THE CHÂTEAU WAS THE PRIDE OF CIEL, THE CAPITAL OF ÉTOLIA. Elara had spent the hour-and-a-half-long drake flight reading as much about the country as she could, but even the pictures had not done the beauty of it justice.
Ciel was like something out of a picture book, all cobblestone streets choked with people and framed by pine trees, colorful storefronts down alleys too narrow for carriages, and street artists in thick coats and long scarves perched on overturned buckets advertising portraits in Étolian. A carriage had conveyed a wide-eyed Elara and her Queenshield through the heart of Ciel, giving Elara ample time to admire how different the city was from anywhere she’d ever been.
Étolia had carved out a foothold in the Ember Sea by conquering the island of Marién, the way Joya del Mar had claimed Isalina and Kaere, and Langley had ruled San Irie. Since Étolia had lost that colony in the Mariéni Revolution a century ago, they hadn’t made any further attempts to settle in the Ember Sea. But their empire hardly seemed to be suffering from lacking land that wasn’t theirs. In fact, Ciel seemed to be flourishing by minding its own business.
Despite all the sights she had passed, Elara found the real treasure standing at the entrance to the Château gardens. “Professor Smithers!”
Damon Smithers was a tall white man in his late fifties, with shoulders as wide as a mainsail, a square jaw on a square head, and a broad smile that made his laugh lines deepen. In the midafternoon sun, he leaned against a lamppost, dressed in a fitted gray suit with an indigo waistcoat that made his narrow blue eyes pop. A blue scarf protected his neck from the cold. At Hearthstone, he had taught history, one of Elara’s two favorite classes. Here, with a gray wool cap atop his silver hair, and his mustache grown out into a short salt-and-pepper beard, he looked like a force waiting to be unleashed.
“Miss Vincent,” he said warmly in patois. “You’re early.”
“So are you.” Elara wanted to throw her arms around him, but she wasn’t sure it would be appropriate. When Aveline had assured her that a translator would meet her at the Château, she hadn’t imagined it would be her former professor. “How have you been? How’s Mr. Lewis?”
Professor Smithers dipped his head with a shy smile at the mention of his husband. “He’s well. We’re both as well as can be with all the upheaval.” The smile faded into something brittle. “For all our studies, we underestimated how exhausting it is to live through unprecedented times.”
Elara’s smile froze on her face. She reminded herself that the professor meant well: He had praised and encouraged her in her studies, and he and Mr. Lewis had ridden their sage dragon, Nizsa, into battle to protect San Irie from their own country. She was sure he hadn’t meant to remind her that, while San Irie had always existed in unprecedented times—war after war, with ingenuity and community as their only shields against total annihilation—Langley had known peace and stability.
Peace and stability that had grown from the blood of the conquered.
Smithers’s expression changed, as if he realized he had said something wrong. Elara pushed forward before he could apologize. Or, rather, before she could feel obligated to accept an apology. “So, who will we be dealing with in there?”
Since there was nothing a professor loved to do more than lecture, Elara was treated to an overview of the Étolian royal family—including their host, twenty-six-year-old Orianne Lumiére. As the second daughter of the House of Lumiére, she was a tournesola, or heir to the throne, and acted as a diplomat for her sister, Reine Anjou, protecting her local interests. Her sixteen-year-old brother, Guienne, typically represented their family abroad. If Elara remembered correctly, he had been the one they had sent to the San Irie International Peace Summit months ago.
Smithers wrapped up his lesson just as a small group of soldiers—musketeers, he reminded her—exited the Château to bring them inside for the meeting. They wore the gold-lined blue cassocks she remembered from the Summit, along with wide-brimmed plumed hats. Elara followed the bobbing feathers into the massive building, up a carpeted staircase illuminated by a gorgeous skylight, and through marble-and-bronze corridors.
The salon they ended up in had several paintings on the ceiling in gilded oval frames, scenes of battles that Elara didn’t recognize, and marble columns. There was a long dining table in front of a fireplace, and several cushioned chairs were scattered around it. Sitting in one of them, reflected in the large square mirror over the mantel shelf, was Tournesola Orianne.
Her skin was white with golden undertones, her hair was shoulder-length and yellow, her eyes were long-lashed and blue, and her lips were full and pink. She wore a tan gown that brought out her hair’s darker highlights, with a gold medallion at her neck.
An unknown person stood just to her left—likely her translator. Étolia, Reeve had once told Elara, was the only country where none of the Ember Sea island languages were spoken in some capacity. Before losing Marién, they had forced the Mariéni to learn Étolian, brutally stamping out any existing language, culture, or magic. To this day, the island still spoke a dialect of Étolian.
Behind them, the doors closed. Three musketeers remained inside to protect the tournesola, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Queenshield. Smithers bowed, and Elara quickly copied him. She could do this. She had to do this, and so she would.
The tournesola’s voice was lower and raspier than Elara had expected. “Welcome,” her translator said after she finished speaking, their patois nasal from their Étolian accent. “I hate to waste your time, but I have considered your proposal and I do not see the point.”
“The point in a conference?” Elara blinked. “To discuss the threat that Iya poses to the world?”
Smithers translated that, his eyebrows knitted together.
Tournesola Orianne snorted. “As far as I can tell, Iya is a problem made by you and for you,” she said via translator. “Why should we waste our time at an international conference when we could be safeguarding our people from your mistakes?”
“You share a border with Langley,” said Smithers, once in Étolian and then again in patois for Elara’s benefit. “Do you think that Iya will stop his conquest with one empire? If he overtakes us, he’ll come for you and your people next. Do you want to stand alone when he does?”
The professor and the translator continued to volley back and forth, but Elara was no longer listening. She hadn’t expected the conversation to be quick, but she felt naive for expecting that the Étolian royal family wouldn’t need to be convinced that Iya was a danger to them all. When he had been unleashed, she hadn’t hesitated to stand against him, to protect everyone, with or without the power of the gods on her side. That had made her ignorant to the fact that there were people in this world who needed to be persuaded to care about others.
Once again, she found herself thinking about Reeve. He could recite every branch of the House of Lumiére off the top of his head, with facts about each member that he’d read in the newspaper or in the library. What had he told her about Tournesola Orianne?
When her sister became the reine, the queen, Orianne was called to the Château from a convent. It was almost as if he were here beside her, his lightning-blue eyes sparking with new information. Even Elara did not love learning as much as Reeve did; sometimes, absorbing knowledge seemed to breathe life back into him. She’s reportedly inflexible and proud, but, above all, she is pious.
The book Elara had read in the drake had confirmed as much: Étolia, like San Irie, had religious institutions all over its major cities. Their god, Pére Divin, blessed their royal family with wonder working—the power to heal—which they claimed as their divine right to rule. Elara’s eyes narrowed on the tournesola and the medallion around her neck as she and Smithers lobbied back and forth via the translator. It had a symbol of two glowing hands etched into its face. If she was as pious as Reeve claimed, political reasoning wouldn’t work on her.
The queen had been right. This was a job for the Maiden Empyrean. And, finally, Elara knew exactly what to say.
She cleared her throat, stopping Smithers midsentence, and locked eyes with the tournesola. “You’re right.”
The conversation screeched to a stop. Tournesola Orianne’s expression gave away nothing, but there was a shine to her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Elara hoped it was respect.
“Iya is a problem we created, but he’s not one we can solve alone,” she continued, speaking slowly enough for the translator to keep pace. “You know who I am. You know I am the Maiden Empyrean, the weapon of the gods. The Iryan gods,” she corrected when the tournesola’s eyebrow lifted. “Stopping Iya is not just an international mission. It’s a holy one. And I know that if we all don’t join together to stop him now, then he will win. The best way to protect your people is to stand with us, starting with attending this conference. I beg you, on behalf of my queen, my island, my gods, to please consider our proposal.”
In the ensuing silence, Tournesola Orianne continued to stare at Elara as though she were a horse that had learned to walk on just its front legs. Elara’s heart began to beat faster, so fast that she was breathless, but she froze in place. She wanted this victory so badly, every second added new weight to her shoulders, but she feared that any sign of vulnerability would weaken her argument. The longer the tournesola remained quiet, the harder it became for Elara to keep her expression blank.
And then the tournesola looked away with a clipped statement conveyed by her translator: “I will consider this matter further.”
“Your Highness, there is no time—”
“My musketeers will show you out.”
“But when will you—?”
“Thank you for coming.” She stood, a clear end to the conversation. “It was enlightening to meet you, Maiden Empyrean.”
With those final words, her translator fell back, hands folded behind them. Elara felt sick. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from flinging more pleas in Orianne’s direction. Reeve would have been able to secure this alliance, she thought. Even Faron, for all her stubborn rebelliousness, was well-versed in politics; she probably would have had talking points. Elara was a soldier, not a diplomat. Her words would never be enough.
She would never be enough.
Outside, Elara and Smithers watched the musketeers retreat into the Château while the Queenshield went to get Elara’s carriage. She would have to fire call the queen to find out if she was free to return home or if she would have to remain in Ciel to take another meeting with the tournesola… whenever the tournesola was ready. Her insides twisted at the thought of telling Aveline how badly she’d failed.
Then Professor Smithers said, “That was rather shrewd maneuvering, Miss Vincent.”
“What?” Elara paused at the smile on his face. “She didn’t agree.”
“She didn’t disagree,” he pointed out. “The meeting began with her refusal, and you argued her into a deliberation. That’s better than I thought we would get, if I’m honest.”
Elara’s need for validation flared up at once. Every dark thought she’d been having evaporated in the face of the compliment, until she had to fight back a smile. “Well. All right.”
Smithers led the way toward the street, where her carriage idled. The crowds of people had slowed to a trickle, but he still paused before they made it to the sidewalk. He rubbed at his beard, glancing down the lane at the trees casting the stones in shadow. Pine needles littered the sidewalk like a carpet of emeralds.
“I know I said earlier that we are living through unprecedented times, but that’s not quite true,” Smithers finally said, his hands falling to his side. “Iya is recreating the circumstances of his first rise, which Rupert and I have been studying in detail since I was… relieved of my teaching post at Hearthstone.”
Elara remembered, just then, that Mr. Lewis was a historian, so he likely had access to the very books and records that the Sotos were probably using to learn more about Iya. The first time Elara had met Barret Soto, he had recited a Langlish nursery rhyme with prescient information about Lightbringer’s plans to rise from the Empty. Perhaps Mr. Lewis and Barret had read the same books. “Is there another nursery rhyme about this, Professor?”
“Not as such. This is just a story we all know by heart yet seem incapable of learning from.” Smithers sighed. “It begins like this: A young and charismatic leader, a hunger for power, and the annexation of lands expedited by the sheer volume of people who believe this is, simply, not their problem.”
“And how does it end?”
“Historically?” The professor opened the carriage door. “Some people—good people—speak out. They rally, and they organize. They fight back, with or without the support of their hand-wringing leaders. In the light of day or the dead of night, they hold the line.” A fervor appeared in his eyes that Elara wanted to ask him about, but it quickly disappeared. “And the tyrant falls, sometimes as brutally as they rose to begin with.”
But it wasn’t a story, Elara wanted to say as she stepped into the carriage. Stories had endings. This was an endless cycle. This was the Warwicks trading Reeve’s autonomy away in exchange for power. This was Wayne and Aisha’s parents burying their children decades too soon. This was Iya tearing apart countries and families to build an empire on their skulls.
This was an unlearned lesson that always ended in destruction.
“How many people have to die,” Elara whispered, “before a tyrant falls?”
“Even one is far too many.”
Smithers closed the carriage door, and it pulled away from the curb, leaving Elara alone with her thoughts.