Chapter Thirty-Five The Lady’s Guide to Escape

"I want someone to believe in so badly. I know it's not wise to believe in you," murmured Lia. "I will anyway."

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

E mer and Lia ran down the secret tunnel out of the palace. Frantic sobs erupted from Lia's throat, but Emer pulled her along. She wouldn't betray either of them again. This time, she wouldn't let Lia go.

"Wait," Lia gasped, through her sobs. "Behind us!"

The light at the end of the tunnel was the eerie burning sky. Emer dragged her another few paces, but Lia wrenched herself free with a burst of strength.

"My lady, we cannot go back!"

As Emer spoke, the ghoul lunged. Emer hurled herself in front of Lia, shielding Lia with her body. The ghoul knocked them both down. In life, he must have been a big man. He was heavy atop Emer, huge cold hands tugging at her wrists as if he was a child trying to pull her along on the playground. Lia screamed and scrabbled backwards in the debris of the tunnel, rolling out from the tangle of limbs and away. When the ghoul opened his mouth, there was no breath, only the scent of decaying innards.

" Rahela ," the ghoul crooned.

Lia grabbed the ghoul's rotted collar and yanked him off Emer. Moss-tipped fingertips left cold slimy traces like slug trails on her skin, but he didn't succeed in grasping Emer before she scrambled to her feet. Once Emer was up, she raised her axe and gave the ghoul as many whacks as it took to keep him down.

"He wasn't trying to bite you," Lia whispered. "He was trying to drag you back."

For whatever punishment the Emperor had in mind. Emer shuddered and headed determinedly to the mouth of the tunnel.

Their great escape had led them to a roof overhanging the Cauldron, that notorious den of sinners and thieves. The battle seemed to be over, though Emer didn't know whether the raiders had surrendered or been killed. Perhaps both living armies had been torn to pieces by the dead. The blood-slick streets were hushed, lost under a red haze of magic. Faraway sounds of eerie rejoicing mingled with the clotted muttering of the dead.

Beyond the Cauldron lay the remnants of the ravine's rising. Among rocks blackened as burned-out coals in a grate, the dead were teeming.

For a fleeting moment Emer thought she saw Lord Marius, but even at this distance there was something wrong with his eyes. One instant he seemed a tall powerful man with ice-and-night hair, the next a shadow, the next a flame, until she began to doubt if she saw anything at all. Beside the shifting presence walked a young man with fox-fire hair, his snow-pale face strangely familiar. Keen-eyed though she was, Emer's vision blurred as though she stared too long into the sun. When she blinked, there were only shadows and the dead.

Beyond the grey city walls was a long line of people escaping to the mountains. She and Lia could join the refugees. It wasn't a future Emer had pictured for herself, fleeing the city with the fairest of them all. If anyone had ever told Emer this would come to pass, she wouldn't have believed them. Now that future lay before her like a bright road.

When she turned to Lia, Lia's shining face was clouded.

"That ghoul said ‘ Rahela '," Lia mused, in her sweet clever voice. "I heard the other ghouls outside the throne room door. Emer, they were all saying her name."

Her lady Rae had said, He is coming. When he does, he will be the Emperor. I'm the traitor. I'm the one he hates the most.

He hated her enough to put her name in the mouths of hungry ghouls. His rage was splitting the sky. Emer was terrified for Rae, but Emer had been terrified and helpless before.

Emer said roughly, "She's as good as dead."

"All I ever wanted was a family," Lia said. "Now she's my family. She's willing to die to prove it. I won't let her! I know how men think. He won't kill her. He'll keep her to torment. I can rescue her."

Emer was suddenly furious. "There's no need to always be good and forgiving! She betrayed you. So did I. She's being punished. That's how it should be."

She'd never let herself shout at Lia before. She was ashamed to even face her, and now she realized that somewhere in the back of her mind she'd believed the story everyone told about Lia: that she was too fragile, that real emotion would make her crumple to pieces.

Instead, Lia's eyes reflected the strange lightning in the sky. Twin blue fires burned in the pearl of her face.

"Thus, I should never trust anyone?" demanded Lia. "Then she dies alone, and someday so do I. If I believe she's my sister, if she believes it, doesn't that make it true? When you pretended to care for me, I believed in you. Did you ever believe in me?"

Emer had built a cage for those memories, locked the door, and refused to let them out. Now with a soft question, the memories escaped like unchained monsters. Sharing a bed, sharing secrets, knowing she must betray one woman she cared for or the other. How Emer had hated herself, and hated the whole world.

She'd refused to let herself even look at Lia. Now, Lia gazed up at her. Emer's lies burned away under the clear light of those eyes.

The fairest of them all. The irresistible one. Emer believed every story men told about her, because Emer felt that way too.

Emer confessed, "I didn't want to be a fool like everyone else. I wanted to be iron, but you were the only thing that made me a fool. You're the only story I ever believed in."

The smile that touched Lia's mouth was magic, making her impossibly more beautiful. She cupped Emer's face in her lily-petal lady's hands and drew her down into a soft kiss that left Emer more dazed than the hardest of blows.

Even in the darkest night and the scarlet storm, Lia made it seem like sunlight would return.

"She saved me. Now I'll save her. Come," murmured Lia. "I know someone in the Cauldron who will help us. I have a plan."

Hand in hand, they found a way down from the roof together. The iron maid and the pearl went hunting through streets of sinners and thieves.