Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

The city is gated. Although Calla can see between the gaps of its tall bars, dirt has clumped around the structure over the centuries, sticking to the hinges and rusting over the latches. It would be quicker to climb to the top using the dirt mounds as support rather than attempt to pull the latch open.

She’s scrambled up the bars in seconds, then leaps onto the other side with a hard crunch on the gravel. The half-moon is sufficient to light her way. The city streets take shape before her, glowing faintly with the yellow brightness coming from her own eyes.

The whine in her ears prompts her to keep going. No time to linger. She needs to find Otta, and then she’s going to bash her head in until Otta tells her how she can stop her head from doing this.

Sinoa… don’t do… to me…

The voices are persistent. Calla swallows hard, pressing down on her sword while she runs so it doesn’t make noise knocking against her leg. The streets here are far wider than San-Er’s. While she moves fast, the buildings stand sentry on both sides. Some windows have been smashed in, others smeared with enough dirt to turn them opaque. There aren’t electric signs anywhere in sight. Stone tiles pave the roads, leaving enough room to push wooden barrows. One has been parked outside a white door.

“Otta,” Calla ventures, “I’m here. Come out.”

Silence. She slows. The structural damage worsens the deeper she goes into the city. A shopfront marked with PHARMACY is half caved in. A door on its other side appears to be the entrance into a residential block, the paper billing at the front asking prospective tenants to call a short number. Calla tilts her head. So it hasn’t been long enough that the paper has rotted. Yet it has been long enough that the phone towers have since gone down in the provinces. This city was emptied before the war, not after.

A howl travels through the night. Some mixture between animal and the cold sting of wind. Calla has to suppress the shiver dancing down her neck. The provinces are too large, too wide. San-Er guarantees every threat is forced into close proximity, but out beyond the wall, in the arena of the grand kingdom, someone could be waiting for an immeasurable amount of time before playing their hand.

Sinoa… I won’t let you…

Calla’s breath comes short. She can’t hold on to one thought for long; the pain is all-encompassing. Maybe Otta is trying to kill her. Maybe this is how she deteriorates until she goes entirely insane and runs herself through with her sword.

“What do you want ?”

Calla draws her sword and swings. She only cuts through air, the whistle of her blade joining the night chorus.

Fuck. Fuck .

Forward she goes. Her vision blurs. She stumbles down alleys and up hills. Barely keeps her balance on descending stone steps and finally hurls herself into a pillar for something to clutch to. This cannot continue, but Calla can’t return to the campsite like this, nor can she admit to anyone that something is wrong. They would investigate. They would figure out that she’s doubled. That she has occupied someone else for the entire life she remembers—and there’s no reason she deserves the power she has.

Her fingers come off the pillar covered in ash. When Calla looks ahead and focuses, she recognizes the shape of the building before her as a temple. Its columns smolder white under the moon. The overhanging, upcurved eaves glitter gold.

“Please,” she manages aloud. If there are gods in this world, she’s begging for relief.

Calla staggers toward the temple, her foot crossing where dirt turns to marble flooring. She feels qi pulse the air around her. The thrumming behind her eyes sears with the physical press of a knifepoint.

Long live Her Majesty, a scream calls in her head, suddenly as clear as day. It’s a chorus of voices in unison, not from this temple but from across the city, echoing and echoing. Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years. May our sacrifice give her new life. May she be reborn, and win the war once our enemies have perished.

Calla falls to her knees. Her sword scrapes against marble, brushing away a thin film of ash. There’s color beneath, an inlay built into the base before the steps begin. She barely has the conscious capacity to make the decision, and yet she finds herself swiping at the ash, scratching and brushing until the image is clear.

She doesn’t understand.

This is her face, staring back at her from the very composition of the temple floor. It’s an impossibility. Calla today may be an invader, but Princess Calla Tuoleimi was still born like any other child, eight years before a girl from Rincun jumped in.

Calla clears the ash below her face.

SINOA TUOLEIMI QUEEN OF THE PALACE OF HEAVENS

This must be a hallucination. She can’t rein in the pain anymore. Something is trying to tear her apart from the inside out. She’s going to die if she doesn’t stop it.

“Calla, stay right there.”

The night floods with yellow. Her chest shudders. The new sigil on her arm feels entirely aflame, as though she might possess the raging sun in her bones.

“Galipei?”

He comes into view. His sword is drawn. “Hands up.”

Long live Her Majesty. Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years. Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years. Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years. Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years—

“Shut up!” Calla gasps, clasping her ears. “ Please. ”

You’ll never win this war. The blood will be on your hands. The land will be lost—

“Calla Tuoleimi,” Galipei bellows, “you have three seconds to surrender yourself before I bring you in by force.”

The south is lost. Yi has burned. You have nothing but—

“One.”

Sinoa, I will never see you again.

“Two.”

Long live Her Eternal Majesty.

“Thr—”

For the first time in fifteen years, Calla jumps.