Chapter 15

Caris faced Soren's wavering starfire, straining to see Eimarille through it as a strange calm settled over her. Around her, the soldiers that had marched with her through the trenches and the catacombs and those that had arrived later in the streets shouted orders at each other as they readied to fight.

Honovi helped Soren to his feet, the warden looking pale-faced and bruised-eyed. Soren hadn't been as steady since the jail, but there wasn't time to ask how he was doing. Honovi raised his arm, pulling the trigger on a pistol that let loose a marker into the sky, purple smoke exploding over their position.

"What—" Caris gasped out.

"It'll summon a bombing run around us. Caoimhe and the others know to look for it. Come on," Blaine said.

The wall of starfire peeled apart in sections, holes opening. Ashion soldiers scrambled for cover in shattered doorways of buildings along the street and behind Legion-made bulletproof shields. Blaine tried to drag her off the street, but Caris dug in her heels. "No. You can't all keep fighting and dying for me."

She tore free of his grip and raised her hands, palms facing outward, and summoned starfire. It poured out of her, curling to fill in the gaps of Soren's defensive wall. Gunfire erupted on the other side, but no bullets made their way through.

"You need to burn the street where they stand before Eimarille does the same to us," Soren said.

Caris shot him an anguished look. "Nathaniel is back there."

Soren's gaze was implacable, no judgment in his eyes, only a ruthless sort of determination Caris knew she'd never be able to match. "You have to, or we all die."

The choice was taken from her by Eimarille. She could sense the other woman's power sliding along her own, the starfire writhing like a dying beast. Soren swore, his words drowned out by the roar of fire as it suddenly expanded.

Caris frantically tried to keep the starfire at bay, dimly aware of Soren trying to assist. But Eimarille's skill at manipulating the aether proved far better than theirs, and she broke through their attempt to hold her back. The force of the push sent them all flying. Caris crashed into Blaine, who took the brunt of their landing. Her head bounced off his shoulder, heat washing over them and everyone else as they rolled over the street. She lashed out blindly, pushing back against the starfire that threatened to consume them.

She rolled off Blaine, getting shakily to her feet, watching through blurred vision as the starfire twisted and arched over the street, kept at bay by her strength of will. Screams filled the air as a handful of soldiers went up in pillars of starfire before Soren's heavy presence against her awareness blocked any such further attacks from Eimarille. So Eimarille shifted her target—instead of people, every single rifle their side carried burst into flame. Again, Caris felt Soren trying to ward Eimarille off, and when the flames were snuffed out, she rather thought Eimarille had done it, not Soren.

"Tell everyone to get back," Caris said, staring down the street at Eimarille, watching the other woman approach with measured strides, trailed by the Klovod and Nathaniel.

"Caris—" Blaine protested.

"Do it! Soren and I can't fight her if we're worried about keeping all of you alive. You need to find cover."

"My road is your road until I see you on the starfire throne."

She didn't have time to argue with him. Blaine refused to move, and so did Maurus once her order was relayed. The rest of the Royal Guard stayed, too, as did the others. No one left, even when she wished they would. She didn't want any more people to die for her in the fight to see their country freed of Daijal rule.

Honovi seemed to have the same idea as Blaine, refusing to leave Soren's side as the warden met her in the middle of the street. Sweat beaded on his brow, and tremors made his fingers twitch, but Soren didn't look in any danger of collapsing.

"I'll take out their guns and the automatons as they did ours and then focus on the Klovod. The governor wants him alive, if possible," Soren said.

"The rest of us will engage with her soldiers," Maurus said from behind them. "Wardens and magicians up front. Let's keep the enemy away from our queen."

Caris met Soren's eyes, and he stared back at her with a steely determination in them that helped steady her. "Try to get Nathaniel free?—"

She broke off as a shadow passed over them all. She jerked her head around, watching in horror as, with a casual flick of her wrist, Eimarille sent a fast-moving, snaking vortex of starfire toward the airship preparing for a bombing run.

Caris raised her arm toward the sky and desperately tried to redirect the starfire, but she was too late. The airship exploded like a bomb a few streets over, the concussive force of it rattling through the air.

"There will be more attempts," Honovi said grimly.

Soren raised his hands, palm up, fingers spread wide. Starfire flickered to life against his palms, bright like tiny stars. "Good."

Bursts of starfire erupted from his hands into the sky like fireworks, guided by his will, to arc over the street toward the Daijalan force that backed Eimarille. He targeted the automatons first, and Caris made sure Soren would hit them by lashing out at Eimarille.

Caris wielded starfire like a cudgel, forcing Eimarille to defend herself and not the soldiers behind her. The other woman rocked to a halt, arms raised and hands braced against the starfire that sought to surround her. With a twist of power Caris felt in her gut, Eimarille wrenched the starfire from her control, letting it wrap around her arms like a fiery banner.

"You will die here," Eimarille said, even as the automatons behind her exploded from Soren's attack.

Caris swallowed against a desert-dry throat. "No, I won't."

"I was promised a crown. I will not let you take it from me."

It took everything Caris had to hold off Eimarille's next attack, feeling as if all the moisture was sucked out of her body with the starfire the other woman called forth. She staggered, but Blaine kept her upright, never leaving her side. She was only dimly aware of Soren moving away, working to keep Daijalan bullets at bay as he sought to remove their rifles and pistols from the fight. Caris had to trust he and the others could handle the soldiers while she drew Eimarille's attention and ire.

Eimarille's control was better than hers, but their strength in calling forth starfire was about equal. Caris kept it at bay from herself and Blaine and did her best to keep Eimarille's attacks from reaching the others.

With guns out of play and automatons melted to scrap, soldiers resorted to close and deadly fighting, with the wardens and their poison grenades taking the lead. A circle of starfire kept them all at bay, trapped on the outside while Caris faced the woman who would have been her older sister in some other life, down some other road.

"Eimarille, please! You rule Daijal. Can't that be enough?" Caris asked desperately as starfire twisted between them like stormy waves of searing heat.

"I am Rourke. Ashion is mine by right of blood," Eimarille spat back.

"You can't reason with her, so don't try," Blaine said from behind Caris, guarding her back with Honovi.

"Did you hope to rule with your Blade?" Soren called out from where he was fighting with the Klovod, their poison short swords clashing against each other in a furious duel.

Eimarille went deathly still at his words, fingers curled like claws around flickers of starfire. "What have you done?"

"I killed her."

If grief had a sound, Caris thought it would have resembled the terrible, wordless scream that escaped Eimarille's throat just then. Eimarille rounded on Soren, thrusting one arm toward him and releasing an inferno of starfire that consumed the area he and the Klovod fought in.

"Soren!" Caris shouted.

Eimarille turned again to face her, white-faced with grief and rage, gray-blue eyes glimmering with tears that reflected the light of starfire surrounding her. "If I must live without my love, then so will you."

The threat had Caris running before she even knew she was moving. "Nathaniel!"

She was ready to push back against starfire, to keep him from burning to ash, but it wasn't his body she needed to protect—it was his clockwork metal heart.

Eimarille yanked free a clarion crystal rod from where it hung from her belt. Caris recognized the song of it only because she was close enough now to hear it, the notes the same as the one that sang inside Nathaniel's chest, ever a comfort to her. When Eimarille dropped the clarion crystal onto the ground and slammed her boot heel down on it, that precious song broke.

Nathaniel staggered forward, like a puppet with its strings cut, both hands going to his chest. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. The world went quiet, and Caris didn't know she was screaming until sound rushed back to her like a cresting wave hitting the shore.

"Nathaniel!"

Caris fell to her knees beside him, heedless of Eimarille at her back, of anything but the man she gathered into her arms. He was seizing, fingers clawing at his chest, eyes full of a terrified horror as he stared up at her.

"Caris," he gasped out, struggling to breathe.

She could hear the discordant notes of shattered clarion crystal emanating from his clockwork metal heart, the self-destruct spell having been activated by Eimarille's actions. The threads of Ksenia's magic that had held back the Klovod's control were still present but rapidly fading as the mechanics and alchemy and magic that had kept Nathaniel alive since being turned into a rionetka broke apart.

"You'll be okay," Caris gasped out, lifting one shaking hand to push his hair away from his eyes as she clutched him close. "The wardens can save you, I know they can."

"No, they can't," Eimarille said, heat growing at Caris' back from a summoning of starfire. "And no one will?—"

Eimarille broke off with a wet gurgle, the silence that followed her unfinished words enough to momentarily wrench Caris' attention away from Nathaniel. She glanced over her shoulder, watching as Soren slid his poison short sword free of Eimarille's chest. He'd stabbed her in the back and didn't bother to catch their sister's body as it fell to the ground.

Soren stared at Caris through fading starfire, something like pity in his gray eyes. "She was right. There's no alchemy in the world that can save him."

Caris choked on an ugly, cracked sound before the world blurred from her tears. She turned her head around, staring down into Nathaniel's rapidly paling face as the fight amongst the soldiers around them raged on beyond the ring of defensive starfire Soren held up, the screams of denial from the Daijalans ringing through the air. All of it seemed so distant in that moment as she held Nathaniel close, her tears falling onto his face to mingle with his.

"Please don't leave me," Caris begged.

Nathaniel's shaking hand curled over her wrist, fingers resting against her pulse, his grip barely even there. "My darling, I love you, and I would have lived for you, but there is no living with a broken heart like mine."

"I love you," she said, voice cracking around the sob that tore through her, fingers pressed to his throat, searching for a pulse that was fading away like the last bits of magic giving him unnatural life. Nathaniel had promised her, once before, that he would love her until his heart broke, and he kept that promise to the end of his road, there in her arms. "I will walk this road for the both of us."

"You will make a grand queen. I so wish… I could have seen it."

Nathaniel's mouth curled into a smile that had only ever been for her, the fractured song in his broken clockwork metal heart fading into nothing, its silence ringing in her ears as he slipped away into a peace she could not follow.

Caris stroked his cheek, staring into eyes that saw no more, and choked on her breath, on her tears, on the grief that welled up in her like a bitter funeral dirge. When she opened her mouth, nothing came out but a scream that matched Eimarille's in its wretchedness of knowing one would have to live a life alone.

"Caris," Blaine said from far away. "You have to let him go."

"No," she cried into Nathaniel's hair, clutching at him, at everything she'd hoped to keep after the war and would now no longer have. "No!"

Strong hands gripped her wrists, and she fought them, not wanting to let Nathaniel go, but they pulled her away from him anyway. She keened, some animalistic sound of loss that carried no words. Blaine's face, when she finally recognized who held her, was full of grief and sorrow.

"Honovi will watch over him, but we have to get you to the starfire throne."

She hated Blaine in that moment for asking her to leave behind the only man she'd ever loved. For reminding her of the fighting still happening in the capital and outside it, of the war that had been fought in her name and Eimarille's, and all the death that lay in the wake of her road—a road that was much lonelier than it had ever been before. But if she turned away now, it would be a betrayal to everything and everyone she'd lost, to all the newly empty spaces in her own broken heart.

So Caris let Blaine pull her to her feet, let him carry her forward while she carried her burdens and grief. She leaned against him, staring blankly at the pool of blood spreading away from Eimarille's body, too tired and heart-sore for hate to take root.

"Why?" Caris asked, voice raw from screaming, throat burning from overuse.

"I don't think we'll ever know," Blaine said quietly.

Soren held out his hand to her, his poison short sword still dripping with their sister's heart's blood. The Klovod lay sprawled on the ground some distance away; alive or dead, she couldn't tell. "Come. You have a duty."

She didn't want it. She never had. But Caris still took his steady hand with hers that shook. Soren gave it a careful squeeze before leading her out of the circle of starfire he'd been holding up. Caris looked back at where Nathaniel lay at Honovi's feet as Soren burned their way forward, until Blaine urged her to turn away. "Your road leads ahead, not behind."

Caris was barely cognizant of their run to the public park that held the starfire throne, their soldiers pushing Eimarille's back. It burned there in the remnants of the old palace's throne room, a beacon that had set the course of war before Caris had even known she was Rourke. But she knew who she was now—grief-stricken and broken-hearted, but a Rourke, forever and always.

When she finally stood before the starfire throne, that seat of power that had torn her life apart since her birth, whether she'd known it or not, Caris wanted to look away. She'd lived her entire life in the shadow of the shattered legacy it provided, walking a road that was always going to return to it. "I don't want it."

"I know," Blaine replied, quiet and sad. "I'm sorry."

Caris let go of her brother and her witness, walking forward on a road she'd only ever walk alone from here on out. She approached the starfire throne with stumbling steps, the heat of that ever-burning decree drying her tears. She came to a stop in front of it, holding out a hand so that her fingers trembled a hairsbreadth from a star god's eternal power.

Caris pressed her lips together and stepped into starfire, pushing the searing heat aside, making space to sit on the throne. Starfire flared bright and hot and golden all around her, blocking out the world for a moment. Then it sputtered and died out, leaving behind the throne and Caris and a kingdom that was now hers alone to rule. She stared at Soren and Blaine, at the remnants of their soldiers approaching, at the desperately wounded Daijalans beyond, all of them bearing witness to her right by blood.

Then Caris bent over her knees, held her head in her hands, and cried.