CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Esmae, wake up,” says Max.
I open my eyes. I’m confused at first, disoriented, because I seem to be reclined in one of Titania’s seats with a blanket draped over me. Why am I here?
And then I remember. I must have fallen asleep at some point after Kirrin vanished.
It’s morning now, the sun gleaming hard and gold into the ship and across the icy valley, and I have to go duel my brother.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Max says, and the shadows under his eyes tell me he hasn’t slept. “It didn’t even occur to me that you’d be here in the dock with Titania until a minute ago. I looked in the woods, in the library, all over. You’re late. You know that, don’t you?”
I bolt up out of the seat and the blanket tumbles to the floor. “What?”
“The duel was supposed to start five minutes ago.”
Horrified, I rush to find proper clothes. “Titania, how could you not wake me? Didn’t I tell you what time the duel was?”
“Yes, but you didn’t specifically ask me to wake you,” she says. Her tone is prim and—
Guilty?
I stop, cocking my head to one side. “Why didn’t you wake me, Titania?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Titania.”
“Rama asked me not to wake you,” she says. “He told me Amba came to him with a way to stop the duel, but she needed his help to make sure you didn’t get there on time. He asked me to keep you here for a little while.”
I grab a coat, furious. “How could they scheme behind my back? Why couldn’t they just speak to me?”
“I don’t know.”
I turn on Max. “Did you know about this?”
“Of course not. If I’d hatched some sort of plot to stop the duel, you’d have known about it immediately.” He looks troubled. “We need to hurry.”
“I can’t believe them,” I growl, jamming my feet into my boots and practically tumbling out of the hatch. “They probably offered Alexi something to call off the duel. Behind my back! And it would have to be something enormous. I can’t think of a single thing that Alexi wants more than to go back home and take back his crown.”
“No one could have convinced him to call off the duel,” says Max grimly. “There’s nothing Amba or Rama could have said to persuade him.”
I glance at him. “Then you think Alexi will still be waiting for me? And the worst that will happen is that I’ll look like an idiot who couldn’t turn up on time to her own duel?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. Why would Amba feel the need to be so secretive about this—”
We clamber down the mountain path, over ice and rocks, finding the quickest way to the Basin—the amphitheater—deep in the valley. The sun is in my eyes, sharp and real and alien, dancing off the white of the snow.
The Basin is built exactly as its name suggests, a grassy stage at its heart with stone steps rising around it in a circle. The stage is much too small for a tournament or competition, but it’s perfect for a duel. An audience would normally sit on the steps to watch, but today’s audience is on its feet, packed onto the steps, transfixed by the duel.
The duel?
I freeze at the top of the steps and blink the sun out of my eyes. “Have I lost my mind?”
Max doesn’t answer. His gaze is fixed on the stage. Disbelief and fury war across his features.
Because there I am. Unmistakably me, copper in my hair and a sword in my hands, locked in a duel with my twin brother. I am not at my best today and Alexi seems to be holding back, but I am there nonetheless. One step back, another forward, my teeth gritted, my brow beaded with sweat, my sword hand quivering a little. The swords flash in the sun, and I notice that there’s no snow on the ground beneath the duelers’ feet, just green, green grass.
“I’m going to kill Rama for helping Amba pull off this nonsense,” I mutter. “Where is he? He must be here somewhere.”
I’ll have to go down there now and humiliate myself by announcing that there’s been a mistake, a goddess has been up to all sorts of tricks, and can we just start the duel all over again? And then everyone will fuss and complain because Alexi will have exhausted himself fighting already while I’m completely rested, so it won’t be fair. And then what? We delay the duel for a few hours? What did Amba hope to achieve with this nonsense?
There are gasps from the crowd as Alexi almost nicks the other me on the cheek. I wince like it was my own cheek. It’s bizarre and unnatural to see myself from the outside.
I start pushing my way down to the stage. Cold bites into my exposed skin, and my breath blows white on the air. Between the glare of the sun and the cold and the stuffy closeness of the crowd, it’s difficult to even shove my way past the top step. I persevere. No one notices me, until a hand grabs my elbow.
“What the hell are you doing up here when you’re also down there?” demands Sybilla. “Why is Max so angry?”
“Don’t ask,” I say.
I elbow my way down farther, one eye always fixed on the stage. The other version of me has just fallen, but scrambles up again. Behind me, I hear Max saying something to Sybilla, and she makes a choked sound.
The clash of metal, the flash of the sun. Alexi isn’t far from beating the other me. She’s nowhere near as good as I am with a sword. She jumps back, grips the sword with both hands, cuts sideways. Alexi dodges the blow and catches her sword with his. The blades flash, the sun glitters off metal on Alexi’s back. My clone looks tired.
What is she? An illusion? A robot? Some other kind of artificial construct?
No. An illusion can’t hold a real sword and machines like this don’t exist. There’s something much too human about my other self’s movements, about her shaky hand, about the tension and exhaustion in her face.
It’s someone else. Amba’s gone back to the gods’ old tricks. She’s cloaked someone to look just like me.
What’s the point? Why would she cloak a human for the first time in a hundred years just for this? Does she really think I’ll stand back and give Titania up just because a false version of me is about to lose this duel? Doesn’t she realize I’ll put a stop to this whole fiasco and insist on doing it properly?
I push my way closer. “Where’s Rama?” I ask, glancing back at Max and Sybilla.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve seen him today.”
“Not at all? He didn’t come to the Basin with you?”
“No. I knocked on his door at the inn, but there was no answer. I didn’t think much of it because I couldn’t find you or Max either. He wasn’t with you?”
“No,” says Max.
“Where is he then?”
The prickle on the back of my neck is faint at first, but it soon grows, solidifying into fear. I spin my head around again and look at the other me, at the clothes that don’t quite fit her properly and the tired sword hand and the wide eyes, and I see the traces I missed before.
And that’s when I understand. There was a vision, and the vision was inevitable. Amba had to keep the secret from everyone except the person she needed to take my place. And it was all my idea. She said so herself. She stood in my room, and watched Lord Selwyn stab a duplicate of me, and she saw a way to help me. A silent scream builds in my throat and now I’m frantic, desperate, pushing the crowd, stumbling forward, determined to make this stop before it’s too late.
The swords clash. And while Rama’s eyes are on the swords, Alexi reaches for the metal glittering on his back.
And just as the scream breaks free of my throat, he slides the broken arrow into the false Esmae’s heart.
Into Rama’s heart.
My scream shatters the sharp, sunny day, but it’s not the only one. As soon as the blood spurts over the other Esmae’s shirt, as soon as the blood trickles down Alexi’s hand and the broken arrow he pulls free of her chest, the crowd’s cries and screams join mine.
The other Esmae tumbles forward onto the grass. Blood spills out from under her. The crowd goes quiet. Alexi drops the broken arrow and stands very still, just looking down at her. His face is pale, the bronze blanched into a deathly white.
And there it is, the inevitable vision that the gods saw.
A duel. A broken arrow. Blood on the grass.
And me, dying.
They said Alexi would kill me. I swore I wouldn’t die.
In the end, we were all right.
By the time I break free of the crowd and stumble to Rama’s side, he’s transformed back. The small, sturdy body on the grass has grown taller and lankier, the coppery-brown hair has shortened and turned back to black, the light bronze skin and gray eyes have darkened to his brown. He’s Rama again, in and out now.
There are confused cries as I kneel down beside him; the onlookers can’t understand what’s happened.
“Rama,” I whisper. “Rama, stay with me. Please.”
He blinks at me slowly, confused. Once, twice. The sun turns his eyes to gold.
“Ez,” he says, and then he’s gone.