“Magar.”
Emma exhaled. “If that’s what the lantern means, then yes. I need your help. I need it now. Will you give it to me?”
“Will you free the dead? Will you shepherd them to their final destination?”
“Yes,” she told him. “Yes, even you.”
“Will you save my child?”
What?
He tried to reach out across the table, but his hands were occupied. “Will you save my child?”
Emma stared at him. She met his gaze and held it. His eyes were brown. The lines of his face had shifted in place, deepening across the brow. He seemed old, tired, frail. And he seemed alive. But the girls could see him; they could touch him. She didn’t understand.
And now was not the time for confusion.
No, magar, it is not.
“You’re dead,” she whispered, to the disembodied voice.
She felt his bitter, bitter smile—a smile that didn’t touch the face of the man seated in front of her. Yes. Yes and no. Death is complicated in this place.
“So is life.”
No, Emma—life is not. But she felt his attention shift to the man seated in the chair, as if he were an entirely different person. Life is simply a struggle not to become one of the dead. He stood by the seated Scoros, as if he were a shadow—his shadow.
“Anne?”
The girl nodded.
“Why can you touch him? Why—”
She looked confused. “I can touch you,” she finally said.
“Yes, but I’m—” She stopped, shook her head, and turned toward the open door. “I think,” she told Scoros, “it’s time for you to leave this room.”
“Why?”
“Because Reyna is coming.”
He looked confused—far more confused than Anne had. “Of course she is.” He glanced at the two girls and said, gently, “You must let go of my hands. She will see you.”
• • •
Emma stood at the threshold of this tiny prison. The very vague plan she’d made—and calling it a plan was a gross overstatement—was gone. She had intended to open Michael’s invisible door, to find what remained of Scoros—and to take over the bindings that held him here.
The memories, the gathered bits of Scoros, had said or implied that Scoros was woven throughout the citadel, that it was his essence and his power that somehow kept it together, kept it afloat. He had implied, again, that if she found the element of himself that was hidden and bound, Emma would gain control of enough of the citadel that her friends wouldn’t plunge instantly to their deaths.
He hadn’t, however, told her that he was alive.
She had no idea how to bind someone who was still living. She had no idea how she had found any of Scoros if he wasn’t dead.
“Leave him,” the magar said quietly.
“I can’t—”
“You have two options. Kill him or leave him. He is of no use to you if he is alive.”
“He’s of no use to me if he’s dead, either.” She exhaled. “But he’s not—he can’t be—bound to the Queen.”
But the old woman shook her head. “He is bound,” she said, grimly. As Emma opened her mouth, the old woman continued. “I thought he was dead. No wonder I could never find him. Do you understand what was done?”
Emma shook her head. She approached the old man, and held out her free hand. “I don’t know if I can save your daughter,” she told him. “I hope to save everyone else.”
He stared at her hand.
“I’m sorry, Scoros, but you must leave this room.”
“It is my room,” he said, with a soft smile. “It is hidden, defended; it is here that Reyna can flee if there is danger. It is here she comes when she requires comfort or guidance. I cannot leave.”
“Are you bound to this room?” she asked him. “Do you come to life only when this door is opened?”
Yes, the shadow Scoros, the gathered Scoros, replied. When the door is open and only then. It is a prison.
But Emma shook her head. She thought she understood some part of what had been done. Parts of Scoros were dead, but he himself was—barely—alive.
“Which one of you,” she asked, her voice clearer and harder, “attempted to kill the Queen of the Dead?”
Do not do this.
She couldn’t meet the eyes of the parts of Scoros that were dead. The parts, Emma thought, that must be killed, bound, and hidden if the man seated in front of her was to love and comfort the Queen.
“You did this to yourself.”
No. But we were not enemies, then. I had given her all of my life that mattered, and it was not enough. I was not the first to attempt to kill her. I will not be the last. Perhaps you will be—because the attempts will not end while she lives. Perhaps they will become infrequent. Perhaps they will all be ineffective. When I suggested what was done to me, I wished to protect her.
I know what was done to the dead to build this place. This was my penance: to suffer what the dead suffer—and for just as long as they suffer it.
But I chose. I chose what to surrender. I chose what to bury. And I watched. I watch her now, he added. She is almost here. She has not stopped to gather her knights. Tell him—tell me—that Eric is with her.
She realized that Scoros couldn’t hear his own voice. He could see the dead. He could see the lantern. But he was of the people.
“If the Queen kills you, what happens?”
Silence.
“Scoros, I’m sorry, but you must leave this room. It doesn’t matter now that the room is defended and protected against attack. Attack comes.” She lifted the lantern, understanding what it meant to him. Understanding what it made her, in his eyes.
He rose. “Magar,” he said, and this time he bowed to her. “We have waited. We have waited a long, long time.”
She left the closet-sized room, and Scoros followed, trailed by a shadow that didn’t conform to the fall of light. The room was no longer empty. Men and women of all ages, shapes, races, had gathered there; they were silent. The voices of the dead—those without form, without mobility—were not.
They fell silent only when the doors at the other end of the chamber rolled—slammed—open.
THE QUEEN’S KNIGHTS do not reappear. She is too angry to call them. The mobile dead have vanished. Nothing stands between Reyna and the citadel except Eric.
“You will wait here,” she tells him. Her voice is the Queen’s voice, not the girl’s, and there is death in it. Of course there is. Who disobeys the Queen? She storms through the empty, silent streets; the only thing she can hear is her breathing and the rustle of her train.
Eric does not obey. Were he anyone else, he would be dead, now. He almost dies anyway, so potent is her rage. Everything in her is angry. Everything rages, although she does not speak.
She thinks she has never been so angry. She thinks she will never be so angry again.
She is wrong.
• • •
She reaches the great doors of the citadel; they are open. They were opened for the procession, and they will not be closed until the ceremony is finished—if it is ever finished. She enters. The halls are as empty as the streets. Beneath the high, vaulted ceilings, her footsteps echo. Her hands have curved into shaking fists; she cannot loosen them.
She is certain that Emma is here. It is a sick certainty, an angry one. She meant, once, to bring Emma here as a novice. Later, she intended to bring her here for other reasons. She kept Nathan, resurrected him, with that in mind. She wanted to have something to offer Emma.
Why?
She almost can’t remember.
But Nathan is Reyna’s to offer. He is meant to be a gift, a magnanimous act. She will not allow him to be stolen.
She walks toward her chambers; her anger cools. Emma is an untrained girl. She
is less, much less, than Reyna was at the same age. She has been taught nothing. She has no skill. How has she taken Nathan? How has she broken that binding?
She slows. Longland. She will speak with Longland. She takes a deep breath. Another. She needs to think. Turning, she sees Eric. He is watching her. He does not smile.
She is not smiling either. The day is ruined. The event, destroyed. But Eric is here, and there will be another day. A better day. Maybe she was foolish to begin immediately. Maybe she was too impulsive. Things hurried are seldom perfect.
But she remembers hurrying to the tree by the stream in the early, early hours of the morning. She remembers Eric, standing beneath its boughs, watching her approach. She remembers the urgency, the joy—both hers and his. She knows there is no joy in him today.
But is there joy in her?
She opens her mouth, closes it, waits for the right words to form. She isn’t certain what to say. She doesn’t want to appear weak. Even if Eric is here, she remains the Queen of the Dead, and weakness is not allowed.
She is never certain, later, what she would have said. She knows her mouth is open, and his, closed. She knows that he is standing a yard away. She can close that distance or preserve it; he has given the choice to her.
It is not what she wants—the choice, the responsibility of choice. What she wants is his joy and his desire and his love. Her love has never died; she knows that love can last forever. She means to say this—even if this is the wrong time, the wrong place.
But a sudden, brilliant light cuts across her vision, blinding her; it permeates the walls, the floors, rises to the heights of the vaulted ceiling—and beyond. Reyna knows that light. There is only one thing that can cast it.
She turns toward the lantern. She can see its shape; there are walls between the light and her eyes, but they are made of the dead, and even if they weren’t, the light would still be visible; it is close.
It is too close.
She sees the shape of Eric’s eyes change; she knows he sees what she sees. She feels the rumble of the floor beneath her feet; imagines she can see the tremor in the walls and the ceiling they support. The whole of her world seems to strain toward the lantern’s light.
And of course it does.
Emma.
• • •
“Tell me,” Reyna says. “Tell me about Emma.” She walks. Eric shadows her. “What is she like? Is she beautiful?”
Eric doesn’t answer immediately.
“Does she look like I look?”
“No. She looks almost nothing like you.”
“Is she powerful?”
“How could she be?”
“She has the lantern.” Her voice cracks on the last word. Cracks and lifts. “Tell me, Eric. What is she like?” She walks, dragging him in her wake. She cannot see where the lantern is, but she knows it is close.
“How did she find my mother? How did she convince my mother to give her the lantern?”
Eric says, after a long pause, “Emma is kind.”
• • •
It is not what Reyna wants to hear. It is not, in truth, what she expected to hear. She laughs; it is a bitter, incredulous sound. “The magar gave the lantern to a child because she’s kind?” She is shaking, almost in time with the floor and the walls, as if they echo her fury—and the longing and the rage and the disappointment—always, always, the disappointment.
“What does that even mean? My mother was never kind!” It is true. The magar was bitter and harsh. She despised weakness. She despised her oldest daughter. Every bit of approval she gave was grudging and qualified—and there was little enough of it. So little.
Reyna did everything her mother asked. Learned everything her mother wanted her to learn. Lived with the dead, because that was what her mother wanted. She learned everything. She learned quickly. She was more powerful than any of her cousins. She was more powerful than her mother. She did what she was told to do, time and again, even when it meant that she would lose the day with Eric.
She has never understood what the magar wanted from her. Even Scoros couldn’t explain it. She has never understood why she was not, why she was never, good enough. Her mother doesn’t know Emma. Her mother didn’t raise her. Her mother didn’t live with her.
But her mother gave the lantern to Emma. Emma is her mother’s choice of magar.
Reyna coughs around words and gives up on them.
She will kill Emma Hall. She will take the lantern. She doesn’t need her mother’s permission or approval. And then, when she has it, she will find her mother, and her mother will answer every question Reyna has.
She lifts her skirts, hating the train, hating the confinement, hating everything. She doesn’t know where Emma is—but she knows Emma is in the citadel.
It is Scoros who tells her, indirectly.
What is kindness? What does it mean?
She will banish him, too. She will kill him. She doesn’t need Scoros anymore. Maybe she never did.
It means vision, little one. Emma Hall sees what is laid before her. She sees—or tries to see—clearly. She does not judge.
“And I do?” Reyna shouts.
Scoros doesn’t answer. It doesn’t matter. Reyna knows where Emma is. She knows where Emma must be. A bitter, bitter anger fills her, spills over; the floor beneath her feet almost unravels with the potency of her rage.
Eric tries to take her arm, and she pushes him away—without touching him at all. It is Scoros she wants to kill. Emma. But if she is not very careful, Eric will also be caught in the cauldron of her rage, her loss, her endless, endless sorrow.
For just a moment, she wants that. She wants to immolate everything. She wants to give up on love, because love has always, always betrayed her. She is tired of pain. She is tired of trying. She is tired of everything.
And angry.
THE QUEEN OF THE DEAD stood beneath the arched frame of the open door.
She was, in a fashion, beautiful; in the light from the skylight, she glittered in a way that suggested sequins—or diamonds. Her dress was white, the skirts full and rustling behind her; Emma thought there was, or would be, a train. There were no attendants to carry it.
Her crown was gold, a shade warmer and darker than her hair, which had been pulled back off her face.
She looked beautiful, perfect. She looked like a bride. A bride made of living ice and rage. Her eyes, brown, glittered as Emma met her gaze. She stared at Emma, seated in the center of her own circle.
The royal gaze swept the room and came to rest not on Chase or Emma, but on the old man who was seated within the periphery of the circle. Emma’s circle. From what she understood, the circle would afford him no protection.
But she wasn’t certain that the circle would afford anyone in the room any protection from the Queen’s rage. She trembled with it, swelled with it, embodied it; it seemed larger in all ways than she was.
“How dare you?” Her voice was thin—like the edge of a blade—her eyes, narrowed. Emma found her so compelling that she almost missed Eric as he entered the room behind her. It was Eric who closed the doors; the Queen didn’t appear to be aware of them.
It was Eric who bent and carefully straightened the Queen’s train. It was such an unexpected gesture, Emma stared at him. He failed to meet her gaze. But he failed to look at the Queen herself, either. He simply stood behind her, as if he were a guard or an attendant.
Maybe, she thought, love didn’t die. Maybe it couldn’t be killed. Or maybe it was just Emma’s love that was so conditional. If she had ever loved Reyna, she would have stopped centuries ago; there would be nothing in the woman she had become that would keep the love alive and much that would kill it.
If Nathan had been the King of the Dead, if he had changed so much from the Nathan she’d fallen in love with, she wouldn’t have been able to continue
to love him. Love—Emma’s love—needed some small embers to continue to burn. She wondered what that said about her, because she had believed—not intellectually, but emotionally, viscerally—that love was forever.
She accepted that love was not fixed. It wasn’t diamond. It was organic. It grew. Like a tree it required soil, sunlight, water, and deprived of those things for long enough, it died.
Reyna’s had not.
But Eric’s?
• • •
“Scoros. Why have you left your room?” Rage lent a killing frost to her tone.
Scoros’ expression was drawn, reserved; his shoulders drooped, his spine turned gently down. He was not a young man, but he had aged a decade or two since the doors had opened. A bitter mix of yearning, grief, and disgust twisted his lips, narrowed his eyes. He glanced briefly at Emma; the expression didn’t change.
“Reyna.”
If the Queen narrowed her eyes any farther, they’d be closed. “Your Majesty,” she said, correcting him. “You will never use my name again.”
But the old man shook his head. “You are Reyna,” he said. “To me, you will always be Reyna. I failed you.”
Reyna stared at the lantern’s light. She was silent for a long moment.
“Get ready,” Chase let the two words escape the corner of his mouth. Emma heard them but didn’t respond. She looked at the cast of the Queen’s face in the lantern light. The Queen seemed to be drawn to it, just as the dead were.
“You might redeem yourself,” Reyna told the old man.
“I have failed every attempt to do so,” Scoros replied. Even as he spoke, Emma heard echoes and harmonies fold around each syllable. But she saw his expression shift, and she realized that even now, knowing everything he knew, Scoros—this Scoros—wanted redemption.
Reyna saw this too. “Take the lantern from her hands.”
His chin dropped. He moved his hands—slowly—and folded them in his lap. When he raised his face again, he smiled. It was not a happy expression. “Have you forgotten so much?”
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