THE LAST TIME I had walked into a crowd, it was to pretend to kill my own brother, and they had thirsted for my blood.
And before that, he had carved my skin from my head to the tune of hundreds of cheers. I reached up to touch the silverskin that covered me from throat to jaw to skull.
No, I did not have pleasant memories of crowds, and I was not likely to form them here, with only Ograns and Shotet exiles waiting for me.
We had walked down the dark stairs, feeling our way with the soles of our shoes and the brushes of our fingers, and turned a sharp corner, and here we were: in a dim waiting space with creaky wood floors, and the glow of Ogran clothing, most of which adorned Shotet bodies, though I only knew because of the language they spoke.
Ogran clothing—which even the Shotet wore, here—had no real distinct style, some of it tight and some flowing, some ornate and some simple, but the embrace of that ever-present glow was there, in bracelets and anklets and necklaces, shoelaces and belts and buttons. One man I passed even had stripes of red light—faint, but still, light—stitched into the back of his jacket. It gave everyone an eerie look, lit from beneath by their garments, their faces difficult to see. Those with fair skin, like Akos’s, almost gave off their own light—not an advantage on a planet as hostile as this.
There were benches for sitting, and high tables for standing around. Some held glasses with a clear substance that scattered light inside them. I watched a bottle passed through a group of people, bobbing along like their hands were waves. Children sat in a circle near my feet, playing a game with quick hand motions passed in a round. Two boys, a few seasons younger than me, play-fought near one of the massive room’s wooden pillars. This was a space for gathering and, I sensed, not much else; this was not where the Shotet lived, or worked, or ate, but just a space to wait out the storms. The Ogran woman had remained vague about what “the storms” actually were. Not surprising. Ograns seemed to trade in vague language and weighty looks.
Teka melded into the crowd right away, throwing her arms around the nearest exile she recognized. That was when people began to take notice of us—Teka, with her pale skin and even paler hair, required no introduction. Akos was a head taller than most people in the room, and drew eyes naturally.
And then there was me. Glinting silverskin and currentshadows crawling all over my body.
I tried not to tense as some people went quiet at the sight of me, and others muttered, or pointed—who had taught them manners?
I was used to this sort of reaction, I reminded myself. I was Cyra Noavek. Guards at the manor backed away from me instinctively, women held their children near at the sight of me. I drew myself up straighter, taller, and shook my head when Akos reached for me, to help me with my pain. No, better to let them see me as I was. Better to get this over with.
I pretended I was not breathing harder.
“Hey.” Teka pinched the elbow of my oddly sized mechanic’s jumpsuit and tugged. “Come on, we should introduce ourselves to the leadership.”
“You don’t know them already?” I said, as Akos searched behind him—for his mother and brother, I assumed, though he had been avoiding them since we landed.
I tried to imagine how I would have acted if my mother had returned to my life after I had accepted that I would never see her again. In my mind, it was a happy reunion, and we fell into our old rhythms of care and understanding. It certainly wasn’t that simple for Akos, with the history of betrayal and subterfuge that existed between him and Sifa, but even without that, perhaps it was never simple. Perhaps I would have avoided Ylira just as he avoided his mother.
Or maybe it was just that she spoke in riddles, and it was exhausting.
Once Akos had rounded up his family, we all followed Teka deeper into the room. I tried to keep myself from marching, though that was my instinct—scare them on purpose, so I didn’t have to watch them grow frightened by accident.
“So we’re right near the village of Galo,” Teka said. “It’s mostly full of Shotet exiles now, but there are still some Ograns who live here. Merchants, mostly. My mother said we’d integrated pretty well—oh!”
Teka threw her arms around a pale-haired man with a mug in hand, then shook hands with a woman with a shaved head, who tapped Teka’s eye patch in gentle mocking.
“I’m saving my fancy one for a special occasion,” Teka replied. “Do you know where Ettrek is? I have to introduce him to—ah.”
A man had stepped forward, tall, though not as tall as Akos, with long dark hair drawn up into a knot. I couldn’t decide, in this light, if he was my age or ten seasons older. The rumble in his voice didn’t do much to help.
“Ah, here she is,” the man said. “Ryzek’s Scourge turned Ryzek’s Executioner.”
He put an arm around me, turning as if to draw me into a group of people all holding glasses of whatever-it-was. I pulled away from him so quickly he might not have had the chance to feel my currentgift.
Pain darted across my cheek, and followed my next swallow down my throat. “Call me that again and I will—”
“What? Hurt me?” The man smirked. “It would be interesting to see you try. Then we would see if you are as good at fighting as they say.”
“Regardless of whether I am a good fighter or not,” I snapped, “I am not Ryzek’s ‘Executioner.’”
“So humble!” an older woman across from me said, tipping some of her drink into her mouth. “We all saw what you did on the news feed, Miss Noavek. There’s no need to be shy about it.”
“I am neither shy nor humble,” I said, feeling my mouth twist into my sourest smile. My head was pounding. “I just don’t believe everything I see. You should have learned that lesson well enough, exile.”
I almost laughed, seeing all their eyebrows pop up in unison. Akos touched my shoulder, the part covered with fabric, and bent closer to my ear.
“Slow down on making enemies,” he said. “There’s plenty of time for that later.”
I stifled a laugh. He had a point, though.
At first, all I saw next was a broad smile in the dark, and then Jorek collided with Akos. Akos looked too confused to return the embrace—actually, he didn’t seem particularly affectionate, as a rule, I had noticed—but he managed to give Jorek a good-natured slap on the shoulder as he pulled away.
“Took you long enough to get here,” Jorek said. “I was beginning to think you guys got kidnapped by the chancellor.”
“No,” Akos said. “Actually, we abandoned her in an escape pod.”
“Really?” Jorek’s eyebrows popped up. “That’s sort of a shame. I liked her.”
“You liked her?” I said.
“Miss Noavek,” Jorek said, bobbing his head to me. He turned back to Akos. “Yeah, she was a little scary, and apparently I gravitate toward that quality in friends.”
My cheeks warmed as he looked from Akos to me and back again, pointedly. Jorek thought of me as a friend?
“How’s your mom?” Akos said to him. “Is she here?”
Jorek had stayed behind after our little mission to ensure that his mother made it through the chaos of Voa.
“Safe and sound, but no, she’s not here,” Jorek said. “She said if she ever manages to land on Ogra, she’s never going to try to take off again. No, she’s keeping an eye on things for us in Voa. Moved in with her brother and his children.”
“Good,” Akos said. He scratched the back of his neck, and his fingertips scraped along the thin chain he wore, the one with the ring Ara Kuzar had given him hanging from the end of it. He didn’t wear it out of affection, as Ara and Jorek had undoubtedly hoped he would, but as a burden. A reminder.
Teka had disappeared for a moment, but she returned now with a sturdy woman at her side. She was not tall or short, really, and her hair was pulled back into a tight braid. The smile she gave me was warm enough, though like the others, she didn’t even glance in Akos’s direction. Her attention was solely mine.
“Miss Noavek,” the woman said, offering your hand. “I am Aza. I sit on our council here.”
I glanced at Akos, asking a silent question. He rested his hand on the bare skin where my neck met my shoulder, extinguishing my currentshadows. I knew without trying that I was not capable of controlling my gift right now, as I had learned to in the renegade hideout in Voa. Not in Ogra’s currentgift-enhancing atmosphere, with days of limited sleep behind me. It was taking all the energy I had just to keep it contained, so it wouldn’t explode out of me as it had when we first landed.
I took the woman’s hand, and shook it. Akos may not have commanded her attention before, but his ability to extinguish my gift certainly did. In fact, everyone around us looked at him—specifically, at the hand he kept on my skin.
“Call me Cyra, please,” I said to Aza.
Aza’s gaze was curious, and sharp. When I dropped her hand, Akos dropped his, and my currentshadows returned. His cheeks were bright with color, and it was spreading to his neck.
“And you are?” Aza asked him.
“Akos Kereseth,” he said, a little too quietly. I wasn’t used to the meek side of him, but now that we weren’t constantly surrounded by the people who had kidnapped him or killed his father or otherwise tormented him—well. Perhaps this was what he was like, under somewhat more normal circumstances.
“Kereseth,” Aza repeated. “It’s funny—for the duration of this exile colony’s existence, we have never had a fated person pass through our doors. And now we have two.”
“Four, actually,” I said. “Akos’s older brother Eijeh is . . . somewhere. And his mother, Sifa. They’re both oracles.”
I cast a glance around for both of them. Sifa emerged from the shadows behind me, almost as if summoned by her name alone. Eijeh was a few paces behind her.
“Oracles. Two oracles,” Aza said. She was finally startled, it seemed.
“Aza,” Sifa said, nodding. She wore a smile intended, I was sure, to be inscrutable. I almost rolled my eyes.
“Thank you for sheltering us,” Sifa said. “All of you. We have walked a hard road to get here.”
“Of course,” Aza said stiffly. “The storms will be over soon, and we will be able to find a place for you to rest.” Aza stepped closer. “But I must ask, Oracle . . . should we be concerned?”
Sifa smiled. “Why do you ask?”
“Hosting two oracles at once seems like . . .” Aza frowned. “Not a good sign for the future.”
“The answer to your question is yes. Now is indeed the time for concern,” Sifa said softly. “But that would be the case whether I was here or not.”
She tilted her head, and another Ogran woman—this one fair-skinned, dotted with freckles, and wearing bracelets that lit up a gentle white—stepped forward. The bracelets helped me to see her face when she gestured to me, whispering in Ettrek’s ear.
“Miss Noavek,” the Ogran woman said then, when her whispering was finished. Her eyes—as dark as my own—followed the currentshadows that now cradled my throat like a choking hand, and felt much the same. “My name is Yssa, and I have just heard from someone in our communications tower. We have received a call for you, from Assembly Headquarters.”
“For me?” I raised my eyebrows. “Surely you’re mistaken.”
“The recording was broadcast on the Assembly-wide news feed a few hours ago. That is as quickly as we can receive them on Ogra. Unfortunately, this one has a time limit,” she said. “The message is from Isae Benesit. If you wish to respond, you must be prepared to act immediately.”
“What?” I demanded. I felt a buzzing in my chest, like the hum of the current but stronger, more visceral. “I have to respond immediately?”
“Yes,” Yssa said. “Or you will not get back to her in time. Our communications delay is regrettable, but there is no way to bypass it. We can record you from here and send the footage up to the next satellite, which departs our atmosphere in just minutes. Otherwise we must wait another hour. Come with me, please.”
I reached for Akos’s hand. He gave it, and held on tight, and we followed Yssa through the crowd.
Yssa had the message cued to a screen on the far wall. It was as large as I was with my arms outstretched. She had me stand on a mark on the floor, shooed away everyone who was standing around me—including Akos—and turned on a light that cast my face in yellow. This was for the camera that would record my message, I assumed.
I had been instructed in matters of diplomacy by my mother, but only as a child. After her death, neither my father nor my brother had bothered to continue that part of my education. They had assumed—reasonably—that I would never need to know those things, weaponized girl that I was. I tried to remember what she had told me. Stand up straight. Speak clearly. Don’t be afraid to think about your answer—the pause feels longer to you than it does to them. That was all I could remember. It would have to be enough.
Isae Benesit appeared on the screen before me, larger now than she had ever been in life. Her face was uncovered—the disguise was unnecessary now that her sister had been killed, I assumed, and the two could no longer be confused for each other. The scars stood out from her skin, prominent but not garish. Though the rest of her face was painted with makeup, the scars had been left alone. At her insistence, I assumed.
Her black hair shone, pulled back from her face, and she wore a high-collared dress—I assumed, I could only see to her waist—made of a thick, black material that looked almost liquid. An off-center button shone gold against her throat. And there was a gold band around her forehead. A crown, of sorts, though the least ornamental one I had ever seen. This was not a chancellor who wanted to be associated with the abundance and wealth of Othyr. This chancellor led Osoc, Shissa, and most important, Hessa. The very heart of Thuvhe.
She appeared to have taken great pains not to appear pretty or delicate. She was striking, eyes lined in careful black, skin left to its usual olive tone without embellishment other than powder to limit its shine.
I, meanwhile, hadn’t had a proper bath in over a week, and I was wearing an ill-fitting jumpsuit.
Wonderful.
“This is Isae Benesit, Fated Chancellor of Thuvhe, speaking on behalf of the nation-planet of Thuvhe,” she began. The room went quiet around me. I squeezed my hands into fists at my sides. Pain raced through my body, sparking in my feet and spreading through my legs and around my abdomen.
I blinked tears away, and forced myself to focus, and stand as still as I could.
“This message is addressed to the successor of the so-called throne of Shotet,” she continued. “As Ryzek Noavek has been confirmed dead, by blood succession laws obeyed by the Shotet people themselves, it must be delivered to Cyra Noavek before the common break of day, measured on this day at 6:13 a.m.”
“The past few seasons have brought with them several acts of Shotet aggression: In one invasion, our falling oracle was killed, and our rising oracle was kidnapped. And just a few days ago, my sister, Orieve Benesit, was kidnapped and murdered in a public forum.”
She had practiced this statement. She had to have, because she didn’t so much as stumble over the words, though her eyes glittered with malice. Perhaps that was just my imagination.
“The escalation of these aggressive acts has become impossible to ignore. It must be met with strength.” She cleared her throat—quietly, just a brief moment of humanity. “What I will read to you now are the terms of Shotet surrender to Thuvhe.
“Item one: Shotet will disband its standing army and surrender all weapons to the Thuvhesit state.
“Item two: Shotet will surrender its sojourn ship to the Assembly of Nine Planets, and forgo the sojourn in favor of settlement in and around the area known as Voa, immediately north of the southern seas.
“Item three: Shotet will permit Thuvhesit and Assembly troops to occupy Shotet until such time as Shotet has been restored to order and peaceful cooperation with Assembly and Thuvhesit authority.
“Item four: Shotet will desist in referring to itself as a sovereign nation, and will instead acknowledge its belonging to the nation of Thuvhe.
“Item five: Shotet will pay reparations to all public facilities and families affected by Shotet aggression of the past one hundred seasons, on the planet of Thuvhe and abroad, in an amount to be determined at a later date by a committee of Assembly and Thuvhesit authorities.
“Item six: All Shotet identifying as ‘exiles’ of the Noavek regime will return to Thuvhe and settle at a location distinct from Voa, where they will be pardoned and granted full Thuvhesit citizenship.”
I felt like my entire body was curling into a fist, one finger at a time, squeezing blood from every knuckle. I hardly noticed the pain of my currentgift, though the shadows raced along my skin, at their deepest, densest black.
“You will respond to this message accepting these terms, or I will issue a declaration of war, at which point the blood of your own people will be on your hands,” Isae continued. “A response must be received by the common daybreak, measured on this day at 6:13 a.m., or your life will be assumed forfeit, and we will proceed to the next member of your family line. Transmission complete.”
Isae’s face disappeared from the screen. Everything was silent around me. I closed my eyes and fought for control of my body. Now is not the time, I told it, as it raged with pain. Now is not the time to take up space in my head.
I tried again to think of my mother’s lessons, but I could only think of her. The tilt of her neck, the cold smile she wore when she wanted someone to wither from the inside out. The way she used her quiet, rich voice to get exactly what she wanted. I could try to imitate her, but it wouldn’t work for me. I already knew that I was no Ylira Noavek.
The only persona I had ever been able to adopt was that of Ryzek’s Scourge, and I desperately didn’t want to be that, not again, never again.
“Are you ready to respond, Miss Noavek? You have only a few minutes,” Yssa said.
I was not ready to respond, not ready to act as the leader of a divided country that had never showed me anything but disdain. Around me now were the critical eyes of people who had been exiled because of the cruelty of my own father and my own brother. I was aware of the insult it must have been to them, to see me treated like their leader when I was really part of the same family that had tortured and excluded them.
But someone had to do this, and right now, the task fell to me. I would have to do my best.
I straightened. Cleared my throat. And nodded.
Yssa nodded back. I focused on the sights ahead of me, recording my image and voice to send it along to Isae.
“This is Cyra Noavek, acting sovereign of the rightful nation of Shotet,” I said, and though my voice shook, the words were right. The yellow light burned against my face, and I stared straight ahead. I would not flinch at my currentshadows, I would not—
I flinched. It didn’t matter, I told myself. I was in pain. Flinching was what I did.
“Shotet rejects your terms of surrender, as living under them would be worse than the bloodshed to which you referred,” I continued. “Ryzek Noavek is dead, and the crimes he committed against Thuvhe, whether directly or indirectly, are not representative of his people.”
I had run out of formal language.
“I think you know that,” I said instead. “You have walked among us and met our resistance effort face-to-face.”
I stopped. Thought about what I wanted to say.
“The nation of Shotet respectfully requests a cessation of hostilities until such a time as we can meet and discuss a treaty between our two nations,” I said. “War is not what we want. But make no mistake, we are a nation, divided though we are between Ogra and Urek, and will be treated as such. Transmission complete.”
I didn’t realize, until I was finished, that I had just revealed the location of the exile colony—formerly secret to all but the Ograns—to Isae Benesit. It was too late to change that, though.
Before anyone could speak, I held up a hand to get Yssa’s attention.
“Can I record another message? This one is to be delivered immediately to Voa satellites.”
Yssa hesitated.
“Please,” I added. It couldn’t hurt.
“Okay,” she said. “But it must be brief.”
“The briefest,” I said.
I waited for her signal to begin. This message I could do without thinking, without rehearsing. When Yssa nodded, I took a breath, and said:
“People of Voa. This is Cyra Noavek. Thuvhe has declared war on Shotet. Hostiles incoming. Evacuate to the sojourn ship immediately. I repeat, evacuate to the sojourn ship immediately. Transmission complete.”
With that, I bent at the waist, bracing myself on my knees, and struggled to breathe. I was in so much pain my legs felt like they would give out at any moment. Akos rushed forward, clutching first at my shoulders, and then at my hands. I braced myself against him, my head slotted next to his, my forehead against his shoulder.
“You did well,” he said quietly. “You did well, I have you, I have you.”
When I glanced over his shoulder, I saw tentative smiles, heard murmurs that almost seemed . . . approving. Was Akos right? Had I really done well? I couldn’t believe that was true.
War was coming. And no matter what Akos said, no matter what anyone said from now on, I was the one who had urged it forward.