I didn’t know why she was telling me this.
“Colette said the party was to celebrate my becoming a woman, but I knew it was because I was finally old enough to field betrothals. She wanted to invite all the great colonial families living in Lanaix—nobles and wealthy merchants and Lirian expatriates—and all the children from my private school. I insisted she invite my extended family on my father’s side as well; all my friends from the sea. Grudgingly, she agreed.”
Lullaby set her mouth. “I remember going down to the beach on the day of the party. I wore a new gown, and my handmaidens fixed my hair in an elaborate updo and helped me put on cosmetics for the first time. I felt beautiful and grown-up, and even though Colette was using me as always, I felt valued. Valuable. I waited for hours for the first guests to show up. But no one ever came. Not my classmates, not their parents, not my friends from the sea. And when the châtelaine came to tell me that my mother had left for Lirias and wouldn’t be back for spans, I realized that it wasn’t because of me that no one came—it wasn’t because I was half human and half Gorma, caught between worlds and unwelcome in either of them. It was because Colette had forgotten to invite anyone. She had forgotten about the party. She had forgotten it was even my name day. And I realized that the only thing worse than being hated was being forgotten.”
She lifted her blue-brindle eyes to mine. I battled sick anticipation.
“Being your friend feels like that name day.”
Horror spun threads of hot and cold through my veins. The scars along my arms stung like someone had rubbed salt in them.
“Is this about what happened in the dungeon?” I remembered her bruised arms, her haunted eyes. Remorse crawled up my spine and sank cold teeth into my heart. I should have tried harder to make sure she was all right.
“If you don’t already know,” Lullaby whispered, “then I suppose it can’t be very important, can it?”
She marched away with a dancer’s grace and a warrior’s resolve. My heart throbbed, but though I wanted to follow her, I didn’t. I would find a way to make this right—whatever I had broken, I would find a way to fix.
But no one ever mended a friendship by arguing in a hallway.
I paced the Hall of Portraits after the following Matin’s Congrès, mulling over my failures and giving my doubts more weight than they probably deserved. I’d argued with Lady Marta again—I’d finally dared to broach the matter of liberating the Sousine, a wealthy Imperial colony and Lullaby’s homeland. Marta’s words razored through me, harsh:
You want to reform the tax code, dismantle the military, build public schools, and emancipate a colony? I admire your idealism, dauphine, but you have to be realistic. This empire requires capital, especially now the ambric miners are striking in the Dusklands. Freeing the Sousine will ruin us.
I stared at a portrait of a handsome, laughing nobleman and fought despair. Was what I dreamed truly impossible? Or was I just not fighting hard enough to make it real?
Boots on marble rang out behind me, and I forced myself to keep walking—I didn’t need anyone to witness me wallowing in a puddle of self-pity.
The footsteps caught up to me in the Rotonde at the center of the palais’s façade, where a domed ceiling sent spears of blistering red to score the parquet floor. Vast windows stared out over Coeur d’Or’s imposing gate to the Concordat boulevard, then beyond to the tapestry of the city, woven with a thousand bright colors.
“Mirage.”
I recognized that drawling tenor. I turned to face Sunder’s searing eyes.
“You have vexed me, lord.” I gave my chin a haughty twist. “You left this Matin without a word. Again.”
“You were snoring. Loudly.”
Outrage sparked in my chest a moment before I saw the smile hiding in the corner of his mouth. He laughed at my expression, surging up to catch me around the waist and spin me toward the window. I yelped when he hoisted me onto the broad sill, but I relished the warmth of the sun on my back and the warmth of his regard on my face. He looked good today—his eyes were bright and his color was high.
Maybe too high. Hectic spots of red stained his cheekbones, and his pupils were dilated dark as Midnight.
“Sunder—”
“I like you like this.” His gloved hands tangled in my loose curls.
“Like what?” I narrowed my eyes. “Perched inappropriately on a rather public windowsill where anyone might happen by?”
“Well, yes. But that’s not what I meant.” His laugh burned heat against my throat. “Today in the Congrès—you were passionate, powerful, fearless. Marta Iole terrifies me. And yet you oppose her as an equal, a peer. No—you are her empress, and she knows it better than you do.”
I swallowed down a flush of pleasure. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.” His smile went slow and wide. His hands tightened on my waist. “But you don’t need me to tell you this is where you belong.”
Belong. The word was a syncopation against the rhythm of my heartbeat. I’d hungered to belong somewhere for as long as I could remember—the very idea of finding my place in this world had become armor against uncertainty, perfume to mask the stench of loneliness. But after all this time yearning to hear those words—this is where you belong—I was starting to wonder whether I had earned them. Or if they were even true.
“What’s wrong?” Sunder drew back.
“Marta Iole is just one person.” Bitterness burst in my throat. “Those Ambers, in the marché. They looked at me like I was an imposter. And those Red Masks—they doubt my legitimacy so deeply they’d risk their lives to kill me. How do I prove to them—my people—I’m their rightful empress?”
“Give them time.” His thumb brushed my jaw. “Let them see you shine, and they will know you are their Sun Heir.”
“How?” I bit my lip. “How do I prove to them I’m more than a fantasy in fine silks and tiaras? I was raised in dusky rags—now I wear Severine’s sunlit gowns. I was never loved—how am I supposed to earn the love of an entire city, an entire empire?”
“You do yourself too little credit, demoiselle.”
His gaze burned like sunlight through leaf-bare trees. He tilted my chin, his thumb brushing against my lower lip. I leaned into his touch, ignoring the frisson of energy gliding along my jaw. His other arm slipped around my waist and slid my hips against his, molding us together. His lips parted, hovering over mine, and I savored his hope and drank his desire. I hesitated in the bittersweet wasteland between fear and want. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Sunder caught sight of something over my shoulder, and abruptly let me go. Cold air drafted between us, slowing my pulse and shriveling my heart. I spun, looking through arching windows toward the palais gates, where a parade marched up the Concordat—
It wasn’t a parade. It was … a royal procession?
I unclenched my fingernails from my palm, crossed to the glass doors, and stepped out onto the wrought-iron balcony beyond. The music of marching wafted up—shod hooves ringing out on cobblestones, the champagne timpani of laughter and trumpets and song. The cortège was nearly the length of the Concordat: a river of riders in uniform—bright red and pale kembric, metal helms and dancing horses. Children ran beside the retinue, and my breath caught in my throat when I saw the soldats tossing coins to the onlookers. The procession was heading straight for Coeur d’Or’s gilded gates, flowing up the shallow steps like a sunlit river.