She carefully enveloped her sister’s silver-handled hairbrush in the midnight-blue scarf Katrynn had stolen off a noblewoman during a particularly windy season. She tucked both in the bucket of a fine wool hat that Artur had won from a visiting merchant during a card game. For her mother, Sabine extracted several jars of her rarest ingredients—beetles’ wings and snake eyes and preserved lark hearts—tucking them into the folds of the hat. For her father, she even grabbed the last cigar that stank like a furnace, the one he said he’d smoke when he returned from sea.
She took nothing for herself. There was far too much their apartment held of her past—her days spent stewing beneath blankets, watching shadows stretch on the walls. Who Sabine had been, here, was not who she was, now. She wanted nothing by which to remember that other girl.
She had everything she needed within.
Her neighborhood now evacuated, Sabine took up watch in the bell tower. The clanging was dizzying, the noise so great she could not find space for her fear. Instead, she squinted down past the barricade at the invading army, at the tiny commanders dismounting from steeds and shouting for soldiers to fall into formation. Yet no matter how long the New Maiden watched and waited, she could not find the prophet’s face.
Sabine traded her position in the tower for one atop the barricade, scrutinizing the soldiers whose jeers were drowned out by the endless tolling of bells. None of them had Tal’s careful expression, his impossibly straight posture, his green and gold eyes. His absence left her perplexed.
Tal had been circling her since the moment they’d met, appearing everywhere the New Maiden went, arming Sabine with tiny daggers and emotional anecdotes, tugging on that invisible string that tied them together, body and soul, to the New Maiden and the Second Son. He would not hide from this final obligation. If anything, the soldier in Tal would have embraced it wholeheartedly. So where was he?
Sabine closed her eyes and caught a whiff of salt air off the water. If His prophet had not returned to the city, that meant the Second Son had another idea. He was sentimental and dramatic, and thus would surely demand that their final duel take place on sacred ground. The city held no special meaning to Sebastien or the New Maiden. Instead, he would wish to meet somewhere significant—the land where they both had been born, the land where they had learned to love, the land where they had lost so much. He would be waiting for her in the Lower Banks.
It was another of His careful cruelties. Sabine would have to leave Velle before the war had truly begun and sacrifice her curated supplies of anger. She would be forced to put the needs of the New Maiden before the needs of her kin, to let her followers fight without her by their side.
Just as she had imagined, her family’s faces fell when she told them what she had to do. “I don’t like the idea of you out there on your own with Him, Bet,” her mother said.
“I have to go alone,” Sabine said gently. “This is the way it must end.”
Orla cupped her daughter’s face in her hands. “Be careful, all right?”
Saying goodbye to her family suddenly felt important. This was not some ruse they were running off to play, coming back together an hour later with coins and an amusing anecdote. This was serious. This was dangerous. Worse, Sabine did not know how either battle was going to end.
“You too.” She kissed her mother on the cheek, then turned to Artur. “Please, listen to Mol’s descendants and keep yourself far away from the blast.” Artur gave her a mock salute before enveloping her in a hug. Sabine squeezed him tightly. Then she rounded on Katrynn. “Rynn, I—”
But her sister did not let her finish. She squeezed Sabine’s hand. “Burn Him to the ground.”
A lump formed in Sabine’s throat. Although she could not form the words, she hoped her eyes blazed with affirmation. She would not rest until it was finished. “Tassi An,” she finally managed. Katrynn rewarded her with a smile like starlight.
Then Sabine took off running toward the city center. She stole a midnight-black mare from outside a tavern with a moth insignia and raced her out the southern gate, waved through by a group of Theo’s and Beck’s descendants. Sabine’s jaw was tense, her knuckles white, as she clutched the reins. Although the creature moved faster than she could imagine, it wasn’t quick enough to shake loose her feelings of guilt and regret at leaving behind the war waged in her name, at not having taken the chance to tell the queen she loved her.
But then, her power was in those feelings, in that emotionality. The New Maiden had told her as much. Sabine could not fathom what sort of fight the Second Son expected, what sort of strange reunion she and Tal would have upon the shore. However they dueled, it would end in blows. She could only hope that her anger would be weapon enough.
32
Elodie came crashing back to consciousness.
All at once, her airway was unrestricted and she took in great, gasping breaths, coughing through the shock of how simple it was to pull air in and out of her desperate lungs. She sank to her knees beside the limp body of her aggressor. Above Edgar stood Brianne, clutching a glass orb in her shaking hands.
The decorative ornament was painted to resemble the continents of the world. There was a smudge of blood next to the shape of the Sixth Republic.
“Bri?” Elodie croaked. “What are you—”
“We should probably restrain him,” came the voice of the middle Warnou sister.
“Cleo?” Elodie tried to rise, but a wave of nausea sent her sinking back onto her heels.
“Should we tie him up?” Brianne turned to Cleo.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Cleo said, her voice wavering at a pitch high enough to break glass. “You’re the one who hit him with a paperweight.”
“He was strangling Elodie.” Brianne wiped the globe on her trousers—the red transferring to the sandy linen—before returning it to its place on the queen’s desk.
“Bri…” Elodie’s voice caught in her throat like gravel beneath a coach’s wheel. It hurt to speak, to breathe, to think.
“No lectures, Ellie,” her youngest sister said darkly. “If you need something done, best a Warnou woman does it.”
Tears swam in Elodie’s eyes, not from pain but pride. Her youngest sister was no longer the fumbling girl at the mercy of the Church. She was no longer controlled by even her family. Instead, she kept them safe. Brianne tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then turned her attention back to Edgar. His breathing was quiet, but steady.
“I’m glad you didn’t kill him.” Cleo nudged his neck with the toe of her shoe.
“I’m sorry I didn’t,” Brianne said darkly. “He would have deserved it.”
“Death is a very permanent punishment,” Edgar said, his voice loose, eyes unfocused.
Elodie swore. She had been hoping to come up with a plan before Edgar came to. She glanced desperately at Rob, who hovered near the door looking uncomfortable.
Edgar noticed the prince at the same moment. “Help me, brother,” he appealed to Rob, eyes wide. “In His name, please, let me go.”
Rob stared at Edgar, looking thoughtful. Dread crept its way up Elodie’s spine. Although she did not want to believe that Rob could betray all three of his sisters, she was unable to forget the anger he had expressed during their last conversation, the coolness with which he had dismissed her from his chambers.
“There’s a good lad,” Edgar said, latching on to her brother’s hesitation. “We’re the same. I knew it.”
“We’re not the same at all.” The Prince of Velle’s right hand closed around the glass paperweight on the queen’s desk. “For when you threaten one Warnou, the others raise their hackles. As is one, so are we all. Which means”—Rob grimaced apologetically—“you had this coming.”
