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Dalca presses his lips to mine, and for a moment all is still. His lips are soft and his hand is so gentle where it cups my cheek. The fragrance of the garden wraps around our shoulders like a blanket.
I jump back, touching my lips with the tips of my fingers, staring at him.
“I’m sorry.” Dalca looks surprised and troubled. His hand rises, as if he would reach for me.
His fingers brush my arm as I turn away, but fear propels me out of his reach. Fear of what it means, fear of why I didn’t push him away, fear of what kind of person I am.
I run.
He could catch me if he wanted, I’m sure, but I pray he doesn’t want to.
My legs take me out of the palace, drawing shouts as I go, but I’mnot stopped, not as I run through the second, through the gates of the third and fourth, all the way back to the fifth. It’s a sense of home I run toward, but I have no home left.
It was stupid to run. I know it. A cleverer woman would have somehow used that against Dalca to find Pa. When my legs begin to ache, I walk, and walk, and walk.
The pressure has been building inside me. It feels like too much, all of a sudden. I can’t think about Dalca, I can’t afford to think about how soft his lips are, not when I have to save Pa, but I can’t get him out of my mind. What’s wrong with him? He doesn’t know me, not at all. Not enough to kiss me.
What’s wrong with me? Why am I thinking about him still? I can’t want him. I shouldn’t. Nothing can happen between us. He’s the Regia’s son. My parents killed his grandfather. He’s planning Pa’s murder. There’s got to be something wrong with me. Because some part of me understands him.To do the one good thing that I must do, I find myself caught in a thousand small evils.
What wouldn’t I do to save Pa? In the darkness of my mind, I can admit things. I’d go back to the garden. I’d kiss Dalca till his head spun. I’d find a way to twist him around my finger if I knew it would save Pa’s life.
The fifth ring feels gloriously crowded compared to the first. The clamor of brass, the tinkling of glass, the smell of bodies and incense. I wander through the crowds until I get lost within them, until the curious looks at my third-ring outfit die away. A little girl chases a gap-toothed boy, laughing like a tiny hyena, till she smacks into my legs. Shegiggles an apology. Stones fall from her lips with every syllable, a curse. I smile at her as the boy tugs her away.
I watch them go. I wonder what shape her life will take. Her parents met, maybe fell in love, and their choices brought her into a world that despises the stormtouched. I wonder what sort of life I would have lived, had my parents made different choices. Would I have been brought up in the safety and security of the third? Would I have become a great ikonomancer like Pa?
I scrub a hand across my eyes. Fear is making a coward of me.
My legs don’t want to stay still. They drive me through a ramshackle market with meager wares, past an old metalworks that’s been converted to a shelter, past hundreds of tense-eyed people packed into far too small a place. There are pockets of joy: men laughing in a tiny barbershop, a green-faced mother crooning to her child. But I also skirt a fistfight between two snarling men and edge past a woman with a frying pan yelling at a horned boy to leave her house and never come back. I duck my head and try to look as inconspicuous as possible.
My hand goes to Ma’s locket, my thumb tracing the familiar grooves. What would Ma do? She had ambition, but it was an ambition born out of compassion. She had bravery, to do the things no one else dared, but in doing so, she left Pa and me behind.
I suppose Dalca’s mother left him, too. To become Regia, she renounced everything else. The Great King lives in her body, but she’s gone. Does he miss her, like I miss Ma?
Right beside the stormwall, cast in its shadow, is a block of ruins. The skeleton of an old temple stands amongst the rubble of its roof. A casualty from the last stormsurge. The rubble will remain until the priestesses declare it curse-free and safe to touch.
I pick my way through, wanting to see the Great King. The statueof the Great King is missing an arm, but otherwise unscathed, standing alone on a pedestal. His stern face looks down at me. Ma left me to be Regia, for the Great King’s power. Was it worth it?
I kick at a piece of stone and yelp at the stabbing pain in my toe. Stupid. The stone flips over, and a pair of angry stone eyes stare up at me. They must belong to the Great King’s other form, the King of Wrath. And sure enough, on the other side of the temple is the remnant of another pedestal. The statue is in a hundred pieces, one of the larger shards shows a sandaled foot, another a section of robe, but it’s the third that draws my attention. Clasped hands, holding a small sapling with intertwined roots. The sculptor meant for the sapling to appear to glow; two concentric circles are chiseled into the stone.
I’ve seen this before. It’s a more detailed version of Casvian’s proto-ikon. Two concentric circles, surrounding squiggles like tree roots. I laugh. It echoes, sounding more bitter with every repetition. I’ve found this, and not Pa. I don’t even know what the mark means, or why Casvian wants it.
I know so damn little. About Ma, about Pa. About Dalca, and why he’s gotten under my skin. I hate it. I hate feeling small. I hate that I couldn’t find the way to the old city. I hate that Dalca caught me. I hate that I let him kiss me.
But most of all, I hate that I ran away.
Hate builds in my gut, dark and oily. The fifth’s warning bells begin to toll, as if the Storm knows, as if it comes for me. Bolts of violet lightning streak through the wall of darkness, illuminating the beasts writhing within. Thunder booms, echoing hollowly through my chest.
The ringing of the bells grows louder as the other watchtowers pick up the call. The Storm has awakened.
Streaks of red stand out against the black as Wardana fly toward theStorm. Ikonomancers work the woven ikonshield, and a lattice of blue-white ikons materializes, holding the Storm back.
And I’m in trouble. I’m within spitting distance of the stormwall, and worse, I don’t know this part of the fifth—I don’t know the nearest stormshelter. I dash out of the temple, stumbling over rubble, transfixed by the roiling clouds.
The Storm bulges, like a great hand reaching for me. The ikonshield bends and stretches, fighting against it. A flash of lightning illuminates a massive serpent’s eye that swivels, as if it’s looking for something. Another strike of lightning illuminates its body, coiling around the city. The barrier strains, the glowing ikon-lines growing thin. The wrath of the Storm and the power of the ikonomancers are equally matched.
For a moment all is hushed.
The ikonshield shatters.
