CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I watch as Panchal approaches in the distance. It’s a blue and brown planet surrounded by nine tiny moons and shared by four realms. Skylark is one of those realms.
The pilot flies us closer. My nerves feel shredded. I stay very still, keeping my eyes fixed on the glass panels ahead. I’m afraid. I shouldn’t be because all we need to do is reach our fleet; the generals will have to listen to Max once they see him, and Titania will stop when she sees me.
Except there’s this horrid, scratchy voice in the back of my mind telling me events won’t unfold that way. That Lord Selwyn will have told his generals not to stop no matter what happens.
Rama, Sybilla, and the pilot have talked most of the journey, overly cheerful conversation to hide the fact that they’re all uneasy, but Max and I have scarcely said a word. I know he’s more than uneasy. He’s afraid too. His sword is on the floor beneath his seat.
I get up abruptly and cross to the back of the ship where the weapons are shelved. I strap a quiver of arrows to my back beside the Black Bow, slide two short swords into loops at my hips, and hide a knife in my boot. The movements feel easy and familiar after thousands of hours in simulations. I twitch my foot, feel the knife pull down on my boot. I can almost hear Rickard’s voice in my ear. Count your weapons, Esmae. How many have you got? Good. Now put one back. Weapons weigh you down, and speed is worth a dozen weapons. I put the knife back.
When I turn back, the others are all staring at me.
“Shouldn’t you be concentrating on where the ship’s going?” I ask the pilot.
He pays my question no attention. “Why did you just do all that?” he asks.
“I was getting ready.”
“For what?” Rama asks. “An invasion of your own? You look like you’re about to storm a fortress, Ez.” He grins, delighted with the picture he’s painted. “I think you’d make a fine stormer of fortresses. I can see you plotting whole wars with just a handful of soldiers. Esmae Rey, the winner of warships. In command of Kali’s forces, you’ll conquer the enemies who won’t bow and set fire to the entire world.”
Sybilla and the pilot fall about in fits of giggles. I ignore them. “You should write a book.”
“I will,” Rama assures me. “I’ll call it The Grumpy Princess.”
I yank a handful of his hair and he yelps.
Then the pilot, abruptly sober, speaks up. “We’re almost there.”
Max stands and approaches the console, looking out on our quickly approaching target. His shoulders are tense. Sybilla takes a few weapons off the shelf for herself.
As we enter the planet’s orbit, outer space gives way to sky. We dive toward Skylark. The light is soft, a pale gold streaked with pink. It’s only just morning here.
There’s so much smoke in the air that it’s difficult to see much of the realm itself, just glimpses of glass domes and temple spires and fields dotted here and there. By the time we get close to the Sky sentries and defenses, it’s clear Lord Selwyn’s generals have already used Titania to wreak havoc. Two sentry towers are ablaze. The ruins of three patrol ships lie on the ground far below us. I have no idea if their occupants escaped alive. Kali’s fleet is poised behind Titania, who faces a much, much larger and much, much weaker fleet of Sky ships. I see soldiers balanced on their ships’ wings, tense, waiting. Everything is smoke. Everything is chaos.
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 Kali’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.