Chapter 29
The man Yanami’s grandparents chained in the courtyard the next morning is nothing like I expected him to be. He is well built, not too muscular, but lean and young. He must only be a few years older than us.
I was the first out of the room, knowing what I would find and running out as if I’d be able to hide it. Mare stepped out after he heard my door close. The princess was already awake, but took her time following behind me.
When we all meet in the courtyard, she looks at Mare and me with a softness that makes my skin itch. Is it possible to feel regret for something you haven’t done yet?
It doesn’t matter. I don’t have the choice or time to think about it too hard.
“What?” Mare draws out the word with a yawn. “What’s going on?”
The princess doesn’t question anything. She gives me a once-over in the sunlight. We’re dressed the same, but she was right last night. Her mother’s clothes do fit me better. What’s slouchy on her is perfect, if not tight, on me.
Her gaze leaves my body, and I feel a chill at the loss.
For how cold she looks now, her eyes were filled with heat when she looked at me.
She glances over to her grandparents but doesn’t greet them.
Her focus lands on the man in chains. She tilts her head to the side in consideration of what, I don’t know.
Still, she does not ask a single question.
Is this proof that she knew last night, as my lips were on hers, what would happen today?
What I was going to ask her to do? Did she kiss me with that certainty?
Or maybe she didn’t see this coming at all, but she’s long since lost any sense of surprise.
How many times has she woken up to someone chained, knowing what the person on their knees meant?
She said she’s been doing this since she was a child.
She was just a child.
I look at her closed-off face, the plumpness of her lips, and the edge of her cheekbones, her supple skin. She’s no longer the child being forced by her mom to kill, but I am also no longer the hero saving her. I don’t think I ever have been.
“You said you’d do anything to help me to the Sun Staff,” I say, but it sounds like begging. I don’t know what, but I want something. I need it desperately. Maybe her voice, or an agreement, maybe forgiveness.
“It’s always about helping. That’s what she told me at the beginning, too,” she says
Her mother, the Inka I got killed, the Inka I hated. Now I follow in her footsteps. Yanami wanted her mother dead for what she did to her. She will never forgive me.
“There’s a boat waiting at the dock for you,” Yanami’s grandfather says.
“Mare, bring me my dagger. You’ll wait for us inside,” I say.
“No,” he replies immediately.
“No?” I repeat, both surprised at his gall but expecting it all the same. From the moment I woke up and saw the princess, I knew nothing today would be easy. Still, I don’t want to fight, not with Mare.
“I’m going with you,” he says. He already has the dagger in his hands, and he flicks it into a defensive position, like he’s arming himself. He must see something in me that I don’t feel, because shock lines his face when I nod.
“Okay,” I say and hold my hand out.
His eyes flick back and forth between me and everyone else.
He doesn’t look the least bit perturbed at the prisoner.
Rather, he’s focused on holding the dagger to his chest like he wants to make sure he keeps any bargaining power he has.
For what, I can’t imagine. There’s too much on my mind to dwell on it.
He finally hands it over, eyes on me like I’ll take it and bolt at any moment.
I see the princess’s expression from behind him. She’s frowning, and it’s such an expressive look on her that I almost drop the knife. She’s not frowning at me. She’s looking at Mare and Mare only. Do I see disappointment there? Worry? I don’t want to see it anymore. I can’t bear it.
The boat is waiting.
We walk. The man is silent, though I don’t know if it’s of his own accord.
According to the princess’s grandparents, he knows his punishment is until death.
He’s been powering their house with his samay for years, ever since his initial crime of theft put him in their charge.
That’s what they told him this morning, that this would just be another round of mimicry for him to do.
He doesn’t know he’s going to die today.
It’s a rocky climb down to the island’s coast from the house. My steps are confident until I see the boat in the distance. I hesitate. Something in my heart stutters.
That’s the boat that will take the princess wherever she wants to go after this, as she requested. But first, first we need to do this. I need to do this.
My breathing goes steady. My mind clears. I’m stuck in the sensation of falling, and there’s no catching me now.
We all stop at the boat. Yanami’s grandparents dip their heads and turn to leave.
They told me they would do as much last night.
The prisoner is now in our custody. The anger builds but quickly drains from the princess’s face, refusing to give away if she’s surprised or if she heard the plan last night.
“Are you unable to face what you’ve created?” she says to their backs. They stop walking but don’t turn around.
The lake breeze lifts the few hairs that escaped her grandmother’s braids. Each strand is a beautiful, untainted black. Just like her daughter’s were, the woman who used everyone’s samay, including her own daughter’s, so that she wouldn’t have to use her own.
The wind blows some of my own hair up and toward my face. I push it out of the way. I don’t want to see my own black strands.
“Answer me,” the princess commands, reeling in her anger to something more controlled. She may keep denying her lineage, but her voice will always be that of authority.
The wind bites at the sensitive skin of my eyes, and soon I’m tearing up. It has to be the wind assaulting my eyes. My heart is steady. My breathing flows deep, in and out in a calm rhythm. It has to be the wind creating these tears.
“The one who created you is dead,” her grandmother says. “We face our share of ghosts every day on this island. We’ll leave you to face yours.”
The princess faces me.
“Princess–” My sentence is cut off by the glare she sends me. I can’t call her by her name, not for this.
I say the next word that feels right.
“Inka, here,” I handle the knife’s edge carefully and give it to her handle first.
She slaps it out of my hand. It cuts a thin slice across my palm.
Drops of blood begin to clot at the gash.
I stare at it in amazement. In times like these, I feel as if I can’t bleed, yet there’s the proof.
I see it, but I don’t feel a thing. Mare is fussing next to me, and I shoot him a tight smile to calm him down.
I clean my palm on my pants. The blood soaks into the dark wool.
The time I spend handling my hand is enough for the princess to get herself back under tight control.
“I won’t lay a finger on this man. If you want this, then you’re going to do it, and you’re going to force me,” the bored detachment of her voice doesn’t match the fight in her words, but I’ve spent enough time with her to know that she means every word she says.
I consider the prisoner at our feet. The dagger lies next to him.
He doesn’t make a single move to pick it up, despite the chains around his hands being loose enough for him to reach out and grab it.
He won’t fight back. That much is clear.
The princess implied that the people she drained struggled against her, that she had to force them.
Now, it’s not the victim that will be coerced. It’s the princess herself.
Or maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe everyone is a victim here except for me. I force that thought away. I’m calm. I’m committed. I’m going to do this to get the princess’s powers back and find the Sun Staff.
I can’t kill him. He needs to be alive while she drains him, but there also needs to be a connection between them deeper than flesh.
The connection cannot be broken during the process.
I think it over and over, despite knowing exactly what to do.
I figured it out last night, choking on my own breath like the man will soon be choking on his blood.
I push the princess forward with a hand on her back. She moves like a puppet. Once she’s positioned next to him, I hold my breath and banish any part of me that protests. Those parts of me can’t exist, not if I want to fulfill my destiny, not if I want to be the hero I know I can be.
Silver glints off the blade as it slashes through the air. The princess doesn’t flinch as blood spatters on her face.
“That’s what I would always do, too.” The princess says. She sounds far away. I wonder if part of her has been banished too. I wonder if those parts of ourselves will ever meet somewhere else, somewhere far away from all of this.
The man sputters, falling to his knees and grabbing his throat. The princess doesn’t move. Of course, a puppet cannot move on its own.
She looks at me and speaks again. “I won’t make this easy for you.”
As if I don’t already know.
“Where do you want me to open a wound?” I ask her. I keep my voice low despite the choking of the man between us. It’s loud, but I know she’ll hear me.
“I don’t.”
I gave her a chance. I slice her hand and wrap it around the man’s throat. Except for his twitching, it truly feels like they’re dolls.
I can’t throw up. I can’t gag. I can’t look away. The dagger drops from my numb hand. I see all of it. The whole nightmare. I’m such a fool.