Not His, it whispered in its glorious, terrible, beautiful voice. The one she had dreamed of every day since it first abandoned her. The one that was just as much a part of her as her heart or her mind or her bones. That voice was so welcomed after its prolonged silence that Sabine began to weep with relief. Not His anymore, the darkness promised, and then, more tentatively, not telling but asking: Yours?
Sabine did not know what she was doing. She knew only what she felt. Her emotions, which had once been so volatile as to leave her exhausted, frightened, and alone, had grown into instincts that she could trust, a compass she could follow.
Now that she knew she could exist without her darkness, Sabine found that she did not want to. And that made all the difference, didn’t it? The choosing. The knowledge that she could cry, could rage, could laugh, could love, even while she held that sadness as an essential part of her. She could do it all.
And so, she whispered: “Yes.”
“What are you doing?” Tal’s voice held a high, desperate edge as He watched the darkness wrap itself around Sabine, watched it creep inside her and turn her blue veins black.
“I forgive you, Seb,” she said, with a voice that was, but was not, hers. “For all you have done. Your pain did not define you. In fact, you were forged in spite of it. But now, it is time to relinquish your hurt. To let go of your fear and allow yourself to feel something else.”
The Second Son’s voice wavered. “I do not know how.”
The New Maiden took His hand. “You do not let the darkness claim you. You acknowledge that you have known it, that you have held it, and that you have survived it. And then,” she said, placing a hand on Tal’s chest, just above his heart, “you set it free.”
The tears that fell onto Sabine’s cheeks tasted like salt and starlight. Even though it was darkness that seeped back into her, Sabine felt a warmth within. That precious jewel of the New Maiden’s soul began to pulse a soft, careful rhythm in harmony with her own heartbeat. This was not only darkness, but hope. Sabine was still dark and light and everything in between.
Anger became acceptance.
She sank to her knees, her tears splattering the earth beneath her. The Second Son watched with something akin to awe. A single tear rolled down Tal’s cheek. That drop contained the world, every hurt never spoken, all the pain never shared. Sebastien knelt beside the New Maiden, and, at long last, the Second Son wept.
When all His tears ran dry, Sebastien kissed the New Maiden softly, tender and chaste. “Your will be done, Isolde,” He whispered, the gold nearly gone from Tal’s eyes, and then, with a great shuddering breath, Tal’s body crumpled onto the sand.
34
First pain. Then shrieking, splintering, ringing, roaring, keening, crying, and cursing. It hit Elodie all at once, so loud that she could hardly make sense of all the sounds. She struggled to open her eyes, to move her arms. She wished the screaming would stop—it was so piercing that she could not focus. Her head ached something terrible. Finally, she managed to make sense of the buzzing near her ear. Someone was calling her name.
“Elodie. Elodie? Elodie!” Elodie peeled her eyes open and took in the desperate, fearful face of her commander. “Majesty, get up,” Maxine was saying, running a hand across the queen’s forehead. It came back wet with blood. “Please, stop screaming. We need to get you out of here.”
Elodie forced her mouth shut, and the screaming stopped. Her throat was raw, her lungs thick with smoke and dust. Her limbs were heavy and foreign as she fought to command them. She blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the scene before her, but she could not comprehend it.
The world was on fire. The dock around her was littered with debris: giant wooden planks, charred strips of sails, metal scraps twisted and melted grotesquely. The ships docked in the harbor were ablaze, and great plumes of thick, black smoke made the afternoon look like midnight. The air was sharp as a sword and hurt just as much to swallow. Beside her was what looked to be someone’s front door. With dread, Elodie pushed herself to her knees and turned away from the water to face her city.
She started screaming again. Where once there had been buildings—tall and short, squat and wide—now was nothing but an endless plain of wreckage. Roofs sloped, lining the ground, while the bones of buildings smoked and sparked, exposed to every element. The castle, high on the hill, remained untouched even as the city below burned.
“Elodie!” Maxine’s voice was sharp. “Help me. Now.”
She searched for the other girl, who was struggling to pull a wooden beam off a pile of rags. No, not rags. Bodies. Elodie’s screams turned to shrieks as she rose to her feet. She had to find her family. Wood splintered into her skin, blood blooming bright on her palms, but she did not notice, did not care, as she helped Maxine unearth Brianne from beneath a crush of wood. The youngest Warnou was bleeding, her left arm at an odd angle, but she was breathing.
“Cleo,” she was saying, tears mixing with the ash on her face to create a strange paste. “She was with me and then…”
But Maxine was quicker. “Over here!” she screamed, and the Warnou siblings hobbled to where the middle sister’s skirt stuck out from beneath a pile of debris.
“I can’t…” Maxine was scrabbling desperately at the stone that sat atop the pile, but it would not budge. “Help, I’m—”
“Here,” came Silas’s gentle voice. Elodie’s aunt stood beside Maxine and helped her roll away the rock, haul away a broken window and bricks from a toppled chimney, to reveal Rob and Cleo, huddled together in a cave of rubble, looking petrified but otherwise unharmed.
Elodie fell to the ground in relief. The smoke was thicker now, the char so biting that it was like trying to breathe beneath layers of blankets.
“Let’s get you to the healers,” Maxine said, holding out a hand to the middle Warnou sister.
“I can’t move,” Cleo said from where she was huddled, tears streaking her face. “I don’t want…”
Maxine reached in to gather Cleo in her arms. Rob got shakily to his feet and followed, helping Brianne navigate the rubble without jostling her injured arm.
Elodie watched them go. Around her, the world moved slowly, the haze so thick it might have been a dream. Black-uniformed soldiers lay lifeless in the street, their faces soft in death, swords abandoned by their side. Others struggled to maintain consciousness, to claw their way free from the harbor and rejoin their retreating ranks.
Velle had won the battle, but at an impossible cost. There was blood on Elodie’s hands, and no matter how desperately she scrubbed, they would never again be clean.
She did not move until she felt a gentle hand on her back.
“Elodie,” Silas said softly. “It’s time to go.”
The queen shook her head. “This is…” She grasped desperately for a word that could encompass the damage, the terror, the fear she felt, but there was no way to describe it. She began again. “I was supposed to lead. I was supposed to keep my country safe, and I failed. What am I to do now?”
“You stay alive,” Silas said, helping her move one foot in front of the other, guiding her over the shattered chair legs and twisted bed frames that littered the cobblestones. “You stay alive, you mourn the dead, and then,” she said grimly, “you rebuild.”
It was easier said than done. Elodie had much to examine and even more to repair. Her country was broken and hungry, her relationships strained and bruised. She focused her efforts externally first.
Before freeing Edgar from the chapel’s confessional booth, Elodie presented him with a carefully worded declaration of peace that promised the reinstating of the Republics’ imports.
“I’m not entirely authorized to sign such a sweeping proclamation,” Edgar said, as the queen freed one of his freckled hands so that he could commit his name to the page in ink.
“You were able to instill enough passion in the Republics so as to cut off our resources,” Elodie said sourly, as she offered him a quill. “I’m certain you can find it within yourself to be just as convincing with this new mandate.”
