Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Midnight strikes in the Palace of Union. Floor by floor, the electric lights flicker on when they sense movement cutting through the sleeping hallways, chasing away the hazy indigo for Anton to march through the north wing, his heart pounding in his ears.

It’s Otta. She’s here.

The moment he had access to the royal vault, Anton made sure that Otta’s medical bills were paid, made sure there wasn’t anything outstanding that could prompt the hospital to clear her bed when they couldn’t reach him. He hasn’t checked in on her otherwise—he’s been a little preoccupied—but he couldn’t have imagined that she would wake up . The yaisu sickness is incurable. The doctors have never changed their tune. Although she wouldn’t get better, she wouldn’t get worse. A lifelong coma was no consolation, but it was still enough for Anton to clutch to, day after day. At least he had her. At least she wasn’t entirely gone.

“August, one moment.”

Galipei is calling after him. Just now in the surveillance room, Anton was quick to react, pushing into the corridor to make his way to the infirmary and see for himself. Calla has either taken another route or decided not to check on this matter, because it’s only the palace guard at his heels. And Galipei. Galipei, incessantly needing to speak to him, even while Anton was holed up in his quarters, unwilling to see visitors all evening. Honestly, Galipei should have just passed the message to a guard on duty instead of asserting self-importance, instead of waiting around the hallways for a personal conversation and delaying delivery because Anton exited his quarters in the other direction to avoid him. Look at how quickly news about Calla’s arrival in the palace breached a straight line into his ear as soon as the guards on duty started muttering with the rumors.

“It can wait, surely,” Anton says.

When Galipei finally catches up, his posture is stiff and his shoulders are slouched. Anton understands the restlessness, the confusion spilling off him. But Galipei Weisanna does not yet suspect that his charge has been invaded. Anton needs to keep it that way.

“It cannot,” Galipei intones, lowering his voice so only Anton can hear him. “I’m sorry, August. But at least Kasa is gone. Even if she tells someone—”

Anton should know better than to react. Unfortunately, he isn’t quick enough to stop himself from giving Galipei a bewildered look, and Galipei cuts himself off midsentence. In that gesture alone, Galipei must know something isn’t right. Before he’s noticed the precise color of Anton’s eyes, before he’s registered any of Anton’s strangeness in August’s body, he’s picked up on this one discrepancy, and Galipei simply stops talking.

“Did you bring her here?” Anton asks, trying to smooth over his error. Did you have something to do with this? he wants to ask instead. Did August?

“Not my doing,” Galipei says shortly.

Anton pulls his loose sleeves back. All this fabric, gathering at his elbows, restricting his every movement. He’s practically choking in it, the silk and the gold, the layers and the cover-ups.

Two guards pull open the doors to the infirmary. Inside, the clinical space is twice as large as any of the palace bedrooms, and for a moment, Anton doesn’t even know where to look. He steps in. The soft, warm-hued bulbs on the walls illuminate the room with small circles, mimicking candlelight. Piles of blackened towels sit in the corner. Blood. He smells it despite the stink of bleach emanating from the marble floors too.

She almost blends in with the sheets. In the farthest bed by the red-curtained window, there’s the shape of Otta Avia, her black hair poking out from the white. It’s a familiar sight: an unmoving Otta, connected to the tubes and lines that keep her affixed to her last gasp of life.

Except here, there’s nothing attached to her.

Here, when he draws to a stop at her bedside, her eyes fly open.

“Otta,” he says; he exalts. He doesn’t realize he’s dropped to his knees until he feels the faint echo of pain.

Otta sits up hesitantly. Their eyes lock, and in the flickering light, it appears that her irises are yellow instead. He thinks of Calla, off elsewhere in the palace. When Otta blinks, her eyes return to the same black shade they’ve always been. Perhaps , Anton considers dimly, this is an imposter . It would be more believable that someone has conducted dirty work and planted a fraud in the palace. That they manipulated qi to invade Otta’s dying body. Far more believable than Otta Avia suddenly awake and well again.

Then Otta takes a stuttering breath, her tears welling over in an instant, and Anton doesn’t need to bring the firelight close to erase his doubts. Seven years later, fresh out of an eternal sleep, and she can still summon tears on demand. His vision distorts and blurs, trying to reconcile the present before him with the memories he has replayed over and over: of the days when they got in trouble across the palace, caught in someone’s quarters, found where they weren’t supposed to be, and Otta always got them out scot-free with the howl of her crying.

“Hey, hey, you’re all right,” he urges. “You’re safe, Otta.”

He reaches to cup her face. He’s afraid that if he presses too hard, she’ll disintegrate like a drawing in sand, but Otta is firm beneath him. Her sobs ease, a flash of confusion deepening the line between her brows.

“I hear you woke in the morgue,” Galipei says from behind Anton’s shoulder. “That must have been frightening.”

Otta sniffles. “It was so awful,” she whispers. “All I could see was darkness. I felt the fire.”

“The fire?” Anton echoes. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” She twitches, then nudges Anton’s hand away. “Don’t ask me to explain. I don’t know!”

The infirmary is cold. Anton doesn’t know why he’s only noticing it now. It prickles his skin, up and down his arms. He glances over his shoulder, silently warning Galipei not to say anything more. Galipei, unrepentant, folds his arms across his chest.

“We will have to investigate further,” Galipei says anyway. “It’s nothing short of a medical marvel to wake from the yaisu sickness. Northeast Hospital will want to run tests and see what happened.”

“What?” Otta’s eyes well up again. “You’re going to send me back there?”

“We’re not sending you back there,” Anton says. Almost instinctively, he tries to take Otta’s hand, and she tenses, pulling away. He’s taken aback for a moment. Then Galipei says, “August. You’ve got company incoming,” and Anton remembers. He’s August Shenzhi, Talin’s newly crowned king. This isn’t his first love before him. It is his half sister, and he should act like it.

Movement enters his periphery. Silent as a ghost, Calla Tuoleimi walks into the infirmary, a bag dangling from her hands.

For fuck’s sake.

“Well. This is a shock,” she says wryly, swinging her arm.

The bag lands beside him on Otta’s bed. He didn’t hear her approaching, though Galipei clearly did. He’s let his guard down once again. No wonder he lost in the arena.

“Clothes for you,” Calla says. “Figured you’d like them better than that awful hospital gown.”

Slowly Otta reaches for the bag. She tips it upside down, and out tumble two large pieces of green silk. A bodice with bell-shaped sleeves, then another swath of fabric composing the skirts.

“That’s very kind of you.” Otta’s tone doesn’t give her away, but her frown does. Her tears remain dew-frosted on her lower lashes, glimmering as she holds the silk closer. Anton recognizes that dress. It’s hers, indeed, having sat in her rooms for years.

“Truly, Highness, you shouldn’t have,” Anton says. It’s as much a message for himself as it is for Otta. Calla was delayed merely minutes after him into the infirmary. If, in that time, she had a servant track down Otta’s former quarters and retrieve the dress, then Calla Tuoleimi is priority number one in these gilded halls, the princess who the palace drops everything for. He wonders whether she’s heard the chatter about her. Whether she planted her spies here while she was in Rincun to report the palace’s whispered curiosities, people wanting to know where their King-Killer had gone. Kasa can’t punish them for that anymore. The Palace of Union can say aloud that they love his destroyer, even if the council wants her out.

Otta zeros in on Calla.

“I know you.”

“I should hope so,” Calla returns. “We’ve met several times.” She comes to crouch beside Otta, hovering on Anton’s left. Something about the scene before him feels like a violation of nature. It churns his gut, not unlike the way his jump back in the arena felt like it was turning his body inside out. Someone like Calla was never meant to meet a girl like Otta. They will eat each other alive.

“I’m only a royal advisor now, so don’t worry about bowing.”

“Calla, thank you for bringing her clothes,” Anton cuts in, before Otta decides to combat the subtle threat. “But if you must busy yourself with palace affairs, I suggest getting some sleep. The council will want a debrief on Rincun in the morning.”

“I keep telling you I need to speak with you, given that what happened in Rincun may be related to what lies in front of us,” Calla fires back. “You should consider the possibility that Otta Avia’s body has been invaded by a hostile force.”

“She hasn’t.” It doesn’t surprise him that Calla would immediately hold this suspicion as well; an invader presently getting away with their identity theft will, naturally, be inclined to think everyone else could be equally guilty. Only after his quick defense do the rest of Calla’s words dawn on him, and he backtracks. “What do you mean, what happened in Rincun ?”

Calla stands, her leathers rustling. “We found an entire legion dead. Palace-delegated soldiers in their barracks. No weapons, no wounds. It’s as though their qi was merely plucked from their body.”

The news arrives at an awry angle, like a bird thrown at their feet with legs growing out of its head. Calla’s delegation visit was supposed to be a formality. The idea of an attack in Rincun while she was there is so absurd that Anton only blinks—as does Galipei, his restless movements stilling.

“Has Rincun been invaded?” Anton asks, knowing full well that cannot be the case if it has taken Calla until now to announce this. Nevertheless, if Sica is going to cross the borderlands into Talin, the first province they will reach is Rincun.

“Unclear. Rincun is still investigating the incident.”

Anton isn’t sure what this means. Neither is Calla, it seems, given that she’s reported the news so vaguely.

“Trouble follows you wherever you go, doesn’t it, Princess Calla?”

Her glare whips to him. It grates him to admit it, but a surge of satisfaction rushes down his throat to see her agitated like this. To provoke her like this. Yes, perhaps he ought to get rid of her entirely, find some excuse to call the palace guard down on her, yet… this is a better punishment. A thousand lashings in answer for her fatal cut. She should feel the pain too.

“You know, I owe you an apology, Otta,” Calla says suddenly.

Anton’s stomach drops. Well, there’s the problem with punishing her long-term: Calla likes to retaliate.

“Whatever for?” Otta picks at a thread on her dress. She doesn’t see the glint in Calla’s yellow eyes while they stay locked on Anton, homing in before she looses her weapon.

“Aren’t you wondering how your brother’s on the throne? Last time you were awake, it was King Kasa ruling this palace. Surely you don’t think the natural passage of time put that crown on August’s head.”

Stop, Anton signals to her with his eyes. Right now.

“Perhaps it did,” Otta replies.

“Ah. Alas.” Calla smiles. “I imagine when you awoke, you asked for Anton Makusa.”

Now Otta sits up straighter, her shoulder-length hair gliding back. Where her posture was soft, meshed into the lines of the sheets, she prickles to attention at Calla’s words.

“What does Anton have to do with anything?” A pause. “Where… is Anton?”

“A fantastic question. I’m sure he would have greeted you himself if he were here.”

Anton can hear the insects fluttering in the corner. The electric pulse beating through the lights. Instinct tells him to jump, to surge into movement before he can be caught and chained down.

“Where is he?” Otta repeats, an edge entering her voice.

Calla takes her time answering. She looks away from Anton, directing her gaze out as though she’s doing penance. She wants to rankle him into giving himself away, into calling her a liar. He will not. He, too, wants to know how Otta will react anyway. The curiosity pushes up beneath the surface of his skin, where his need to be needed flows in his brittle blood. You were supposed to be the one who loved me most, he thinks. How will you mourn me?

“He’s dead,” Calla says. “He entered the king’s games to pay your debts, and I killed him in the final battle.”

He didn’t expect her to say it so plainly. It takes every effort not to scoff and demand she explain the circumstances of his defeat. When Otta lifts her gaze, he braces, waiting for either a wailing shriek or a pithy remark that she never loved him anyway—one or the other, surely—but her expression is unchanging, her eyes narrowed to make two elongated chasms, nothing of the whites visible.

Seven years have passed, and the world has moved on without Otta Avia. Seven years asleep, and those black irises still scare Anton if he looks too long, as though nothing has changed.

“Why do you sound like that?” Otta asks.

Anton can’t help but blink. Dimly, he senses that this exchange between Calla and Otta has moved on without him—which is absurd, when it’s supposed to be about him. He rises, and Calla looks at him sharply. Her elbow flutters, drifting closer to her waist where there used to hang a sword.

“I beg your pardon?”

Though she’s speaking to Otta, she is looking at him.

“Your tone. Who was Anton to you ?”

“If I may,” Galipei interrupts. He has been all but forgotten, lurking by the wall. “Any trouble in Rincun should be reported immediately to the council, who can warn their respective provinces. We waste time debating it here.”

“Yes, fair point,” Anton agrees at once. “Calla, won’t you write up the report?”

Calla has been saved from answering Otta’s question. She reaches for her long hair, untucks the stray strands from her collar, and flips them outward with a huff. “Venus Hailira can make the report to the council. I’ve reported to the king. My duty is done.”

She pivots. Her boots clunk through the door, into the hallway, and out of earshot. Galipei catches Anton’s attention and meaningfully tilts his head in that direction too, urging them to take their leave.

“August,” Galipei prompts when Anton doesn’t move, and Anton jolts again. He remembers where he is—who he is. “It’s getting very late.”

“It is.” He turns back to Otta. “Get some rest. There will be time to talk later.”

“Yes,” Otta says quietly. “I appreciate that.”

A lock of black hair falls into her face, curling at the end and flicking at the corner of her mouth. It might give the impression of smiling if it weren’t for the fire in her eyes. Again, for a flash, he thinks, Your eyes. They could almost be the same yellow as Calla’s. Then the light flickers, the shadows settle back in place, and Otta is Otta.

He fears he is filling the space Calla left behind. The thought is frightening enough that Anton has to resist the urge to reach out and touch Otta once more, to confirm that she is real and not an illusion he conjured to reckon with Calla’s betrayal.

“Is there anything you need?” Anton asks. He bids himself to keep still. Galipei’s scrutiny prickles at the side of his face.

Do you have nothing more to say? he entreats silently. Ask about me. Ask anything.

“No,” Otta replies. “But I’d like to be discharged tomorrow. I want to return to my old rooms.”

“We can arrange that.” Anton takes a step away from the bed. Before he can draw far, it is Otta who reaches out to touch the side of his hand, and he startles.

Otta blinks up at him, almost childlike.

“I appreciate it,” she repeats. “I know we haven’t always gotten along, August. But I am thankful that you will take care of me nonetheless.”

“Of course.” Anton releases her hand. “Get some rest.”

He’s quiet while walking out. Galipei, wisely, says nothing too, trailing three steps after him on their way to the king’s quarters. Though he doesn’t speak, Galipei’s footfall comes down hard, each audible thump keeping rhythm like a heartbeat. Anton tries to block it out, but it is as potent as another pulse inside him: August, trying to come back to life the moment Anton falters.

Not a chance, Anton thinks. They reach his quarters. Without a goodbye to Galipei, he enters the antechamber and slams the door closed.