, until it lay exposed in the bed of earth.
It was soft, and human-sized, and yet, it wasn’t the tender meat of flesh, but something else, not red but silver-white, glowing with the milky shine of the Sijlt. And when it pulsed beneath her hands, she knew it was the heart of the city, of the world. Roots coursed and ran like veins deep into the soil to every side, but they were loose enough to let her lift the heart.
It beat in time with hers, and as it did, she began to pour her own power into it, felt the magic leave her, and not leave her, because it was still there, in her hands, in the heart that grew brighter and brighter, brighter than the river, brighter than the sun in the sky, and the trees bloomed and the sky grew blue and the ground became a tangle of grass and flower and sapling and fruit.
And for a moment, she saw her London as it must have been once, as it could be again, if she could feed the heart enough.
But even as she thought it, the light faltered in her hand, began to dim again.
“No,” she whispered, tried to pour more power in, but she had nothing left to give, and still, the glow faded, the light ebbed, weakening until it was not a blazing sun but a lantern, a candle, a small and fragile flame. And as it faded, so did the other version of her world.
The flowers died and the sky went grey and the leaves fell from the trees and the earth turned hard and cold beneath her knees and everything took on a pale and frosted glaze.
“No,” she pleaded, as the light died in her hands, and the heart stopped beating, and everything fell apart.
* * *
Kosika woke with dirt in her hands.
She blinked for a moment, disoriented by the absence of a bed, the dappled sunlight where a ceiling should have been. She wasn’t in her chamber at all, but lying beneath a tree, its branches dotted by clusters of unripe fruit, and even though the ground beneath her back was hard, she could feel slivers of grass tickling her neck.
Kosika held up a hand, and saw dark soil sticking to her fingers, where she must have gripped the ground in sleep. Voices wafted toward her, and she sat up and saw Nasi and Lark sitting a few feet away, their heads bowed together over a book. He said something in her ear, the words too soft to reach, but she was close enough to see the way Nasi smiled, the twitch of her lips tugging on her scarred cheek, setting off the tracery of silver lines.
“It’s rude to whisper,” announced Kosika, brushing the dirt from her palms.
Nasi cocked her head. “Ruder than it is to wake a sleeping queen?”
The dream rose up, brushing against her mind, and Kosika wished they had woken her sooner. Besides, she didn’t like the idea of sleeping so exposed—but she hadn’t been able to help herself. She remembered drifting off, feeling full and tired and sun-warmed as a peach.
A picnic sat between them on a wool blanket, a bowl of cherries and a tray of sandwiches, a paring knife in a block of cheese, and three cups half-filled from a pitcher of tea.
It had been Lark’s idea, the picnic.
He’d shown up at her chamber door that morning, while Nasi was somehow beating her at kol-kot, a basket swinging from one hand, and announced it was too fine a day to be inside. Sure enough, sun was streaming in the open window. The weather was always nicer after a tithe. As for the picnic, he’d even dressed the part, trading his soldier’s armor for a fitted tunic and trousers and a pair of polished boots, a violet kerchief tied over the scar at his throat. She wondered if the clothes were his, and when he’d grown into them. He’d caught her looking, and smiled, and Kosika felt herself smiling back, caught herself halfway and rolled her eyes.