Chapter 48
I wake at midnight and breathe in the scent of spoiling roses. My birthday is behind me. The toast my father made floats through my mind, and I toss, tangling myself further in the sheets. My marriageability is going to change things.
Still, over the following days and weeks, I manage to cling to my privacy at the Sunrise Palace. I ignore the letters from lords, letting them pile up. After Somnus, Seran insists I start accepting invites, but I still drag my feet, attending the minimum number of parties.
When a knock comes at my door after solstice, I assume I’m being summoned to yet another event to meet lords.
A maid stands there, holding out a dress. It’s white, but thick, and high-necked. It doesn’t look like the other dresses I’ve been sent for festivities.
“Seran says you are to attend a family gathering this morning, your highness. He asked that you wear this.”
Two carriages wait in the courtyard. Rinalda is already seated in one, her red hair severe against the pale seat cushion.
I climb into my own. As we roll toward the windward gates instead of the Central Palace, my stomach tightens.
There is only one reason I’m being taken outside the Citadel in this dress.
The Crimson Square.
My father does not summon the royal family to witness the death of petty criminals. Either someone important is about to be put to the pyre or lots of people are.
The balcony is already crowded when Rinalda and I arrive. My father sits on the throne at the center, flanked by my brothers, with a crowd of nobles and advisors behind them. Rinalda takes a place in line next to Jasper, and I shuffle in beside her, hanging back a step to stay out of his sightline.
Below, the square is packed. Thousands of faces tilt upward, mouths open, voices climbing over one another.
They scream for the death of traitors. They howl for justice as though their devotion will be cataloged and rewarded.
It will not. Loyalty to the flame earns nothing beyond the right to keep living under it.
Anything less is punished in the very square where they stand.
Set back from my siblings, I can see the rigid line of Rinalda’s shoulders. Her fingers curl around her own forearm, nails pressing crescents into the skin. I open my mouth to say something, but a horn sounds below, low and long, and the crowd falls silent.
A voice rings out over the square: “For the crime of treason against the emperor, the blood of Ignar, and the Eternal Flame, the condemned are sentenced to burn.”
Thirty or so men and women are led out and forced to kneel, then bent forward so their foreheads press to the stone. They will burn without even the dignity of looking at the sky.
It’s not a small execution, but I still don’t see why a band of criminals was enough to gather us all here.
Then a tall figure is led out, back straight, despite his tattered clothes. The nobles on the balcony murmur and gasp. At the risk of stepping into Jasper’s line of sight, I stand on my toes and lean forward, but even with a better view, I don’t recognize him.
The priests guide him to an elevated central pyre and chain his wrists around an iron post. It will heat and burn his skin long before the first flames meet flesh.
The announcer booms out again. “The traitors were led by Alaris Arastoros, previous Sovereign of Arastos. Stripped of all titles, and sentenced to burn, for crimes against the emperor.”
Now I gasp. The sovereign of the most shadoward province on the continent, dragged to the Crimson Square as a traitor? I have watched my father’s justice carried out on thieves and rebels. Nobles burned too, with proof of their crimes. But a sovereign?
It’s never happened.
And Alaris Arastoros at that? I’ve heard his name in passing at parties, attached to a reputation that makes the court ladies giggle behind their fans. But a traitor?
I cannot make out his face from this angle, only the dark fall of his hair and the line of his jaw.
I want to ask Rinalda if she knows what happened, what he did, but the priests are already moving.
They carry torches to each of the criminals, setting fire to each.
As screams start to rise, four priests surround the central pyre, lowering their torches to the kindling.
The Sovereign of Arastos doesn’t fight his chains the way I have seen so many do. Even as the iron at his back glows red, he doesn’t thrash or shout. I would think he’s unconscious, but his head is up.
I can’t watch.
I lock my chin forward and let my eyes go glassy.
If Jasper or one of my other brothers turns around and catches me looking away, it will be a lick of flame across my arm and a long ride back for lobellum.
So I stare, and I do not see. The smoke rolls up from below, thick with the smell of pitch and boiling flesh.
I hate this.
Beside me, Rinalda is almost relaxed, her hands loose at her sides.
She is watching the pyre with an expression so blank, I wonder if she is somewhere else entirely.
Standing before a different pyre, years ago, with tears streaming down her face and her hands raised.
They made her light it herself, her lover bound to the stake, and Rinalda’s blue flame so searingly hot that Seran said it would have been impossible to feel.
As if that were mercy. As if the color of the fire could make it kind.
Finally, the carriage takes me back to the Sunrise Palace, the awful smells clinging to my dress and hair.
The days creak on. The next time Seran sends for me, it is for a party. The gossip is all about the violence that’s sparked in Arastos. I only catch pieces, having missed most of the chatter that overtook the palace in the days right after the burning.
At least lords seem more interested in the conflict than me, and I’m allowed to hang back. But Seran sidles up to my elbow before I go.
“I’ve been speaking with the advisors. These unfortunate events have accelerated your father’s desire to see you married,” he says in his usual mild manner.
“We need to strengthen our shadoward alliances and ease the unrest with a wedding. I’ll update you on your schedule tomorrow.
And I’ll send a seamstress to make you some new dresses. ”
The threat of more events triples my exhaustion as I return to the Sunrise Palace. I take my shoes off on the first floor, an action Rinalda would surely sneer at. I climb the marble stairs and pause. A man dressed in black is on the upper landing.
Except for Seran, men aren’t allowed here. Even guards only come when called.
“What are you…?” My eyes widen as I take in his mask.
He closes the distance between us and shoves me. For one excruciating second, I’m airborne, then I slam headfirst to the marble.
It all goes black.
A knock brings me to my senses. My eyes fly wide and I gasp, pain shooting through my head and neck. I seize.
The knock comes again.
“The lord sent me to check on you, Lady.” It’s Flora’s voice, muffled through the door.
Daylight pours through the window, bright enough to be near noon. I am in Alaris’s bed in a tangle of covers. I grit my teeth as I force myself up on shaking arms, surprised I can move at all through the agony of what feels like crushed bone.
The pain in my head is fading, but something worse replaces it.
Oh no.
That wasn’t a dream. What I just saw really happened.
I throw the covers off and leap out of bed. The room lurches as my body locks, and I fall to my knees. For a terrible breath I cannot feel my legs. Then the numbness fades and I force myself upright with a new throb in my kneecaps.
I stumble out the door, push past Flora, and race down the hall. It warps, and I catch myself on the wall. I feel my way along panel after panel, until my hands land on the door to the office. I twist the handle and spill inside.
Heads turn toward me. Alaris, Dashol, Karns, and Nykiri.
My eyes catch on Dashol’s broad frame, then on Nykiri’s cropped hair, and the square comes back. Both of them knelt next to the pyre, foreheads to the stone. I didn’t recognize them while I was remembering, but now I do.
“You can’t go,” is all I get out before my knees give.
The floor rushes up and then stops. Dashol has me, his arm locked under my ribs, holding me upright. Voices tangle as my vision swims.
Then cooler hands support me. Alaris has me. He’s speaking. Even though I want to listen he’s blurring out.
There are now five lifetimes competing for my attention. I can feel his arm under my grip, but somehow, I’m also spinning. Courtiers and courtyards and my bedroom and blood…it all layers and weaves as I sink and float.
I fight to the surface. I have to warn him. I saw him on the pyre, chained, flames climbing. I shake my head until the office comes back.
“You can’t attack. It’s too dangerous. You all burn. You all burn in the Crimson Square.”
The last thing I hear is Alaris saying my name.