FROM THE MOMENT THIS WAR MEETING BEGAN, FARON COULD TELL it was different. There was an anticipation in the air, a restlessness among Iya’s followers, that hadn’t been there before. No one looked at her except Ballard and Noble, whose swift recovery from their head wounds seemed to have made them even more volatile. They sat beside Lynwood and Thompson, and the former smirked as though he knew something Faron didn’t.
Once again, a map of the world covered the tabletop. This time, the clay crowns had been cleared from the space, except for a single one over the Emerald Highlands of Nova. The south of Langley was roughly an hour to two hours away from the archipelago by dragon, depending on where, exactly, they landed. Instead of squat tenements and precarious high-rises, the Highlands boasted verdant countryside claimed by those rich enough to measure their property in thousands of acres.
“We’ll begin the conquest here,” Iya said, his fingers resting atop the crown. “Even if news of our arrival reaches the capital, it would take them over an hour to mobilize the Dragon Legion and reach the Highlands. We’ll also have the benefit of cutting them off from the Silver Sea as we move farther south.”
“Rosetree Manor is fortified against dragons, my saint,” said Mireya Warwick. “If we take Watson, we’ll be in a perfect position to hold our lands from there.”
It took Faron a moment to place the name Watson, and then she scowled. It was the name of the town where the Warwicks had briefly trapped Elara. With Signey and Zephyra, she’d managed to escape, to warn the queen of the impending attack and return to San Irie. But across the Crown Sea, Faron had freed Lightbringer from the Empty, severing Elara’s dragon bond at the worst-possible moment. It was a wonder that Elara had made it out, when she had no longer been able to communicate with her dragon.
“What information do we have on the town?” asked Iya. “It’s far closer to Beacon than I would like.” He moved the crown deeper into the Highlands, resting over a city that hid in the shadow of a short mountain range. “What if we take Arledge instead and spread north?”
“Arledge is more densely populated,” Gavriel Warwick pointed out. “And their people are vicious fighters. They live too close to the Contested Lands not to be.”
“‘Their people’?” Faron lifted her eyebrows. “Don’t you mean your people?”
“Watson may take away our advantage on time,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “but I believe it would be easier to bring the population to heel.”
Their people. The population. Hearing the commander of Langley speak about his empire as though they were targets to be taken out instead of humans who had once looked to him as a ruler was horrifying. Even before she had won the throne, Aveline had thought of Iryans as her people, her family, her reason to fight. Everyone in this room—Faron excluded—looked between the Warwicks and Iya with mild interest, indifferent to the destruction this would cause.
They were Langlish. It was none of her business. But Faron’s stomach twisted as the conversation carried on without her, turning to scouting parties and predicted fatalities. She had forgotten this aspect of war, this… casual disregard for the reality of human suffering. This dehumanization of the opposition, to justify what would be done. This rationalization of even-accidental deaths as casualties of a necessary conflict. Hadn’t she used that same reasoning just the other day to skirt San Irie’s culpability for Sebastian Edwards’s death? That was war, she had said. This was war.
But Iya spoke of killing innocents. There could be no war against innocents. Only an unjust massacre.
And she was just letting it happen.
Faron stood up. Words hovered on the tip of her tongue, but, in the end, she fled.
The hallway was cool in comparison with the heat of that oppressive room—or maybe it was her, just her, burning from the combination of wild emotions she felt. The Langlish weren’t her people, but they didn’t have to be her people to deserve to live. But what could she do? She could ask Iya to order the citizens of Watson to evacuate, but that was only a temporary solution. Even if they had somewhere else to go, he had no intention of giving back their homes, and she could hardly ask them to trust her long enough to defeat him.
Her back met the wall. She slid down until she was on the floor, her knees drawn up to her chest, her forehead pressed against them. The air was thin. Their voices tornadoed through her mind: cutting them off… what if we take… bring the population to heel… It wasn’t as though she had thought that being on the offensive side of a conquest would be easier in any way, but she was in this room and she wasn’t in this room, the inevitable result of Iya’s scheming playing out behind her eyelids every time she blinked. She had seen it in San Irie during the war, and her throat burned with the phantom taste of acrid smoke and putrid corpses. She remembered it too well. The fire and fear. The hunger and helplessness. The death, always death, so much death.
Get up, she told her leaden limbs. Stop him. But the memories were paralyzing. Her body was not her own. Her chest was tight. It was only when she registered footsteps that her heart stopped pounding in her ears. She tensed, ready for a fight, but the footsteps of the rest of the members of the war meeting trailed past her as though she weren’t even there. Except the final set, walking alone, pausing less than a yard away from her. Close enough for her to strike—ankle sweep, groin punch, victory in two moves—if she needed to defend herself.
“Faron,” said Iya. “The meeting is over. You should return to your room.”
Not that she knew how to defend herself from him.
“What did you decide?” she asked in her most acidic tone. Her voice remained blissfully steady. “Who will be first to die?”
“We’ll start with Watson.” Iya sat down beside her. She could feel the line of his arm against her shoulder, but she refused to look at him. She felt too raw right now to see those words come from Reeve’s lips. “You can come along, if you like.”
“I don’t want to watch you massacre your own people.”
“You watched me massacre your people with little protest. What makes this so different?”
Faron’s head snapped up. “That’s unfair. That’s not—”
Iya withdrew something from the inner pocket of his jacket and passed it to her. It was a folded copy of the San Irie Times, black-and-white front page emblazoned with her face—or, rather, her younger face. She was twelve years old, her fist raised over her head, the sky dark with a dragon twisted into an unnatural position. She remembered the photo from the same paper years ago, and the triumphant write-up of the battle that had followed.
This was not triumphant. CHILDE TRAITOR, the headline read. THE GODS’ CHOSEN DESTROYS THE CAPITAL. Along the side were two smaller photos, one of Port Sol as it had looked before, surrounded by crystal-clear waters and divided by crowded streets, and a second one of Port Sol in the wake of Iya’s temporary takeover, reduced to destroyed buildings and smoking craters.
Faron’s hands shook as she turned to the page with the rest of the article. The version of her the Iryans described sounded worse than Iya, somehow—a sociopath elevated to divine status by her people only to wield her power against two nations. Was this how San Irie saw her?
Was this how the gods saw her?
“You may think my current methods are cruel, but I once tried to build a legacy based on something other than fear,” Iya said. “In return, history forgot my name. ‘The Gray Saint,’ I believe I was called?” He leaned closer, lowering his voice to a sinister whisper. “When you’re gone, do you think they will remember Faron Vincent? Or will they remember the Childe Empyrean and how far she fell?”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the article, and was sliced by the devastation and rage in every word. She’d done that. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d done that. And here it was in print, a permanent record of her shattered reputation.
Faron’s breaths knifed out of her, painful and sharp. “Where did you get this?”
“The market, one island over. I can take you there later if you suspect I’ve tampered with this in any way.” Iya pried her clawed fingers from the paper and took it back. He folded it carefully in half before setting it on his other side. “Breathe with me before you pass out, Faron. Inhale.…”
Her body instinctively followed the familiar instructions. Her eyes slid shut as she inhaled, held the breath, exhaled, then repeated each step. She and Elara had often done this together in the dark of night, Faron’s forehead pressed to Elara’s collarbone, their heartbeats slowly syncing as they calmed from whatever nightmare had gripped them in its talons. Where are you? Elara would ask. In my bedroom, in Deadegg, Faron would reply. With you. I’m safe. We’re safe.
We’re safe, Elara would whisper, a prayer and a promise. We are safe.
“You try so hard to be good,” Iya murmured from somewhere above her, fingertips tracing over her frizzy baby hairs, “and it seems to do little but exhaust you.”
Faron swatted away his hand and straightened. The article had left her in pieces, but she was used to wedging them back together into a facade of strength. She glared at Iya, sweeping her vulnerabilities behind her mental armor. “Just because you tried to be good and failed so badly, it was legendary doesn’t mean the rest of us will follow in your footsteps.”
Instead of responding with anger, Iya chuckled. As if she were amusing him. “The sooner you accept that you’ve already followed in my footsteps, the sooner you’ll stop feeling like this.”
“Don’t pretend to know how I feel—”
“We’re connected, Faron. When you feel something strongly enough, I feel it, too. You’re exhausted. You’re miserable. You’re angry with yourself, and you’re angry with me, and you’re angry with the world for placing these burdens on your shoulders.” Suddenly, she could no longer hear the serrated edges of Lightbringer in Iya’s tone. She could hear him and him only. Gael Soto—or as close to Gael Soto as she could get with Lightbringer corrupting his soul. “I know exactly how you feel. I’ve felt it myself, in the past.” His fingers tipped up her chin, until all she could see were those eyes. Instead of the usual coldness, she saw understanding. “If you cannot be their saint, why not be their villain? Why chase fame when you could live in infamy?”
He was close, close enough that she could study his chaotic eyebrows, feel the warmth of his breath, smell the black tea he’d had with his toast-and-jam breakfast. She could count his stubby eyelashes, follow the uneven line of his curls across his forehead. His eyes were trained on hers. They were no longer Reeve’s blue but hazel, and, even still, as she watched, his pupils slowly consumed that hazel until there was only a ring of it left. Desire was etched into every line of his face, thick in every breath.
Lightbringer had lost control again. It was obvious to her now. This was Gael Soto watching her as if he wanted to swallow her whole.
“You are an unstoppable, overwhelming, indescribable force, Faron Vincent,” he said softly, “and they do not deserve you.”
Faron’s traitorous body wanted to surge closer, but her heart held her firmly in place. Her shallow breath, the thrum of her pulse—none of it was for him. It was for who he looked like. It was for Reeve. She remembered how Gael had once appeared—black hair, milk-white skin, hazel eyes, all sharp angles—and she felt nothing but wistful regret. She looked at the boy in front of her, at Reeve, and, even though his eyes were wrong, wrong, wrong, her lips parted with the desire to feel his again. To kiss him better, longer, deeper this time, until there was no one in his mind but her.
“Faron, I…” Gael’s lips were parted. His expression was both hungry and lost, as if he didn’t know where he was or what he wanted except for her. Faron swallowed, unsure of what to say to keep them suspended in this moment that Lightbringer couldn’t seem to pierce.
And then it was over. Iya surged to his feet in a wave of movement, swiping a hand over his mouth. He left without looking at her, his thundering footsteps echoing down the quiet hallway. Faron deflated against the wall, her heart fissuring from a hundred disparate emotions. She was uninterested in Gael’s want, but she was terrified of his understanding. Why was the only person who truly saw her the biggest danger her world had ever faced?
He was right. She had tried to be good. She had tried so hard. She was not like her sister, who seemed to be a natural hero. She always had to try. And it had blown up in her face so badly that it was front-page news.
“I miss you, Elara,” she whispered into the silent air.
But above all, she missed who she used to be. A girl who knew right from wrong. A tool for independence. A saint with a purpose. Whoever she was—whoever she was becoming—was not someone she recognized. And with each new day, she feared she’d passed the point of no return.