by Bree Barton
“Not sure how much Nell showed you on your way in,” he said, “but she’s been gone for years. I’m a much better guide.”
“I don’t need the full tour,” she said, knowing it was futile.
The more Pilar saw of the House of Shadows, the more it confused her. She felt the same impulse as when she’d first seen it: an almost magnetic tug, met by a strong repulsion. Not so different from the contradiction in herself, honestly. Push me, pull me. Stay away—and hold me close.
If the House looked massive on the outside, the inside was even bigger. Stone paraded her past dozens of room-sized glass spheres clustered together. Like bubbles in a giant bath.
“The sfeeras,” he said.
Some of the sfeeras had curtains. Others didn’t. She spotted beds, hammocks, and simple straw mats. Tables, chairs, bookshelves, bathtubs. She saw one pale-skinned woman in a bathtub.
Stone’s skin flushed a shade darker. He looked away.
“Some residents like to be sky-clad. Up to them, of course. I just wish they’d do it more . . .” He coughed. “Privately.”
“How long do people stay here?”
“As long as they need. We always find room.”
He took her past lecture halls crammed with important-looking people droning on about who knew what. Past a sweet-smelling chamber Stone called a “chocolate kitchen,” where two cooks argued passionately about cacao beans. Past a long, skinny room filled with children in capes screaming and chasing each other. She felt a sharp pang, thinking of all the families who must have tried to escape Fojo Karação.
“Here’s the Creation Studio,” Stone said, ushering her inside a big airy space with easels, pottery wheels, and fat orange octagons she was pretty sure were kilns. People sat around the studio painting. Drawing. Slapping wet lumps of clay. And so on.
“Do you practice any art?” Stone asked.
“Not this kind.”
“What kind, then?”
She shifted her weight. “Music.”
“Then I’ll take you to the Orkhestra! A troupe of traveling musicians arrived a few days ago from Fojo. They’re amazing. And just children! I’m sure they’d—”
“Won’t be necessary,” she said curtly. “I don’t play anymore.”
He nodded, taking this at face value. A note of sadness echoed in her chest. She’d thought Stone would try harder to persuade her. The last thing she needed was a bunch of doe-eyed children butchering their violins. But she’d seen those children when she’d first walked into the House, and they didn’t seem like butchers. They’d touched their instruments with love and care.
She thought of Quin at the piano. How gently he’d touched the keys. She remembered the notes humming through her bones, stoking her desire. Now, with a little distance, she saw she had been more in love with the way he made her feel than with Quin himself. The Doomed Duet of Pil and Kill had been doomed from the start.
“See that?”
Stone pointed to a muscular, sandy-haired woman in the back corner, running her bare hands over a hunk of pearly white stone. From across the room, Pilar saw the stone crumble, dropping in chips and curls at her feet.
“Fire sculpting,” Stone said. “Annabeth carves the stone using the heat from her hands. She says it melts away like butter. Annabeth is from the river kingdom, actually. Her hands were always burning through her gloves. For years she managed to hide it, but then someone tipped off the Hunters. She escaped moments before they arrived.”
Pilar swallowed. “You know about the Hunters?”
“Everyone knows about the Hunters. That kind of evil spreads through all four kingdoms.”
How long before Stone found out the leader of the Hunters was her father? Considering Nell knew, it was only a matter of time.
“Like I said,” Stone continued, “we’ve been getting refugees from Glas Ddir ever since Ronan became king—back before I was born. Whole families take everything they can carry on their backs and start trekking west. It’s a monthlong journey, and a hard one, mostly desert. Many don’t survive. When Mumma was appointed Shadowess for her second term, she started sending caravans to our eastern borders to find people and bring them here safely.”
Pilar watched the white stone spall under Annabeth’s sure hands. The steadiness of her fingers filled Pilar with a calm, peaceful feeling. Those hands had been liberated. Now they were shaping something beautiful. As the sculpture began to emerge from the stone, Pilar detected one large, drooping ear. Then another. The nose was long and skinny, almost trunk-like.
“An elephant!” she exclaimed.
Stone smiled. “She makes all kinds of animals. You’ll see them stationed around the House.”
Pilar started to smile back. Then she remembered Mia chattering about the rock shaped like an elephant. Chattering to Nell, not to her.
Pilar’s mood darkened. Where was Rose now? Strolling through the House of Shadows, stroking the stone elephants? Chugging magical elixirs? Fawning over Nell?
A part of Pilar wanted to protect her half sister. Save Mia from herself.
Another part wanted to punish her.
Something had shifted. Now when Pilar looked at Annabeth and her elephant, she felt only sadness.
She gave Stone a hard look.
“The Gymnasia,” she said.
It was stuffed into the far back corner of the building, making Pilar wonder if the Gymnasia was the House’s dirty little secret. It certainly lacked polish. Clamped to the walls and floors were thin, shiny cushions, streaked with sweat or spit. Maybe blood.
She loved it.
“Hardly anybody comes here anymore,” Stone said. “I’ve got the whole place to myself.” He toed a floor mat. “Now if only I had someone to spar with.”
Pilar pressed her lips together to keep from grinning. There’d been a chance the Gymnasia would bring back her worst memories. Orry in the cottage, teaching her to fight. Quin using her own moves against her.
But she didn’t see Quin or Orry. She saw sandbags hanging from the ceiling. Straps for wrapping hands and wrists. This place was worth a hundred Rose Gardens. It was real. No magic. No lies. The Gymnasia was the first place in the House of Shadows where she’d felt at home.
In the absence of another home, where else could she go?
Pilar felt Stone watching her, his round face hopeful. She thought of what Nell had told her: that her baby brother trusted people too easily.
“Why do you want to spar with me, Stone? You don’t even know me.”
“But I’d like to.”
She studied him. If she detected even a seed of infatuation, she would root it out before it ever had a chance to grow.
But that wasn’t what she saw in Stone’s face. She saw a boy eager to worship people he’d only just met. A boy dying for someone to follow. A boy willing to trust anyone who paid him the smallest bit of attention.
She saw a child who would keep slicing his chest open until someone broke his heart.
It scared her, how much he reminded her of herself.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll spar with you.”
His brown eyes lit up. “Fantastic! Let me get my—”
“No. Not now. I’ll meet you here in the morning, six o’clock sharp. Wrap your wrists ahead of time. We’ll train every morning. Afternoons, too, depending on how bad you are.” She sniffed. “I’ll also teach you how not to go around asking people you’ve never met to teach you things. You get that lesson for free.”
“You’re going to stay at the House, then?”
Pilar made a decision. She didn’t trust these people—but she’d give them a chance to prove her wrong. She’d focus her attention on Stone, while also keeping an eye on Mia. Best of all, she’d eat good food cooked by other people while hammering out her plan for what came next.
She didn’t owe anyone anything. But she would give Stone one week.
“Seven days,” she said. “That’s how long you have to impress me.”
&nb
sp; “And if I don’t?”
Pilar stretched her neck to one side, then the other. Her spine gave a satisfying crack.
“Then find someone else. I’ll be gone.”
Chapter 13
Ink
THE FIRST ASSAULT WAS the noise.
Under King Ronan’s reign, the Grand Gallery had been draped in fraught silence, everyone frightened of the king. Quin had endured many a meal beside his parents without a single word passed between them. Even if his sister came to supper—and she rarely did—her lively banter would eventually peter out, powerless against the oppressive quiet.
But the Gallery was quiet no longer. Musicians strolled through, crooning ballads and war songs as the Embers laughed and caroused. The black feasting table where the royals once sat had vanished; the smaller gray slab tables had tripled in number, and at least a hundred women and men gathered around them. At a makeshift bar of wood planks resting on large barrels, a barkeep poured pints of stonemalt. A few inebriated Embers reclined on piles of furs and animal skins by the giant stone hearths at either end of the Gallery.
Instinctively, Quin searched for his dogs. Wulf and Beo had always loved curling up on the fire-warmed stones. Every time Quin trudged in for another insufferable supper, the sight of their furry golden heads, ears pricked, was the one thing that sustained him.
But they were not there.
He forced himself to look away. Zaga was not one to protect the small creatures under her care. Nor was Angelyne.
He didn’t want to know what had happened to his dogs.
“What do you think?” Tobin said, gesturing toward the hall.
“It’s transformed.”
“Yes, I decided it could use a dose of cheer. And a dose of strong spirits. Though, to be honest with you, not everyone agreed. Some thought we should burn Kaer Killian to the ground.”
As Tobin spoke the words, a ripple moved across the Grand Gallery, laughs swallowed and sentences left dangling, as one by one every head turned toward Quin.
That was the second assault. The eyes.
Quin had known his return to the river kingdom would be controversial. He was, after all, son of King Ronan—and husband to Queen Angelyne, in a spurious, nonconsensual sort of way. But from what the old farmer had said, and what Brialli Mar had hinted at, there were still some Glasddirans loyal to the crown. Quin had hoped he might be met with pleasure, even gratitude. He had returned to his people after a long, arduous journey. Their orphan-loving king had come home.
Indeed, he saw a smattering of kind, open faces. But on the whole, the Embers greeted him with pure, unadulterated loathing. If looks could kill, he would have collapsed to the stone floor in a heap of human rubble.
And it was this thought—that his own people would murder him in his own home—that flooded him with fury. Didn’t they understand he’d been a victim, too? The Kaer had always been the site of his victimhood, in one form or another.
Quin had returned to claim his rightful place on the throne, which was another way of saying he sought the power he had always been denied. Yet here he was, just as weak and humiliated as ever. And hated, too.
“Care for a drink?” Tobin said with a smirk.
Quin eyed the barkeep, who looked eager to serve him a pint of arsenic.
“I’m all right.”
“Not the warm reception you’d imagined?”
Tobin turned to face the group.
“Friends!” he shouted. “Embers! Do not be alarmed. The prince is our guest.”
He needn’t have shouted. In the absence of other noise, his words were perfectly audible. Quin could not help but feel the presence of his father, King Ronan’s ghost lurking still. As if the moment a Killian walked into the Grand Gallery, the shroud of silence fell once again.
“Guest?” A woman’s shrill voice rose from the sea of stony faces. “You expect me to share my bread and wine with the son of a slaughterer?”
Someone hushed the woman—“sins of the father” or some such—while two new voices joined with hers. Dissension in the ranks, Quin thought. If the Embers were divided, it could only work in his favor.
In the far corner he noticed a distinguished older man and a tall white-haired woman conversing in low voices, their heads bent close. Quin squinted, then gave a start. The man used to be his father’s head guard. How had Sylvan survived Zaga and Angelyne’s regime?
Unlike the rest of the Gallery, Sylvan had his gaze firmly locked on Tobin, as did his companion. They did not look pleased. For the first time, Quin realized that his former music teacher was not the only leader of the Embers, or perhaps not a leader at all.
The woman narrowed her eyes. She began walking toward them, Sylvan a few steps behind. Was it Quin’s imagination, or did Toby blanch?
“M-Maev,” Tobin stammered. “I thought you and Sylvan were . . . I’m glad you’re here, actually. I . . . I thought we might—”
“I told you,” Maev said, making no attempt to lower her voice, “that the only sovereign I care to see in this hall is a Killian head on a spike.”
Quin’s throat tightened. His fingers twitched with pent-up heat. In a closed space like the Grand Gallery, his aim wouldn’t matter. How easy it would be to set them all ablaze.
He restrained himself. There were innocent people in this room. The Embers might be pretenders, false claimants to the throne, but others, like Brialli, were clinging to the only option they had left. There were more Glasddirans in the Gallery than all the other survivors he’d met put together. Did he really want to burn what was left of his people?
Besides. At the moment, Maev’s ire seemed to be directed entirely at Tobin.
“Who else have you invited into our midst, Toby? Is Angelyne next?”
“Maev.” Sylvan laid a hand on her arm. “There’s no need to make a scene.”
“A scene?” She shook her head bitterly. “We’ve worked so hard to get here, Sylvan. We’ve given up so much. And now this”—she sneered at Quin—“threatens to upend everything we’ve been working toward. Has it not occurred to either of you he’s here as Angelyne’s spy?”
Quin shook his head fiercely. “I’m here of my own accord.”
“‘Accord,’” she spat. “You’re a son of Clan Killian. You know nothing about accord. Nothing about harmony, or what is just and fair.”
Fair. Quin mulled the word. His father had never been concerned with fairness—though his aunt had. It was Queen Bronwynis who’d created the Council of the Kaer, surrounding herself with eight councillors to advise her on the finer points of governance.
And what was her reward? Murdered by Ronan, her own brother, who blamed the Gwyrach for the assassination—and promptly commandeered the throne.
What kind of Killian did Quin want to be? A queen like Bronwynis, or a king like Ronan? His gaze swept the Grand Gallery. He saw anger and mistrust, grief and despair. Where was the rest of Glas Ddir? Had they really all fled to the glass kingdom?
They were a broken people. They deserved him, a broken king.
Quin felt a stirring of pity. And, just as quickly, he stamped it out.
Pity had no place in the heart of a king.
“I know this much,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “We have a common enemy. Angelyne is no friend of mine.”
Maev eyed him charily. The entire room was eyeing him the same way. Here, Quin thought, was an opportunity. He’d been given a chance to disarm the Embers—and win their trust.
Seized by sudden inspiration, he angled his body toward the stone tables. If he was going to make a speech, he might as well address them all.
A chill swept down his neck. Here, standing in the Grand Gallery, he had what he had always craved: an audience.
“I’ve come all the way from Luumia,” he began, pleased at how his voice echoed off the Gallery’s black walls, “where Angelyne’s magic has grown even more powerful.”
A murmur swept through the crowd. Quin thought of what Tobin had told hi
m: that the Embers opposed magic most of all.
“Angelyne’s magic thrives on the imbalance of power. With her sisters by her side, she will bring death and destruction to all four kingdoms. Her dark reign has already begun.”
Quin cleared his throat.
“I know the Embers oppose all exploitative systems of governance. You have suffered at the hands of those who abused their power.
“Under my father’s rule, you lost your wives and mothers, your sisters and daughters. You lived in abject fear of a cruel dictator, powerless against his every whim.
“Under Angelyne’s rule, those losses did not abate. With Zaga by her side, the queen murdered your husbands and fathers, your brothers and sons. She destroyed your families and set fire to your villages. You no longer had autonomy over your own bodies, your own minds. I know this nightmare, because I, too, have lived it.”
Quin took a breath.
“I cannot give back what was taken from you. But I can eat beside you, sleep beside you, march into war beside you. We are fighting the same battle. I stand against the tyranny of magic, and any tyranny constructed on the bones of the helpless and the weak.”
He reached into his jacket pocket. Someone gasped, as if Quin might draw a dagger and plunge it into an unsuspecting heart.
Instead he withdrew the letter.
“I have in my hand a missive to the Twisted Sisters. I will order them to return to the river kingdom to face the destruction they have wrought—and pay the price for their crimes.”
Quin brandished the letter overhead, the parchment worn and soft like a white handkerchief. But this was not his surrender. Rather, it was his greatest triumph.
“If the Embers stand against kings,” he said, savoring his final coup de grâce, “then I stand with the Embers.”
The Gallery erupted into cheers.
Quin had never been applauded by a roomful of people, not once in his life. Gone were the empty silences and the lonely stage. Breathless, he let his ears drink up the sound. He wanted to bathe in it.
I choose to return to the people of the river kingdom.
