Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mira
The arena was more magnificent and more terrible than I ever could have imagined.
Striding onto the volcanic sand floor, we were engulfed by the towering, circular stands – a crushing wave of colour and noise. The roar swelled to a crescendo, filling my ears and drowning out everything else. Then I heard the clapping, the audience turning towards what could only be the royal box. The guards had placed us just below, and as I looked up, I had my first glimpse of the emperor and his family.
Emperor Kalias was a striking, muscled figure. His crimson robes were pinned with military medals that glittered brilliantly in the sun. He didn’t acknowledge the crowd as he lowered himself into a throne-like chair, the sharp points of his bone crown jutting upwards like spires. An uncaring, willowy woman followed just behind him, flanked by two royal heirs – a red-headed prince and his female counterpart. The girl from the coach.
‘We are gathered here,’ the emperor announced, ‘to witness a criminal brought to justice. This woman—’ hundreds of eyes turned back to us, fixing on Celeste with hungry anticipation — ‘was one of our own. She belonged to an Order, and she betrayed us.’
I’d known that my mother was someone important. I’d suspected that she had come from a noble family, from somewhere in Ravalia. But from an Order ?
No one left the Orders. No one.
‘On a critical assignment in Kalure, this woman turned traitor, failing in her mission to assassinate the Kalurian king.’ Rapt silence fell over the stands. ‘For years, she has been on the run – but the empire always prevails.’
I could barely take in the words, the implications. Celeste had been sent to kill my father, but she hadn’t gone through with it. I glanced sideways at her, and the tenderness and pain on her face took my breath away.
I remembered asking Darius what she’d done that was so terrible. His answer: she fell in love.
It would take longer than this moment to puzzle through her secrets, the motivations behind her decisions. But as I looked at my mother, I felt myself soften – because she’d done it for love. And I refused to believe that anything done out of love could be too terrible.
But, high above us, the crowd clearly disagreed. The audience was animated in their hatred, cheering for Celeste’s death. Cheering for the execution of a woman they didn’t even know.
I felt sick as I stared into the sea of unfeeling faces. Would they be so unfeeling if they were down here, looking up? Would they be as confident in their cruelty then ?
‘Traitor of the Third Order,’ Emperor Kalias announced, ‘I pronounce you guilty of treason. For crimes against the Ravalian Empire, I sentence you to death.’
The words fell like hammer blows. I turned to face my mother, and I knew the terror was obvious on my face.
‘No!’ I cried, a broken rasp of a sound.
It’s okay, Mira, she mouthed.
I knew better. I knew that nothing was going to be okay, ever again.
‘As for her daughter . . .’ The emperor paused, waiting for the crowd to grow silent once more. ‘It might seem harsh, to punish a girl for her mother’s mistakes. But this is no ordinary girl. She is a threat to our empire – a descendant of the traitorous line that usurped Kalure from our ancestors.’ There was no remorse in his face as he continued, ‘Princess Kasmira Volaris will join her mother in death. Prince Roran, if you would?’
I didn’t know what shocked me more. The pronouncement of my execution, or my name.
Kasmira Volaris.
Even my name was unfamiliar to me.
The prince, sitting to the right of the emperor’s throne, stood. As he left the royal box, my eyes locked with Scarlett’s. I could have sworn there was pity on her face.
I tore my gaze away, watching Roran descend through the stands. The audience cheered, but not as loudly as before. Did they see a rival royal, an enemy of the Ravalian Empire? Or did they see a girl – a girl barely older than eighteen, filled with fear and despair as she prepared to die?
Celeste didn’t react to the emperor’s pronouncement. Her expression was very calm, and I wondered how such a thing was possible. She smiled at me, the same gentle smile that had greeted me every morning over breakfast.
‘Mira,’ she said, ‘the emperor just publicly declared me an Order member. That means there’s a way out for you, if you decide to take it. And if you do, return to the docks and enter the water. The locket will find you.’
‘I don’t under—’
‘No talking,’ one of the Warriors interjected, his arm enclosing threateningly over mine.
For a moment, all I felt was confusion. Then realisation came in a sudden rush. I might have been part Kalurian, but the emperor himself had announced that my mother was one of his own, that she belonged to the Order of Masks.
Even Emperor Kalias wasn’t above the sacred laws of the Ravalian Empire. And my mother was right. There was one loophole, one desperate way out. But did I want to take it?
The prince strode into the arena and paused, waiting for the emperor’s next order. His flinty eyes were fixed on the royal box, and not once did they land on me or my mother.
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Please don’t do this.’
He kept his attention fixed resolutely ahead, as if I was nothing to him. Less than nothing.
The emperor might as well have been carved from stone, like one of his many self-styled statues. Even as I stared up at him, he said nothing. Did nothing. I realised that he was drawing this out for maximum effect. If I hadn’t hated him before, then I hated him now. I hated him with all of my desperate, breaking heart.
One nod. That was all it took.
Roran turned from the emperor, focusing his attention on Celeste, who was forced to her knees by two guards. His sword was the most horrible thing I’d seen in my life. My breath came in sharp pants, my heart racing frantically in my chest – as if it knew its beats were numbered. All I could think was: that sword is going to kill her. That sword is going to kill my mother.
And then it’s going to kill me.
Desperately, I wrenched my arm from my guard’s bruising grip. His surprise gave me the seconds I needed to rush to my mother—
‘Restrain her,’ Roran ordered.
I was jerked back before I could make contact, and I realised that I was crying.
Above me, the sky was a brilliant, bright blue, but it should have been grey and cold. It should have been bleak and lifeless, because surely the world was ending. Surely nothing could continue after this.
‘All my life,’ Celeste said resolutely, ‘I’ve tried to keep you safe and hidden. But you were never meant to hide your light. You were born to shine .’
There was power in the gaze she levelled at me, filled with love. With the kind of strength no one could take away, even as the guards pushed her head down.
‘Look away, Mira,’ she instructed. ‘Close your eyes and look away.’
I kept my eyes open – even as the prince raised his sword and aimed it at the back of her neck.
My lips parted, like I might try to speak. Like I might tell my mother that I loved her—
The sword cleaved through the air.
My mother’s gasp might as well have been a scream. Her head hit the ground with a thud, the loudest sound I’d ever heard. And though her eyes were still open, staring up at the sky, she was no longer seeing it. She was no longer seeing anything.
I dropped to my knees beside my mother’s body. Her blood stained my hands, my clothes, my skin. I didn’t care. My heart was breaking, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces.
At that moment, I welcomed the prince’s sword. Death was the easy, peaceful way out. Death would be a relief.
It was life that was unbearable.
Behind me, I heard the approach of heavy footsteps. Roran would do it quick and clean; he would slice through the back of my neck, and it would be done. I would be gone, like my mother was gone.
But as I closed my eyes, preparing to surrender to my fate, I realised—
I wasn’t ready to die.
I twisted at the last second, rolling out of the way as the sword flashed in a downward arc. The blade embedded into the arena floor, but I was already up and moving, meeting Roran’s stare with searing hatred.
If I could have, I would have damned everything to hell and run at him. But I had a matter of seconds before the soldiers descended, and I needed every one of them.
The audience murmured their confusion as I took a step forward, away from my mother’s body, away from the prince. Every eye in the arena was fixed on me now, the girl marked for death. The girl suddenly refusing to die.
‘I choose to compete,’ I shouted. ‘As the daughter of an Order member, I invoke my right to compete in the Trials!’
If the emperor was surprised, he didn’t show it. He ignored the crowd’s cries, regarding me with an assessing gaze. His pause lingered for what seemed like an eternity, and my heart sank.
Then, slowly and deliberately, he raised a palm. There was power in that single gesture—
The power of life.
My eyes locked with the emperor’s, and I wondered what he saw. I wondered if he realised that it would be a mistake, keeping me alive.
Because I didn’t care what he did to me, or what obstacles he put in my way. I didn’t care about anything except one singular, all-consuming goal—
Making him pay.