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This promise, in part, she can swear to. “You took my heart long ago, Ryon,” she says. “It stays with you.”

CHAPTERFORTY-EIGHT

This iskra witch has always been something of a curiosity to Cressida.

Timid, but not careful. Quiet, but opinionated. Hardened as glass and just as breakable. The splinters are plain to see. One could easily find the fractures and tap a finger to watch them spread. What a fascination she has been.

Now, she inspires nothing but fear.

Cressida watches Yennes as she departs, taking a horse marked with Terrsaw emblems through the back alleys of the Mecca, quickly swallowed by night.

“This plan is folly,” Cressida hisses to Ruby.

The former captain looks as doubtful as Cressida does. “What other choice have we?”

A million choices cross the Queen Consort’s mind. This is not the first juncture in their haphazard plot that has made her consider abandonment. How easy it would be to walk away and return to the palace? To lay next to her wife and be awash in the same sin. She has certainly done it well these past fifty years.

If only she could sleep, she might just do it.

But she is profoundly aware of what will happen when she lays her head down. She will see those faceless visitors. She’ll hear wings and shouts and the cries of children. Slowly, her toes will curl and her throat will clench. She’ll be gradually pulverised by some invisible weight that cannot be lifted. She’ll lie awake, bound to her bed, slowly corroding.

So long has Cressida wrestled with the cost of her complicity. She is too old, too tired to keep the guilt at bay.

No, they are too far down the path already. There are no other choices.

“Get some sleep while you can, Ruby,” Cressida murmurs. “Leave for the Fallen Village before the sun rises.”

“And you?” Ruby asks, her young face turned up to Cressida’s. The older woman remembers looking in a mirror to see a face just as unlined as this, blessed by youth. How insidious the years are, leaching the body so gradually you barely notice life draining away.

Ruby awaits an answer, watching Cressida carefully. When no reply comes, she asks again; “What will you do,Your Majesty,when Alvira learns of your deception?”

Cressida smiles bleakly, ignoring the hammering of her heart. It would hardly do for it to give out now. “I suspect the knife in my chest will make it difficult to do much of anything, Ruby,” she says, nodding to her one last time. “Good luck to you.”

She leaves the woman in the shadows of the stables, walking swiftly back from whence she came, and the palace beckons her. The gates open before she can touch them, the guards nod their heads and make no mention of her being out of her chambers in the middle of the night. It is not their place to question someone of her station. It is not their place to comment on the welling of her eyes. They avert their gazes and allow her passage through the outer tunnels and up the servant stairwell, down the orange-bathed corridors, and through to the quarters where Alvira waits.

She pushes the doors to the bed chamber softly, then lets them click behind her.

Her wife’s familiar form is outlined – despite the utter darkness of the room – huddled there beneath the blankets, smaller in sleep. Less substantial without the weight of that fucking crown.

Here, in this bed, she is just a woman. A woman she has loved well these decades past. A woman who once read aloud her journals of how she would purify the corrupt, right all wrongs, defend the vulnerable, cure the ailed. A woman who once held her face in her hands and declared Cressida the greatest gift on Terrsaw land. A woman who carried her, bruised and bleeding through the streets of the Mecca, promising her a future free of persecution for two women like them. Free of judgement. A world they would rule together.

Cressida lays herself upon the pillow beside her wife for the last time and does not close her eyes. She watches her through the night, brushing the silver hairs away from her face and wondering how she sleeps so soundly while their bed is surrounded by ghosts.

The carriage sways precariously as they trundle through the Mecca.

Alvira and Cressida sit on opposing benches, watching beyond the small windows. The town square is filled with undulating crowds that press forward as the carriage draws near. They throw their rice paper confetti and holler their anthems. The musicians bleat relentlessly, strumming their lutes and banging their drums. But inside the coach, the noise is muted. The faces are blurry. Cressida cannot help but stare at Alvira’s careful joviality, the gentle crinkle in the outer corners of her eyes. She waves graciously, no citizen too lowly for her attentions.

Performers,Cressida thinks.The both of us.

“Did I not ask for thatshrineto be cleaned up?” Alvira asks. Her smile does not falter, but her eyes have found the steps that lead to theFallen Woman.It remains cluttered by hundreds of unlit candles. Despite the crowd’s size, no one dares tread upon the dais.

“The advisors decided against it,” Cressida tells her. “With all the attention on the Sabar girl, they thought it might rouse the rebels.” Indeed, their chants can still be heard through the more peaceful celebrations.

Alvira allows a slight frown to ruin her otherwise perfect portrayal. “Why haven’t they been detained? I remembered the advisors agreeing to that much, at least.”

But any orders to have the protestors removed had been undone by Cressida just that morning. “There are so many of them now, dear,” Cressida says placatingly. “It is not possible to gag them all.”

“I should have the archers pick them off from the parapet,” Alvira says icily, waving to a child on the shoulders of his father. “Be done with this…obsession.”