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?”
Max doesn’t look away. “That’s one option.”
Amba’s eyes ignite like firecrackers. I tense as she advances on Max. She must make herself grow a little taller as she strides across the room, because by the time she stops in front of him, they are exactly eye to eye. He doesn’t even flinch.
Her voice is full of wrath. “How dare you.”
He doesn’t reply, doesn’t look away.
Amba abruptly spins on her heel to face me. “Have I ever told you the story of my brother Valin?”
“Is that important now?” Max snaps.
She ignores him and addresses me. “He was a god of wisdom and choices, proud and clever, until the day he made the choice that cost him his life. And gods are not supposed to lose their lives.” Her mouth presses into a sad, bitter line. “A hundred years ago, when Winter cut off trade with Kali and refused to supply this realm with goods or fuel, there was a war. It started to turn ugly. Valin intervened.”
“Why?”
“He always had a soft spot for Kali.” Amba lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “He stepped in. He planned battles and strategized and minimized the loss of life. He was able to achieve all this with his godhood intact because he never actually involved himself physically in the battle. And then he did.”
“How?”
“One of the other goddesses had been helping Winter. Loussa, goddess of the arts. She was in love with a Winter princess. She transformed one of their archers into a likeness of a royal cousin of the Reys so that he could sneak past the king’s guards. Once inside, he tried to shoot the king of Kali. Valin reached out and plucked the arrow out of the air. And became mortal for his pains.”
A god did an act of good and lost his entire world for his troubles. “What happened to him?”
“The battle ended shortly thereafter, in large part due to Valin’s help. Valin himself would have aged and died eventually, in constant agony, cut off from the celestial realms, with no mortal family or friends to spend the remainder of his life with, but then Kirrin stepped in. They both ruled the Empty Moon once, you know. Valin and Kirrin. My brothers. They were devoted to each other. When Valin lost his godhood, Kirrin gave him a blessed dagger and asked him to put it in his own heart.”
“He asked the brother he loved to kill himself?”
“The knife was blessed,” Amba repeats. “It was Kirrin’s boon. It ended Valin’s life but gave him another. One where he could be born mortal, to a mortal mother, and grow up surrounded by mortal family and mortal friends. Kirrin gave him a chance to be happy. A reward for the sacrifice he had made.”
“So Valin died, was reborn somewhere else, and had a happy mortal life until he eventually died again?”
“Not quite,” Amba says, and then she stops, releasing a breath like all the anger has gone out of her. “Never mind. It isn’t relevant. What is relevant is the fact that I would be making the same mistake Valin did if I were to physically intervene in your duel.” Her eyes flash back to Max. “You have no business asking it of me. I am not inclined to throw away my immortality like my brother did.”
“You sound angry with him,” I say tentatively.
“I killed our father to save him,” Amba says. “I raised him. I raised all five of them. I loved them all and then he left. He left me. Of course I’m angry.”
Max’s jaw unclenches, his eyes softening with regret. He doesn’t mention Amba’s immortality again.
She turns back to me. “Have you told Rama about the vision?”
“Not yet,” I admit.
She tuts, and I don’t blame her; I’ve put it off too long. I promise myself I’ll tell him when I see him tomorrow, and Sybilla too. Imagining it fills me with dread. Don’t let me lose her, Rama had said to Titania. But there’s nothing Titania can do about this.
“At any rate,” Amba says, addressing Max again, “I fail to see what you’re so worried about. Don’t you know Esmae has sworn she won’t fall prey to that fate?”
Max looks startled. “You swore?”
I nod. And I’m no less determined to hold to it than I was when I said it. “Vows are sealed in stone the moment the gods and the universe hear them, aren’t they? I said it. I swore I wouldn’t die that way.”
I sound fierce, and I wonder if I sound completely mad, too. How can I possibly deflect something two gods have seen?
And yet, when Max’s eyes meet mine, I see that the smile there has flickered back to life.
“You think I can do it,” I say in wonder.
“I believed in you the day I met you, Esmae. I believe in you now.”
It’s a beautiful thing to hear him say, but it isn’t necessary. There’s already a voice inside my head, and it’s been there for some time now. It says, I believe in me too.