by Jane Kindred
I shuddered at the memory. Kae, still under Aeval’s spell, had beheaded our guide and all the men who stood guard with him. I found it alarming how easily he spoke of such things, as if he enjoyed reminding others of the atrocities he’d committed—his self-hating version of penance.
We rode awhile in silence, taking the horses into the heights. The road, if it could be called that, followed the ravine through which the Gihon River flowed, climbing high above it in a steep and rocky incline. This was the only way to get from Pyr Amaravati to Aravoth City, and though the horses were well used to it, surefooted on even the icy cliffs in winter, it took all our concentration to navigate without becoming unnerved.
At a clearing overlooking the river valley, we stopped to let the horses graze. Beyond, the hazy outline of sharp mountain peaks marked the border of the Empyrean. By right of birth, this should all be my domain, though only in name. If I succeeded in my bid for the throne, the princedoms would once again be sovereign.
I sighed, sitting among the scattered clover on the hillside. It was a responsibility I didn’t want, but one I couldn’t shirk. It was dreadful to know so many were counting on me.
“You’ll find the strength within you when the time comes.” Kae spoke behind me as if he knew what I was thinking.
“You couldn’t fight her,” I said bitterly. “How can I?”
Kae echoed my sigh and sat beside me. “Nazkia, you’ve always been stronger than any of us.”
I stared at him, astonished and angry. “Stronger? Because I managed to run from you? That had nothing to do with me, Cousin. That was Helga, and ever since it has been Belphagor and Vasily.”
“I meant before…that.” He looked ill. “Ola—” His voice cracked and he swallowed and went on. “Ola was in awe of you. You were always so brave, running headlong into whatever was before you. She knew about your little trips to Raqia. She wished she had half the courage you did, to go and do things on your own that would have terrified her.”
I bit my lip and looked away, not wanting to cry in front of him.
“I wish…” His words trailed off. We both knew how foolish wishing was. It couldn’t bring her back.
I spoke my own foolish wish anyway. “I wish I hadn’t ridden off into the mountains on my birthday. Everything that’s happened since has been because of that one selfish, headlong run of mine into what was before me.”
“Nazkia, it isn’t.” His weak voice was surprised and emotional, and for a moment I feared he meant to put his arm around me, but he must have seen me flinch. “You’re not blaming yourself for all of this. For my weakness? Please don’t—”
“I blame you,” I interrupted. “I accept responsibility for setting it all in motion, but make no mistake; I blame you.” Ola’s words in the dream struck me once more, and I had to know. “If it wasn’t you who cut her open, who was it?”
Kae swallowed and looked out over the valley. His answer came in a whisper I had to strain to hear. “She was the first. In our room. Some inexplicable fury came over me and I put my knife in her chest. I thought she was dead. I left her and went to the drawing room and I…killed the others. And then you came in, and she’d been hiding, and she came out to save you from me. And I remember thinking, ‘Where’s the baby? What has she done?’ and then the terrible urge took me again and I didn’t care.”
I dug my nails into my palms, wanting to cover my ears again, wanting not to hear this. I didn’t want to know what had been in his head.
With a sudden, violent motion, Kae jumped up and ran toward the edge of the cliff. For a moment, I thought he meant to throw himself from it. Instead, he threw himself on the ground and vomited wretchedly into the deep ravine.
Not for the first time, I wondered if I’d made a mistake in freeing him from Aeval. Perhaps we all would have been better off if he’d never come back to himself. Why hadn’t I let him bleed to death in the snow at Gehenna when I’d stabbed him to keep him from slitting my throat? Ola’s words from a dream had spoken to me then as well, urging me to bury him in ice to bring his fever down as the release from Aeval’s hold on his blood made his temperature rise precipitously.
I’d done all I could to save him. Somehow, I’d thought he might emerge from her spell the same man he’d been before, like an enchanted prince in a fairy story, as if the rest had never happened. But like the unscarred face he hid beneath his mask—convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was blind and hideously burned—my Kae was only a memory. If his former self still lay hidden underneath, it mattered not at all to the present reality of what he’d become.
I stood and brushed off my sparring pants. “We should get back. It takes a full day to reach Aravoth City, so there’s no sense in going all the way there. The rest of the path is much the same.”
Kae climbed to his feet and mounted his horse, and we headed back toward Pyr Amaravati without speaking again.
When we arrived at the stables, my cousin stopped me before I left him and spoke without expression. “I cannot bear this life any longer. I will fulfill my promise to you to train your army and lead them into war, but when the dust has settled, no matter who emerges victorious, I am ending it.”
Back in my room, I wept as I changed my clothes. My friend was already dead. I’d killed him, as surely as he’d once killed me.
I headed for the bath, hoping to forget the afternoon in a long evening soak, but one of Sarael’s servants stopped me in the hallway.
“Your Supernal Highness.” The Virtue bowed. “His Serenity Sar Sarael requests your presence in the tablinum.” The large den at the far end of the atrium was reserved for formal audiences. Something had happened. I followed the servant downstairs and through the atrium, and found Vasily and Belphagor already at Sarael’s table.
Sarael stood as I entered, waiting until I sat opposite him before taking his seat once more. “Your Supernal Highness, I took the liberty of sending for your cousin. The news I have concerns him as well.”
“Aeval’s army.” My heart beat rapidly at the knowledge that what we’d been planning for was about to begin. There was no turning back.
“Yes. We’ve had reports of their movement north of Elysium.”
From the vestibule at the other end of the atrium, Kae approached, escorted by two Virtues. He hadn’t entered the manor once since his arrival two months ago, refusing to be treated as a guest, but he looked perfectly at home among the tasteful elegance of Pyr Amaravati. Though it was nearly July, he wore a double-breasted frock coat in black wool over his customary black clothing—a habit acquired in his days with Aeval that apparently suited him—and the coat swung about his legs as he crossed the stone tiles with purpose.
But for the mask and damaged eye, he looked every bit the dashing grand duke he had been in my youth, the object of my girlhood infatuation.
“Your Serenity. Your Supernal Highness.” He bowed slightly as Sarael stood and also bowed to me, but he ignored Belphagor and Vasily, which was probably just as well. “I gather it’s begun.”
“From what my scouts tell me, the Supernal Army left Elysium in the last week,” Sarael confirmed. “We can expect them to arrive at Gihon Valley within ten days. But there is other news we hadn’t anticipated.”
“What is it?” growled Vasily. “You’ve kept us in suspense long enough.”
“We’re given to understand that as soon as Aeval was out of the city, another pretender to the throne declared in Elysium.”
I shot from my seat. “What other pretender?” We’d planned for weeks to take advantage of Aeval’s departure from the city for the same purpose.
“Helga has put him forth. She claims to be the guardian of a young man in the direct line of the House of Arkhangel’sk.”
“That’s preposterous.” My jaw tightened with anger. “My father had only one brother, and Kae is his only son. There’s no one else. Nothing left at all of Arkhangel’sk but myself and Kae.”
“This will be difficult to hea
r.” Sarael looked troubled and I dropped back into my seat, unable to fathom what he might be about to say. “She claims to have the son of His Supernal Highness—” He nodded toward Kae. “And your sister Omeliea.”
My mind refused to process this. It was as if he were speaking complete gibberish, words arranged without regard for form or function tossed into a bag, shaken, and then dumped out. I opened my mouth to ask him what he’d said when Kae pushed back his chair and stood. Beside his mask, his face was whiter than I’d ever seen it, like sun-bleached bone against his dark clothing.
“Helga?” His voice cracked, brittle, as though written on charred paper. “Helga took the baby?”
“What baby?” My head was spinning, Sarael’s words still incomprehensible, and I had some vague idea we were speaking of Ola. “Whose baby?” Belphagor put a hand on my arm to calm me, as if I were becoming hysterical.
Kae turned to me. “The baby!” he croaked. “Ola’s baby! Your sister’s baby, whom you were so certain I had vivisected her to remove!”
The words rained down on me like glass shards and I heard Sarael’s at last, as if a delicate ball that held them had shattered, releasing them all in a hail of brittle splinters. I saw my sister before me holding her belly in a protective, belated gesture over the emptiness within. Someone had cut her so neatly, so precisely, like a body laid out in an anatomy lesson to display its organs. Such careful deliberation was not the sort of thing a raving man would do in a fit of wildness, I realized. It had been right in front of me all along, but so utterly incomprehensible I’d refused to see it. The baby had been surgically delivered.
“She wasn’t due.” I heard my voice, hardly aware of speaking, as if a ventriloquist had thrown the words for me to enunciate. “She was only eight months on.”
“If Helga speaks the truth,” said Sarael, “she must have had the skills to deliver and care for a premature infant. She kept him hidden and raised him as her own.”
“It’s not true.” I couldn’t accept this—that my own childhood nurse, as horribly as she’d betrayed me in taking my daughter, could have attacked my sister and cut her child from her womb. But who else? Who else would have done such a thing?
“She offers as proof his mother’s ring and the signed attestation of two blood relatives. They are kin from your mother’s side, from the House of Arcadia, but the testaments are legal. They’ve examined the boy and believe him to be whom Helga purports him to be. The laws of Heaven consider Azel Kaeyevich to be a legitimate heir to the throne.”
“Azel!” She even dared to steal my brother’s name. Azel had always been her darling. He’d been everyone’s darling, but Helga had been devoted to him. “Where is she keeping him? The child was not at Gehenna.”
“We don’t know,” Sarael admitted. “So far, all that’s been presented is the proof of his claim and not the boy himself. Helga is still in hiding. But she intends to rule as his regent. There was no mention made of the fact that his father, who is technically principality of the Firmament, is still alive.”
I looked at Kae, still standing before his chair. What showed of his face was still white as gypsum and he’d broken out in a cold sweat. Vasily lunged forward across the table as Kae began to fall, catching him with a fist in the collar of his coat. The servants who’d escorted Kae rushed into the room and took hold of him before Vasily lost his grip.
Sarael rose. “Take His Supernal Highness to the Pearl Room to lie down. He’s had a shock.”
I followed, feeling vaguely that I must do something, with Ola’s plea to be kind to him repeating in my head. I stood inside the door as they laid him on the bed and removed his coat. Kae stirred and struggled for a moment in vague, disoriented motions, and then lay back as he seemed to come to himself, letting them drape a thin blanket over him.
One of the servants nodded to me as they went out. “We’ll bring His Supernal Highness something to eat.” I sat beside my cousin, not knowing what to say.
With his eye still closed, Kae spoke weakly. “I guess you have your answer.” His mouth twisted with emotion. “After the atrocities I’ve committed, you’d think I couldn’t be offended by those of another. I have no right to my outrage, but there it is.”
I couldn’t disagree, but I found myself glad he felt it, just the same. He’d still loved Ola, despite the madness that had taken him. He hadn’t casually tormented her to no purpose other than vicious cruelty as I’d imagined. It was small comfort, but it was comfort.
I smoothed my skirt in my lap. “If this is true, Helga chose to do what she did. Consciously chose to violate Ola. No spell clouded her mind.”
Kae opened his eye with a guarded expression.
“Of course I recognize you were not yourself.” I answered his unspoken question tersely. “It doesn’t change anything.” I paused. “Does this change anything for you? Knowing my claim to the throne challenges…your son’s?” It was difficult to say, and nearly inconceivable.
“My son’s?” Clearly it was equally inconceivable to Kae. He hesitated only a moment. “No. No, of course not. You’re the heir to the throne. If this is true, Helga’s only using the boy as a pawn.”
“He might have a greater claim. Ola was firstborn and second in line after Azel. Any son of hers would eventually have sat on the throne.”
“Not like this. No. I’m committed to your campaign. And I have no right to think of the boy as anything to me. I am nothing but his mother’s murderer.”
“If he’s my sister’s son, he is something to me. When we’ve defeated Helga, I’ll have to consider which of us has the right to rule Heaven.”
I dreamt once more of my daughter that night, the fire this time surrounding her as she cried, while a boy stood silently behind the flames. Just before I woke at the cusp of dawn, I heard her calling for me. I rolled over, weeping, and reached for Vasily, but the arms I found weren’t his. He hadn’t crawled into bed with me in the night. Instead, Kae sat beside me and I’d thrown my arms about him.
Disoriented, I gazed up at him—strangely beautiful in the pearly blue light of Pyr Amaravati despite his disfigurement.
Kae let go of my shoulders and pulled me gently away. “You were crying out in your sleep. I was trying to wake you.”
For a moment, I’d forgotten I was supposed to hate him.
Dawn crept along the banks of the Gihon, painting cerulean light across the empty expanse of the Empyrean beyond it through the pale blue glass, as if Pyr Amaravati itself colored the day. I pulled my knees up under the covers and wrapped my arms around them, drawing a heavy sigh. “So it begins. Do you think your men are ready?”
“I think they’ll certainly give Aeval a surprise. They are not the same men who fought with honor at Gehenna. Perhaps it will be enough.”
I studied the leather mask that hid his unblemished face, wondering if he would always see nothing but ugliness when he looked upon his countenance. Would I? Despite the pain and misery between us, I missed my friend. On a morning like this—a thousand years ago, it seemed—we might have talked and laughed over anything and nothing at all.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes to dispel the ghosts of what could no longer be. “How many troops can we spare for the march on Elysium? I’d hoped to go after Helga before having to deal with Aeval, but that’s out of our hands now. Do we have enough to mount an attack on the demon army at the same time as we occupy the city?”
Kae thought for a moment, and even in his one clouded eye, I could see the cold calculation for which I’d engaged him. “The flooding from the Gihon is still high at the Aravoth Pass. We should be able to hold the queen’s forces at the bottleneck at Gihon Falls long enough to give you time to reach Elysium. With any luck, she’ll never set foot on Aravothan soil, in which case, the bulk of our forces can be concentrated on Elysium instead of Aravoth.”
“And without luck?”
“Without luck, we haven’t enough men to fight her anyway, so it’s luck or nothing.”
I’d hoped Margarita’s choice to stay on might have encouraged other Nephilim to pledge their support independent of the Grigori, but the Nephilim relied heavily on the approval of their angelic cousins. After the Angliski Nephilim had gone against the will of the Grigori in joining the celestial revolution, their clan had been forever cut off from the protection and companionship of the greater clan. Margarita hadn’t exactly disobeyed Dmitri’s wishes, but I supposed even the fear of the appearance of disloyalty was enough to keep the rest in line.
With none but the Virtues on our side, our only hope in winning against Aeval lay in first defeating Helga. If we could turn her army to our cause—and it seemed logical most would prefer me to Aeval’s oppressive rule—we might have a fair chance against Aeval’s Powers and the enlisted hordes of the Fourth Choir.
“I don’t intend to rely on luck,” I said. “That’s why Lively is coming with me.”
I gathered everyone in the atrium before breakfast to announce my orders for battle. In addition to Lively, I informed them, Vasily and Belphagor would accompany me.
Belphagor whispered something to Vasily beside him on the stone bench.
I cleared my throat. “Does that not suit you, Belphagor?”
He raised a dark eyebrow at my tone, the metal bar piercing his brow catching the light. “If it pleases Your Supernal Highness,” he said with dramatic formality, “I would like to request that the remaining Virtues of Sar Haniel’s platoon accompany us.”
