He winded his horn once more. The thickening mist blazed. A pale woman in a shimmering gown stood beneath the trees. Another, a stranger to Melanna, stood close attendance, her skin shining silver.
Eleventh bell had sounded, and the Goddess Ashana had come.
The sword slipped from Melanna’s hand. Fire faded as it struck the grass.
Moonlight ebbed. The cloister fell silent at a sight lost to living memory. Kings and princes who would have died rather than pay homage to a woman knelt in silent reverence.
The Huntsman twisted the spear in the kernclaw’s chest. Shadows parted at the accompanying scream. All was moonlight and mist.
Ashana strode past the corpse without a glance and enfolded Melanna in embrace.
“Forgive my lateness. I have been away too long.”
Shame and joy mingled in Melanna’s heart. Shame for what had driven them apart, and joy at beholding her once again. “I failed you. I’m sorry.”
Ashana stepped away and bowed her head, straw-blonde tresses falling to frame her face. “The failure was mine. I have been timid, too afraid of taking action. No more. Do they still call you my daughter?”
“Some do, Goddess.”
“Ashana.” She delivered the rebuke with a soft smile. “Always Ashana.”
Melanna scowled away discomfort. The Goddess seldom enjoyed being named such. Indeed, she sometimes claimed not to be a goddess at all. “I beg you, save my father.”
“Those who would rule should never beg.”
“Then I ask.”
The smile faded. “Elspeth?”
The attendant drew close. Lustrous silver complexion turned dull as she slipped into the shadow of the trees. A slender woman, she was in aspect no older than Melanna, and like to the Goddess in all ways save ash-blonde hair cropped close.
She leaned near, her cold grey eyes but inches away.
“You’d have done better to guard him closer,” she whispered. “Such a disappointment. How can my mother love a failure so?”
Elspeth knelt beside Melanna’s father, her fingers dancing briefly across his brow before she straightened. “His wounds are bitter with poison. I need silver. I need the crown. And soon.”
Ashana’s sapphire eyes bored into Melanna’s. “The choice is yours. What is more important? Your father’s life, or his crown? Your crown?”
Melanna stiffened and faced the altar. The imperial crown. The heart of Empire. Their family’s history. Everything for which her father had fought. Everything she’d thought to claim. Her past and future were bound to it.
She stared at the latticework bridge, where the Icansae prince knelt. He and his kind would never forgive. Her father would never forgive. If she sacrificed the crown, there could be no throne. She’d become the wrecker of tradition in truth, as well as jealous whisper.
Melanna tore her eyes from the bridge, her gaze touching briefly on Elspeth’s. Her eyes held only contempt, as one bored with a performance that had overstayed its due. Only the Huntsman offered any solace. Or she thought he did. A slight dip of the head that might have existed only in her imagination, urging her to make a decision.
“Take it.” Melanna raised the silver circlet from its bed of ivy and held it out. “No woman can be worthy of a crown she chooses over those she loves.”
“The correct answer.”
Melanna barely heard Ashana’s soft-spoken words. She felt sure no other had.
Elspeth snatched the crown. “About time.”
Corrosion crept outward from her fingers as patina and tarnish, faster and faster as the rot spread. Black dust rushed away, and the crown was gone, reduced to twisted fragments. White light danced about Elspeth’s fingers, her hands once again silver as they had been in moonlight. Rent armour crumbled at her touch, and she set her hands to Kai Saran’s wounds.
His scream echoed across the cloister. His body convulsed on shoulders and heels. Melanna clenched a fist – her one concession to weakness as her sire writhed.
At last, the screams faded. Elspeth stepped away. Her bare arms were black to the elbow with charred skin, her expression dark with caged pain. Melanna’s father lay motionless in the drifting mist, his tan skin no longer marred by poison’s taint.
“He will live,” Elspeth said tautly. Her blackened fingers scratched at a charred palm, scattering dark flecks and revealing pale skin beneath. “If he so chooses.”
A final spasm and a rasping cough brought Melanna’s father to a propped elbow. A welter of dark blood spilled across his lips and dribbled into the mists.
“Charming,” Elspeth murmured.
Melanna fell to her knees. “Father?”
Eyes cracked open. A breathy voice hailed from a distant place. “Melanna?”
Wary of the eyes upon her from around the cloister, Melanna forewent the embrace she longed to offer, and instead held out a hand.
“Can you stand, my prince?”
She stuttered the words, barely able to speak for contrary emotions. Those emotions soared as his hand closed about hers. Not yet the strength of the mountain, but better than she’d dared hope. His breathing rasped more than she liked, but such things would improve while life thrived.
He rose, and at once bowed his head as he realised in whose presence he stood.
“Goddess.” A flicker of eye and lip betrayed a nervousness Melanna had never before witnessed. “I owe you my life.”
“You owe your daughter, not I.” With some surprise, Melanna noted that Ashana didn’t quibble her father’s use of the title. “Her sacrifice saved you.”
“Sacrifice?” His eyes sought Melanna’s.
She glanced away. “The crown is gone.”
His face tightened. “Then there can be no coronation. I cannot be Emperor.”
For a heartbeat Melanna wished she could undo the decision already made. But only for a heartbeat. A corpse wore no crown. If her father hated her for what she’d done, he’d at least be alive to do so. She could bear that burden, even if she spent the rest of her life seeking to atone. A life that love for her father had cast far adrift.
“No coronation?” Ashana shook her head and spread her arms wide. “The bell chimed invitation, and I am here. If I’m a goddess, and the Goddess comes only for coronation, then a coronation there must be. You owe your daughter your life, Prince Kai, and I owe her a crown. Only one of us need make good on the debt today.”
Reaching high above the mists and into the rays of the moon, she wove the brilliant light like thread. A shape coalesced. A circlet of silver that was not silver, for it shone even when gathered down into the shadows beneath the trees. Ashana held it level with her waist and tilted her head, her lips moving silently as one struck by a failure of memory at an inopportune moment.
“Prince Kai,” she said at last. “This crown is for your daughter, who led you out of Dark and into moonlight.”
Though the words were spoken to Melanna’s father, the sudden force in Ashana’s voice made them plain for all to hear.
“But you may bear it, for her and for me, until I call you to the gardens of Evermoon and all ephemeral burdens fall away. Do you accept this responsibility? Will you be my hand upon this world?”
His eyes met Melanna’s in question. Her mouth was ashen, so she nodded instead. Eyes still averted, he knelt at Ashana’s feet.