Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
Aesira
The fog that came after a dose was heavy, like seeing through a dust storm, cloudy and blurred. The only bright side to being forced into submission was the others felt she was fine to be alone. Not a threat.
Her head pounded, her pulse beating in her ears. The place where the needle pricked her skin stung. She felt weightless without her sword. Useless without her knights.
Peeling back the curtains, her heart sank as the sun dipped lower into the horizon, casting the city in a rusty glow.
The door behind her creaked open.
“Aesira.” She spun around and Stone was there.
“How did you get in here?”
He met her across the room. “I have my ways.” He brushed her hair back and Aesira couldn’t help but lean into his touch.
“You’re supposed to be leaving,” she said. “It’s almost sunset.”
“Do you think I’d really leave without you?” He tilted her chin. “Rule number two, remember?”
A lump grew in Aesira’s throat, burning as she swallowed past it. “You have to go.”
You are a disease.
“Leave with me.” Stone swept the hair from her cheek. “Tonight. We have enough astra to make it to the Isles. Maybe further. Nora was right when she said this isn’t your fight. You don’t know what else they’re hiding.”
“Stone.” She buried her face in his chest, like maybe if she held him close, held him tight, she could pretend her life wasn't falling apart.
“Please,” he whispered against her hair and that one single word threatened to unravel her entire being.
All the years of dedication and sweat and tears and blood, all to be destroyed by a single word. But not just a word. A word from him.
“Whatever they’ve asked you to do, you don’t have to do it.
You know that right?” He cradled her face in his palms. “You can leave with me, with us, right now.” He kissed her and she melted into him, clung to his arms, to the dream that they could ever be free from who they really were. “Please come with me, Aesira."
It would be easy to love him, she thought. To leave Vargah and sail through the desert until they reached the promise of freedom in the Isles. It would be easy to forget the life she lived here because it was hardly a life at all.
Everything you touch turns to rot.
Dust churned in her head, an ache pulsing down to the roots of her teeth. "You need to go."
“Aesira," he said her name through a sigh. "We know astra is real.” He took her hand and kissed the mark where the astra flower had burned her. “And they have chosen to ignore it and sacrifice someone anyway. They are serving a goddess who gets satisfaction from seeing one of her disciples slain for no reason. Either way, they are not who they say they are. They don’t deserve your loyalty and we cannot stay.”
He turned for the door, dragging her by the hand. She wanted to leave. To flee with him and the crew and Nora.
She wanted to stay. To keep him safe from her. To find Kamari.
She wanted both things and when she opened her mouth, her father’s voice came out. A soldier's voice. Rigid and authoritative and devoid of emotion, just as she was trained. “I’m not the person you think I am,” she said. “I'm not good. I make choices that hurt people. I can't hurt you too.”
Stone turned, facing her again. He cupped her face and held it firm.
“You're not hearing me when I say that I want you to come with me, so hear this. You can tell me all the terrible things you’ve done,” he said.
“Let every horrible thought and memory you have bleed out of you and I would still lap at your confessions like a dog deprived of water.” His lips were crushing as they met hers.
“It won’t change how I see you or that I want you,” he said between kisses.
“That’s how it feels, Aesira. Like I’ve been deprived and you are the only thing that has offered me some semblance of life. If you're scared of hurting me, then leave with me and don't.”
Her heart cleaved in two, leaving an open chasm in her chest. Stone’s eyes pinned her in place. She savored the color of them. The shape of his nose. She memorized the bend right in the middle and the scar that ran down his face, somehow making him more beautiful.
Her body and mind were fighting through the injection, the medicine that dulled her spirit and instincts and she tried, tried, to remember that she was more than what her father made her to be. More than the Order made her to be.
More than an infection. A disease to those she loved.
“I’m sorry, Stone.” She dug her fingers into her hair, pulling at the roots. “I want to, but—”
“Don’t.” He shook his head before straightening his jacket, squaring his shoulders.
“If your choice is to stay, there’s nothing else to say.
” A muscle feathered in his jaw and then he was stepping toward the door.
“We were just pretending anyway, right?” The pounding in her head was drowned out by the agonizing ache spreading through her chest, clenching up her throat.
Every step he took from her, the fog in her mind cleared a little more until he reached the door and it dissipated completely.
She could stay and search for Kamari. Could pretend to be the daughter her father needed her to be until it was just the right time to flay him open–flay them all open.
Or she could leave.
She could leave and find Kamari a different way. Trust what Hanna saw.
Find the rebels.
Be with Stone.
When she laid it out in her mind, it was simple. An easy choice.
The line in the sand, just as Nora had drawn, and he was on the other side. “Stone, wait. I’m—”
When he turned from the door, it opened behind him and Lord Raffe stepped in. “Well,” Raffe said, smoothing his pristine silk shirt. “Am I interrupting something?”
Stone stepped aside, shaking his head. “I was just leaving.”
Raffe’s laugh cut through the room. “No you weren’t.” From beyond the door, another man stepped forward. Stone’s body stiffened, his shoulders tight.
“Well, well,” Vic said. “Look who it is.”
Five sentries filtered into the room behind Vic, still dressed in their Naming Day armor. Three of them circled Stone, the others flanking her sides.
“Stone is a free man, Lord Raffe,” she said. “He was heading back to the Boneyard District.”
Raffe and Vic shared a look that made Aesira’s stomach plummet. “It seems you and my betrothed here have gotten to know each other well the last few weeks, Mr. Stone," Raffe said, "but I’d say it’s awfully inappropriate to have you sneaking out of her room.”
Stone stole a glance at Aesira over his shoulder. I told you I'm not good, she wanted to say. I told you I'd hurt you.
“What are you doing here?” Stone’s voice had turned cold. Emotionless. The sentries next to him made a move to draw their weapons but Raffe waved them off.
“You of all people should know who holds the desert's secrets,” Vic said. “My long time client here”—he slapped Raffe on the shoulder—“told me of a very peculiar group of Odegas traveling to find the king. After your indiscreet visit to the Outpost it didn’t take much to piece together where you were headed and why.”
Aesira reached for her sides, but all of her weapons were surrendered. No hidden blades. No swords. No knights by her side.
Stone bent his head down, just enough to reach Vic’s eyes. “We were sent to look for the king, nothing more.”
A cruel smile curled Vic’s lips. “Is that so? You know people talk in the Outpost and when they don’t, they’re forced to.
She kept your secrets for a long time and I'll admit she was a tough one,” he said.
“But with enough persistence, eventually all things break.
" He pulled a yellow flower from his pocket. “She said you had a plan. A map."
Soo.
“If you touched her, I will fucking kill you.” Stone lunged, his fist colliding into Vic then Raffe but there were too many sentries. One slammed Stone into the wall while another’s fist flew into his cheek with a sick crunch.
“Raffe stop this! There is nothing out there. We found nothing!”
Raffe stepped away as the other sentries surrounded Stone, taking their turn beating him. Hitting his face. His stomach. His back. Stone groaned as he dropped to his knees, glasses broken and thrown from his face, eyes clouded and nose bloody.
Vic pulled a scarf from his pocket, wiping his nose until it was clean.
“The only one to blame here is you.” He spat in Stone’s direction.
“Coming into my house, talking to my people behind my back.” He knelt down and gripped Stone's hair until his head was forced back, whispering something in his ear.
“Take him,” Vic said before standing and straightening his shirt.
Aesira tugged free of the sentries grip and ran for Stone.
She dropped to the ground, blood on the floor soaking through her night dress.
“Stone,” she whispered, holding his face in her palms. “I’m so sorry.
” His eyes were swollen, lip torn open. “I’m sorry—” The sentries from before ripped her backwards, one grabbing each arm.
“Please,” Aesira begged. “Please just let him go. I know the way on my own, you don’t need him.”
Raffe tsked. “But what kind of husband would I be to allow my wife to face such dangers in the west?” Her stomach roiled.
“He’s going to show us the way.” Raffe snapped his fingers again.
“Now.” The three sentries pulled Stone to his feet and dragged him out of the room, leaving a bloody trail in his wake.
“And don’t fuck him up too much more,” Vic shouted, “we need his head clear.”
Raffe turned to her, a tiny speckle of blood staining his shirt. “And you,” he said, “need more taming than I realized.”
Everything had gone quiet and dark.
The noises outside. The people scurrying about the Citadel. Her racing heart.
Aesira couldn’t get Stone’s face out of her head.
Not the broken and bloodied one, but the one just before that. The one where she told him she wasn’t going with him.
The General's words rang true, even now.
She could not love someone without hurting them.
She should have left with him the moment he asked. Should have fled this kingdom and this duty and honor without hesitation.
She had been always broken but now Stone was broken too, because of her. Broken and imprisoned when he deserved to be free.
She allowed herself one cry. One moment to sit with her regret before she raised her chin and wiped her cheeks and let out one last wavering breath.
She would meet her father in the council room.
She would meet Lord Raffe and accept his proposal.
She would restore the treaty before anyone noticed it was broken.
She was a weapon, yes. But she was also the spare. Born as a backup in the chance Kamari could not uphold her duties.
What Stone failed to realize earlier when he’d asked her to leave was that there was power in being the spare. No one would expect her to lead, only to be grateful to be given the opportunity so they wouldn’t see who she really was, only who they expected her to be.
She was no longer choosing to serve her father or Celestria or the Order. She was choosing, for once, to serve herself, just as Stone begged her to. And she would bring the kingdom down right from the inside, making them pay for his pain.
For Kamari’s.
For her own.
And she would do it with a crown on her head and a smile on her face.
She would destroy them, each and every one, and she’d do it as a queen.