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Chapter Forty-Three

I open my eyes to starlight.

I must be in the heavens, nothingness swept around by the winds of an open void, because there is no pain.

Except my body responds, and the pain returns slowly, like the stitch of a needle. I lift my hand to eye level, turning it slowly. It isn’t transparent; it’s flesh and bone. And I am not floating. I’m lying in a bed. Curtains quiver in a balmy breeze.

I ease up, hands digging into a white nightdress, memory coalescing in my mind.

My soul, adrift.

The Fate of Morta.

Green eyes between blurry blinks, low murmurs breathing my name. Vasalie. Wake up.

Anton.

Had I dreamed it? It must have been a dream.

But then, I remember dying. The feel of falling, breaking, yet my bones aren’t shattered. I feel like I always had before, familiar aches lancing my nerves.

I scramble from bed, not knowing where I am. I totter forward until I reach a wide window on the far wall. Leaning my weight on the sill, my eyes widen at the view.

Miles of sand ripple before me. Not the sand of the Miridranian beaches but yellow thick-grained sand, eddying across tempered dunes.

My heart speeds. I turn, examining my surroundings.

Sand-colored walls encompass a white bed, and underneath, a vibrant rug depicts jungle cats threading between jewel-colored trees.

Otherwise, the room is empty, save for an arching door.

I stagger into the adjoining room. It’s darker, a scattering of tasseled pillows strewn across a heavy rug. A table hitches against a wide window, complete with a pot of tea and two stoneware cups. Then a figure, perched on a chair—

“Vas?”

I jump, crashing into the potted plant next to me.

With a hearty laugh, the figure rises from his chair and bounds toward me, scooping me into a hug. “Vasalie, souls above. You’re awake!”

Laurent. The sound of his voice pulls a sob from my chest. I squeeze him into a hug then ask, “What’s happened? I remember dying. And I saw her, Laurent—”

“I know,” he says, but he doesn’t understand.

“Anton. Where is he—”

“Come,” he says, gently taking hold of my arm. “I know you want answers, but this story isn’t mine to tell. I will take you to someone who can.”

I follow on unsteady feet. “At least tell me where we are?”

He pauses, looking back at me. And when he answers, his smile lights up the room. “Vasalie, welcome to Razam.”

The door swings open, and I lose my breath.

It’s similar to the room I’d found in the tunnel all those weeks ago, though larger. Several paintings—impossibly realistic, imposed on some sort of glass—hang along the sandstone walls, lit from behind. And yet the images look familiar. There’s some of my father, of Illian. His room, his desk.

And then, then there’s one I recognize, as if a memory had been plucked from my mind.

It’s of Illian and my father meeting in the brothel in Philam, exactly as they had been, frozen in time. This is not artwork. It wasn’t brushed with paint or oil.

Images, trapped in glass.

“We call them stills for now, though nothing quite fits,” comes another voice.

Gustav.

And there he is, his smile broad. I hadn’t even noticed him. Or Copelan next to him, both swathed in loose, silken clothes. They are by the window, hovering over a map alongside Prince Sundar.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“I didn’t either at first.” Laurent gives my hand a squeeze; it feels so small cupped by his own. “But this,” he says, gesturing around, “is Miridran’s salvation.”

“We’ve been working on it for years, Anton and I,” Gustav says, approaching.

He pauses before the image of my father and Illian.

“We can capture reality with a device we call a Lensgraph—name pending. This is one of many reasons the recent tunnel additions in the Palace of Anell were built. We’ve been trying to gather proof of Illian’s schemes for some time. ”

The invention Gustav helped build.

The proof Anton promised he would deliver.

The development Basile had referenced.

My feet move of their own accord. There, on the far wall, are stills of the banquet night. Everyone gathered at the table. The show of light on the walls. Then me, gazing into the looking glass after Anton pulled me away. I shake my head, words trapped in my throat.

“Of course by the time we had enough proof to bring before the Crowns’ Syndicate, it was too late. The last image Anton caught took time to develop, and by then . . .”

The tunnels had been discovered, and Anton had been captured.

My eyes catch on a familiar still on the wall. It’s the one I saw when I’d discovered the room in the tunnel, where Anton seemed to be looking right at me with that infuriating, all-knowing smirk. I touch a finger against the glass, leaving a thumbprint on his bottom lip.

Anton.

“I saw him,” I say. And perhaps it had been a dream, but I swear, swear that it was real—

“Vasalie, your sacrifice that night has not gone unnoticed,” Gustav says. “However, once . . .” He trails off, swallowing. “We had to flee Miridran. The Crowns’ Syndicate will not allow Anton to rule after Illian’s accusations—not without intervention.”

Copelan meets my gaze for the first time, but he quickly glances down. Ashamed, I realize. Turns out I can’t look at him, either.

“So Miridran doesn’t have a king,” I whisper, “with Illian dead.”

Dead, by my hands. But Anton . . .

“The Crowns’ Syndicate holds Razam responsible for King Rurik’s death. And Illian’s, now. The new king of Brisendale is calling for war,” Prince Sundar answers. “He’s camped a portion of his army in the Karithian archipelago, on an island just north of Miridran.”

The new king. The Beast of the North. My father.

When Crowns divide, and nations collide,

Blood will run, high as tides.

“It’s a war we cannot win,” Prince Sundar continues. “However, once Anton went missing on the night of your final performance, my mother had the foresight to escape with these,” he says, gesturing at the stills.

She didn’t abandon us.

“It means we can now petition an audience with the Crowns’ Syndicate on neutral ground and lay out our proof,” Laurent says.

Proof—of everything my father and Illian did. Because Anton got that proof. He had been gathering it all along.

He’d kept his word to me. I press my hands to my chest.

“The general will not relinquish his throne easily,” says a new voice—powerful yet feminine. Queen Sadira whisks into the room then, her sharp eyes taking me in. “But he will not garner support once the Syndicate sees this. Especially if you, his daughter, are the one to present it.”

I blow out a breath.

Anton. He’s given me everything I need to show the world who my father truly is. My revenge, Emilia’s justice, it sits in my lap, wrapped with a bow. A rush of emotions surges through me and I have a hard time keeping it in. Everything I’d fought for is here, within my grasp.

I am free.

I can take my father down.

Except . . .

“Please tell me where he is,” I rasp. My heart races, stutters. I pull against my nightdress, chest tight. “I saw him. He made a bargain and—”

“Breathe, Vastianna Stova,” Queen Sadira says, approaching me. She skims her knuckles across my cheek, her expression so similar to how Emilia used to look at me that I almost crumble beneath her touch. “I will take you to him. But first, we must talk.”

After our talk, Queen Sadira leads me into a secluded wing of her palace, the halls empty and mostly unlit. She dismisses the four guards standing watch at yet another archway, save for the one I recognize.

Basile.

Only his expression is blank as ever, and he merely nods at the queen, who then leaves me at the threshold.

“You will need to keep your distance, Princess,” Basile says.

Princess. Because my father is now a king. I shudder, but when I peer into the moonlit room beyond, I feel like a carpet has been yanked from under my feet, and the world is dropping beneath me.

Anton stands by the window, but he does not see me.

He looks different. His hair is shorter, styled rather than waving around his shoulders. He wears a dark, buttoned vest that shows off his toned arms and matching silk pants.

The sight of him steals my breath.

It’s been a week since I died—or so Her Majesty informed me. He brought me from the depths of Morta’s Lair. Carried me himself. And I had slept through it all: the trip here, our arrival.

Give me one day with my court.

And I had missed it.

I watch him now, my heart disintegrating inside my chest, until finally, I muster the will to speak.

“I saw everything.” My voice breaks apart like a cluster of sand.

Anton doesn’t move, doesn’t even stir. My pulse thunders, but I tread toward him until he has no choice but to acknowledge my presence.

When he turns, his lovely emerald eyes skim mine, and everything we’ve been through catches up to me like a tide, threatening to buckle my knees. A tear eases down my cheek, followed by several more. I grab his face—his sharp, arresting face. Beautiful, just as Eremis once was.

From Beauty foretold, a trap unfolds,

A return to the living, a plight of souls.

“Anton,” I cry. “What you did . . .”

He is not the Anton you remember, Queen Sadira had warned me. It’s as though he remembers the Gathering differently.

Because of the bargain, the deal he made, he had been himself for a day. One day, where he told Sadira what had happened in Morta’s Lair. The lens. All of it.

That’s what she told me.

He set provisions in place for Miridran. Wrote a decree making Gustav the King Regent to rule in his stead. Gustav, who is also of royal blood, his mother a cousin to the late Queen Saskia, his father a relation of King Junien’s. In a few days, he will return to Ansa.

And now Anton is all but lost.

He was meant for so much more, yet he sacrificed it all. For me. And I had been so wary of him, so afraid he was like his brother. Another man who would use and discard me in the end.