Page 57 of The Shattered King

No two lumie are alike. Even Ursa and I, identical twins, had very different lumie. Mine was a crenellated puzzle, like the top of a castle tower. Hers had been a deep pond blooming with water lilies.

And yet that innate sameness between us allowed her to push into my lumis in the seconds after my death. Allowed her to take from herself and give to me, to re-form what I had lost so that one of us might live.

That was the key; I couldn’t re-create with magic what my lumis already had. I could only create what it lacked—what it needed .

Yet I did not know what Renn lacked because I had never seen his lumis whole. I didn’t yet know its shape. He had to rebuild his hive from scratch.

He needed a new queen.

That was the first step to saving Renn. To give him a new queen, I needed to replicate that sameness Ursa and I had shared.

But Renn and I weren’t twins. We weren’t related.

We weren’t even the same age or gender. And so I had to convince his lumis that we were the same. Convince it to truly let me in.

All the experimenting I’d done, creating orbs with magic ... it wouldn’t work on him. Not when I didn’t know what his lumis was supposed to be. I had no template to work from.

But it would work on me. I knew all my own pieces by heart.

I could rebuild myself.

I didn’t know if I would succeed, but if I couldn’t heal this man, no one could, and I would not live in a world where Renn Reshua Noblewight needlessly suffered.

So I tore him down, little by little, and pulled magic into me, remaking him as a gaffer might remake a broken vase by casting it back into the fire.

Only this time, instead of just dust, I melted down whole baubles, globes and orbs I’d spent hours, even days, toiling over.

They melted in my hands, and I re-formed them, stretching and shaping them into pieces that fit together into crenellations of mixing and warped colors, occasionally stepping back to reshape and remold, for Renn’s lumis did not understand my plan for it and wished only to return to its broken ways.

I knew it hurt him. I felt him distantly, as though in a dream, clutching at my shoulders, growling into the gag he’d fashioned for himself.

It hurt him, and it exhausted me. I didn’t even remember falling asleep the first time, only waking again beside Renn, his hair plastered to his face with sweat, his breathing heavy.

With the blanket against the window and the fire cold, I didn’t know the time.

I reached for him, dowsed, and continued.

I built up one merlon, then another, measuring their height and width to match mine exactly.

I forced myself to work at a measured pace so as not to burn out my own strength too quickly.

The more rest I needed, the longer Renn would suffer.

So I built and shaped him from memory, little by little, coercing glass into stone, spheres into cubes.

I had to break again, to eat and to rest. Renn shivered, hot with fever. Sten eased broth down his throat, and I soaked rags with snow and set them on his forehead and chest. He didn’t wake.

I dowsed again and changed him. For three days I changed him, until his lumis mirrored my own.

They were so alike I could peer into mine while staying in his, as though my own consciousness were a bridge between the two.

Alike enough that I could give him part of myself, just as Ursa had given me pieces of herself eight years ago.

I studied the pieces of me, searching for a queen. Knew immediately when I saw what would work for him. Deep down, I’d known as I’d built him, for the queen is the heart of any hive.

I smiled to myself. “I told you you’d break my heart,” I whispered.

Moving into my own lumis, I found the pieces that made up my heart. Tugged on the magic, begged it, and shaped it into copies. Each piece I removed, I replaced with magic, a translucent, almost crystalline block for each of my gray-cast stones, until half of my heart was no longer mine.

I didn’t feel it, not yet, but I would. In the days, months, and years to come, I would be sick, too. How it would manifest, I couldn’t predict. If nothing else, I would have to feed these magicked replacements carefully for the rest of my days, else they would fail, and I would die.

He was worth the risk.

Gathering my heart pieces, I bridged into Renn, ready to line them up with his own crenellations. Yet when I set down the armful of lumis I’d brought, I marveled at it.

Glass, all of it. Transformed in an instant from death-limned stone into carmine, azure, and emerald. The colors of Renn.

I cried, then laughed. This was going to work.

I fit the pieces into his own heart, forming a new foundation, a new queen, for his lumis.

As soon as I fit the last piece in place, he absorbed it, melting the new glass into the old.

I panicked as the crenellations began to liquify, but even as I tried to stop it, the lumis formed new orbs, some as small as marbles, others as large as my head.

Whole, beautiful ornaments of light with soft opaque scars—marks from years of fractures.

They recognized me, called to me, and I needed to only touch one of them to know where it went.

I needed only to guide it to the right place in this wall-less space for it to snap into place, for lines of light to connect it heavenward, very much like a chandelier.

Exhaustion weighed at my limbs again, but I was so close, so very close.

I lifted baubles over my head, set a few only an inch above my toes.

They shifted into place, connecting upward on strings of light.

Connecting to each other, forming stunning geometric shapes, shimmering in colors beyond what Rolys’s skies could conjure.

My body dragged me back. Too heavy, too tired, too raw.

But there was only one left, one globe red as a sunrise before a storm.

Red as a Noblewight phoenix. I resisted the pull back to myself, crawled to it, and slipped my hand beneath its weightless glow.

Lifted it up to the center of the shimmering space, where it, too, shifted into place, connecting to everything else on gold filaments that shined so brilliantly they blinded me—

The expenditure was too much, and I faded away from the light and the glory, my own body imprisoning me in a deep, black sleep.

I stirred in sleep, its threads pulling and stretching, resisting. But the fire was so bright it burned red on the other side of my eyelids, slowly coaxing them open.

I put up a hand, the light too strong for me. I turned over. Sat up, my bones creaking like those of a much older woman. The heart in my chest felt too heavy and too light all at once, like the heart of a bird. A heart formed half of flesh, half of magic.

“Nym,” Renn whispered.

I blinked and looked at the fire, but only embers burned in the hearth. Shifted and saw the blanket blocking the sun through the window.

Turned and saw light, and within it him , and I marveled, sure I’d been caught in the throes of a dream.

The light emanated from Renn . A soft, pale-gold light from every surface of his skin. It radiated from his hair and his eyes, from his teeth when he smiled. It formed an angled halo behind him, almost like bird wings, but ethereal and crystalline, as insubstantial as air.

Behind him, wood creaked.

“Gods take me,” Sten said from the bottom of the stairs, eyes wide, reflecting the shape of his king. He fell to his knees. “He is gods-touched.”

I found my feet. Faltered on them. “Renn?”

He grinned. “It worked, Nym. But now I think you’re just showing off.”

I shook my head, trying to find my breath and failing. Trying to comprehend the vision of him, and falling short. “H-How?”

Lifting a hand, he studied his palm. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to wake you for an hour.” He formed a fist and squeezed. Veins on his temples rose, and the light dimmed. He relaxed, and the glow returned.

An angel on earth. Gods-touched, Sten had said.

Do you not realize what he is? Queen Winvrin had once barked at me.

Gods above . . . had she known . . . ?

Behind me, his face pressed to the floor, Sten murmured as though through tears, “When the kingdoms of men falter, the blood of the Allmaster shall rise up, garbed as an angel of fire, and balm its people as rain to the earth.”

Strength fled my legs. My knees buckled, but as I fell Renn lunged for me, impossibly fast, and caught my elbows. His touch felt as it always did, warm and calloused and safe. The light didn’t burn.

Tears brimmed my eyes. I laughed and lifted a hand, touching his face—his cheek, his lips, his nose.

“You’re beautiful,” I whispered. He had always been beautiful. This light ... this light had always been there, shining in his eyes, his countenance. “How ... how does it feel? How do you feel?”

He shook his head, disbelief bright in his luminescent eyes. “Like I’ve never felt before, Nym. Like I could climb a mountain and jump into the sky.”

He laughed, and in it I thought I heard the slight clicking of his lungs. But surely I was mistaken. His lumis was whole again—

I didn’t realize I was crying until he grazed my cheek with a knuckle, smearing trails left by my tears. “I knew there was something different,” I whispered. “I knew there was something more to you. But ... how?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Nym, what did you do ?”

My heart fluttered beneath my breast. I touched it. Would it upset him, if I told him? But ... but this ! Surely he could be nothing but grateful.

Were the scars in his lumis still there? How long would this last, if I couldn’t heal those scars?

Yet as I struggled to formulate a response, screams sounded from outside, snaking between the edges of the blanket blocking the window. Flowing down the stairs from above.

The three of us knew, without asking. Without looking. We were not so far from Rove as to be immune to the war.

The dragons had come.