Chapter 8
Idressed alone.
Lucan had left the new gown for me on the edge of the bed.
It was red. Deep, arterial, the color of old royal blood, with the gold of his realm threaded through it in a veinwork so fine you could only see it in motion.
The collar was high and the sleeves long, but the line of the dress—fitted, then loosed below the hips, the skirt breaking into a thousand silk shards with every step—was nothing I would have put on myself, not in any life, but now, after the change, it felt exactly right.
He was waiting for me outside the chamber, at the head of the passage, dressed for the court.
He looked me over.
“You are a marvel,” he said, “and you are mine.”
He offered his arm. I took it.
The hall was full.
They looked at me, all of them.
The old reflex came up, a wave, to round the shoulders, to duck the chin, to look away from the looking. The contract burned a line up my arm, not pain but a bracing: no, baby. Stand. Present. Stay.
I did.
I saw the other women before I saw the king.
They stood across from each other, at the far side of the hall, three in a row, each in her own color—Lydia in Wrath’s infernal red, the fabric so stark it made her smallness even starker, her hair braided tight and the green eyes steady, unblinking; Nora in Greed-amber, the dress cut to her broad shoulders and thick with the shine of a thousand tiny sequins, her face bare, her chin up, freckles visible across the bridge of her nose; Rachel in Envy’s prismatic silk, the color impossible, the cut severe, hair let down for the first time, glasses gone, eyes wide and brown and searching.
They were all looking at me.
I nodded, once, to each.
They nodded back.
I had never had sisters. In any honest accounting, the word meant little to me. But the nod was a knowing, and the knowing was: we are in it together, whatever it is.
The bond hummed at my wrist.
Not Lucan’s side. My own.
The king sat the throne.
He was dying. Anyone could see it—his face was carved with so many fine lines it looked like old veined marble, and the hands that gripped the arms of the throne had gone thin, the skin translucent over the white of the bone, the nails dark, the sigils at the knuckles faded and cracked.
The crown sat heavy on the skull, the gold of it gone to a dull pewter, and behind the throne the pillar of the domain burned less bright than even the smallest veins in the floor.
He looked at Lucan.
He looked at me.
He remained silent.
We took our places at the foot of the dais. Lucan’s hand rested lightly on my back; he could have pressed me to the floor and instead pressed me upward.
The air stilled.
A demon with wings stepped forward, her face shrouded, the robe of her rank so dark it seemed to eat the light around it.
She began to speak.
She spoke in an unknown language, and the bond translated it as sensation: the story of a realm, the story of an age, the story of a prince who had never asked, a king who had never given, a city that had been waiting for a single crack in the marble for a thousand years.
As she spoke, the pillar behind the throne brightened.
As she spoke, the other three women came forward, one by one, and each set a hand at the arm of her demon.
Lydia took Wrath’s hand; Nora took Greed’s; Rachel, who trembled but did not flinch, placed hers in Envy’s and did not let go. The four of us faced the dais, the audience, the entire history of the city.
The demon spoke on.
She called my name.
I went forward.
Lucan stayed behind, as the custom demanded.
I walked up the steps, carrying the boots, and I set them, not at the king’s feet, but on the obsidian at the center of the platform. I did it without bowing, without crouching, without the old apology. I looked him in the eyes.
The king smiled—just.
He said nothing.
The demon spoke a final phrase. The gold in the pillar blazed, so bright it hurt, and then it sealed.
I turned.
Lucan was at the foot of the dais.
I reached for him. Not the old reach—timid, outstretched, waiting to be batted away—but a confident reach, palm up, knowing he would take it.
He did.
The bond at my wrist went white-hot.
He knelt at my side, on the stone. He looked up at me. He took my hand in both of his.
He said, in the low, even, beautiful voice I had fallen in love with, “You are my equal. You are my queen. I am yours, for as long as the realm stands.”
The chamber shivered.
The king did not move.
I looked at Lucan, and I saw the cracks at his jaw, at his hand, at the base of his throat. I saw the man, not the armor.
I lifted him.
He rose.
We turned to the hall.
A thousand demons bowed their heads.
The four women, my sisters, bowed their heads.
The king did not.
But the city did.
Lucan did not flinch from them.
He let go my hand. He took a step forward, to the very edge of the platform, and raised his chin like a prince, and he did the thing he had never done for any being in the history of his house.
He let the cracks show.
I saw it before anyone else.
The white at his cheekbones, like veins of marble, spreading down to the jaw, up to the temple; the ribbon of white around the throat, like a collar of milk or bone or fire; the cracks at the backs of his hands, opening wider, leaking light.
Every flaw he had hidden was on display, and the old beautiful armor of him was gone, and the thing that stood on the obsidian was not the sovereign, but the man.
I thought: Yes. Yes, my Lord. Let them see what we have made.
I thought: They will love you for it.
But the room did not love him.
The room did not know what to do. The bond at my wrist burned—not in warning, not in fear, but in a signal, a pulse, a sense of: be ready. The women across from me, my sisters, saw it too. Lydia’s lips parted. Nora’s hands curled at her sides. Rachel’s eyes went wide, then wider.
The cracks spread.
They were not random. They were deliberate, planned as an old city’s roads are planned, as a competition routine is planned: every line a line of intent, every flaw a signature of the one who made it. The white of the cracks threw light up into Lucan’s eyes.
The brothers saw it first.
Wrath, in red, with Lydia’s hand at his arm, leaned forward.
His eyes went hot and narrow. Greed made a small movement at his jaw, a muscle working, and his girl squeezed his hand.
Envy did not move at all—he watched, flat, cold, his girl beside him, her head bowed, her body braced for what was coming.
The king smiled.
The smile was small, but it moved through the whole face, lighting it from inside as the white in Lucan’s skin lit him.
I saw the king’s hand flex on the arm of the throne.
I saw the dark veins at his knuckles, the old gold of the sigils, and felt the smile make the whole room colder even as the pillar behind him burned brighter.
The city waited.
Lucan spoke.
He said: “I will not be the mask.”
He said: “I am the being I have always been, and I am the being you made me, and I will not perform perfection for you any longer.”
He said: “The future of this city is cracked open, and I will be the first to walk through.”
I wanted to shout. I wanted to skate the length of the dais and jump into his arms and say, Yes, this, more of this, give them everything we have, but the city was silent, and the silence was the silence before a quake, the silence before a war.
The pillar behind the throne ignited.
The white of the cracks ran up the walls, into the ceiling, down the long length of the chamber, out through the open doors, into the city beyond.
The gold of the realm took it in, blended it, made a new vein—red-gold, white-gold, the old royal blood and the new sunlight—and the fourth pillar was lit.
The city bowed, but it bowed not in worship. It bowed in shock. It bowed in fear.
The brothers watched.
Wrath’s hand curled around Lydia’s waist. Greed turned to his mate and, for a moment, let his own mask slip, and in the face was a hunger, a terror, a want. Envy did not look at anyone but me.
I realized, then, what we had done.
We had made a target.
The king watched me. He watched Lucan. He watched the cracks, and the light, and the court shifting in their seats, and he smiled the smile of a dying man who had just seen the beginning of the end.
The bond at my wrist flared. Lucan turned to me.
He was shaking, just a little, as I had shaken after the first clean edge, after the first clean skate, after the first real, unbreakable moment of my own life.
He held out his hand.
I went to him.
We faced the city, together, and in the silence I heard the sound of a thousand beings recalibrating what they believed possible.
But something was wrong in the room. Not the king’s smile, not the brothers’ reactions, not even the bond going hot in warning.
There was a cold.
Just at the back of the neck, at the edge of the hairline, the faintest trace of cool air in the hall.
I scanned the room.
I found him instantly, because he was the only being not reacting at all.
He was tall. All the brothers were tall, but he was the tallest. He stood near the edge of the dais.
He wore a grey so pale it looked like stone, the fabric loose, the cut severe.
His skin was the color of old paper, almost translucent.
His hair was black, long, and tied back in a way that made his head look heavier, as if it took effort to hold upright.
His eyes, when they found mine, were a pure, flat, winter blue. No ring. No fire.
He watched me.
Not Lucan.
Not the cracks, not the bond, not the future of the city or the war or the succession.
He watched me.
It was the most direct, most chilling attention I had ever felt, in this world or the last. Every other being in the room was pointed at Lucan; this one did not seem to know Lucan existed. His arms were folded, and his weight rested on one hip, as if he was about to fall asleep standing up.
He watched me.
Sloth.