CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ELARA

IN THE END, AVELINE GAVE ELARA PERMISSION TO RETURN TO SAN Irie until the tournesola reached out again. “There’s nothing more you can do,” the queen had said during the fire call, “and Tournesola Orianne may react unfavorably if she thinks your presence is pressuring her.” And then, almost as an afterthought, she’d added, “Why don’t you go to Highfort to check in with the officers about their research and their defense strategies? It might help you, to be back in your element.”

Elara had taken the idea of being back in her element a little too far by stopping in Deadegg first. But between Joya del Mar and Étolia, she’d been gone for just under a week, and she missed the security and confidence that she could get only from being home. If she landed in Deadegg to see her parents, took a carriage through Papillon to talk to the gods, and finally settled in Highfort, she would still be ready when Aveline summoned her again. Even more so, really, because her problems always seemed smaller with a belly full of her mother’s rice and peas and oxtail.

But there was tension on the streets of her small town. There were no fresh insults painted on her house—unless her parents had already cleaned them off—but there were flyers affixed to every tree and lamppost, advertising a rally in the square. Half-hidden in an alley, Elara had shaken off her Queenshield escort to avoid a scene. Instead, she wore a head wrap over her unbraided hair and the most nondescript day dress she could find in her closet. But if someone spotted her, she knew she would still be recognizable. These people had watched her grow up, after all.

A fact that made the swollen crowd before her all the more terrifying.

Elara swallowed around a dry throat. Her skin felt too small for her body. The last time she had faced down a protest, it had been on horseback in the capital while her countrymen spoke out against the Novan presence on the island. Now she was on foot, in her hometown, while her neighbors spoke out against her.

Her fist tightened around the wrinkled flyer in her hand, which read NO MORE EMPYREANS above the protest’s date and time. The market that usually spilled across the square with wooden carts and colorful awnings had been replaced by a raised wooden platform. A man walked onto that platform now, stopping in the center to face the crowd. Elara’s heart seized when she recognized him.

Desmond Pryor.

Wayne’s father.

Desmond had skin the color of tree bark and one amber eye. The other had been lost in the revolution; all that was left were his closed lid and the scar that sliced from his hairline, through his eye socket, down his face, to the base of his neck. His hair had grown out into an afro of tight curls, and his hands were gloved to hide the first-degree burns the dragons had left him with. Wayne had always said his father hadn’t returned from war better off, and Elara knew that went deeper than the injuries he’d been left with. Even from here, there was a hollowness in his eye that she recognized. As if even this rally were just another battle.

“Let’s begin,” he said without raising his voice. A hush fell over the crowd anyway, conversations easing into rapt silence. Desmond held himself like an officer, with the commanding voice to match. It was easy to imagine him leading squads to victory. “For too long, we have placed our fates in the hands of children, based on only their word that this is the will of the gods. A sword without an experienced hand to wield it can cut us just as easily as it cuts our enemies. We need only look around to see these wounds.”

Elara had repaired the shops that bracketed the square, but he stood in front of the crumbled stone wall that had once surrounded the dragon egg for which Deadegg was named. The soil was black, swallowing shards of stone and concrete. Grass grew in an unnatural oval around the area, clearly delineating where nothing would ever grow again.

“I don’t know about you,” Desmond continued, “but I cannot believe this is Irie’s will. Or, if it is, her will has been corrupted by the impulsiveness of adolescents. We deserve better than a queen who lies in bed with Novans.”

“YES!” the crowd shouted in answer to a question he hadn’t needed to ask.

“We deserve better than an Empyrean who attacks the very people she’s meant to protect.”

“YES!”

“We deserve better than a successor who brings dragons to our shores. Who worships a Langlish soldier. No,” Desmond spat, “who dates a dragon Rider—the very kind of people who murdered our children.”

“YES!”

His eye lifted, and for a wild moment Elara was sure he could see her there, tucked in that narrow space between a restaurant and a clothing store. She imagined the zealous crowd reaching for her and dragging her into the street to answer for her crimes. She didn’t believe they would hurt her—she couldn’t—but they would demand explanations that she didn’t have. Explanations they were too hurt to listen to anyway.

“With each passing day, I fear we won’t have an island to live on, or family to live with. The reign of the Renard Castell line must end here,” Desmond Pryor finished. “And the time of the Empyreans is over!”

The crowd erupted with applause and cheers. “NO MORE EMPYREANS,” they chanted. “NO MORE QUEENS!” Their cries rose into a cacophony, swirling and merging until they flattened into a single wall of sound: “NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE.”

Desmond looked out at them without joy. It was as if he didn’t even see the masses he had riled up. His gaze was only on the past. On the dead.

Elara pressed her back against the wall, clenching her eyes shut as the horde began to disperse. She was paralyzed by the fact that they were right. Desmond Pryor was right. For all their efforts to make San Irie better, she and Faron had done little but make it worse. They were just kids. Stupid kids. Even the gods were sick of them.

From a young age, Elara had learned to fear failure. The trickle of praise from parents and teachers made her feel as if she could fly without magic. The hammer of disappointment from those same figures could shatter her completely. She was in pieces now, bearing the resentment of an entire town, an entire nation. Hold it together. Hold it together. A tear slid down her cheek. She scrubbed it away.

“Hello, Elara,” said Desmond Pryor.

She froze. Wayne’s father stood at the mouth of Blind Alley, blocking the light from the sun. With his face in shadow, Elara couldn’t read his expression. “Hello, Mr. Pryor.”

“I didn’t see you at the funerals.”

She swallowed. “Yes, I—no.”

Anything she could say—that she’d been reconstructing destroyed buildings, that she’d been chasing ways to defeat Iya, that she’d been bouncing from country to country to gain allies—just felt like an excuse. Reeve was unquestionably her best friend, but she had spent most days with Wayne and Aisha—and with Cherry—even if only from sheer proximity. She should have been at Wayne and Aisha’s funerals. They shouldn’t have had funerals.

Desmond stepped into the alley, and Elara barely stifled her sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted was for someone to notice him standing out there and come to see who he was looking at. With the two of them in the narrow space, she somehow felt safer.

At least until he said, “What did you think of the rally?”

His tone had no inflection, but she felt targeted anyway. Her shoulders hunched.

“Um, I don’t think I’m allowed to have an opinion.”

“Why wouldn’t you be allowed to have an opinion?”

“People should be allowed to grieve, to rage, to turn their pain into action without my judgment.”

Desmond Pryor tilted his head. “Even if it means treason?”

Elara hadn’t said that, but she pressed her lips together rather than answer the question. It felt as if she were being baited into making a statement. She could practically hear Reeve in her ear, telling her that sometimes there was no winning, there was only surviving.

“Wayne spoke fondly of you,” he continued, taking a step closer. His eye was bright, and the cloud of his grief filled the spaces of the alley until Elara felt trapped. “He spoke of your discipline and your power. He looked up to you, in many ways. And you couldn’t even be bothered to attend his funeral or answer for his death.”

Elara’s pulse raced, throbbing at her temples. “I don’t—I can’t possibly answer for that. It never should have happened. He never should have—”

Desmond Pryor was close enough now to back her against the wall. “It should have been you. Both of you. Not my son. You.”

“Mr. Pryor, please.” Fresh tears ran down her face. “Wayne wouldn’t want this for you.”

“YOU DO NOT GET TO TELL ME WHAT HE WOULD HAVE WANTED.”

“Empyrean?”

Queenshield stood at the mouth of the alley. They had found her not a moment too soon. One had a hand near the hilt of her scalestone sword.

“Everything all right?” she asked without taking her eyes off Desmond Pryor.

“It—it was nice to see you again,” Elara stammered, slipping toward the safety of the Queenshield. Her heart raced faster than her feet. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t reply, but as she allowed the Queenshield to surround her, she heard the clatter of a trash bin being kicked into a wall.

“That was dangerous and irresponsible,” Papa said when she made it home, pacing in front of the curtained windows. It was his night to cook, and he had made stew peas—one of her favorites. But when her parents had asked about her day over dinner, the whole story had come spilling out, and now she was in deep trouble. “Desmond has been volatile since the war. What if he’d hurt you?”

“His son is dead because of me,” Elara whispered now, her belly full of food and guilt. “I think it’d be understandable if he hurt me.”

“You and your sister always do this, and it’s precisely why we worry,” said Mama, her legs crossed at the ankles. She was sitting on the couch, sewing a button back onto a dress, but it didn’t seem to be going well, with how agitated she was. “You take the burden of the world on your shoulders with no regard for the people who care about you. We already had to wake up one morning to find your beds cold and you long gone to a war you had no business fighting in. Now I have to worry that you’ll let your own countrymen hurt you out of—what? Some misguided penance? Iya killed Wayne Pryor, not you.”

Papa stopped pacing. His back was to her, his locs tumbling past his shoulders and blocking his expression from view. Elara didn’t know where to look or what to say. Her parents’ frustration and disappointment bludgeoned every thought from her head except apologies.

Papa’s sigh was a deep and broken thing. “Your mother and I have spoken many times about the pressure we’ve put on you from a young age. You’re our firstborn, Elara. We’ve so rarely had to worry about you that we fear you’ve built your personhood around being undeserving of worry. As if concern is a sign of your failure to handle everything on your own.” When he turned, the sadness on his face made Elara want to cross the room and hug him. “I just want to make sure that you know you don’t have to. Trying to parent two young women whose destinies are bigger and more dangerous than we could have comprehended is… difficult. We’ve made many mistakes, and we’ll make many more. But we’re here for you. We love you. We’re so proud of you. And we don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“If Desmond Pryor or anyone else tries to lay a hand on you, they’ll have me to deal with,” said Mama. She set the dress to the side, giving Elara the same grave look. “You and your sister may be the Empyreans, but you’re still our children. Let us be there for you. Please.”

Elara’s eyes stung. “There’s just so much going on.”

“We’re listening.”

It was harder than she expected, opening up to her parents. But then everything spilled out of her, from the gods’ reluctance to lend her their magic to her diplomatic trip to Étolia, from her failure to get anywhere near Faron at Hearthstone to Signey pulling away from her just when she needed her most. By the time she finished talking, her throat was scraped raw, and she felt like an old jar of all-purpose seasoning with nothing left to give.

“I don’t think there’s anything to do about Étolia but to wait. But as for the gods,” Papa said slowly, “they want results, not reasoning. I think that you’re right: Lightbringer cannot be defeated without the help of the dragons. But after Empyreans who said one thing and did another, you won’t convince the gods with anything but your actions. You don’t need their validation, Elara. You’re a smart, responsible woman. Trust your own judgment.” He paused. “May Irie bless us.”

Elara’s mouth twitched with the sudden urge to smile. Her father had taught her to make her first altar. To speak about the gods this way, even to reassure her, was likely killing him. “But what if I’m wrong?”

“Then you try something else. Again and again until you get it right. It’s the Vincent way.”

“And as for Signey,” said Mama with a roll of her eyes, “your father was the same way. He kissed me in the schoolyard and then tried to tell me we were just friends.”

“Nida,” Papa groaned.

“It took him four years to get his act together, and it took a lot of groveling and grand gestures for me to give him another chance,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “Signey seems far smarter than Carver, so let her get there in her own time. But remember that you deserve someone who loves you as fiercely as your father loves me. Who makes you feel special. Who earns their place by your side. Don’t settle for less.”

This time, Elara did smile. “How much groveling, exactly?”

“For Irie’s sake,” muttered Papa. “There’s no need to reminisce about all that.”

“Does that help, baby?” Mama asked, ignoring him once more. “Even if we can’t fix it, we’re also just happy to listen.”

Elara’s smile wobbled as she felt a wave of love for her parents. They were the reason she was the person she was today, and though war had changed her relationship with them to something more fraught, she had forgotten what it was like to feel as if she could lean on them. No matter what the gods or the newspapers said, they would love her. Even if she failed. Perhaps especially if she failed.

“Can…” Elara’s cheeks heated. “Can I have a hug?”

Mama’s arms opened immediately. “Come here, pickney.”

In seconds, Elara was bundled in her mother’s warm embrace. She felt like a child again, from a time before the war when her nightmares did not have teeth and the monsters that lurked under her bed weren’t yet human. Her father came up behind her, hugging her as well, and Elara could feel months of stress melting from her body. Still, she couldn’t help remembering that one person was missing. That Faron should be there. That Faron should have this comfort, too.

They weren’t a family without Faron.

With a shaky breath, Elara pulled back. “I have to fire call Barret Soto. And tomorrow I have to go to Papillon to talk to the gods. But maybe tonight we could just… spend time together?” Elara glanced over at the wall that lined the hallway, as though she could see through it to Faron’s empty bedroom. “Even though…”

“Even though,” Papa repeated wistfully. “All right, let’s do that.”

Mama picked up the dress and her sewing kit. Papa returned to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Elara got to her feet, feeling better than she had in days. Feeling more like herself than she had in months. Papa was right. She was a Vincent. All she could do was try and try and try.

Eventually she would succeed. Faron would be back in her room, and her family would be whole again. Anti-Empyrean protests and inscrutable allies, diplomatic trips and irritable gods, evil dragons and impossible tasks—it all may have risen to challenge her, but Elara was stronger.

With her family at her back, there was nothing she could not do.