“Well, you’re here now.” I shifted my weight very slightlyaway from him and caught the tightening of his eyes as I moved back. “What do you want?”
He hesitated, gazing past me as if gathering his thoughts, before he let out a quiet sigh. “You have every right to be angry,” he said at last. “I should have told you, long before we reached Irrikah. If I had, that first meeting with the queen wouldn’t have been such a shock.”
Surprise flickered through me. Again, I hadn’t expected this. And after talking with Halek, I could understand the logic of it all. “You had your reasons,” I said at last. “We were strangers back then. You didn’t know anything about me.”
He shook his head, running a hand over his eyes. “I thought about it a hundred times between Kovass and here,” he said. “When we were on the strider, I wondered if there was a way I could tell you. But...” His eyes narrowed, a grim shadow crossing his face. “I needed you to come with me to Irrikah, to meet the queen. The ma’jhet had called you Fateless, and the queen has been waiting for the arrival of the Fateless for a long time. Knowing what you went through in Kovass, I wasn’t sure if you would agree to walk into the kingdom of another Deathless. And by the time Iwascertain...” He gave me a look of remorse. “We were far into our journey, and the Scarab Clan had already sacrificed much of their tribe to keep you safe from the ma’jhet. If I had revealed the queen’s origins then, Kysa might’ve killed me. At the very least, she would have refused to let you go to Irrikah.”
I shivered, as memories from that bloody day flooded in. The day Vahn finally came for me, on the back of a gigantic abomination, and a horde of undead had attacked the Scarab Clan. Theinsect riders had fought like the warriors they were, but Vahn’s magic continuously brought the rotting creatures back to life when they fell, and their sheer numbers were overwhelming. We’d finally managed to shoot the giant abomination down, and I’d driven my dagger into Vahn’s heart myself, ending the battle and his life.
That day, I became a warrior of the Scarab Clan, an insect rider, and Ratuk became part of our small group. But for me, it would always be the day I killed the man I’d considered my only family.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked. “It’s done, Raithe. I’m here, and in a few hours, I’m going to see the queen. Your mission is complete, and your duty to me is over. Why did you come here?”
“Because I want you to know that what I feel for you hasn’t changed.” Raithe didn’t move, though his eyes, pale and beseeching, met mine across the space between us. “I am still the same person I was before you met the queen,” he said in a quietly intense voice. “I don’t want you to believe that everything I did or said was just to bring you here.”
My heart turned over. Tears pressed behind my lids, and I forced them back, turning away from the kahjai so I could gather myself. I could feel him watching me, his silhouette hovering at the edge of my vision, and I curled my fingers into fists at my sides. “I wish I could believe that, Raithe,” I whispered. “I really do.”
Raithe let out a quiet breath. When I turned back to him, his expression was blank, though the flickers of pain in his eyes leftcracks in the expressionless mask. “What can I do,” he asked in a low voice, “to earn your trust again?”
My throat ached. I wanted to tell him everything was all right and he didn’t have to do anything, that all was forgiven. But that wasn’t true. Even if Raithe did feel something toward me, he still served the Deathless queen. Just as Vahn had served the king. I couldn’t go through this a second time. I would have given anything for the Guildmaster to choose me, to tell me everything was forgiven, that he would never sacrifice me to the Deathless King. That blind hope had nearly cost me and the others our lives, when Vahn had proved—very definitively—that serving the Deathless always came first.
I swallowed hard and looked at Raithe, hating what I was about to say next. “Maybe it’s better that you don’t,” I whispered, and saw the split-second flash of dismay in his eyes before they iced over completely. “For both of us.”
“I see.” Now his voice was that of a stranger. He took a step back, not angry, offended, remorseful, anything. His expression was a mask once more, the cracks in it vanished entirely. “Then forgive this intrusion,” he said, and gave a formal bow. “I will leave you in peace, Fateless.”
He turned and walked away, leaving not through the door, but out of one of the narrow open windows on the far side of the room. Without looking back, he slipped over the sill, vanishing into the darkness, and I was alone.
I sat on the bed, uncaring of the cool silk beneath my fingers. Pulling my knees to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them, and in the quiet stillness before dawn, with no one around to see,I let the poisonous tears burn a path down my face and soak into my sleeves.
Dawn came slowly, but a faint golden light finally began poking in through the windows as Solasti began her climb into the sky. I was still sitting on the bed, dozing in and out of the nightmare realm, when a knock outside my door made me glance up.
Opening the door, I was faced once again with a tall, beautifully elegant iylvahn, who offered a smile and a perfectly polite bow. “Forgive the early awakening, Fateless,” she said. “But Chancellor Llorek has bid me to inform you that your meeting with the queen will be at peak suns rise. Please make all the necessary preparations for your meeting with Her Majesty, Queen Sahmessyia.”
Fear spiked through me, but I nodded. After the iylvahn left, I shut the door and turned, wondering how one prepared oneself for a meeting with royalty. I had time for a bath, though I was still leery about being naked and helpless within the palace. Especially after last night. Not that I believed Raithe himself would do anything, but I had certainly lost any protection the kahjai might’ve offered while I was here.
Thinking about Raithe made my throat hurt again, and I pushed down the lingering emotions, shoving them to the back of my mind. This was for the best. Now I didn’t have to worry about Raithe having to choose between me and loyalty to his queen. Vahn had taught me better. I wouldn’t be in that position, ever again.
I finally gave in to the temptation and took a bath. The waterhad cooled overnight and was lukewarm instead of steaming, but it still felt both amazing and decadent to be completely submerged. Afterward, I dressed and ran a pearlescent comb I found on the dresser through my hair, untangling it as best I could. Hopefully, I wouldn’t look like a complete urchin when I met the queen. When I opened my door again, Chancellor Llorek stood there in his resplendent robes, smiling down at me. Halek and Kysa waited behind him, the former looking noticeably cleaner than before, his hair gleaming a bright gold under the lights. Kysa appeared the same in her stark black chiton armor, and from the grim expression on her face, she would not be taking it off anytime soon.
“Fateless.” The chancellor offered a slight bow and raised a billowing white-and-gold sleeve, gesturing down the hallway. “This way, if you would. Her Magnificent Majesty, Queen Sahmessyia, is waiting for you.”
We followed the chancellor down the long, splendid hallway, as my heart continued to crash around my chest. When I’d lived in Kovass, any of the higher classes noticing you was considered a bad thing. You did not want to catch the attention of a guard, a noble, a merchant, and especially not a royal. Nothing good came of it; guards were likely to arrest you, nobles were likely to send their guards after you, and royals were notorious for demanding executions for real or imagined crimes. If someone like me was ever caught inside the palace walls, or even in the home of a merchant prince, they would be dragged off to prison or the execution block. No hesitation, no questions asked.
And here I was, on my way to meet not only a queen, but an ancient Deathless who had the power to split me in half with a thought. The last time I had seen a Deathless, he was toppling a city. In the aftermath, his ma’jhet servants had sent terrifying dreams, hulking abominations, and an undead army after me. What would this queen do, if she discovered I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give her what she wanted?
The corridor ended at a pair of truly massive arched doors, stretched nearly to the ceiling. They seemed built for giants, gilded in gold and almost too bright to look at, looming over us poor mortals on the ground. As we approached, they swung noiselessly outward on their own. And we stepped into the throne room of the Deathless queen.
It was as breathtakingly stunning as one would think. The vaulted ceiling soared above us, beams and rafters twisted with flowering vines that filled the air with heady sweetness. Pillars marched down the room, each one carved in the shape of a tree, marble branches forming delicate archways above us. Some of the branches even had the figurines of tiny songbirds among the leaves. Shimmering curtains of water flowed down the walls, cascading into pools that threw golden light over everything. I was instantly overwhelmed; it was all I could do to place one foot in front of the other when all my instincts were urging me to turn and flee this room as quickly as possible.
At the end of the chamber from a throne of gold-veined marble shaped to look like curling vines, leaves, and flowers, the Void-filled eyes of the Deathless queen met mine.
“Welcome,Fateless.”
Her voice, soft as it was, made the pillars tremble. The queen rose, her presence seeming to fill the room. The iylvahn were a tall people, but the queen stood easily head and shoulders over them. Her long white hair rippled behind her as she raised an arm and beckoned us forward. “Come. Don’t be afraid. You have nothing to fear in my court.”
I started forward, then noticed a familiar figure standing on one corner of the dais. My heart leaped as Raithe stared in our direction, but the eyes that met mine were blank, empty of emotion.
Chancellor Llorek stopped at the base of the throne and bowed low at the waist. We followed his example, even Kysa, though she did not bend as far as the rest of us. I suspected the insect rider would not say anything unless spoken to directly, but even though her people hated the Deathless, I doubted she would violate the rules of iylvahn culture.
