Page 23 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

They sober. “That’s a real tragedy. Poor souls.”

“We know a pale-haired man led th-them. They used ikons to get it to burn so hot so fast.”

Pale-haired. That’ll be Dalca’s lackey. “Do you know—did anyone get out?”

Grandmother answers. “If they did, dear, they’re keeping to the ground.”

The uneasy quiet and the pity in their eyes say the rest. I clench my jaw and straighten my back. “So, how do we do it?”

Ikontooth chuckles, deep and humorless.

“Do what, dear?”

“Save my father.”

The gorgeous woman opposite, who’s been silent this whole time, crosses her arms and leans back. The others trade looks.

I bite my lip. “But you were friends.”

She breaks her silence with a low, melodic voice. “We were. That’s why you get an invitation in here, why your questions get answered free of charge.”

The green-eyed woman adds, gently, “None of us can risk what we risked then.”

Then. The revolution that I’ve only heard of in snatches. “What happened back then?”

“You don’t know?”

“I know they made Ma walk into the Storm. That the Regia died.”

The gorgeous woman gestures, and a minute later, a round of drinks clatters onto the table. A clay cup of sundust tea appears before me. I glance at the others’ cups, which are full of a frothy amber liquid.

It chafes that they see me as a child, but free is free. It’s not until I take a sip that the scent of cardamom hits me like a kick in the teeth. I push the cup away. “What don’t I know?”

The woman at the end speaks. “Eat, child.”

I take a bite of the flatbread. Warm, flaky crust around a tongue-tingling burst of spices and sweet potato.

“There was once a boy from the fourth ring,” she begins, “a boyboth shy and brilliant. Ikons whispered their secrets to him; great mysteries of ikonomancy unlocked themselves for him. The ikonomancers, so high up in their third-ring fortress, saw his talent and drew him into their fold.”

A muffled interruption. “What? I always thought Alcanar worked his way up, same as the rest.”

“Shush.”

She continues. “Under the same stars, in the second ring, a girl was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She spat it out in favor of a dream: a world without the Storm, a world reborn, where all were equal.”

Green Eyes slams her cup. “That had something to do with her right bastard of a pa, that did. She was always running away. That’s how she met you, isn’t it, Im?”

Im, the gorgeous one, inclines her head. “When your Ma and Pa met, his cleverness and her determination coupled into something powerful.”

“Beautiful couple they were, dear.” The grandmotherly one smiles at me. “Of course, they had their fights, but they had sweetness too.”

“More than that, they had ambition. Your mother began remaking herself in the mold of a leader, and your father turned his mind to the mystery of the Regia. He told his findings to a trusted few, having come to understand that the Regia was an imperfect vessel, unable to hold the entirety of the Great King’s soul. Something was left unbound—and the Storm devoured it and grew more powerful.”

I drink in everything they say with the thirst of someone who knows they’ll never get another sip.

“Your mother believed she could take on the mantle of Regia. Only, there was a Regia already on the throne, and a Regia is not an easything to depose. Your father never meant to kill him; he thought he knew how to neutralize the mark, make the Regia just a man. That was the plan—but something went wrong, and the Regia lost his life. Your mother, wearing the golden mark, the royal ikon, went into the Storm.”

“Th-that’s where it all went wrong.”