Amber & Dusk

by Lyra Selene

  Sunder turned away from the ledge and stepped toward me, until he was close enough that I could have reached out and touched him. In the cavern of his frost-limned eyes I saw some sheer part of myself reflected back.

  “Do you know why our gifts manifest in such different ways?” he murmured. “Pain, poison; healing, song. Illusion.”

  I shook my head.

  “No one does. Some think it’s passed parent to child, shifting and warping as blood binds to blood. But no one is born wielding magic. Our legacies only manifest after we grow and mature, experience the diversity of joy and pain life invariably brings.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Oleander and I were barely older than babes when our parents were killed.” Remembered pain chiseled Sunder’s features. “But we both understood too well what had happened. I remember she used to sit in the greenhouse beneath the flowering oleander, our mother’s favorite flower and my sister’s namesake. The flower is lovely, but poisonous in all its parts. She would sit, and weep bitter tears, plucking the blooms from their stems and crushing the petals between her little hands. And I—I would wander the woods beyond the ravine, setting traps for rabbits and foxes because I wanted them as my pets. I wanted them as my friends. But I didn’t know how to catch them without maiming them. And even the animals I eventually caught, and tamed, and kept, were afraid of me. Because I had broken their bones, spilled their blood across the snow.”

  An arrow of sympathy laced with shock sang toward my heart. Sunder leaned closer.

  “I believe that, instead of arising from our blood, our legacies are shaped by who we are. Our abilities rise and shape to our own inclinations. For better or for worse, I want to cause pain, even to the things I love.”

  His hand drifted toward me, slow enough that I could slap it away if I wanted to. I didn’t. His fingers hovered above my collarbone. A crackle of energy passed between us.

  “And me?” My voice was breathless. “If that’s true, what do my illusions mean?”

  “Perhaps you have deceit in your soul,” whispered Sunder. His hand floated higher, raising the hairs along my neck. “Or perhaps you want to show the world something only you can see. Something lovely, and strange, and just a little bit monstrous.”

  “So you don’t mind,” I managed, “if I’m a monster?”

  “No.” He rocked closer, and his closeness sent a thread of desire stitching up my spine. “Because I’m a monster too.”

  I kissed him. It was as simple as turning my head and pressing my lips against his. For a moment, time waited. My heart stopped. His hands stilled. His lips brushed against mine, cool and soft and light as a flake of falling snow.

  Time stuttered. And started again.

  He deepened the kiss, his lips a promise: a covenant of the sublime. His hand found my waist and crushed me against him. Our heartbeats thundered side by side. I slid my palms up the front of his coat, finding his collar. I tugged, pulling him closer. Strands of his hair whispered against my knuckles and sent my thoughts whirling away into the dusk. He nudged me backward. My shoulders hit the edge of the pillar. I gasped.

  The clouds of our breath mingled as he drew away, eyes snagging on mine. And for the first time since I’d met him, I saw Sunder utterly unmasked and unguarded. I saw the deep well of torment pooling behind eyes dark with want. I saw desolation, and desire, and an icy, endless strength.

  He captured my lips with his once more. But this kiss was laced with desperation, and something else: a zinging ache that jolted the skin across my face and tightened my muscles. His hands glided down the column of my neck and left scorching trails in their wake. A high ringing pierced my ears. My palms itched. I clenched my hands into fists and shoved him away.

  “No,” I breathed. “Not like that.”

  A cold breeze off the mountains gusted between us. Sunder stared at me. He was breathing hard, and spots of hectic red stood out high on his angular cheekbones. He shuddered, and pushed the spill of white-gold hair off his furrowed brow.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  And I believed him. Because I was sorry too.

  “You’re cold,” I whispered, because he was shivering in his fine brocade, shivering like he’d break apart, shivering like he’d never be warm again.

  “I’m always cold,” he replied.

  “We should go inside.” I laughed. The sound was as hollow as my heart. “Before you catch your death.”

  “Death,” he repeated, and turned his face toward the mountains. The low sun drenched him in blood. “I’ve dreamed of dying so many times. Sometimes, I can’t help but think that somehow, somewhere, it must have already happened.”

  He straightened, turned, and smiled like an ice wolf.

  “Come on.” He brushed past me and into the château. “We have much planning to do if we ever hope to outsmart that lying witch and steal the throne from under her nose.”

  I watched him disappear back into Belsyre. Another icy wind stole the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t help but feel like something else had been stolen from me too.

  We planned until Compline turned to Nocturne and a sweep of freezing fog shrouded the valley.

  “To mount a successful coup,” Sunder said, “we’re going to need the Amber Court on our side. We don’t have time to requisition the noble families from their country estates, so we’ll have to rely on our peers. Sinister is ruthless and fierce, but their loyalties can be unpredictable. There are a few courtiers I’ve been grooming to turn against the empress. I can try to motivate them with favors or fortune.”

  “Most of Dexter is furious and deeply resentful about all the legacies the empress has been seizing from their ranks,” I added. “I might not be able to incite them myself, but now that Thibo—”

  Sunder nodded. “The Montrachets have no great love for imperial rule—they were annexed during the Conquest, same as the de Veres. From what I hear, half his clan has already been drafted for the empress’s petty battles. Use his disappearance if you can.”

  “And Luca—”

  “We are not involving that feckless ore trader!” Sunder’s eyes slashed up to meet mine. “He nearly ruined all our plans. Besides, we want to replace the empress with an heir we control—”

  “Control?” My voice was icy.

  “You know what I mean.” Sunder sat back against his chair. “We don’t know how many militants La Discorde has in its ranks, nor how much support they have among the commoners. If we cede any part of this overthrow to Luca and his friends, we could have a revolution on our hands, instead of a clean coup with relatively few casualties. Do you want to eviscerate the Amber Empire, or just remove its head?”

  “Fine,” I snapped. “Maybe you’re right. But we could still use them without telling them what we’re doing. They could create a diversion—draw away the Skyclad Gardes while we put the rest of our plan into motion.”

  Sunder opened his mouth, then closed it again. He grimaced, and put his head in his hands.

  “That might actually be a good idea, demoiselle,” he muttered. “Discuss it with Luca when we’re back in the city. But no promises.”

  “Agreed.” I glanced up to find his eyes lingering on my face. My mouth parted, and the silent press of heightened emotions threatened to collapse the frigid wall we’d built between us since that moment on the terrace. I looked away first. “Will you speak to Dowser, or should I?”

  “I will,” he said. “He’s not going to like any of this. He’s been trying to find out for tides what Severine’s legacy is, and has spent almost as long trying to find out which of her treasures is the second Relic. He’s going to counsel us to wait until you’re stronger, until we have more information, until we know we can win.”

  “Do you think he’s right?”

  “That depends on you.” Sunder splayed his hands across the table. “For this to work, you won’t be able to lead the dissident courtiers against the Skyclad Gardes to secure the palais. The nobilit
y know me; they fear me. They may or may not be willing to follow me, but they most certainly won’t follow you. Furthermore, we’re going to have to separate Severine from those among her court who remain loyal. She knows how to manipulate them, how to bend them to her will. No—you’re going to have to be the one to vanquish Severine. Alone.”

  “I know,” I said, and even as the words left my mouth I realized that ever since I had discovered who I was—who my father was, and what Severine had done to my mother, my innocent siblings—I had known that I was going to have to be the one to face the empress. The ember inside me spat sparks. “I need to remind everyone—commoner and noble alike—what she did to seize power, so I can discredit her. I need to find out what her legacy is, so she can’t use it against me, or the rest of the court. And I need to defeat her, in whatever way I can.”

  Sunder’s gaze flicked with jagged awe. “And how do you plan to do that?”

  I smiled. “I have a few ideas.”

  We spent hours planning moves, and countermoves. Attack, parry, riposte. We mapped out every player at our disposal, and tried to predict where our enemies would be, and how they would act. We planned until my head swam with so many plots and gambits that I could barely remember my own name, much less who I could and couldn’t trust, and under what circumstances.

  When the bells for Nocturne turned to Matin, and the fog turned to feathered blasts of downy snow, our plans were finally complete. We rose from the table in the gloom, the silence between us fragile as glass.

  “Have you thought at all—” Sunder began, tentative. He cleared his throat. “You said that you would break the world, if you had to; to remake it the way you see it. What will that world look like, when you sit upon the Amber Throne?”

  I opened my mouth to say I hadn’t thought about it. But when I met his eyes—taut with expectation and bright with brittle hope—I realized that wasn’t true. In a strange way, it was all I’d ever thought about. From the moment I learned what I was, I’d dreamed of that world. I’d crossed an empire for that world, only to realize that if I truly wanted a place to belong, I’d have to create it.

  I can do better than she can.

  “I don’t have easy answers,” I whispered. “And I know next to nothing about ruling. But when I close my eyes I dream of a world where beauty is an intention, not a pretense. Where grace reigns. Where compassion dwells. I can’t promise to make this empire great again, but I can promise—I can try—to make it good again. I have to believe I’m capable of that.”

  “Then I have to believe it too.”

  Sunder reached for me, one last time. His hand brushed against mine. I flinched. He had to look away to hide the pain twisting his face into something desolate, broken, and more than a little monstrous.

  Coeur d’Or was so busy and full of activity that our return a week later was barely remarked upon.

  The remaining members of La Discorde had been publicly executed. The sight of their gore-striped heads adorning spikes on the city gates striated my bones with cold-hot blades of fear and fury. Nausea punched holes in my stomach and bile seared my throat, but I refused to look away, forcing myself to memorize their agonized, disfigured faces.

  This, I whispered to myself, this is the price of failure.

  And when at last I turned away, I thanked the Scion that Luca’s dark-curled head did not hang among them.

  Carrousel was going forward as planned, preparations turning the palais into a carnival. The jardins bustled with tradespeople and artisans and artificers building grand pavilions and gazebos and magical mechanisms to transform the landscape. Trees and shrubbery swarmed with decorations: bright lanterns flapping like strange colored birds, streamers gossamer as captured cobwebs, white lights glittering like the stars of legend.

  I went directly to my seamstress. I didn’t have time to waste if I wanted the gown for my performance to be perfect. I tipped her handsomely to have the gown ready by the end of the week, and tipped her even better for her discretion.

  Lullaby greeted me with narrowed eyes.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded, and I fought the urge to cry. I’d left her without a word, abandoning her like I’d abandoned Thibo—

  No. Nothing I could have done would have saved Thibo. I gathered my memories of my friend into a precious bundle and stored them in the quietest corner of my mind. I’d grieved and would continue to grieve him. But the best thing I could do now was stick to the plan and make sure that murderous witch didn’t steal any more of my friends.

  I told Lullaby, as concisely as possible, about my time at Belsyre. About Sunder, and Bane, and Severine. Everything I knew. Everything we planned. How I hoped she’d fit into that plan.

  When I was finished, Lullaby sat back against the divan. She barely looked surprised.

  “I’m glad.” Her mouth hardened. “I’m only sad Thibo isn’t here to be a part of it. He’s been talking about this for spans, he—” She broke off, and that determined mouth quivered. “He said he was in contact with a spy in Sinister, someone planning something big. He guessed it was Sunder. I always said he was insane. Shows you what I know about intrigue.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was too late.”

  “Don’t.” Lullaby turned to look out the window, her gaze distant. “He used to say: I reap what others have sown; I am the scythe they least expect. I suppose now you—we—have to be that scythe.”

  I tamped down the flames of anger and pain and futility, glazing them along the facets of that ember smoldering beside my heart. A cinder that a single spark would reignite into an inferno of sunlight and perilous dreams, jewel-bright visions and monstrous hopes.

  And when I left Lullaby with a strong embrace and a handful of instructions, I saw that fire reflected in her own water-blue eyes.

  “Mirage?” she said as I turned away.

  “Yes?”

  “Make her pay for what she did to Thibo.”

  A letter. A handful of écu here, and a few kembric livres there. Whispered conversations.

  I signaled Luca with our old method of red handkerchiefs in the window, and when he stalked out to meet me along the Esplanade I told him about the plan. Just enough about the plan, just enough to get him excited, like I knew it would. His smile flashed sharp as a dagger forged in the red light of our sun. His eyes didn’t flicker as he agreed to involve La Discorde, whose recent loss had only strengthened their resolve. He didn’t even flinch when I told him he’d have to work with Sunder.

  And that’s when I knew my friend—the boy with the wild curls who somersaulted from Madame Rina’s convoy and snuck me crusts of bread because he knew how hungry I was—was gone forever. He’d transformed into a man I’d once glimpsed long ago by the uneven light of a guttering cook fire. A man scarred by tragedy and transformed by rage, with death in his eyes and revolution in his soul.

  My disappearance with the Suicide Twins was talked about, but not in the way I would have expected. As Sunder predicted, everyone at court assumed he and I were lovers. I tried not to dwell on the various twisted and unspeakable speculations regarding the nature of our relationship. Eyes raked my back when I passed through the corridors of Coeur d’Or, but I straightened my shoulders and lengthened my stride.

  Sunder was—Sunder. He inhaled wine and exhaled insults. We saw each other at parties and salons and concerts, and if he leaned too close to whisper something in my ear, or curled a proprietorial hand around my waist, I only smiled, and simpered, and hid the bleak, delicious flare of heat burning through my veins.

  What was it he said, that day beneath the pergola? To sell the illusion.

  Because that’s all it was. Yet another illusion in my growing repertoire of fancies and delusions. A cheap facsimile of something that, for a moment, felt real. Was real. Wasn’t it? But even now, mere days after my time at Belsyre, those moments seemed to be slipping away, like a half-remembered dream. I closed my eyes, and tried to remember, but it was like reaching for someone
else’s memory. A broken promise, a good dream turned bad; blood on the snow where before there were red flowers.

  So I focused on the plan. I ran through it again and again, every step, every illusion, over and over. I practiced it until I dreamed it. And then I practiced again.

  I paced the annex with the mosaic floor, my eyes trained on the frescoed ceiling. I tried to concentrate on the Sun in his sapphire throne, the Moon flanked by her star-eyed maidens. The Scion on his chariot of flames. But the images blurred behind the film of tears prickling hot at my eyes, and all I could think of was the first time I came to this room. Thibo, laughing at my ignorance. Thibo, dancing me across a map sparkling with gems and mica. I rubbed a thumb over the locket I’d started carrying in my pocket. Thibo—

  “Don’t cry on my account, demoiselle.” A cool voice cut through my misery.

  I whirled. Sunder stood across the mosaic of the daylight world, clad in a kembric-gilded waistcoat so bright he could have been the Scion himself. For the first time in days, his entourage of Sinister lords and ladies was nowhere to be seen.

  “We met here, once,” Sunder mused, his tone bittersweet. His polished boots carried him across the Dusklands toward the Meteor Mountains, where my jeweled slippers nudged tiles of onyx and opal.

  “I remember,” I muttered. Uncertainty battled with a sour, brittle yearning. “Didn’t you accuse me of pawning your money for tacky gowns?”

  “Maybe.” He smiled, whisper-thin. “But you accused me of defiling innocent horses.”

  I choked on a laugh. Mirth tinted with old embarrassment chased away the last tatter of my sorrow. “More fool you for matching wits with me.”

  “A lesson I’ve learned time and again.” His boots paused by my slippers. His dristic-edged eyes searched mine, but he didn’t touch me. “And you were dancing that day, were you not? With your friend. With Thibo.”