The moon had not risen on the Amber Empire for a thousand tides. But that didn’t mean my people never craved luster.
Or spectacle.
A crowd of silent people lingered in the Marché Cuirasse—mere steps from the orphanage I’d planned to visit. Sunlight raw as uncut ambric sent their shadows sliding along the uneven cobblestones and turned their eyes to mirror glass. They’d heard I was coming—I saw wilted paper sunbursts chased with kembric leaf hung from painted sticks. I also saw a few sharp-nosed masks, red as blood, perched jaunty on children’s heads or shoved in back pockets. I saw hard mouths and bruised eyes. I saw fear.
I did not see any smiles.
I swung out of my carrosse, stepping into the ruddy light and fighting unease. In the nearly two spans since defeating Severine, I’d spent barely any time in the city. The first span had been a chaos of fleeing the Skyclad army, marshaling aid from Belsyre, and recapturing a city on the brink of revolution. And in recent weeks, I’d barely left Coeur d’Or—patching a broken government, demilitarizing a vast army, and planning a coronation left me little time for jaunts through my seething capital. But strange whispers had begun to reach the palais, and I knew it was time for me to walk among my people, even if I was not yet Amber Empress.
A platoon of Belsyre’s formidable soldats moved to flank me as I approached the staring crowd, their jet-black uniforms darker than the clouds above the Midnight Dominion. Even after a span serving as my honor garde, the Loup-Garou—the Werewolf—still made me nervous. Their booted feet stepped in unison, echoing the hollows between my heartbeats. I almost turned toward them in the dusk—to search their pale impassive faces for a sharp half smile, to seek out a pair of green eyes among their matching emerald signats, to find a trace of familiarity in all this strangeness.
I didn’t turn. I clutched the fabric of my golden skirts and looked into the faces of my people, savoring the edge of my own power reflecting in their eyes. A flare of pleasure burst along my spine when I remembered—I was their dauphine. I was their Sun Heir.
I sank to my knees before a little girl hiding in her mother’s ragged skirts. She must have been about seven, although her small size made her look younger. Hunger etched out her jaw and chiseled her ribs; I could see them jutting through the thin material of her worn frock. She was clutching one of the sunburst kites—handmade, cut from cheap parchment and painted in garish shades of yellow and orange.
“Hello.” My voice came out too soft. I cleared my throat. “What’s your name?”
She nestled deeper into her mother’s skirts, mute. I bit my lip and tried to see myself how she must see me. A girl—a woman—not much younger than her mother, gowned in a magnificent dress of kembric and cream, designed to catch the light and amplify it. A woman with ambric gilt dusted around her cheeks and along her collarbone. A woman who was to be her empress.
“My name is Mirage.” I leaned closer, conspiratorial. “Although once upon a time my name was Sylvie.”
Something flickered in her eyes, then disappeared. An idea coaxed the edge of my mind. I smiled, held out a hand, and made the little girl see something that wasn’t there. A ball of flame appeared, blazing red as our static sun. Light poured between my fingertips, splashing the cobbles with kembric and gowning the little girl in radiance.
She gasped, her eyes glazing with awe. Her mother’s face softened. The crowd inhaled and leaned a little closer.
My smile grew. This—this was my gift. The legacy of illusion—a wash of impossible colors born in the dusk and glittering like sunlight in my veins. This was what drove me out of the shadows and into the light. To the Amber City, to the palais of Coeur d’Or, into this complicated, confusing, remarkable life. This was why I was here.
I made the fantastical sun bigger. But something was wrong—a taint of darkness stained the molten glow an ugly red. Brilliance battled with blight as the orb stuttered on its axis. Horror scorched my throat. My fingers trembled. I clenched my fist. The sun shattered into a thousand pieces, sending a flickering firework of scarlet and shadow bursting into the crowd. Droplets of blood danced on the breeze, then disappeared like a broken promise.
The crowd’s scattered, unenthusiastic applause tasted like soured wine. I turned my gaze back to the little girl, suddenly nauseous.
“I’m Cosette,” the little girl whispered, at last. “Maman calls me Etty though.”
“Etty is a lovely name,” I choked out, gesturing to the mass of paper and string clutched in her little palm. “May I see what you’re holding?”
Etty nodded, handing over her sunburst kite without protest. I tried not to care when her mother’s calloused hands tightened on her daughter’s shoulders, but a shadow of resentment caught in my throat. I unfolded the symbol in my lap, smoothing its edges with fingers that came away yellow. I cooed over it, winking at Cosette. I flipped it over.
Drawn on its reverse, in negative space, with charcoal and a decided hand, was an image of the moon. But this was not the silent, serene moon I remembered from the frescoes in the Sisters’ Temple where I was raised. This moon had sly, slitted eyes and expectant brows, like she had just awoken from a delicious, devious dream. This moon smiled like she would shatter an empire just to see herself reflected in all its broken pieces. This moon would not forgive a world who had forsaken her.
I breathed a tiny sip of sun-stained air. Sunder had been right after all. I’d barely believed him when he’d said this image was spreading around the city like a secret. The sunburst did not surprise me, for it had long been a symbol claimed by the Sabourin dynasty—the royal line descended from Meridian’s mythic blood. That blood flowed through my own veins. But the moon? I didn’t understand what it had to do with me.
“Do you know what this is?” I gently waved the kite. “Do you know what these pictures mean?”
“Ye-e-es,” said Etty. “The pretty yellow one’s supposed to be the sun. And the other one—” She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and glanced at her mother. The woman darted her eyes to me, then gave a curt nod. “The one with the round white face is supposed to be the moon.”
“Why?”
She screwed up her little face. “Why what?”
“I didn’t—” My hands still trembled. I clutched the kite tighter. “Why did you and your mother draw the moon on the back side of the sun? What’s it supposed to mean?”
“It means you, of course,” said Etty matter-of-factly. “Because you were born in the dark, but you came to the light. Maman says you’re not the Sun Heir. She keeps calling you the Du—”
I heard a rough intake of breath from the crowd. The scuffle of bodies colliding—the melee of half-drawn swords and shouting soldats. I turned a half second before a body slammed into me, colliding with my hip and knocking my legs out from under me.
I hit the ground in a chaos of elbows and knees churning against the pavement. My neck bent back, then snapped forward. My head pummeled the cobbles with a jarring wave of pain. Darkness lapped at my vision as hands grabbed my shoulders, grappling for my throat. Panic frothed wild in my chest, and I pushed up, bloody palms on cobbles. I slammed backward into my assailant. He grunted, fingers slipping from my neck as a Loup-Garou soldat grabbed for him. I threw myself forward into a limping run, my vision swimming as I gasped for breath to scream, to flee—