CHAPTER TWENTY
Annara fell asleep in the church, waiting for Senne. She curled up just beneath the altar underneath her father’s old coat. Despite the smell of his cologne, she passed out quickly, descending into a gray dreamless sleep that was only broken when the threshold of the church creaked like a single note from a violin.
Outside, the rain had softened, and it fell through holes in the roof in long silver threads. The light was pale blue. Everything was quiet, not in the way that it was in the palace, which was a cold silence with an undertone of fear, but in the way that a library was quiet. Silence filled the room like water.
She sat up and rubbed her eyes, feeling a thousand bruises ache in a thousand different ways. Senne stood in the doorway, a familiar dark shape that glowed in hundreds of colors where the light from the stained glass hit her. As Annara watched, she removed her veil.
Annara had been half-expecting a ruin of scoured flesh, but Senne’s face was the same as it had always been. There didn’t seem to be any obvious wounds on her. Annara let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Something started to unknot in her chest.
“Are there more bombs in here?” Senne asked, as if they were talking about the weather.
“No. I’m unarmed, except for…” Annara trailed off, and walked over to her. “We need to end this.”
“So you’ve been saying.”
“I mean it this time. The prophecy should end here, in this room.”
Annara’s knees shook a little, and then she lowered herself down and knelt in front of Senne, head bowed. The floorboards creaked under her weight, the same breathy violin-noise as before. Rain streamed off the tattered roof. Cracked glass images of moon saints glowed in the windows, but none of them watched. Their eyes were closed, their smiles gentle, as if dreaming pleasantly.
Annara reached into her pocket and brought out her old knife. She offered its hilt to Senne.
“End it,” she said. “Please. Before I do anything worse.”
Senne took the knife. Annara could only tell because the weight in her hand lessened, and the warmth of her fingertips brushed Annara’s palm. Even through Senne’s gloves, it was like sunlight.
“There aren’t any traps here. No more explosives. I just thought it would be a nice place to die,” Annara said, faintly proud of the fact that her voice didn’t shake. She sounded empty, but composed. “This is the best way to end the prophecy. You live. I don’t cause any more damage. So, please. Whenever you’re ready.”
It was a sin to ask someone you loved to hurt you, according to the sun goddess’s doctrine. A minor sin, to be sure, and only a small entry in a long catalogue of thousands of others, many of which Annara had already committed.
It was only then, thinking about sin and waiting to be killed, that Annara realized that she had loved Senne. It was a small revelation, not a large one, because it felt like it should have been obvious. It was like an invisible thread that had passed through every one of their interactions, and in retrospect, it explained so much. The night when Mercan died. Why Annara had started to fall apart. The feeling had been there the entire time, unnoticed by either of them, but as much a part of Annara as her own heartbeat.
It was too late for it to matter now. Senne took off her gloves and placed her hands on either side of Annara’s head. Annara was certain that Senne was about to break her neck. That was good. It was a fast death, a clean death, more so than bleeding out, and better than she deserved.
✽✽✽
You just have to decide which choices are worth making, Heron had said, days ago, while they rode to Half-Moon Abbey. Back then, Senne had only seen one option: to obey the king. It was her purpose, and doing otherwise meant she would face execution. But now, with Annara in front of her, there was only one choice worth making.
Annara looked tired, more tired than Senne had ever seen her, and there was an agonized twist to her mouth that hadn’t been there before. Her ashy hair was disheveled. Part of her bangs was crusted to her forehead with dried blood. There was a cut there, under her hair, and a line of rust ran down from her hairline and clotted in her eyebrow.
Senne reached out, paused for a minute, and cleaned the blood off Annara’s forehead. Her sleeve was wet from the rain, and the blood turned pink before vanishing like mist in the sun. She lowered her hand to cradle Annara’s cheek until Annara opened her eyes.
It really was the only choice worth making.
✽✽✽
Annara waited, but the fatal blow never came. Instead, Senne gently wiped Annara’s forehead. There was a wound there she hadn’t noticed, and the rain on Senne’s clothes took away some of the pain. She felt cleaner immediately.
Senne smoothed her thumb across Annara’s cheek, so gentle that it hurt. All of the emotions that Annara had pressed down and ignored for months rose to the surface in the wake of that touch, sharp and bright like shards of multicolored glass. She opened her eyes, and she could tell immediately from the look on Senne’s face that Senne wasn’t going to hurt her.
She couldn’t remember when she had learned to read Senne so well. All of her expressions were variations on calm, but somewhere along the line, Annara had learned which ones were secretly agonized and which ones were secretly amused. This one was full of tenderness, as fragile as spun sugar.
“What have you been doing?” Senne asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Annara rasped around the pain in her throat. “I don’t know. I should never have come back to the Crescent, I should have...”
Senne helped her stand shakily and put her knife back into its sheath. The back of the church was missing a wall. It cantilevered out over the sea, a square full of silver threads of rain and the crumpled gray sea. They sat together on the edge of the wooden floor, listening to the waves crash far below, almost touching but not quite.
“Sit down,” Senne said, unnecessarily. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Annara let her dab the rest of the blood off her face with a handkerchief. She sat placidly as Senne spread a cool ointment on her various bruises, overcome by an intense feeling of affection for the way Senne’s eyebrows met in the center of her forehead when she was feeling worried or pensive. The feeling burned, not in the way that fire did, but in the way sugar did, pure crystalline sugar, when she hadn’t tasted it in years.
“When’s the last time you ate something?” Senne said.
“I don’t know. Yesterday morning.”
Senne brought out a poppyseed bun, wrapped in paper. She broke off a piece of it. It was still fresh, caramel-golden on the outside and soft and white on the inside. Senne pressed the piece into Annara’s hands.
“Eat this,” she said.
Annara bit into it. It tasted like Seichre. No, that wasn’t right. It tasted like home. It tasted like sitting on the kitchen table in Wraith Manor, tracing the whorls of the wood with one finger and hearing the click of the door tell her that Senne was about to walk into the room. The memory was so clear that it could have happened moments ago.
All of a sudden, Annara burst into tears. It was hard to swallow, but she ate ravenously. Senne’s hands jerked up like she wanted to pull Annara into her arms, but in the end, she only placed one hand on Annara’s back. Annara leaned into the touch.
What had she been doing? The past month or two flashed before her eyes, bitter and acidic. Haol was right. She hadn’t been herself, not for a long time, not since she shot Lord Archon, or maybe not since she stabbed Senne. Lord Archon’s death was the only thing she couldn’t bring herself to regret.
She hadn’t cried like this in years. Tears rolled down her cheeks and soaked her sleeves, her nose and throat clogged, her eyes swollen. She could taste the salt. The rain hushed, and in the sudden quiet, Senne rubbed her back.
“I can’t stay,” Senne whispered. “I have to go back to Seichre.”
Annara swallowed, but her breathing was still uneven. Everything she said turned into a strangled sob.
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br /> “I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I never should have hurt you, and I knew it, but I did it anyway. I’m sorry for everything. I’m going to fix it. The three-state treaty. I’m going to fix it all.”
When she looked back over, Senne was gone. Annara never found out if she had heard.
It didn’t matter. Annara took a few shuddering breaths. Her tears were starting to thin just as the rain did. She wiped her eyes with her sleeves. Senne was right; she felt better after eating something.
What have I been doing? she thought to herself. I can’t change anything by dying. I’ve spent the past few days royally screwing everyone on the Crescent over, and I’m one of the only people on the island who can fix it.
She stood, and brushed the crumbs off her clothes. Talking to Senne had blown all the smoke out of her head. She knew exactly what she was going to do.
✽✽✽
Annara found Haol exactly where she thought she’d find him. His mother’s house was slowly falling apart. Raindrops dripped from the eaves like little diamonds. The shingles of the roof were streaked with moss. The frame of the door was rotting, exposing bits of orange wood under the paint.
Haol tried to slam the door when he saw her. She wedged her fingers into the door crack at the last minute, and he nearly crushed her knuckles.
“Ow! Holy hell. Listen, Haol, I’m sorry.”
He opened the door again and stared at her as if she had dropped down from the moon. Annara shook her hand out, grimacing.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for everything I said to you. I know it hurt. I’m sorry about Ervon. It was a mistake, and I knew it. It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “What are you going to do now?”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you. We can’t talk about this in the street.”
Reluctantly, Haol stood aside. Annara walked into the deteriorating house. It smelled damp and stale. Annara doubted anyone had lived there since Haol’s parents had died.
Haol’s father had been a servant in the House of Archon. He died when Haol was a baby. His mother had clung precariously to life for several years after that, before dying of a prolonged illness she couldn’t afford to treat. It wasn’t a quick death, like most of the ones Annara had seen. It was nasty, protracted, and painful. Annara had never met her.
“I didn’t mean it,” she said quietly, following him into the kitchen. “I just wanted you to leave me alone. You were always my friend.”
“Past tense?” Haol said.
“I can’t see why you’d want me as your friend after this. But you wanted to know the plan, didn’t you?”
“There’s a plan?” Haol said.
“There is now. Hold out your hands.”
He did so, squinting suspiciously at her. She took out a golden circlet and placed it in both his hands. The original swan-shaped circlet had been lost in the waters off Ervon, but her father had kept a second one. Goddess forbid anyone ever see him without his crown.
“What is this?” Haol said.
She handed him a sheaf of papers. “And here’s the official abdication paperwork. Archon is yours, Haol. If you get them out of the mess I created, it won’t matter who your parents were. The citizens will love you.”
“So you want me to clean up your mess,” Haol said sharply, once he pulled himself together enough to stop staring at the circlet.
“Well, I can’t ask anyone else to do it. I don’t do well with power, as we’ve both seen. I want it for the wrong reasons. You don’t. I’ll walk you through it, if you want.”
He looked up, suddenly determined. “What do you need me to do?”
“First, go back to the palace. Tell them Lord Wraith killed me, if you want. They’ll be expecting it, and it’ll help mollify Seichre and Alrhen-Xiun. Show your advisors that paperwork. Get them on your side. The soldiers love you, you’re one of them, so you shouldn’t have any trouble there.”
“You’re really doing this,” Haol said. “You’re really giving me the crown.”
“Yes. Keep up. The next thing you want to do is find a way to contact Lord Chreon Se. I don’t care if he’s on vacation on the moon, find a way to talk to him and tell him the three-state treaty is in jeopardy. He’ll want to help.”
“Chreon Se? Isn’t he just…”
“A useless hedonist? Maybe. I’ve never really been able to tell. But there’s a chance he’s competent, and you need all the help you can get. Don’t bother with Lady Midion, she’s an idiot. Keep Rheon Se out of this if you can. Oh, and put an Ervonian in charge of Ervon, but make sure it’s an Ervonian who won’t do anything reckless.”
“Alright,” Haol said slowly. “I’ll do that. But what’s going to happen to you?”
“I’m leaving Archon for good. People will assume Lord Wraith killed me no matter what you do, but you can tell them that, if you want. That way, it’ll be harder to undermine your authority.”
“Will you be alright?”
Annara paused, startled. She had been thinking several steps ahead, and she had to retrace her steps to figure out what he had said. “I always am,” she lied.
“I’m sorry too,” Haol said. “You are my friend, Annara. You always will be, even if we don’t get the chance to speak again.”
Annara nodded, throat tight. “You have no reason to apologize. Good luck, Haol.”
“You too.”
When she left, he was holding the crown up to the light that snaked through the broken windows, like he was trying to imagine how it would look on his head.
✽✽✽
“I don’t know,” the shopkeeper said, speaking around the stem of her pipe. “The material seems nice, but it’s badly damaged.”
They stood in a secondhand clothing store in the south of Archon. Lord Archon’s coat slumped across the counter like a dead thing, a hunting trophy, or a skinned fox. Annara shivered. Without it, she was underdressed in just a shirt and a cravat, and the shirt had turned transparent with moisture. Still, it was better this way.
“Is this real ermine?” the shopkeeper asked.
“Real enough to fool most of the suckers who come in here, right?” Annara said with a roguish grin.
The shopkeeper smiled back. “True enough.”
“It’s obviously not good enough to wear,” Annara said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not good enough to salvage. Cut it to pieces, I say. You could make some good ribbons out of that silk.”
“White, though,” the shopkeeper said thoughtfully. “It’s not in season.”
“You’ll be thanking me come spring. Hey, don’t you think this fur would look good on your shawl?” Annara made a frame out of her fingers, like she was imagining it. “Showstopping. It’d bring out the color of your eyes like nobody’s business.”
“Flatterer.”
“Besides, it’s not like I need a mountain of cash for the old thing,” Annara said. “Just enough money to get me to my cousin in Rheon Se, that’s all. I know it’s in pretty bad shape.”
“Why, miss, I’m starting to think you stole this article, since you’re so eager to get rid of it.”
“It’s not like anyone’s looking for it,” Annara countered. “The owner’s dead. Why, I honestly think the Swan Palace expects this coat to end up back on the market.”
“Can you swear by the Goddesses that this thing isn’t a liability?”
“On my mother’s grave,” Annara said instantly.
The shopkeeper took a long drag on her pipe. The embers in the bowl flared orange. “You’re sharp, and you’re a fast talker. I like that. Sure you have to leave so soon? You sound like you could sell anything to anybody.”
“Thanks for the offer, ma’am, but my cousin’s waiting for me. Gotta head out before planting season starts.”
“Shame. Well, good luck, then. Moon’s blessings be with you.”
“You too.” Annara paused in the doorway. “You are planning to cut it up, though,
right?”
The shopkeeper was looking at the coat, hungrily, the way a butcher looked at a fresh cut of meat. “Can’t sell it like this. All those stains. No, I’m selling it in pieces. Ribbons and pouches and the like. Why, what’s it to you?”
By the time she looked up, Annara was already gone.
It was a long walk to the bridge. Beyond it, Ervon wasn’t as ruined as she had feared. The palace was a wreck. The fire had scythed straight through it. Walls were missing, leaving only a blackened skeleton of wooden beams. The older stone part of the palace didn’t burn, but the stone was cracked in places and streaked with black soot in others.
The other buildings didn’t look so bad, though. Around the palace, a few roofs had scorched holes in them, but there was no structural damage. It was only a little disaster, the kind that would be talked about for years without ever ending anybody’s world.
Despite everything, the ferry to Rheon Se was still running. Annara bought a one-way ticket with the money from her father’s coat and watched Ervon shrink behind her. There would be jobs on Rheon Se, because there always were. It was the least populated island, and yet it supplied the others with most of their food. They would be ordinary jobs, too, farming or serving farmers.
Annara was going to live there for the rest of her life. The longer she stayed away from Senne, the longer it would take to fulfill the prophecy, and the longer they both could live. It was borrowed time, but it was still something. You couldn’t change fate, but with a little bit of luck, you could outrun it for a little while.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Heron was seventeen years old, and his mission was to assassinate Lord Midion. It was his first time in the Crescent, and the language sounded strange, too sharp in some places and too slurred in others. Heron could speak a little Crescentian, since he was good at languages, but he had taught himself from a textbook. The nobles were too formal to understand, and the people on the street weren’t formal enough.
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