CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

FARON

FARON AWOKE CHAINED UP IN A DUSTY ROOM.

The air was dank and fetid. The walls and floor were stone, and the only decoration was a single empty bookshelf with cobwebs trailing between the open spaces. Iya had removed the green chains and placed her in scalestone prison irons that were attached to the wall above her head. Her shoulders were already throbbing in discomfort, which meant she had been here for a while.

The battle could have already started.

Reeve could be dead or repossessed or hurt.

Iya could be dead, taking Jesper and the secret of her location to the grave.

And Faron was chained to a wall—with scalestone that Iya must have had since the Battle for Port Sol, waiting for the day she displeased him—trapped in some dusty room where no one but him could find her and forced to deal with the fact that hours from now or hours ago her sister would be at war without her for the first time in their lives.

Faron screamed until her voice went hoarse. She yanked at the chains until her wrists began to bleed. She twisted and cried and searched the floor for anything that might help her, but the room was still empty, and she was still alone.

She drew up her knees to her chest, pressing her forehead against them. It was hard to think of anything but feeling sorry for herself. She was familiar with this fear and helplessness. They had been her constant companions during the San Irie Revolution, long before she had become the Childe Empyrean. Elara would crawl into her bed, or vice versa, and they would huddle together as the world outside exploded in fire and ash. Some nights would be quiet, too quiet, the crickets and birds driven off by the constant threat of dragons. Some nights they couldn’t hear each other over the sound of roaring dragons and clashing drakes. There had been times when the Argents, typically a misty blue, had glowed orange from the bushfires caused by the dragons. Lives and livelihoods destroyed in an instant.

Every day, new names of the dead in the paper.

Every day, people leaving to join the fight and never returning.

Every day, wildfires raging across the mountain, ever closer to swallowing Deadegg whole.

Faron had prayed, and the gods had listened. But she hadn’t prayed for an end to the war. She hadn’t prayed for her people to be safe. She had prayed for the power to protect her family, whose charred bodies she saw in her imagination every time she closed her eyes. She had feared being alone in this world, that the Langlish would take more from her than her peace of mind and her ability to sleep at night.

Everyone had deemed her a saint, but Faron had always been selfish. And that had gotten her here: alone. Imprisoned. Powerless.

“I know you’re awake,” said a familiar voice from the hall. Marius Lynwood sounded so smug that his arrogance bled into the room like a miasma. “I hope you’re enjoying the decor. It was so much fun to put this together for you.”

Faron glared at the door without saying a word.

“I volunteered to stand guard,” he continued, unruffled. “As wonderful as it would be for you to help us win, after what you did? I deserve this. I deserve to have you at my mercy.”

“You have no mercy,” Faron snapped. “You have no honor, no empathy, and not a single damn brain cell in your head.”

“And yet I’m not the one chained to a wall.”

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen: Iya is going to lose. People like Iya always lose. You’ll either die for him, or you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison for betraying your own people. All the power you’re enjoying now will be used against you and then stripped away from you. And you’ll have to live with the fact that in thinking you’re better than anyone else, you just proved that you’re nothing.”

Lynwood didn’t respond. Faron imagined him breaking down the door, his fragile ego spurring him to come in to shut her up and, in so doing, give her the chance to take him down. But instead, he laughed.

“Clearly you haven’t been paying attention,” he said. “Iya is so much more powerful than you could ever imagine.”

“Who do you think made him powerful?” Faron shifted on the floor, wondering if she could kick someone in the genitals from down here. “There’s a reason he hasn’t killed me. I’m the one who freed him. I’m the one whose magic he feeds off. I’m the one who knows all his secrets. Without me, he would lose even sooner. You’d be better off helping me than staying loyal to him, if power is all you’re after.”

“I’d rather die,” Lynwood spat, “than owe anything to you.”

“Fine, die. Until then, shut up.”

Lynwood made a sound as if he wanted to have the last word but couldn’t think of anything worth saying. Faron was done with this conversation anyway. There was no reaching someone like him, the type of boy who had spent his whole life being told he was special. The rise of a god who promised him a position of authority, a position he’d always expected to have without earning, was too alluring. Lynwood would have given his life to preserve the illusion that he was perfection embodied, because the realization that he was mediocre at best would have broken him.

This was who held her fate in their hands. People who cared more about how they were perceived than they did about their own lives—let alone anyone else’s.

She was breathing too fast. Her lungs felt as though they had shrunken, and she couldn’t get enough air. Every gasp scraped her throat on the way in and out. How could she be here again? How could she have been brought so low? How could Marius Lynwood be out there while she was in here, waiting for death?

She should have listened to Elara. She should have gone with her. Maybe they could have rescued Reeve together. Instead, Faron had charged ahead, believing she knew best. Believing she knew better than the gods.

Irie. Mala. Obie. Faron bowed her head, knowing they could no longer hear her but praying desperately anyway. Do what I never could. Protect my people. Protect my sister. Protect Reeve. I built this prison choice by choice, but they don’t deserve to suffer because of me. Please protect them.

No one answered.

No one ever answered her prayers anymore.

Eventually, Faron slept. Her slumber was fitful, and her body felt as if it had been flattened by a dragon, but there was nothing else to do but cry or sleep. Blood had dried around Faron’s wrists, and it now flecked off in rust-brown patches every time she moved. Her stomach begged for food. Her throat cried for water. Her eyes had given up on crying. All it did was dehydrate her.

Her mind continued to show her an intrusive reel of her mistakes. An entire lifetime defined by wars: the ones she feared, the ones she fought, the one she’d facilitated. After the war, she and Elara had been sent to a physician after one nightmare too many. Their parents had been scared, of the changes in them and of the idea of sending them away to a hospital for treatment. The physician had prescribed a change of air, which had resulted in a family trip to the beach.

Faron remembered gazing out at the gorgeous white-topped turquoise, listening to the shh-shh of the waves crashing against the golden shore, and wading in until the water swallowed her ankles. She had closed her eyes, had inhaled the brine and seaweed smell, and had felt her heart beating in her chest like a promise. Alive, alive, alive.

She hadn’t known then, not yet, that alive, alive, alive came with its own challenges. Dying in battle was easy. It lent nobility to a soul preserved in death, a life snuffed out only to be rebuilt as a legend. Living through the war left her with far too much time and opportunity to tarnish her legacy. To disappoint her family, the queen, the gods. It left her frustrated and confused over what she was supposed to do, and who she was supposed to be, when there were no wars to be fought and no enemies to be defeated.

Obie had once told her that a chosen one didn’t stop being chosen just because the war was over, but Faron knew now that this wasn’t true. Her sister was the chosen one now. The asterisk had led to a footnote: If she could be chosen, she could be unchosen, as well. Either way, it was out of her control.

Other things out of her control: these immovable chains holding her to the wall and making her shoulder muscles burn; this impenetrable silence unbroken by the bastard guarding her from outside; a boy god she had thought she could save and who had repaid her mercy with a locked door and a threat. Was Reeve trapped, too, or was he looking for her? Was Elara even alive?

Would Faron still be alive after this?

“Are you going to feed me?” she called toward the door, her voice hoarse from disuse. “Or have you been given permission to starve me, too?”

“Food should be the last of your worries,” Lynwood answered. The sound came from lower now, as if he was sitting down. “Don’t you hear that?” Faron could hear nothing from this room other than his voice, but she didn’t bother to point that out. Instead, she strained her ears past the vacuum of sound, her stomach dropping even before he said, “They’re here. The battle has begun.”