CHAPTER 12 ADRIA
CHAPTER
ADRIA
I’m supposed to head directly to a meeting with the Shadow Court, Thaane in tow.
From him, they’ll demand updates on how our troops are fighting back Azarii’s uprising; and from me, they’ll need a suitable asking price for Kori, delivered intact to the dayfolk.
Instead, I wind like a stubborn river back to my chambers.
In the corner, all three of Russ’s heads blissfully doze, his subconscious canine snores echoing off the walls.
I envy sleep intensely right now. I want to curl up against him again, bury my face in his deep-black fur, and hope to the Beyond for a dreamless rest. But I find myself returning to the locked metal box beneath my bed. One claw pries it open with a hiss.
Inside, the two Morpheus spheres that I confiscated from Kori and the nightfolk girl glow steadily red.
I know they won’t open for me, but some reckless impulse makes me scratch at one sphere’s seams anyway, poking its blinking light with one claw.
Anger rears up in my throat, and I nearly try to tear into the sphere with my teeth before I come to my senses.
You don’t wonder what it’s like? The sun?
Everything inside me clamps shut like the sphere in my palm.
Ribs locking together. Overgrown muscles drawing back against my joints.
My wings ache—a persistent, tired tug at my shoulder blades.
The Diakópsei granted me many gifts, flooded my veins with power, birthed me all over again as a new, vicious creature from its poisonous womb.
But my power only holds sway here, in the Shadowlands.
I’ve never dared to venture beyond the dark.
I’ve never even glimpsed the fabled sun, save for faint traces in the Passage.
If I did, would I even be able to behold it? Or would my eyes melt in their sockets, my skin dripping off my bones, like so many living things that failed to survive the Cataclysm?
My claws have nearly dented the Morpheus sphere. If I shatter it, there will be no recovering the memories within. A moment as seen by the dayfolk. An instant bathed in ceaseless heat and light.
The sphere wavers and blurs. I brace one arm against the floor, practically on all fours now, to stop from pitching forward. I hunger for sleep. I should have been unconscious when I first spotted Kori’s ship, and I haven’t slept a wink since capturing her.
“My lord.” The voice from my doorway hits me like an electric jolt.
“Thaane. I would have met you at the Shadow Court.”
“The court is three floors up. Zalel saw you pivot away from the stairwell, back toward your chambers.”
“Then why isn’t he here?”
“He hesitated to confront you alone,” Thaane says, measured. “I volunteered.”
A hollowness settles in my stomach. Zalel is still more boy than man, more servant than soldier, and he’s seen far too many of my private rages.
Swept up far too many of my shattered mirrors since my overcharge, and all the bodies left in the wake of it.
Part of me pities him for being assigned to me at all. No doubt, I looked ashen and haunted
when I left Kori’s cell. It’s no wonder Zalel didn’t want to confront me. The boy is doubtlessly tired as well; it was he who used his gift to heal the prisoner’s mangled arm before her awakening.
I blow out a breath, its tendrils curling stark white from the constant cold. “Fair enough.”
“Adria … I’m not here on orders.” Thaane’s voice wavers. “I’m here as your friend.”
Your friend. There were times I suspected Thaane would’ve preferred to be more than that.
But he knows full well I could never feel the same; there isn’t a man anywhere on this planet who could make my heart race, make my legs wobble, like the few female warriors in my parents’ army always have when they walked by.
My heart is not attuned to men. Father blamed himself, once, when I tried to tell him.
I retorted that he might as well blame Mother, too, if we were going to treat my heart’s inclinations as an aberration—earning me a blow to the cheek and a permanent ban on such conversations.
Thaane is still watching me. I pull myself out of my thoughts. “I’m fine.” The shape of the Morpheus sphere is all but imprinted in the flesh of my palm. “I needed a moment. Much has happened since … since everything.”
Thaane’s eyes flicker to the sphere. “What is that?”
“The dayfolk heiress was carrying it.”
“Could it be …?”
“A Morpheus sphere, yes.”
Thaane’s gaze goes wide, pupils dark and swimming. “Do you know what sort of memory is inside it?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you know how to open it?”
“I do.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
I shake my head. My horns feel heavy, more collar than crown. “This is the first dayfolk trespasser under my new reign. When my
parents—when the last leaders ruled, they didn’t deign to bargain with dayfolk. But whatever is inside this sphere …” I catch myself blinking in time with its red light. “Only the prisoner can open it.”
“And what does she want in exchange?”
I rise to stand on two feet, swallowing hard. “Nothing,” I breathe.
In a world where dark and light each hold court on their assigned planetary side, where creatures of the day and the night never mingle, where every victory is bought in fire or in ice, born in hidden shelters or unnatural fortresses, this girl—Kori—would trade something for nothing.
A memory of sunlight for my trust. And what is my loyalty even worth? What mercy do I have left to give?
“Nothing at all,” I say.
The red light gleams against my palm, and for an instant, I’m slick again with my mother’s blood.
My ears ring with my father’s screams. What I wouldn’t give to remove that memory, prying it out with my own claws if I had to.
I wonder what its physical shape would be; presumably a bloody, writhing thing, like the root system of a poisonous tree, the foundation of my newly claimed empire rooted irrevocably in death.
It’s the way of my people, Kori said, her empty palm outstretched. A prisoner’s promise, the last thing she had left to give.
My people are nothing like hers. I am nothing like her. Somehow, even through her protective mask, I felt her eyes steady on me, blurry with tears. Hopeful.
What kind of girl seeks mercy in a monster? What sort of dayfolk leader walks willingly into the uncharted dark?
Thaane’s three-clawed foot scrapes idly at the ground. “It can’t be for nothing. She must have an angle, a play.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say, the lie thick and slimy on my tongue.
I’m not afraid that Kori wants something from me. I’m afraid that this planet hasn’t only birthed monsters. I’m afraid that my bloody footsteps were my own design.
Was there truly no other way? Did I strike down my parents as a desperate act, to prevent an overcharged army from declaring war on the Daylands? Did I really break free of their toxic influence at that moment? Or have I become the perfect weapon they always wanted?
I feel cold all over.
“Come to the meeting,” Thaane says, arms crossed, all four wings folded back. “Discuss the ransom. Then you can sleep on all this and determine what she really wants.”
I nod stiffly. With one last jealous glance at my innocently sleeping dog, I follow Thaane into the corridor, back toward the Shadow Court’s seventh-floor meeting chamber.
Together, we will decide the worth of the Daylands’ first daughter in weapons, resources, perhaps even soldiers.
We will transmit a rogue message across the Passage.
And maybe, when I close my eyes, I’ll discern why she would offer me sunlight for no cost at all.
“There’s one other thing,” Thaane says, testing, “if you’re ready to hear it.”
“Readiness is overrated.”
“Upon your return to the fortress, I took the liberty of sending a telekinetic unit, led by General Isek, after the citizen who traded with the prisoner.”
General Isek. I can still see his son’s head twisting clean off, imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. Isek the younger’s killers are dead, yes, and by my hand, but it makes precious little difference when the child remains a corpse. Or at least, I would think so.
Without continued prying for details of his son’s demise, General Isek has simply stood by me since my overcharge, accepting my orders without question, leading soldiers into battle against Azarii, delivering rallying speeches to the wounded—and now, apparently, retrieving Kori’s trading partner with a telekinetic squad.
Does he know I could’ve stopped his son’s death? Does he know that by killing my own parents, I’ve avenged Isek the younger as best I know
how? I don’t deserve his loyalty. But in such unstable times, I will gladly accept it.
Thaane continues recounting the capture of Kori’s trade partner. “Thankfully, she was neither a telekinetic herself nor blessed with wings. They caught up with her and held her fast.” He deliberately clears his throat. “She was questioned by a qualified interrogator, of course.”
I can’t help but raise an eyebrow, intrigued. “What did she tell them?”
“Her name is Lail, daughter of none. An orphan, long surviving on her own, but cared for by another. Her brother, Neo. An Elysian.”
I rack my brain, but the name means nothing to me. “Describe him.”
“A telekinetic prodigy with a shock of red hair. Judged to have immense aptitude, even in his youth, and offered early enrollment in your parents’ regiment.
But he refused to take up arms,” Thaane says sourly, “even for his king and queen. Instead he fled to the Depths, converted into a cultist. The only person aboveground that he didn’t cut off entirely was his sister. ”
I knit my eyebrows together in thought. “What value does this information hold?”