Chapter 27
Liana
The guards picked up Darin, lying still on the stretcher, and carried him away from the chaos.
Whatever they thought about Amril’s accusation and Liana’s role in the attack, they kept their mouths shut.
They knew she wasn’t one of them—the uniform couldn’t fool them—but they also knew both Darin and Amron trusted her, and that seemed to have been enough.
They barely looked at her—between the mob and their captain’s life hanging on a thread, there was little time for gossip and accusations.
Yet, Amril’s words bore into her mind like a drill.
What if he was right? What if Liana’s escape with Amron did change history, but instead of pushing it away from the war, it had pushed it towards the war?
If they hadn’t escaped Celandina’s house, perhaps the attackers wouldn’t have found anyone to ambush.
There would have been no reason to accuse the Seragians of anything.
That attack had set a whole chain of events in motion.
Perhaps every step she’d made since landing in Abia led towards the inevitable conclusion. In trying to run away from the war, she had led everyone to it. Liana, the divine tool of destruction.
She willed herself to stop the unsettling thoughts, knowing the tricks the gods loved to play on people’s minds, but it was futile.
The third day was leaking through her fingers, the afternoon slipping away, her bargain weighing heavily on her.
Yet, what else was she supposed to do? She couldn’t make Amron shirk his duty, and at this moment, his duty was to do everything in his power to prevent conflict.
There was no room for intimacy of any kind.
No matter what moment in history she stepped in, no matter where in their shared life she was, the war separated them just as it always had, their bodies divided by cold steel and burning embers.
She failed at so many things because, as usual, she’d forgotten to calculate in people behaving as people—irrational, scared, angry.
She knew the importance of the moment, the complexity of the multitude of the threads meeting at this point, this wedding in Abia, and yet she’d believed she could simply extricate Amron without the whole structure collapsing into a burning tangle.
She had failed to prevent the king’s stabbing, she had failed to prevent her father’s injury, she had failed to help Amron in any meaningful way.
The guards carried their captain quickly, pushing through the city caught up in the throes of unrest. The crowds on the streets had thinned.
The more cunning among the citizens had gone home, closed their shutters, and barred their doors.
The downside, however, was that those who’d remained on the streets were probably looking for trouble, carrying their ill intentions like burning torches.
History rushed towards the bloody finale.
Keeping her head low, holding the edge of her father’s cloak, Liana let out a quiet groan that melted into bitter laughter.
Who did she think she was? Some deity with the power to turn the course of history at the tips of their fingers?
Some legendary heroine that shaped reality according to her wishes?
She was nothing but an accidental bastard, a divine offshoot that got lucky against all odds. Her improbable connection with Amron, those fifteen years of his unrelenting love for her—that was an anomaly, a thread of history gone rogue—not the war.
The war was inevitable, Amron’s love for her was not.
But looking at the bloodstains on her father’s cloak, black in the lengthening shadows, she cursed herself for being such a weakling.
Her father would never give up the fight, no matter how bad the odds were, and neither would Amron.
They would do whatever was in their power to stop the terrible tide; they would go down fighting.
She wouldn’t give up—for them.
The guards rushed through the darkening streets, reaching one of the back entrances to the palace.
A low wooden door, a long corridor, and the guards’ quarters, the same as they’d ever been.
They’d all but forgotten about Liana as they laid their captain on a pallet in the guards’ infirmary.
In the flickering candlelight, Liana caught the deep worry on the men’s faces, but they didn’t linger; the city was burning, their duty awaited them.
She tucked her hand under Darin’s cloak and wrapped her fingers around his, warm and calloused.
A hand on Liana’s shoulder. “Stand aside, we’ll take care of him.” A firm female voice, a stern, serious face. “Scissors! Water! Needle!” the woman called, and a flurry of people materialized around Darin.
“He’s my father,” Liana whispered, but no one heard her.
They cut him out of his uniform, pushed the arrow shaft through his flesh, cleaned the wound, and sewed it shut.
They moved quickly and with competence, the stern woman directing them.
And yet, frustration bloomed in Liana’s chest, aimed at her own uselessness, her own ineptitude.
She was wasting time, not helping her father, not helping Amron.
“I heard he was injured,” a soft voice said behind Liana’s back.
She turned: Queen Orsiana stood in the shadows, like a solitary ghost. Liana tried to step aside, to bow, but the queen caught her hand. “Don’t. Just tell me what happened.”
So Liana told her about the embassy, the fire, the arrows.
The queen listened in silence, watching the women as they bandaged Darin’s chest, paying her as little attention as they did Liana.
Only when they finished did the stern woman turn to the queen, greeting her with a nod.
“He’s lost a lot of blood, but the arrow missed his heart.
If he pulls through the night, he might live. ”
“Thank you, Nila.”
When the women retreated, rushing to help some other unfortunate guard, the queen approached Darin and laid her hand on his brow.
Liana followed her reluctantly, unsure what to do.
“Darin is a good man,” the queen said. “It’s not my place to tell you how you should feel about him, considering everything, but you need to know he’s always cared about you.”
Liana swallowed the bitterness that rose in her throat. “It’s entirely possible to love a man but hate his choices,” she said.
“Indeed. But sometimes all choices are bad.”
“I don’t know him well enough to judge him,” Liana said.
“When he learned of my existence, he never sent for me, not even when my grandfather died and I had no family left. He sent money and occasional letters. He was a stranger to me, and I to him. And yet…” The queen’s gaze was curious, kind, her silence encouraging Liana to speak.
“I’ve always held a place for him in my heart and now, when I finally have the chance to fill it, I fear it will be wrenched away from me. ”
Liana paused, surprised at her own words, shocked at the ease at which they came out before this quiet woman. She hadn’t planned to talk about her father at all.
“Love is complicated,” the queen said. Laconic as the statement was, it was also true.
The grown-up Liana understood the impossibility of Darin’s choices, but the child in her still hurt. This was not the moment for rational explanations, though—for inspecting the outcomes and judging in hindsight. What they both needed was her forgiveness.
She bent down and kissed his clammy cheek. “It’s fine, Papa. I understand,” she whispered in his ear. “I love you.”
He didn’t open his eyes, but his eyelids fluttered, and she was almost certain he’d heard her.
She turned to the queen. “Thank you. But I suppose you’re not here to offer me comfort.”
“No,” the queen said. “I’m here to beg.”
· · ·
Upstairs, it was eerily silent in the small study the queen led her to.
Somewhere behind the locked doors, in Queen Orsiana’s bed, the king lay dying, and yet, there were no servants running around in panic, no black-clad physicians with their stinking vials and bloodletting tools, no efficient women with needles and bandages, no priests praying.
In the soft light, Liana noticed the queen’s eyes were rimmed with red.
“I’d pray for Darin if I thought it would help,” she said before Liana had the chance to open her mouth. “But I trust Nila and her women more than I trust the gods.”
Wrapped in her pale lilac shawl, the queen leaned on the delicate desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She looked like a very small snowbird, trapped inside a jewel box. Liana had to remind herself that she was neither helpless nor fragile.
“I’m sorry I dragged you here,” the queen said. “I need your help.”
Liana’s heart sank; she’d expected this moment ever since she and Amron found his father. The queen had told her she would ask something of her.
“I came to beg you to talk to your mother.”
The queen words were a punch in the solar plexus. Liana recoiled, her face a mask of revulsion.
“No, your father didn’t tell me about her, I figured it out a long time ago.
And even if I hadn’t, you’re so obviously hers it shines through your skin.
Your aura is emerald green and it smells of forest and blood.
” The queen’s eyes were two shards of flint, cold and sharp.
“And even though I know you’ve lived in Till, I don’t think that’s where you came from just now.
You’re like an arrow flying, there’s a purpose to your being here. ”
Liana nodded. It was pointless to lie.
“And that purpose is Amron,” the queen concluded.
In some ways, the queen’s frightening clarity was liberating, like a knife cutting away rotting flesh.
There were things Liana couldn’t say out loud—not even to Amron—because they were too mad or too terrifying.
But the queen, with her mirror-like eyes and a body that seemed constructed of paper and light, looked barely human, like some ancient prophet.
She looked as if she could absorb any divine joke Liana might throw at her.