Delay. Another fleet.
Kalie’s head pounded. He was trying to delay for another attack. But Father was under siege, and even if he could break through the stargate and muster troops against the Federation, he would never abandon his empire for her.
She didn’t want to delay, she didn’t want to fight, she wanted to save Ariah…
The corners of Zane’s eyes crinkled in that way she liked so much, and his message was clear:Trust me.
Kalie swallowed thickly. She did trust him. She would follow him through Azura’s Arch into whatever lay beyond, if he asked her to.
A hush swept over the hall, and Zane’s smile widened into atriumphant grin. Footsteps and murmurs tripped over one another, and above it all, there was a slow, uneven gait—a shuffling step, a pause, a thud, another step.
Ancient, rattling breaths filled the hall, and the hairs on the back of Kalie’s neck stood on end as every Dalian in the room dropped to their knees. The Dalian guards touched their foreheads to the floor. Even Iliana knelt, with her mouth gaping open.
Above it all rose those rattling breaths and that uneven rhythm:tap, pause, thud, tap.
Trembling, Kalie turned.
Then, stifling a gasp, she fell to her knees.
Despite the oaken staff supporting her hunched, slender figure, the aged woman hobbling into the hall carried an air of nobility. Wisps of white hair floated around her lined face. A nurturing aura radiated from the gentle folds of her worn, cream-colored cloak and tabard. Intricate azure designs wove across the fabric, resembling a peacock’s wings.
“They said,” she rasped, and multiple voices as ancient as time issued from her lips, “that there was to be a challenge.”
Kalie was paralyzed. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth.
Though no one had ever seen her and her name had been lost to time, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that this was Azura’s Speaker.
Crystalline silence hung in the hall.
A purple aura pulsed around a gem hanging from the Speaker’s neck. The light glowed and guttered. Kalie couldn’t stop staring. It looked vaguely like amethyst, but a distortion of it, like someone who’d never seen amethyst had created a replica. Glowing and fading and glowing, in a mesmerizing loop.
Someone scoffed. “Who, exactly, are you?”
“Silence!” Iliana thundered.
Kalie tore her gaze from the violet stone.
Still kneeling, Iliana glared daggers at a legionnaire. Her glare faded to an expression of awestruck reverence as she turned to the Speaker. “Your Supreme Holiness, your presence here is an honor.”
“Azura commands you to rise, daughters,” the Speaker called in her myriad voices, shifting her golden eyes between them.
As Kalie pushed herself to her feet, Zane arched his eyebrows as if to say,Do it.
But she couldn’t make her lips move. In her twenty cycles as Duchissa, Aunt Calida had never seen the Speaker. Nor had Grandmother Madeleine. Rumor claimed Duchissa Coriana had known her identity as a child, but that was a century ago.
Kalie turned to the Speaker, but her gaze caught on Mira.
She skulked in on the Speaker’s heels, keeping her head down as she fidgeted with her ring. Kalie did a double take. Mira never skulked. She sauntered, she smirked, she parted crowds with a look. Mira’s skittish eyes flitted to the towering windows, then to the nondescript exits behind the golden dais, then to the doors between the tapestries in the aisles, as if she was sizing up all the exits.
Kalie’s brows furrowed, and she glanced at Zane, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“The goddess urges peace between her daughters,” the Speaker rasped. “You are not as divided as Zagan and Calla. There is still time to set aside your differences.”
Kalie opened her mouth to protest, but she quickly shut it. To hear the Speaker’s voice was unthinkable, and to interrupt her was beyond unthinkable. She bit down on her tongue and waited until her many rippling voices died away.
“All due respect, Your Supreme Holiness, but when Zagan murdered Queen Azura, Calla challenged him to avenge her. Her ally—” she jabbed a finger at Iliana— “murdered Azura’s chosen heir, my aunt Calida, so I don’t see how my challenge is any different from Calla’s.”
“Then you wish to declare a challenge?”
