Chapter 31

The cell door rattles loudly, stirring Calla from her sleep. Blearily, she turns toward the bars, rubbing her eyes until the world clears. Reality comes barreling back. The arena. Anton. King Kasa, his head rolling away so easily.

Calla closes her eyes again, trying to grasp the last remnants of the sleep she has emerged from. The world was brighter there. If she falls back into the dream now, maybe she won’t feel this agony clawing at her chest. Maybe she would feel less cold, could stop shivering from her very soul.

Shoes click into the cell, then the rustle of clothing. Fingertips, padding lightly at her shoulder, giving her a firm shake.

“Princess Calla, would you kindly awaken?”

“No,” Calla murmurs. Her voice scratches at her throat.

“You are needed,” Galipei continues. “I don’t want to have to drag you.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Calla lets the cell take shape around her again, eyeing the gray walls and the single lightbulb on the low ceiling. “I was dreaming.”

“Dreaming?” Galipei looks around too. His uniform is crisp, the collar ironed and pressed cleanly to his neck. No one could have known it was slathered in blood the previous day. “About what?”

Calla swallows hard. Afar, some other cell is being drawn open, the metallic clank of its bars echoing loudly in the underground space.

“I dreamt there was an emperor Anton,” she whispers, almost incoherently. The wisps of the dream come back to her in a haze of colors, in jewels and thrones and golden-wrought crowns. “Let me slumber once more, to see him.”

“All right. Up we get.”

Galipei yanks her arm and tugs her out of the prison bed. She stumbles after him without much resistance, one foot after the other as they pass the other cells, the other prisoners in their shabby rags and chained ankles. They don’t bother shouting after her when she walks by. They have been exhausted into submission, nothing but piles of bones collapsed at the foot of a bed or atop the dirty sheets, staring with empty eyes. Will August let them out? Will August start liberation from within the palace first, or will he stretch out into the provinces, starting at the edges before sweeping back into San-Er?

Calla stumbles on the steps leading up to the exit.

“Hey, hey,” Galipei exclaims immediately. “Don’t try any funny business.”

“Why would I?” Calla replies warily, straightening and finding her footing again. She dusts her hands off. “I thought August only needed me in here until he took power.”

“Well, yes,” Galipei mutters. He shoots a look over his shoulder, then continues hurrying her along. “I’ve just never seen you stumble before. Forgive me if my suspicions were raised.”

They emerge from the passage, walking through a set of doors that the palace guards hold open, eyes trained on Calla as she’s pulled along. Aboveground now, she winces against the light. Brightness shines through a palace window, leaving a four-panel design on the red carpet. Under Calla’s heavy shoes, the flooring feels like it might give way. Like she could stomp a little too hard, and the soft padding might split in two, breaking a hole through the palace so she falls all the way down.

“There’s a first time for everything,” Calla says quietly, and she wishes the palace would crumble beneath her feet. The ground ought to do her a favor, open a hole and swallow her up, crush her lungs until she stops breathing, plug up her nose and mouth with rubble and dust. King Kasa is dead. Her role in this is fulfilled. The exit light of her world is flashing, blinking neon like the ones that light every hospital corridor. She’s ready to join the lover she put in the grave.

Calla’s hand twitches as she continues to follow Galipei. Not here, she decides, easing her fingers away from her body. She swallows and moves her tongue to rest at the bottom of her mouth too, away from her sharp teeth, the veins there throbbing as if they know how easily she could bite them open.

When August is crowned, he will free her. She’ll leave the twin cities, keep walking to the edges of Talin until she sees the true sea. She doesn’t want the rocky shores in San-Er. Elsewhere, they have talked of sand and smooth, polished stone. There, she can have her choice. She could spill her own blood, run a blade down her arm and let the beaches run with red until a gradient spreads along the golden sand. She could sweep out with the water, wash away into the wide, open world. It doesn’t matter how. As long as it takes her. As long as it brings her to Anton.

Galipei stops before a wide set of doors, knocking once. Before Calla can search her memory for which part of the palace this is and who he’s taking her to see, the doors have already opened. A dozen palace servants stand inside, towels and clothes clutched and readied in their hands. They pull her into the room, their grips firm, muttering amid themselves.

Calla lets them examine her without protest. August must have seized power by now, must have sent instructions through the palace to prepare for the crowning ceremony, inviting San-Er’s civilians to come witness a new divine choosing when the crown is set on his head. The people inside the palace have always been loyal to him anyway. There couldn’t possibly have been any dissent. She wonders if he has also confirmed her return.

“So this is Princess Calla,” one of the servants says. There’s her answer. Of course he would have jumped to the announcement, to assure the people that this violence could only be expected of someone who was already an outlaw. “She looks half-dead.”

A brave soul, to say so in Calla’s presence. Or perhaps the elderly woman who spoke has no hesitation because it is the truth: Calla barely has the strength to stand upright, never mind take offense.

“That’s her own fault. We didn’t do anything to her down there,” Galipei replies. His hand lifts, then pauses in hesitation. A beat later, he sets it down on Calla’s shoulder. “His Highness wants her ready in an hour. Can you get it done?”

The servant huffs a breath. “Yes. That’s not a concern.”

Galipei removes his hand. He clears his throat, as if to confirm with Calla that he shall step back now, but Calla doesn’t turn nor look at him at all. Soon his footsteps thud away, and Calla only eyes the woman standing before her. She is short and stout, white hair pulled in a tight knot. When she grabs Calla by the wrist, her hold is surprisingly sturdy.

The other servants part to make way as Calla is pushed into the wide bathing hall. They fan out to run the faucets, powder the clothes, activate the steam. They sidestep and charge ahead, quiet when they need to be and yelling instructions back and forth on matters that need deliberation. Calla is passed around: one station to the other, clothes peeled off and skin scrubbed until she’s red. She tries to take in their faces without letting them blur together, but there’s something about the palace uniform that muddles the servants together. If they cannot stand apart from each other, they cannot lose their life with one mistake. When August moves onto the throne, will he tear down the palace? Dismiss the palace servants, give them new jobs, tell the councilmembers that no one will wait on them any longer inside these walls, that they must learn to wipe their own dirty behinds?

Maybe she’s giving August too much credit. She can’t imagine what his next move is. Perhaps she should have asked, but the two of them were so intent on their one mutual goal—King Kasa dead and gone—that it hardly seemed to matter what would come next.

Maybe that was a mistake.

Calla winces suddenly, one of the cleaning rags digging hard into her shoulder blade. The servant doesn’t pause, even when Calla glares up at her. They don’t fear her. They see the dried blood in the lines of her hands and dotting the edges of her collarbone and wipe it away without blinking.

“This way, Princess.”

The old servant has returned, directing the others. Wrapped in robes, Calla is pushed out of the bathing hall and into the room, shoved in front of a long, glimmering mirror. The glass is clear enough that every mote of dust in the room is visible in the reflection, haloing around her head as she disturbs the chair cushion. She hardly recognizes herself—if this body has ever been recognizable. These sharp cheeks and deep-yellow eyes. Surrounded by an overabundance of red curtains and golden statues along the walls. Calla glides her hands along the smooth wood of the vanity table and marvels at the heaviness of the furniture, like she is eight years old again and newly in the palace, wanting to keep up the pretense of being a princess but unable to push back the astonishment that gnaws like a sickness in her throat. She runs her bare foot along the plush rectangular rug that hems the room, burying her toes into the threads while they tear her wet hair into shape, untangling the knots and dried blood clots by simply ripping them out.

The elderly servant clears her throat.

“In the palace here,” she says, speaking to Calla properly now, “we had given you an alias. That way, the king would not know we were discussing you, discussing Er’s downfall and how it would take so little to bring San into the same fate.” She takes ahold of Calla’s hair and begins to braid, wrapping a loose chain through the dark strands as she goes. The metal glimmers in the mirror, shining with hidden gems.

“ Glory of Her Father ,” she continues. “As far as King Kasa knew, it was some village girl from the folktales whom the poor servants loved dearly. A country girl who had performed filial deeds and would be remembered forever. Remember Glory of Her Father. Remember her sacrifice. Remember that we must keep going and going until she returns. The elites in the palace thought you were some god, some minor deity we prayed to on our shrines. But you were out there, real and pumping with blood, lurking within the city.”

Calla tries to nudge the braid when the servant pins it atop her head, but the woman tuts and flicks her hand away, then secures the circular loop from the base of her skull to the top of her forehead.

“I took a sword to my father,” Calla replies quietly. “It was no glory to him when I forcibly removed his life and his power.”

“It was not your father you brought glory to. It was your fatherland. Your kingdom. Talin. You did what we needed.”

The servant takes a step back. The others bustling around her pause too, admiring the crown of hair that has been pulled up, not a single strand out of place. Calla closes her fist in the folds of the robes, scrunching the fabric into her fingers. What would happen if they knew? That her father was not her father at all, that their king in Er was no one to her, that the fire burning in her chest had first been set ablaze in a starving, rotting village out in the farthest reaches of Talin?

They would find her less brave, certainly. If they knew that she was no royal who went against her blood, only a country girl who had found power and seized it without mercy. They would think it was her duty, that any person in her position should have done the very same.

The servant brings a small brush near Calla’s face, dabbing at her pale cheek. “Do you have any suggestions?”

It takes Calla a moment to realize that the woman is referring to the cosmetics. Brushes and powders have been brought near and within her reach.

“What’s the point?” Calla asks dully. Her voice still scratches at her throat. “I gather no one is looking at me.”

“On the contrary, everyone will be looking at you.”

They spritz something into her face. She shuts her eyes. She can’t let the tears start running again, or they might never stop.

“There is no need to use an alias anymore,” the servant says softly. Her voice is almost drowned out by the chatter behind her, by the heavy swishing of curtains as they are drawn back. “Every wing of this palace is filled with talk about the princess. Or rather, no one is calling you a princess anymore.”

The brush presses in hard. Calla welcomes it. The sting goes right down to bone, tingling with a chill.

“And what do they call me?”

Her cheek smarts from the pressure. There has been a decorative design drawn in, a whorl moving from the line of her jaw to the side of her brow. When she opens her eyes, she’s staring at someone else in the mirror, at a Calla who was never exiled from Er, at a Calla who spent the last five years within these walls, surrounded by opulence and molded into the image of power.

The servant’s hands close in on her shoulders. She presses down, gripping at skin that has already been rubbed raw.

“ King-Killer, ” she hisses. “Live up to it.”

Quicker than a blink, they have Calla up again, shoved into a shirt made of white silk and pants made of something that looks like the unpolluted night sky. Three corridors, four, five—one corner bend, two small staircases, and then a door, arched with a golden frame that ends a hairsbreadth away from the ceiling. They push in, and the throne room unveils before her, clustered with knickknacks and swirling with a breeze from the open balcony doors.

It was foolish of Calla to think that she might have been able to gain access to this room if the palace was distracted by the arena. It would have been an impossibility. As August said, there was never any alternative to the plan they had started with, the plan they have executed.

Calla walks in. They gave her new boots, smaller than the ones she wore before. Her steps are more delicate. Outside the balcony, the masses have already gathered. She can hear them calling for August, shouting their blessings.

“August?”

She searches the room once over. She misses him at first. He stands at the far side, almost in the corner, staring at an oil painting hanging from the shimmering wallpaper. It’s not until Calla does a second scan that she catches sight of his golden-robed back, blending in with the rest of the room.

There’s no doubt that he is royalty. There’s no doubt that he belongs here, no matter where his birth put him.

“Princess,” someone whispers over her shoulder, and Calla turns around. The servant nods at her and indicates his hands, where a headdress awaits on a pillow—the king’s crown. The divine right of kings: nothing but two twined prongs of metal. If there’s supposed to be an exorbitant amount of qi inside this crown to choose its ruler, Calla cannot feel it at all.

“August,” Calla prompts again. She wants this done. She wants him crowned and declared, so he can pardon her and she can be freed from these games, freed from San-Er, freed from Talin. They call her King-Killer and ask her to live up to it, but she already has. August is the most fit to rule. Calla has done her part. She will give him the power he needs to fix this kingdom.

August steps away from the painting. He clasps his hands behind his back, then turns in a quick pivot, eyes snapping to meet hers across the throne room. She expected glee. She expected pride. Instead, when their gazes collide, she finds barely concealed fury, and it is potent enough that Calla jolts from the fog in her head to wonder if she has done something wrong.

Before she can ask, August has already walked up to her, his expression smoothed over. His forehead is dusted in gold, his black eyes appearing as two colorless voids. Maybe Calla is imagining it. She’s hardly in the right state of mind.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“Ready.”

Calla bites down hard on her teeth. Releases her breath. “Very well.”

She steps onto the balcony first, and the crowd stirs with vigor. Calla tries not to flinch at the attention. It is sundown, the skies colored with an orange glow—rare these days, with the clouds so thick. Each civilian below is cast in a strange tinge, like their skin is on fire, the entire crowd one match strike away from combustion.

August steps onto the balcony too, and then the crowd properly erupts. August, August, August, they chant, but amid it all, there is another name to be heard too. Calla.

Forget your name and adopt a title instead, Anton had said. Calla. Calla. Calla. Soon people will be saying it as they whisper God.

Calla shakes the thought away before it can haunt her.

I will beg your forgiveness in whatever afterlife awaits us, she thinks into the fading twilight. Wait for me. I’ll show myself the same violence if it puts us on even ground once more.

Calla turns to the servant behind her and takes the crown off the pillow. It feels painfully cold to her fingers. Still, her grip is steady when she holds the crown high, when she sets it atop August’s head.

The both of them pause in anticipation. They wait. For divine intervention, for lightning to strike down.

Nothing comes.

He’s been accepted.

The crown has accepted Talin’s newest ruler. Calla’s breath comes out in one long exhale.

“The king is dead,” she bellows to the crowd. Her voice doesn’t waver. When she holds her hand out for August to take, he is prompt, putting his palm atop hers for her to raise high, high, high. “Long live the king!”

Long live the king, the crowd echoes back, and Calla thinks she hears it from behind too, from the servants awaiting in the throne room, from the guards stationed in the hallway outside. Again and again, they continue to repeat themselves: Long live the king, long live the king, long live the king ten thousand years.

“They will write this day into our history for a long time to come,” Calla says quietly, speaking only to August as the crowd keeps chanting. “The day the palace finished flooding with blood and the adopted son rose from its guts.”

The wind blows hard into her face. It curls against her neck, disturbing the hair that had been so painstakingly arranged.

“Yes,” August says. Calla shoots a sharp look at him. This time, she knows she’s not imagining things. She’s not imagining the anger that accompanies the grip she feels closing on her palm.

“August.” She winces, trying to move her hand.

“It will be remembered,” he goes on, like he doesn’t hear her. “And what fine daylight we have today to ensure its longevity in their memory.”

Calla freezes. Her breath leaves her in a rush. Every muscle in her body locks, her mind stuttering to a complete and utter halt as the crowds shout their chorus below them. San-Er fades away, the calls and summons shrinking smaller and smaller until they are naught but a tinny whine. All she can feel is an immense pressure on her hand, tightening to a vise under her new king’s grip.

Night is falling. Across the palace, the electric lights activate, each bulb blinking on one after the other. The crown glimmers. Its metal entwines with blond hair, making for a familiar sight. But then its wearer turns his head toward her, letting her catch his eyes at last—fully, properly.

It is not August Shenzhi, the rightful crown prince of San, that Calla has put on the throne.

It is Anton Makusa.