13. Bastian
Bastian
“‘W hen the princess is in power’—that’s what they said.” The witness held my gaze, not troubled by the unseelie glow.
I shared a look with Faolán.
There were no princesses. Not anymore. Not since I’d beheaded the last remaining heir to Dusk.
Her elder daughter, Princess Nyx, had died in an unseelie attack before I was born.
My fingers tightened around my pen. All the more reason to stop Hydra Ascendant before they became a true threat. The Night Queen had no clear heir. If she died, factions would rise around her distant relatives, like Asher, and those factions would clash in a race to the Moon Throne.
A total fucking disaster.
As was the fact word had got out about Ascendants operating in the city.
The wrinkled woman before us had heard two people outside her house in the early hours. When she blasted them with a sudden rainfall, they’d fled. Unfortunately, her weather magic had also washed away any evidence, save for a pot of red paint.
“‘When the princess is in power this will all pay off.’” She nodded, grey eyebrows drawn together in a fierce frown.
“We heard you.” I tried to keep the sigh from my voice.
“Hmph, good luck getting her on the throne,” Faolán muttered.
The witness’s frown intensified. I liked it, to be honest—it was refreshing for a civilian not to fear me. “Dead women don’t make great queens, do they, Serpent?”
I fixed a smile in place, like I found her comment terribly amusing.
But I could feel the blood on my hands, even though it had been long ago. Throwing her head across the throne room had felt dramatic and daring.
Now I knew it for what it was.
Brash and thoughtless.
Not that I wouldn’t kill her again if I faced the same situation. But some aspects of how I dealt with it—those I’d change if I had my time again.
The orrery on the mantelpiece chimed softly. Almost time for that meeting. I cleared my throat and straightened. “Was there anything else?”
She shook her head. “That’s all I heard.”
“And I appreciate you bringing it to me.” I stood and gestured for the door. “If you hear anything else—”
“Aye, I know how to find you and your friends .” She looked at Faolán for the first time since she’d walked into my office. It was the kind of look that made me want to break things. One people gave shapechangers too often.
Instead, I squeezed my pen and herded both her and Faolán out the door. Even he couldn’t know about my next task.
He shot me a questioning frown after she’d gone. “You don’t think Princess Nyx could’ve survived, do you? No one ever found her body.”
“Three arrows and a fall from the bridge? I think it’s safe to say she’s long gone. If by some miracle she survived all that, she would’ve come back by now.”
“Hmm. True.”
Once he was gone and the door locked, I approached the far side of my office.
A carved panel showed the planets and the Celestial Serpent threatening to swallow them up as he raged at the loss of his beloved Tellurian Serpent. A pale echo of her coiled between planets and stars—a reminder that they were all made from her body. If only he would remember.
Another panel depicted them in the time before . The time before her death. The time before time. In utter blackness, the paired serpents’ undulating bodies knotted together to create the universe. One light with dark stars covering her scales, the other dark—her opposite in every way.
The light in the dark. The dark in the light.
The edges of a hidden door disappeared into their scales and stars, invisible, even to sharp eyes like Faolán’s.
I stroked the dark serpent’s head, drawing upon the magic around me so I didn’t have to say the activation word out loud, and the panel glided open. It closed behind me as I entered an unlit passageway.
Even if I hadn’t been able to see in the gloom, I knew this route so well, I could’ve followed it with my eyes shut.
Over the centuries, my office had always belonged to the previous ruler’s Shadows.
Officially, I was just Braea’s representative in the Convocation, a council that helped give continuity and balance between the two monarchs.
But everyone knew I was a spymaster. The identity of my Dawn counterpart was unknown, but we had a drop point should we ever need to share information for the good of the realm.
In all my years of doing this job, it had remained empty.
I wondered if they had their own network of secret passageways.
There was no record of mine on any plans of the palace, so there was no way of knowing for sure when they’d been built or by whom.
But I’d put my money on Tenebris’s first spymaster designing them at the same time as the palace.
They integrated too seamlessly, taking me to my rooms, to Braea’s, and to various other strategic locations, including my destination today.
Ahead, a door awaited me in the gloom. I pressed the ring on my third finger into a tiny indent. The faint thrum of magic signalled the lock opening.
When I stepped through, the world shifted.
A secret lodestone. The only one, as far as I knew, and I’d scoured the palace, searching for weaknesses. No need for guards when our side could only be unlocked with the spymaster’s ring.
The afternoon sky opened overhead, bathing the overgrown courtyard and its disused fountain in sunlight. This was where I met with my spy from Dawn, so we could be assured no one would spot us. She’d told me about this next meeting—one I wouldn’t take part in so much as observe .
I’d reverse engineered my key and had one made for her that opened the door ahead of me, which led into Dawn, but only if I left it unlocked from this side. It had no effect on the door leading to Dusk.
I rarely entered their side, always conscious that the Night Queen’s Shadow being found there could be catastrophic for the relationship between our courts. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame them if they considered it an act of war.
But this was too good a chance to miss. Caelus had made little to no effort to win the human queen’s hand, and this meeting with King Lucius would surely explain what he’d really been up to. For the king to summon him the day he’d returned—it had to be important.
Occasional peepholes covered in spidersilk mesh opened to left and right, and I aimed for the one that peered into Lucius’s study. He only used it for more formal occasions—he must’ve summoned Caelus here to remind him of his own importance.
Lifting the mesh flap that blended perfectly from the other side, I peered through.
The king was already inside, sitting at his desk, rifling through papers with his lips pursed.
In profile, I could see he slumped a little—his casual pose an odd contrast with the crown upon his head and the regal opulence surrounding him.
Whoever had designed the passages had used this particular peephole a lot, because they’d had a stone seat built into the wall. I’d placed a cushion here long ago, so I settled on that and waited.
No one ever spoke about how the main part of spying was waiting. For the right time. For someone to slip up. For a target to trust you. For the right information to come your way.
A lot of waiting.
But I didn’t have to wait too long today, because Caelus was on time to the instant, knocking and entering as the orrery chimed. Classic Caelus—so perfect. So dull.
After bowing, he placed a file on the king’s desk.
“It’s all there, Your Majesty. Everything I learned in Albion.”
My heart sank. Please, gods, tell me they were going to discuss the report and I hadn’t come here for nothing.
Nodding, Lucius pulled the file closer and flicked through the pages inside.
Caelus shifted as the silence dragged on, yet he wasn’t dismissed.
I smirked at Lucius’s use of quiet. An old technique to assert power and encourage the other person to babble just to end their own discomfort.
It had the desired effect as Caelus went on, “We didn’t trust another interim report after the last one was intercepted.”
The coded message. “We” had to mean him or one of the sisters.
“And where’s the part about…? Ah, there .” Leaning forward, Lucius smoothed his hand over one of the pages, and I pressed against the wall, wishing I could see what he did.
His gaze flicked over the paper, his brow tight with focus until he gave a long exhale. “It’s true, then.”
I gritted my teeth. What was true? Eavesdropping was one thing, but stealing a report from the king—that was another matter. An impossible one.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Caelus bowed his head. “It seems it is possible to end the Sleep.”
I froze. The enchanted Sleep that bound my queen to night and the king to day.
If someone managed to break the Sleep, they’d break the balance, too. Night and day gave the queen and king clear lines of what was hers and what was his. They had no choice but to relinquish control as they fell into Sleep.
The only time they were both awake was during an eclipse.
A rarity, though we were due one soon. Those rare moments allowed them to meet for the first time in centuries—it was a time for them to appear together before their assembled courts, showing how they each trusted the other to handle the kingdom as they slept.
All a show, of course. Trust didn’t come into it—they had no choice but to walk a tightrope, carefully balancing power. If the king broke the peace, the queen could destroy it come sunset and vice versa.
Sleep forced them—and their courts—to hand over the reins. Without it, both sides would vie for power until eventually petty clashes turned into full-scale war.
“If, that is, Your Majesty can get his hands on the relic.”
Lucius didn’t look up from the report, palms pressed together, fingertips touching his lips.
More silence, though the heavy toll of my heartbeat tried to break it.
End the Sleep. Fuck. Fuck .
“But…” Caelus rocked forward on his feet, frowning at Lucius. “Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but isn’t the whole point of two courts and two rulers balance?”
“Balance?” Lucius laughed, though it was more sneering than amused. “You think she cares about balance? You think she wouldn’t use this to her own ends if she got her claws into it? Caelus, you are but a child if you believe that.”
I clenched my hands at the way he spoke of my queen.
He sighed, shaking his head as if explaining something sad to a youth who hadn’t yet been broken by the world. “There is only balance while both sides remain true to it, and that woman hasn’t been true to anything since she was a babe at her mother’s teat. If we don’t secure this thing, she will.”
Caelus’s throat bobbed. “Of course, Your Majesty. So… the plan is to secure it—to keep it safe.”
“You’ve played your part well.” Lucius smiled slowly. “However, my plan is my concern.”
With a flick of his fingers, he dismissed Caelus. As the door clicked shut, Lucius sat back, teeth baring in a wide, wide smile.
I knew what that smile meant.
His plan was to use this relic, whatever it was, on himself alone. There would be no sharing. The Night Queen would still be subject to Sleep and Dawn’s power would spread, unchecked.
A threat to me. To the queen. To everyone in Dusk.
And it would be my fault.