You have to, princess.
I know this for sure. Yanami didn’t want to do this, but Suyai believed she had to. Suyai didn’t fight back. Suyai looked nothing like the man drained on Amantani, spasming and struggling against his death. Suyai breathed deeply and let go, depleted in my arms.
Suyai wanted this. Gods, Suyai comforted me because she was at peace while I continued with this endless war.
Yanami gasps, and my eyes snap up to her. A guard took out his weapon. It’s not pointed at her, but it might as well be.
The people below us cheer. They saw everything. They continue to see everything. I was so caught up in my own story that I forgot about the scene at hand. Fate is a story we tell each other.
What story would come out of this?
Suddenly, I think of Suyai and Yanami begging me to step away at different times. Both of them begging me to leave with them, separated by days, but the sentiment is the same.You don’t have to do this. They both said it. All they both ever asked of me was to leave all this madness behind.
But I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t right, either, because I didn’t know how it would all end. But I wasn’t wrong.
There was never an escape.
I lift Suyai off me and place her gently on the ground. She doesn’t move. She’ll never move again.
Mare sleeps. Beside her, his small chest rises and falls in an unbothered rhythm. When he wakes up, he’ll find out his sister is dead. That should be his only worry. He should have all the space he needs to process it, to accept it. I want him to have as many hours as he needs to cry and give the world his anger.
I don’t want him in the middle of a war, unable to move on, but forced to take action.
I don’t want Mare to end up like me.
Yanami notices me the moment I take a step forward. The guards follow her gaze and look at me with pure relief. I’m the Guardians’ Hero. I came too late to make the messy mistakes and face the punishments for them. I can reap the rewards. I can take all the glory for myself.
Let Yanami be the monster, Suyai the martyr, and me, Sinchinrei, the hero. Let me rip the crown off my head and declare victory.
But Suyai would still be dead. The empire would collapse. Mare would not have a moment to think amidst it all.
I take one step closer to Yanami, and she backs away so abruptly that she trips and lands on her back. She’s not physically injured, but her body is fatigued. She brings her bloody hand into a closed fist above the stone.
She’s repeating something under her breath. A mixture ofsorryandplease.
The guards don’t try to stop me.
Without an Inka the people trust, the empire will devolve into anarchy. We saw it happen with the False King way before my time. Even under Inka Yanaru, the peace was tenuous, one wrong political decision away from full-blown rebellion.
Maybe that’s what the empire needs, but it’s not what Mare needs.
He needs stability, peace, easy times to grow up in. Easy times to live to old age the way Suyai never would.
I step in front of Yanami. We’re about the same height and size, but with her on the floor and me with the Sun Staff, the difference between us seems insurmountable.
She tried to run away from all this, the palace and its power, and I brought her back each time. She’s been a slave to the whims of those who want that damned stone, including me, the Aya Runa, and her own mother. Now, it’s turning the empire against her. She doesn’t look noble like this.
Then word will get out, and soon others, those who don’t see Yanami as a monster, will see her as a tool. There’s no hiding it. There’s no way to erase it from everyone’s memories. No way to stop the stories.
But there is a way to change them.
With the empire’s eyes on us, I know she’ll never escape the fate the stone has for her. Unless it’s gone.
I think about Condor’s feather, shattered, releasing samay into the air. I’m resolute.
I reach out. She closes her eyes, recoiling as if hit. She’s muttering under her breath, but the violent trembling overtaking her body makes it impossible for her to speak. I hearpleaseandsorryand other things I can’t bear to repeat even inside my own head.
How will this look? Yanami, hero of the people, bringing back the empire to glory. Sinchinrei, fallen hero, remembered only to be mourned.
