Mullano had no sky.
That was the first thing Areilycus understood when the dewdrop released them.
There was light, although he could not determine where it came from. A dull, colorless radiance seeped through the realm evenly, refusing to cast proper shadows. Nothing stood out sharply against anything else. Distance had become unreliable. The landscape extended in every direction without horizon or boundary, a flat expanse interrupted by long depressions in the ground where pale mist collected and shifted.
A no-man's land.
The Emperor emerged beside him in human form. The false night he had created in Urmen had left its mark. The veins along his throat were darker than before, branching beneath his skin like cracks in glazed porcelain. He noticed Areilycus looking and adjusted the high collar of his coat with a small, impatient movement.
"You should pace yourself," Areilycus said.
The Emperor raised an eyebrow. "You have been my heir for less than a day and already you are offering unsolicited advice."
"You told me drawing too heavily from a realm could kill the vessel."
"I said it could kill you. I have considerably more practice."
He started walking.
Areilycus followed because standing still felt worse. The ground beneath his boots appeared solid at first, a grey surface with the dull compactness of clay left too long without rain. After several steps, he realized it was not soil. The substance compressed strangely under his weight, too soft in some places and brittle in others. Pale fragments protruded from it in irregular clusters: teeth, finger bones, pieces of cartilage dried nearly translucent. A strip of something resembling leather curled upward near his boot before sinking slowly back beneath the powdery surface.
Areilycus stopped.
The Emperor continued for several paces before looking back.
"What is this?"
"The ground."
"I can see that."
Areilycus forced himself to look down again. The substance beneath his boots shifted faintly, not enough to suggest movement from below but enough to make stillness impossible to trust. A human fingernail rested near the toe of his boot, clean and pink as though clipped only moments ago. Several feet away, a small jawbone lay half embedded in the grey sediment. Its teeth had been removed one by one.
"What is the ground made of?" he asked.
The Emperor glanced toward the flat expanse surrounding them. "What remains after the dead have finished eating."
Areilycus looked up sharply.
Something moved in the mist.
It gathered briefly into a standing outline, narrow at the shoulders, its limbs lengthening and collapsing as it passed through the shallow depression beside the path. For one moment, Areilycus thought he saw a face. Then the impression dissolved, leaving only a distortion in the colorless air.
The Emperor watched it with no particular interest.
"Stay close," he said. "The hungry ones can be tedious."
Areilycus moved nearer despite himself. "The dead eat bodies?"
The Emperor resumed walking, forcing Areilycus to follow if he wanted the explanation.
"Mullano receives souls after death," he said. "Most arrive intact enough to preserve a coherent sense of self for a time. Memory, attachment, grievance, appetite. They still think like people because they remember being housed inside people. But memory deteriorates quite quickly. A soul has no nerves, no blood, no skin. It cannot feel the world directly. Eventually, it begins to forget what sensation was."
Areilycus looked toward the mist again.
More shapes moved there now. Some crawled. Others drifted just above the ground in uneven, dragging motions. None approached the Emperor. They gave him a wide berth without appearing to notice that they were doing so, the way animals altered their path around fire.
"What happens when they forget?" Areilycus asked.
"They dissolve."
"Into what?"
"Nothingness."
Areilycus thought of Urmen, where bodies returned to groves and memory spread through roots after individual shapes collapsed. There had been something unsettling but almost comprehensible in that redistribution. Mullano felt different. The mist moved with too much restless hunger. The scattered fragments beneath Areilycus's feet told him the dead had found ways to delay their ending, however briefly.
"Old souls eat new corpses to remember being alive," he said.
The Emperor inclined his head. "Bodies retain impressions. Habit remains in the hands. Desire leaves traces along the mouth and spine. Grief alters the heart even after it stops beating. The dead feed on those residues. They borrow sensation until it fades."
A sound reached them from somewhere ahead.
Wet tearing.
Then a low murmur that might once have been speech.
The Emperor did not slow.
They crested a shallow rise and found the source.
A body lay on the ground below them.
It belonged to a man, or had belonged to one recently enough that the shape remained unmistakable. He was naked, limbs spread awkwardly against the grey surface, head tilted to one side. His body had not decayed in any ordinary way. There were no insects. No rot. Instead, pale distortions moved across him wherever the dead gathered.
The souls fed without mouths.
They pressed themselves into the corpse and withdrew slowly, each one sinking through flesh as though entering deep water. Wherever a soul passed, the body changed. The man's skin tightened over bone. One hand curled into a fist, then loosened. His mouth opened around a final breath too late to matter. The muscles along his abdomen contracted beneath the translucent pressure of something remembering what it felt like to occupy a stomach, a chest, a throat.
A soul gathered over the dead man's face.
For several seconds, the corpse appeared to wake.
His eyes opened. His lips trembled. A sound scraped through his throat.
Then the soul pulled free.
The face collapsed back into vacancy.
Areilycus could not move.
The dead man's left arm had already been stripped nearly to the bone.
The tissue remained, but it had become thin, grey, and insubstantial, as though the body had been drained of the fact that it once belonged to anyone.
"What was his name?" Areilycus asked.
The Emperor looked toward the corpse. "It no longer matters." "It matters to him."
"He is not there."
"You don't know that."
The Emperor's gaze shifted toward him. "I know precisely where he is. Floating among the dead, eating some other fresh new corpse."
This world sickened Areilycus. "They do not enjoy cannibalism, how quaint."
"Where did the body come from?"
"Covaxani."
Areilycus stared at him. "You bring bodies here?"
"Bodies arrive through several routes. Death houses. Hospitals. Battlefields. The Black Canon. Wherever disposal is required. I do not allow cemeteries anywhere in the Empire. People cling to their dead and forget to move on. Grief slows down the economy of the realm."
Areilycus thought of Malach. The handful of times he had seen him skulking about the Silver City, he always seemed entitled to be there. Someone who had been invited into private rooms for centuries. Areilycus had seen him drinking the Emperor's wine, mocking court officials, resting one hand briefly against his shoulder when he believed no one was watching.
He had also seen the way the Emperor looked at him.
"Was Malach made here?" Areilycus asked.
The Emperor's expression settled into stillness.
"Yes."
Areilycus looked back at the corpse below them.
The souls had begun dispersing. Whatever remained inside the body no longer interested them. One lingered near the dead man's mouth, pressing against it repeatedly as though searching for a memory that had already been consumed. Then it withdrew into the mist, carrying the faint impression of teeth in the place where a face might have formed.
The Emperor continued walking.
The landscape changed gradually as they moved deeper into Mullano. The flat plains gave way to long, shallow basins filled with discarded bodies. They lay in careless layers.
The realm simply accumulated them. Men, women, children, animals, creatures Areilycus did not recognize. Some remained intact. Others had been fed upon until only pale frameworks survived, limbs folded into impossible angles as the sediment swallowed them slowly.
The dead moved everywhere.
They gathered at the edges of the basins in translucent crowds, drawn toward the freshest bodies with the instinctive attention of starving animals. Yet hunger had not stripped them entirely of personality. Areilycus sensed differences in the way they moved. Some lunged greedily toward exposed flesh. Others waited. One small soul hovered above the body of a child and refused to descend despite the press of others around it. Another had attached itself to a severed hand and repeatedly flexed the dead fingers, opening and closing them.
The Emperor stepped around a corpse without looking down.
Areilycus nearly stumbled over it.
The body belonged to a woman with dark hair braided carefully over one shoulder. Her skin remained warm in color despite death. A wound split the fabric over her abdomen, but the rest of her looked untouched. One hand rested palm-up near Areilycus's boot.
The fingers moved.
He recoiled.
The Emperor stopped.
"She is dead," Areilycus said.
"Yes."
"Then why did she move?"
"Residuals of Chaos that moves through the realm sometimes anchors itself in bodies, looking for something to parasite on, animating the dead."
Areilycus looked again.
The woman's fingers curled slowly, then flattened. Her throat contracted around a swallow. Beneath her closed eyelids, her eyes rolled violently from side to side. The motions did not align. They belonged to different impulses, separate attempts to operate the same abandoned machinery.
Several souls hovered near her.
One sank halfway through her chest and withdrew immediately, causing her spine to arch against the ground. Another entered through the mouth. Her jaw snapped shut hard enough to crack a tooth. A third pressed itself along her left leg until the limb kicked outward in a sudden, uncontrolled jerk.
Areilycus turned toward the Emperor. "Make them stop."
"They will lose interest."
"She is being torn apart."
"She cannot feel it."
"Please!"
The Emperor regarded him for a moment, then stepped closer to the corpse. The souls scattered instantly. They retreated to the edges of the mist and waited, their presence visible only as shifting distortions.
The Emperor crouched beside the body and pressed two fingers lightly against the side of her neck. The gesture seemed absurdly careful in a realm where the dead were used as material. He inspected the wound beneath her torn clothing, then turned her wrist over and studied the palm.
"This one will do."
A slow dread settled inside Areilycus.
"For what?"
The Emperor looked up.
"The lesson."
Areilycus took a step back. "No."
The Emperor stood. "A puppet requires three things. A body capable of holding structure. A soul coherent enough to accept direction. Chaos sufficient to bind the two."
"She is a person."
"She was." The Emperor said it calmly, without cruelty. A soul moved closer through the mist.
The Emperor lifted one hand.
The shape stopped.
It was larger than the others and more stable.
Areilycus sensed something from it despite possessing none of Las's gifts. Fear, perhaps. Or resistance. The soul pulled away from the Emperor's reach and immediately struck an invisible boundary. The mist around it tightened.
The Emperor drew it forward.
The soul fought.
Its outline stretched backward through the air, fraying at the edges, but the Emperor continued pulling until it hovered above the woman's body. The corpse reacted before contact. Her fingers twitched. Her spine lifted slightly. Her mouth opened.
The soul recoiled.
"Watch carefully," the Emperor said.
Darkness gathered beneath the skin of his wrist.
The veins along his hand blackened as the force moved outward, collecting in the tips of his fingers. Areilycus felt the pressure inside his own body answer immediately, a sickening recognition that made his ribs ache.
The Emperor pressed one hand against the woman's sternum.
With the other, he drove the soul downward.
The body convulsed.
Her back lifted completely off the ground, supported only by heels and shoulders. The soul struck the flesh and rebounded once, flattening against an invisible surface as if the corpse had rejected it on instinct. The Emperor pushed harder.
The woman's mouth opened wider.
Too wide.
The jaw cracked at one hinge.
A sound emerged from her throat, not a scream exactly, because the lungs had not yet restarted. It was air being forced through dead tissue.
The soul entered through the mouth first.
Then the eyes.
Then every wound.
Its distorted outline compressed violently as the Emperor forced it into channels no longer prepared to receive anything. The woman's skin rippled. Something traveled beneath it from throat to chest, chest to abdomen, abdomen to limbs. Her fingers bent backward until the joints dislocated, then snapped forward again as chaos reached her hands.
Areilycus could not look away.
The Emperor's expression remained focused and almost gentle. Sweat gathered faintly at his temple. The black veins spread beyond his wrist and climbed his forearm as he continued pressing chaos through the dead woman's sternum.
"Bodies resist resurrection," he said. "They remember death more faithfully than life. Do not mistake the soul's eagerness to live for compatibility. The soul wants sensation. The body wants rest. Your task is to overrule both."
The woman's chest rose sharply.
Her ribs cracked one after another beneath the force of the first breath.
She screamed. It tore through Mullano, high and ragged and so full of horror that the waiting souls stirred throughout the mist. Areilycus felt them turn toward the noise. Thousands of hungry shapes gathered attention around a body being made alive.
The woman clawed at the ground.
Her fingers found nothing but grey sediment and the fragments of other bodies. She tried to roll onto her side. The Emperor kept one hand against her chest and held her in place with effortless pressure.
"Stop," Areilycus said.
The Emperor did not look at him. "Stop."
"If I stop now, the body collapses and the soul tears apart with it."
Areilycus stared at the woman's face.
Her eyes had opened.
They did not move together. One iris remained fixed on the Emperor. The other rolled helplessly toward Areilycus. Her mouth worked around words that never formed. Blood appeared where the broken tooth cut into her lower lip.
The Emperor adjusted the position of his hand.
The chaos moved deeper.
The woman's abdomen contracted violently. Beneath the skin, organs shifted with obscene visibility. The body had begun restarting systems in no coherent order. Her heart beat once, so hard the sound carried through the silence.
Then again.
A wet, uneven pounding trapped beneath ribs that had not healed from the effort of breathing.
Her skin darkened along the veins.
Black lines spread from the Emperor's hand through her chest and outward into the limbs, stitching flesh to soul with a force that resembled healing only if one refused to look at the body enduring it.
The woman's scream broke into coughing.
She vomited grey water and something dark enough that Areilycus did not inspect it closely. Her whole body shook with the effort. When she tried to pull away, the Emperor finally released her.
She collapsed onto one side, gasping against the ground.
For several seconds, the only sound came from her breathing.
The Emperor wiped his palm against a cloth pulled from his coat pocket. "That is the basic process."
Areilycus looked at him.
"Basic?"
"The refinements come later."
The woman began crawling.
Not away from the Emperor.
Toward him.
Her limbs moved poorly. One knee dragged. Her fingers slipped repeatedly against the sediment. Yet each time her body failed, she forced it forward again until she reached the Emperor's boots. She placed one shaking hand against the leather and bowed her head.
"Your lordsssssship."
Every damaged part of the newly animated body leaned toward the person maintaining it. The soul had been fastened into flesh by the Emperor's power, and the body understood before the mind did that survival now had a master.
Areilycus felt sick.
"Does she have to do that?" he asked.
The Emperor looked down at the woman.
"No."
"Then why is she?"
"Instinct."
The woman at the Emperor's feet lifted her face.
Her eyes had begun aligning properly. Confusion moved through them first, then fear, then a pleading awareness that made Areilycus look away.
"Do they remember who they were?" he asked.
"Sometimes."
"Does she?"
The Emperor crouched in front of the woman and studied her face. "Do you know your name?"
Her mouth opened.
Nothing emerged except a dry, damaged rasp.
The Emperor waited.
The woman tried again.
"Lera."
The name barely survived the journey out of her throat.
The Emperor nodded. "Good."
Tears began moving down Lera's face.
Areilycus did not know whether they came from pain, terror, gratitude, or some confused combination the body itself had not yet learned to distinguish. That ambiguity made the scene worse. Lera touched her own chest with both hands, feeling the black veins beneath the skin and the erratic pounding of a heart dragged unwillingly back into service.
"Where am I?" she whispered.
"Mullano," the Emperor said.
Her face tightened.
She remembered enough to be afraid.
The Emperor rested one hand briefly against her hair. The gesture was gentle in the manner of a father soothing a frightened child after a nightmare.
"You will rest now," the Emperor said.
Lera lowered herself immediately to the ground.
Her eyelids closed.
Her body became still except for the unsteady rise and fall of her chest.
Areilycus stared at her.
The Emperor stood.
"Now you."
"No."
The Emperor's expression altered by a fraction.
"You will be responsible for Covaxani."
"I said no."
The Emperor looked toward the mist surrounding them.
The waiting souls had begun gathering more closely now, drawn by Lera's newly living body and the chaos humming beneath her skin. They could not reach her while the Emperor stood nearby. Still, their hunger altered the air. Shapes pressed forward and retreated. Faces flickered into being, each one borrowing some memory of eyes, mouths, and hands before losing coherence again.
The Emperor extended his hand.
A second body rose from the sediment.
The body belonged to a young man. Older than Areilycus by several years, perhaps. His dark hair was matted against his forehead. His throat bore a deep wound, but otherwise he appeared intact.
His face looked peaceful.
That was unbearable too.
"No," Areilycus said again.
The Emperor turned toward him. For a moment, the patience left him.
What remained beneath it was the stuff of nightmares. Areilycus's nightmares. Milada's nightmares.
Theron lifted his hand and curled it into a fist. Areilycus felt the air leave his lungs.
He dropped to his knees — or was forced to — and started dry-heaving.
"Listen to me carefully, Areilycus. Covaxani contains people who depend on the systems I built. People die. Bodies fail. Labor becomes scarce. Knowledge disappears. Families beg for return. Armies need soldiers. Cities need workers. Rulers do not govern the world as it should be. They govern the world that exists."
Areilycus felt the word 'please' trying to drag itself out of the depths of his pride — unfortunately, there was no air left in him to force it out.
Areilycus felt the chaos beneath his ribs stir violently, responding not only to the Emperor's presence but to his own anger. It moved toward the surface of his skin, hot and restless, eager for direction.
"I used to be like you," Theron said, squeezing Areilycus's lungs harder. "Sweet, naive, wanted to help everything and everybody helpless or stupid enough to ask."
The Emperor's face closed.
"I felt for every living creature, felt their pain and their joy alike. It was not fun for me."
Areilycus thought of Mila.
"You cannot govern the realm with empathy," Theron said. "People will eat you alive."
He let go.
Areilycus's body dropped off to one side as he drew his knees close, wishing he was dead.
The Emperor turned toward the mist and reached for another soul.
This one came unwillingly too.
Its shape pulled apart as he drew it forward, more coherent than most but less stable than the one bound into Lera. A face flickered at its center: an older man, then a child, then nothing. Areilycus could feel the soul's terror.
The Emperor positioned it above the young man's corpse.
Then he stepped back.
"Bind it."
Areilycus barely managed to get back up, coughing up, gasping.
The soul writhed in the air.
The corpse lay still beneath it.
"Bind it," he repeated.
Areilycus looked at the soul.
Then at the body.
He thought of Mila again. She would have refused. She would have cursed the Emperor, shattered something expensive. The certainty came with such clarity that for one second Areilycus almost smiled.
Then the chaos inside him moved.
The force pressed against his ribs and traveled down his arms before he consciously called it forward. Blackness gathered beneath his palms in faint, branching lines. The young man's corpse reacted immediately. His back arched a fraction from the ground. His fingers twitched.
The possibility opened in front of Areilycus.
Control over the threshold.
The ability to reach into death and decide it was not final.
A terrible power.
A miraculous one.
The Emperor watched him understand.
"That is why people cannot be trusted with chaos," he said quietly. "Not because they are uniquely evil. Because eventually someone dies whom they cannot bear to lose."
Mila.
Alive somewhere beyond the bridges, angry and frightened and impossible to reach.
He imagined her body still on the ground instead.
The thought split something inside him.
The soul above the corpse twisted in the Emperor's hold. The Emperor studied him.
Then he loosened his control slightly.
The soul moved.
Toward the body.
It pressed downward with frantic need, striking the corpse and recoiling as the dead flesh rejected it. Then it tried again. And again. Each impact caused a small, involuntary movement in the young man's limbs: fingers curling, jaw tightening, heel scraping against the ground.
The soul wanted sensation.
Any sensation.
Pain included.
Areilycus looked toward Lera, sleeping at the Emperor's feet with tears dried along her cheeks and black veins spreading beneath her skin.
"That is the burden," he continued. "You will make choices for people who cannot understand the available alternatives. Sometimes they will hate you for it. Sometimes they should."
Areilycus felt the soul strike the body again.
Its desperation passed through him now, carried along the chaos waiting in his palms. He could stop the process. He could let the soul return to Mullano, where it would feed until memory failed and the realm absorbed whatever remained. He could leave the body on the ground to be hollowed out by strangers borrowing the last traces of its life.
Or he could force the two together.
Both choices felt monstrous.
The Emperor had designed the lesson carefully.
Areilycus understood that too late.
He lowered his hand.
Chaos entered the corpse.
The body seized.
Every muscle contracted at once, dragging the young man's limbs inward until he curled tightly against himself. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. The soul struck again and rebounded, its outline distorting with pain.
"Push," the Emperor said.
Areilycus could not breathe.
"I am."
"You are hesitating. The body can feel hesitation as a seam. Close it."
Areilycus forced more chaos through his hands.
The black veins spread across the corpse's throat and jaw. The wound along the neck closed badly, tissue pulling together too quickly, leaving a thick dark scar. The soul entered through the reopened mouth and the half-healed gash at once. The young man's body slammed flat against the ground hard enough to crack the sediment beneath him.
A rib snapped.
Then another.
Areilycus felt each break through the chaos connecting them.
He nearly withdrew.
"Do not stop," the Emperor said.
The body began convulsing.
Legs first, then abdomen, chest, arms, throat. Each system restarted with violent reluctance. The heart resisted longest. Areilycus felt it sitting dead and heavy inside the ribcage while the rest of the body fought around it.
"Find the heart," the Emperor instructed.
Areilycus looked at him desperately. "I don't know how."
"Yes, you do."
Mila.
He reached inward through flesh that was not his and found the heart by its silence. The organ felt dense, shut, unwilling. Areilycus pressed power around it, trying to restart it gently.
Nothing happened.
"Again," the Emperor said.
Areilycus pushed harder.
The heart contracted once.
The force of it sent a shock through both bodies. Areilycus staggered. The corpse's eyes opened wide, irises rolling upward until only white remained visible.
Again.
The heart struck harder.
Blood moved.
It forced itself through veins that had begun collapsing, reopening pathways with pressure enough to darken the skin in spreading bruises. The young man gasped, lungs filling too quickly. A wet rattle tore from his throat. His whole body lurched sideways as he vomited black fluid into the grey sediment.
The soul settled deeper.
Areilycus felt it catch.
The young man screamed.
The sound entered Areilycus through the chaos bond before it reached his ears. Pain flooded him with such force that his knees nearly gave way. He tasted blood. Felt bones crack that did not belong to him. Felt lungs scraping open around air. Felt a dead stomach contracting violently around nothing.
He tried to pull away.
The Emperor caught his wrist.
"Finish it."
"I can't."
"You can."
Areilycus stared at him.
The Emperor's grip tightened.
"Every puppet you make carries a cost," he said. "If you forget that, you become weaker. If you cannot endure it, you become useless. Neither is acceptable."
The young man clawed at the ground.
Areilycus forced the last of the chaos through the body.
The veins darkened.
The soul compressed fully into flesh.
The connection sealed.
The scream broke into sobbing.
Areilycus released him and fell backward onto one knee, one hand braced against the ground. The sediment beneath his palm shifted unpleasantly, full of fragments he refused to identify. His stomach contracted hard enough that he thought he might be sick.
The young man lay curled several feet away, coughing and crying in uneven bursts. His body shook violently. Black veins traced the underside of his jaw and disappeared beneath the torn fabric at his throat. One hand pressed against his sternum as if trying to hold the soul inside.
The Emperor waited.
Slowly, the puppet lifted his head.
His eyes found Areilycus.
He began crawling toward him.
Areilycus moved back.
"Stop."
The puppet stopped immediately.
The response horrified them both.
Areilycus saw the realization enter the young man's face. Confusion first. Then fear. Then the terrible effort of someone attempting to command a body.
"What is your name?" Areilycus asked.
The puppet opened his mouth.
His throat worked painfully around the scar.
"I..."
He swallowed.
The effort made tears gather in his eyes.
"I don't know."
Areilycus looked toward the Emperor.
The young man remained on his hands and knees because no one had told him he could rise. His body trembled with exhaustion. His eyes stayed fixed on Areilycus with a confusion so total that it bordered on devotion. "What do I do with him?" he asked.
The Emperor looked at the puppet. "Whatever you like."
The Emperor stepped closer and placed one hand on Areilycus's shoulder. The chaos beneath his skin quieted instantly beneath the contact, relieved to recognize its source. "This is godhood," the Emperor said. "Deciding what may continue living and accepting that every available choice leaves blood on your hands. If you run away from the responsibility, you will find yourself gutted by fish, just like my stupid brother."
Areilycus looked toward the puppet he had created.
Then toward Lera, asleep at the Emperor's feet.
The Emperor squeezed his shoulder once.
"Tell him to stand."
Areilycus's mouth went dry.
The puppet waited.
He did not want to give the order. He wanted to kneel beside the young man and apologize for doing what the Emperor asked. He wanted Mila to appear and tell him exactly how badly he had failed. He wanted to leave Mullano and never cross another reflection again.
Instead, he heard his own voice.
"Stand."
The puppet rose.
Unsteadily at first. One leg dragged. His spine curved as though the body had forgotten how to distribute weight. But he stood because Areilycus told him to stand, and when he finally lifted his face, something in his expression had already begun changing.
The terror remained.
So did the confusion.
Beneath both, faint and newly forming, was gratitude.
Areilycus understood then why the Emperor believed only gods could be trusted with power.
He just wasn't sure he believed it too.
***
Kin found Soileen at the boundary just before dawn.
She was sitting cross-legged beside the talismans with a shallow basket in her lap, separating flowers from their stems.
The forest behind her had recovered some of its composure since the dragon tore through it, although the recovery looked purely ornamental.
The talismans drawn into the soil remained intact.
Kin stopped on the opposite side of them.
Soileen did not look up immediately. She finished stripping the petals from a small blue flower and arranged them carefully in one corner of the basket.
"You smell like the sea queen," she said.
"I carried her to the shore."
"That was charitable of you."
"Don't worry. I'll make sure she pays me back."
Soileen glanced up at him then. Her face retained the unsettling softness of childhood, but the eyes belonged to someone else.
She looked briefly at the mud on his boots, the bruising near his jaw, the new exhaustion under his eyes.
"You should go home," she said.
Kin laughed quietly. "I've had an interesting night. Everybody keeps telling me that."
"Perhaps you should consider the possibility that everybody is right."
"I've considered it. I remain unconvinced."
Soileen returned to her flowers. "What do you want?"
Kin looked beyond her toward the forest. He could no longer see the camp from the boundary, only the dense layering of roots, trunks, hanging moss, and dark leaves beaded with moisture. Somewhere inside, the Vlax Kaeni continued living according to their rules. They had medicine, memory, spells, and knowledge of the divine family's old crimes. They also possessed a remarkable talent for standing adjacent to disaster while describing their neutrality as wisdom.
"I need to summon the great demon," Kin said.
Soileen's hands stopped.
The stillness lasted only a moment. She resumed sorting petals, but more slowly now.
"You should return to your ship," she said. "Go back to hunting Meiren. Cut off their tails. Sell their fat to people who want to live forever. Continue being exactly the kind of man you were yesterday and stay out of the conflict that is brewing."
Kin watched her carefully.
"Not everyone has a neutrality contract with Theron."
Soileen looked up sharply.
"How did you know that?"
Kin smiled.
He did not smile kindly.
"I didn't."
Kin stepped closer to the talisman line without crossing it. The markings in the dirt seemed to notice him. A faint ripple moved through the nearest symbols, not light exactly, but tension. The forest had begun listening.
"Thank you," he said. "That was helpful."
Soileen set the basket aside.
For the first time since he arrived, she looked like something other than a strange young girl collecting flowers at dawn. Her body remained small. Her dark hair still fell loosely around her shoulders. But authority entered her posture. Kin wondered if she could turn him into a fox.
"You know nothing about our agreements."
Kin crouched on his side of the barrier, lowering himself until they were almost eye level. His ribs protested the movement. He ignored them.
"I used to think Aazor was simply tired and poor. Countless people go missing and we just forget them, replace them with new children. We could not afford outrage every time something monstrous happened beyond the port. So we adapted." A bitter laugh scraped briefly through him.
"And then Kaen died."
The words still hurt.
He had spent years believing Kaen's death would ruin him.
Instead, it had woken him.
"Something changed after that," Kin said. "Not only grief. I know grief. I have spent enough time inside it to recognize its foul stench. This was different. It felt like waking after a fever. Every thought I used to swallow came back sharp enough to cut my brain, bleeding it open. Every compromise became intolerable. Every argument I used to make for patience began sounding like cowardice."
Soileen did not move.
Her silence was no longer dismissive.
Kin leaned closer.
"I thought I had simply reached my limit. Then I started looking around and realized Aazor has been at its limit for generations. People grumble. They drink. They complain when the roofs dissolve and the fishing boats fail to return. But they do not rise. They do not fight. They barely even mourn properly. They accept everything with the exhausted indifference of animals trained not to bite the hand holding the knife."
"That is what oppression does," Soileen said.
"I don't think so," Kin said. He reached down and traced one finger through the damp earth just outside the nearest talisman, careful not to touch the symbol itself.
"What keeps Aazor so submissive?" he asked. "What makes an entire continent, however small, endure humiliation without deciding that death might be preferable? Is it something Theron placed in the water? Something Kaen did accidentally while convincing himself he was protecting us? Some spells only the Vlax Kaeni know?"
A root moved beneath the soil. Kin smiled again.
"There it is."
"You are not as clever as you think."
"I am considerably cleverer than I was last week."
"I know you are angry at Kaen. He is not the most … lovable person in the realm. But you shouldn't be taking out your anger on people who had nothing to do with his betrayal."
Kin's smile vanished. "Why would the Vlax Kaeni need a neutrality agreement with Theron unless neutrality was something he had to enforce? Why would everybody with enough knowledge to interfere choose inaction at the exact moment interference matters? Why do you worship a man whose crimes you can describe with perfect accuracy while treating resistance as a childish failure?"
"No one knows Theron's crimes better than me," she argued. Her face hardened into stone. "Aazorians staying out of trouble should be a good thing."
Kin looked beyond her again, toward the hidden camp. "Tell me how to summon him. Or I will slit Kaen's throat."
Soileen's eyes widened. "You stupid boy. You will ruin everything."
He expected the answer. That was why he had not come empty-handed.
"If you refuse," he said, "I will return to Aazor and tell every person in the port what I suspect."
Soileen's gaze snapped back to him.
"I tell them something has been done to us. I tell them our patience may not belong entirely to us. I tell them Kaen's death broke whatever was holding my mind underwater, and I ask how many others have felt the same agitation since the sea god fell."
"You have no proof."
"I hold Kaen. I will prove that Nestor's body is a temporary house you arranged for some goddamned reason."
"It wasn't me, Kinsley."
"Whoever it was, you had something to do with it."
Kin took another step toward the barrier. This time the talismans reacted more visibly. Fine cracks spread through the soil around the nearest line. The forest tightened around itself, leaves turning subtly toward him. The basket of flowers sat forgotten near Soileen's knee. A few blue petals lifted in the breeze and scattered across the talisman line. Wherever they touched the markings, they blackened instantly.
Soileen watched them burn.
"What do you intend to do once you summon him?" she asked.
Kin considered lying.
It would have been sensible.
He did not know how much she already understood, and he trusted the Vlax Kaeni only marginally more than he trusted the divine family whose secrets they guarded with such irritating solemnity.
But a partial truth might serve him better.
"I just wanna talk."
"He will kill you."
"Possibly."
"And then?"
Kin shrugged. "Then you can return to your flowers."
The dawn brightened gradually around them, although very little sunlight reached the forest floor. Moisture clung to the leaves overhead. Somewhere deeper inside the boundary, smoke rose faintly through the trees from the Vlax Kaeni camp.
When Soileen finally stood, the movement carried none of the awkwardness of childhood. She picked up the basket, brushed soil from her dress, and looked once toward the talismans at her feet.
"You are wrong about one thing," she said.
"Only one?"
Soileen stepped closer to the barrier from the other side. "Believe it or not, it's not about control. It's about love."
She moved closer to the boundary and crouched beside the nearest talisman. With one finger, she traced a narrow break through the line. The barrier opened for her.
Kin lowered his head. "Love is control."
***
The boat did not sink. It was taken.
The whirlpool seized the hull, spun it once, then dragged it down hard enough that Bonnie lost one oar and swore with real feeling. Milada grabbed the side of the boat, but the wood vanished from under her hand as water closed over her head. Salt filled her mouth. The world went black, loud, and cold.
For a moment, there was only current.
Then something caught her by the waist.
Milada kicked on instinct. A hand clamped over the back of her neck and forced her still.
The current turned again, and suddenly she was not drowning downward but being pulled through a narrow passage beneath the sea. Her lungs burned. Her eyes stung. She saw Bonnie a few feet away, red hair streaming around her face, one hand gripping Milada's sleeve, the other clutching a knife she had somehow not lost.
Of course she still had a knife.
Bonnie saw Milada looking at it and made a sharp gesture with her chin.
Don't panic.
Milada wanted to ask if Bonnie considered that useful advice while being abducted by the ocean. Her mouth was full of seawater, so the question had to wait.
The current spat them upward.
Milada broke through the surface and dragged air into her lungs with an ugly sound. Bonnie surfaced beside her, coughing once and already furious. They were no longer in open sea. They were inside a cavern so large its ceiling disappeared into darkness. Water surrounded them on all sides, black and glassy except where it moved around stone platforms and pillars of bone-white coral. Above them, an air pocket hung beneath a dome of trapped saltwater. It bowed overhead, heavy and clear, with fish moving on the other side of it as if the sky had learned to swim.
Milada hauled herself onto the nearest platform. Her dress clung to her legs. Her hair stuck to her face. She had lost one shoe.
Fine. Apparently this was how this day would end.
Bonnie climbed out beside her, less gracefully than usual but with more dignity than anyone dragged through a whirlpool deserved. She shoved wet hair out of her eyes and looked across the cavern.
"Salacia."
The queen of the lower water was waiting on a raised shelf of black stone.
She looked much improved since the forest. Her tail had returned, dark green and silver, coiled lazily through the pool beneath her. Living kelp wrapped the wound at her throat where Areilycus had bitten her. The bandage pulsed faintly, drawing damaged sea-magic back toward her body. One hand rested in the water, fingers moving idly.
A small fish hovered beside her wrist.
He was pale as a coin, with narrow fins and a sour little face. He did not swim away from Salacia. He stayed tucked near her hand, following every movement like an anxious courtier. When Bonnie looked at him, he opened and closed his mouth once, unimpressed.
Salacia stroked one finger along his back.
"Hello there again, sister-in-law," she said. "Whose side are you on these days?"
Bonnie wiped seawater from her mouth. "The one that doesn't open negotiations by drowning me."
"I did not summon you."
"You pulled down my boat."
"You were attached to the girl."
Bonnie's knife remained in her hand. "I am very close to making this conversation our last."
Nestor flicked his fins and tucked himself under Salacia's palm.
"Don't frighten the fish," Salacia said.
Milada stood. Her knees shook once before she forced them still. "You pulled me here."
Salacia turned her attention to her properly.
The amusement did not leave her face, but it thinned.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you are useful."
"Try again."
"Because Theron never keeps his word, and I am tired of waiting for men to honor bargains they only made because they were bleeding at the time."
Bonnie gave a short, humorless laugh. "That narrows it down."
"I was promised chaos," Salacia said. "A measured piece. Enough to complete a private matter."
Milada looked at the fish. Salacia's fingers curled protectively around Nestor. The fish did not flee. He remained close, his little mouth opening and closing in the water as if he wished very much to contribute an insult but lacked the throat for it.
Milada stared at Salacia. "You brought me here because you want me to steal chaos for your pet?"
"My beloved."
"That is a fish."
"At present."
Bonnie looked at the dome overhead as if asking the sea for patience. The sea declined to answer.
Milada's temper, already worn thin by Gorgo's betrayal, Bonnie's revelations, and the small matter of being dragged beneath the ocean, sharpened.
"I am not your courier."
"No," Salacia said. "You are Theron's escaped property with a failing body and a brother full of the one substance I need."
Milada went still.
Bonnie shifted beside her.
Salacia noticed both reactions and smiled without warmth. "Ah. Sibelle told you."
"She told me enough."
"Never trust 'enough.' It is where most disasters breed."
"You mean like trusting you?"
"Exactly. See? You are learning."
Milada took a step toward the pool. The guards along the cavern walls shifted. They were Meiren, armed with hooked spears and curved knives made from shell. None came closer. Salacia lifted two fingers, and they stilled.
"Where is Ari?" Milada asked.
Salacia's expression changed.
"Your brother is gone from Kaen."
"What?"
Salacia touched the wound at her neck.
The kelp bandage tightened around it. For a moment, pain moved visibly across her face, fast and ugly. Nestor darted up to her shoulder, agitated. Salacia cupped him immediately and held him near her collarbone.
"Because your brother bit me," she said. "He pinned me to a tree and drank sea-magic out of my body. I felt the piece he stole leave this realm."
Milada's throat closed.
Bonnie looked sharply at Salacia. "Leave where?"
"Home, I suppose."
Water dripped somewhere high above them. Each drop struck the surface below with a sound too clear for the size of the room.
Milada shook her head once. "No. He was unconscious in the Vlax Kaeni camp."
"He left before you reached my water."
"Who took him?"
"The Emperor's children."
Milada felt the platform tilt beneath her, although it had not moved.
Cleo and Las had taken Ari.
Which meant the Emperor had him.
Which meant Ari was back in Tripolis, surrounded by diamond storms and the man who had spent his life teaching them that love and ownership were related concepts. Now that Mila wasn't there to affirm the opposite belief, what would happen to Areilycus?
Sweet, conflictless Areilycus who never wanted anything from anybody.
Milada pressed one hand against her stomach.
For one second, she almost saw him as he had been in childhood: bare feet on the hot stone of Silica Bluff, laughing with his mouth full of stolen fruit, running too fast because he trusted her to follow. Ari always trusted her to follow.
She had not.
She had gone to Gorgo.
She had left him in the camp.
Now he was gone.
Bonnie said her name quietly.
Milada did not look at her.
Salacia watched the damage settle and, to her credit, did not gloat.
"The Emperor will finish what he began," she said. "If he can place the chaos fully inside Areilycus, he will no longer need to bargain with me. Or Gorgo. Or anyone."
Milada lifted her head. "He will not survive."
Salacia peeled back part of the kelp to show Mila her injury. "I think he'll be just fine."
Milada's hands curled into fists.
Salacia leaned forward, tail shifting under the water. Nestor stayed at her shoulder, small and watchful. "I can give you a way to reach him."
Bonnie laughed once. "And there it is."
Salacia glanced at her. "You object to the obvious?"
"I object to you."
Salacia turned back to Milada. "You will go to Tripolis. You will reach your brother. You will remove enough chaos from him to slow the transfer. Then you will bring that chaos back to me."
Milada laughed.
It surprised her. It came out quiet and cold.
Salacia's brows rose. "Something amusing?"
"You think you're hiring me."
"I am offering you passage."
"You are asking me to walk into the Emperor's realm, steal chaos out of the person he wants as his new body, survive, cross back through whatever bridge Bonnie can rig together, and deliver the thing every god in this family has ruined lives to possess."
"Yes."
"And you thought the price was a route?"
Milada stepped to the edge of the platform. The water below her was clear enough now that she could see Salacia's tail moving beneath the surface, slow and powerful. "I will bring you chaos," Milada said. "Not as payment. As treaty."
Salacia's smile faded.
"Treaty."
"Yes."
"How ambitious. Did nearly drowning improve your politics?"
"No. Losing patience did."
Milada kept her eyes on Salacia. "You want chaos. I want my brother. Bonnie wants her daughter. Aazor wants freedom. Everyone keeps bargaining separately with the Emperor, and that is why he keeps winning."
Salacia looked at Bonnie.
Bonnie looked away first.
"So here is my offer," Milada said. "You give us passage. You give us protection in your waters. You stop treating Aazor like a chew toy you forgot under the furniture. Bonnie gets us into Tripolis without your brother-in-law knowing. I get Ari out. If I bring chaos back, you receive enough to … well, do whatever it is that you want to do."
"And in exchange?" she asked.
"When the war comes, you stand with me."
For the first time since Milada had seen her, Salacia looked genuinely caught off guard.
"War?"
"Yes."
"Sweetheart, that is a large word for someone missing a shoe."
Milada looked down.
She was, in fact, still missing a shoe.
She looked back up. "The Emperor took my brother."
"Theron takes things. It's sort of … what he does."
Salacia leaned back slowly. "You have no army. And since you are merely acquainting yourself with how Chaos works — Theron can revive anything. You don't stand a chance. He will drown you in the sea of corpses."
"I have a plan."
The queen of the lower water understood ambition. She understood appetite. She understood what drove those around her to act on instinct.
"You are very young," Salacia said. "Whatever you think Theron is doing right now to your brother, it will not be half as terrible as the catastrophe he will rain on us if we declare rebellion. Whether we like it or not, ever since we put that cursed thing inside him, he owned us all."
The fish hovered calmly, as if this sort of conversation happened every morning before breakfast.
"A war against Theron is not a rescue mission," Salacia said. "It is not brave children running through corridors while music plays. It is famine, rot, borders closing, families selling each other for a clean cup of water. It is cities choosing which babies to save when the wells turn black. There is a reason Kaen let Theron to his own devices. There is no winning against him."
Salacia's expression cooled.
"I understand wanting something the world insists must remain impossible."
"Then stand with me."
"And if I refuse?"
"There is not much I can do. But just imagine — ridding the realms of a tyrant — doing something even your husband couldn't do."
Salacia stared at her.
The guards along the walls shifted again. This time Salacia did not stop them immediately. The water in the cavern began to move, slow circles forming around each platform. Bonnie adjusted her grip on the knife.
Milada did not step back.
She was frightened. Of course she was frightened. She was standing beneath the sea in front of an immortal queen and she just learned she was breathing because Theron willed it.
But fear was no longer the most important thing in her body.
That place belonged to anger now.
Salacia finally lifted her hand.
The guards stilled.
The water settled.
"If you return with chaos, I will stand with you when the war comes."
Bonnie turned to her. "That was suspiciously direct."
Milada nodded once.
"Then we have a treaty."
"No," Salacia said. "We have a dangerous flirtation with consequences. A treaty requires witnesses, blood, threats, signatures."
"Fine."
Milada stepped closer to the pool and held out her hand.
Salacia looked at it.
Then at Bonnie.
"Is this a mainland custom?"
Bonnie shrugged. "Sometimes we just touch hands."
"How bleak."
But Salacia reached up.
Her fingers were cold. Strong. Webbed slightly between the knuckles.
Milada clasped the queen's hand.
For one moment, the sea held still around them.
Then Salacia tightened her grip.
"Bring me chaos, starling."
Milada tightened hers back. "Bring me to my brother."
***
The insect hovered above Bonnie's wet palm, its body dim gold, almost green at the edges, with one cracked wing that should have made flight impossible. It moved badly, dipping every few seconds as if remembering how air worked. Its light did not pulse with the Emperor's usual rhythm. No sharp red flare. No obedient little heartbeat. No sense of a thing listening to a master several realms away.
It looked half-dead and deeply annoyed about being called back to work.
Salacia leaned against the rim of the pool behind them.
Milada stood at the edge of the shallow tide mirror Salacia had drawn across the black stone floor. It was no wider than a door laid flat. The water was perfectly still, despite the movement of the cavern around it. In its surface, Milada could see herself from above: wet dress, bare foot, one shoe, hair stuck to her face, eyes too dark from exhaustion.
Behind her reflection, a second sky moved.
Tripolis.
A slice of it only. White cliffs. Silver rain. The hard glimmer of Silica Bluff beneath a storm that never fully broke.
Home.
Somewhere under that sky, Ari was with the Emperor.
She had to hold that thought carefully.
She turned to Bonnie.
"Tell me something useful."
Bonnie's face changed.
It was small. A tightening around the mouth. A shutter moving behind the eyes.
"Against Theron?"
"Yes."
"There is nothing useful."
Milada stared at her. "You were married to him."
"That is why I know."
"Bonnie."
"No." Bonnie's voice stayed low, but it sharpened. "The queen was right. There is no help against Theron. Not the kind you want."
Salacia made a pleased sound from the pool. "I do enjoy being quoted."
Bonnie did not look at her.
Milada did. "Nobody was speaking to you."
Milada turned back to Bonnie. "There must be something."
"There are habits. Preferences. Weaknesses he has trained himself not to show. None of them will save you if you walk in thinking you can outplay him in his own realm."
"Then tell me how to survive the first five minutes."
Bonnie held her gaze. "There is a reason you still walk, Mila."
Milada listened.
"There is very little he can do on Kaen, he cannot even set foot on it. You are safe here, he cannot command your body here. If you leave, you can expect to be put down."
Bonnie held her gaze. The old firefly drifted lower over Bonnie's hand. She lifted it carefully and whispered something under her breath. The insect brightened once, then dimmed again.
"If he wants your brother to take over, Theron will need a steadying hand to make sure Areilycus does his bidding. You can appeal to be just that to Areilycus, the same way Justitia has been that to him."
"How do I convince him? I effectively betrayed him."
"Well, you did disobey, but you did it only out of concern for Areilycus, didn't you? You didn't know what was wrong with him, you were scared."
Milada looked at the water again. Her reflection looked younger than she felt. That seemed unfair. She wanted the outside to show at least some of the damage, if only to warn people to stand farther away.
"What does he fear?" she asked.
Bonnie looked down at the firefly. "Becoming obsolete."
Milada absorbed that. "Theron is frightened of what happens when people discover they don't need him in their lives. I think more than anything, that is the reason he refuses to let me see our girl. Because I left. And showed him how unnecessary he is."
The tide mirror shivered.
Bonnie looked down. "Time."
Salacia lifted herself slightly from the pool. Water ran down her shoulders and throat, over the living kelp wrapped around Ari's bite.
"The route is opening," she said. Milada ignored her.
She faced Bonnie fully.
"You should stay by the queen's side."
Bonnie blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Stay with Salacia."
"I was planning to remain near the person least likely to let the ocean eat me, yes."
"No." Milada's voice lowered. "Stay by her side while she does what needs to be done."
Bonnie understood then.
The irritation left her face. What remained was worse.
"Milada."
"Zora is still with Gorgo."
Bonnie went very still.
Milada had not said it earlier. Not directly. There had been no time, and then too much time, and then Salacia had dragged them under the sea.
But now the words had nowhere else to go.
"Zora said Malach told her her mother was trapped on Kaen," Milada said. "She said the Emperor punished him for it. She is sixteen. Silver hair. Green eyes. He fed her fireflies to stop her from speaking. She calls Malach Uncle Mal."
Bonnie's face lost color slowly.
Salacia watched from the pool without comment. For once.
Milada kept going because stopping would be kinder, and kindness was not always useful.
"She was on Gorgo's table when you found us. You saw her."
Bonnie's throat moved.
The old firefly trembled above her palm.
Milada said, "I think you already know."
Bonnie closed her hand carefully around the firefly without crushing it.
For a moment, she looked as if she might deny it. Not because she did not believe.
Then she looked toward Salacia.
The queen's expression was unusually blank.
Milada stepped closer. "Bonnie."
Bonnie looked back at her.
"Stay here," Milada said. "Use Salacia. Use her guards. Use the sea. Get to Gorgo. Get Zora out."
"I will."
The answer came immediately. Bonnie opened her hand again. The firefly crawled weakly across her palm, light flickering against the lines in her skin.
"I will," she repeated. "I will never abandon my child. Not again."
Milada nodded.
A handoff.
You go there.
I go here.
Neither of us stops.
Bonnie caught Milada's wrist before she could turn away.
"One more thing."
Milada looked at her.
"If Theron offers you a choice, do not choose."
Milada stepped into the tide mirror.
The water did not splash. It opened around her ankle like a mouth deciding not to bite yet. Cold ran up her leg, then through her ribs, then behind her eyes. The reflection beneath her changed. Her wet, exhausted face disappeared, replaced by Silica Bluff under diamond rain.
Bonnie released the firefly.
It flew ahead of Milada, crooked and dim, lying with every beat of its damaged wings.
Behind her, Salacia called, "Bring me chaos, little starling."
Bonnie said, "Bring back your brother."
Milada looked once over her shoulder.
Then Tripolis rose through the reflection and took Milada whole.
Milada landed in Tripolis badly.
The firefly had lied as well as Bonnie promised. Broken wings produced broken flight.
Instead of delivering her to the service gardens below Silica Bluff, it dropped her through a shallow rain pool onto the polished floor of the eastern palace gallery.
She hit one knee first. Pain shot up her leg. Her hand slapped marble. The tide mirror closed beneath her before she could curse it properly.
The firefly dipped once in front of her face, its cracked wing buzzing with smug exhaustion.
"Brilliant," Milada muttered. "Excellent work. Very discreet."
The palace answered with a crash.
Not nearby.
Below.
The whole floor trembled.
Milada looked up.
Tripolis had changed since she left, or perhaps she was only seeing it without the courtesy of belief. The gallery was too white, too clean, too rich with light. Rain struck the glass roof overhead in hard silver lines. Diamond fragments slid down the panes and gathered in gutters designed to carry beauty safely away from people who could not afford to bleed for it.
Another crash came from below.
Then a scream.
Milada stood too quickly, caught the wall, and forced herself to breathe.
The firefly turned toward the sound.
Milada followed.
The east gallery opened onto the high inner stair, where half a dozen palace guards were running in the wrong direction. That told her enough. Palace guards did not run away from danger. They ran toward it, loudly and in expensive boots.
One guard saw her and stopped dead.
"Lady Milada?"
She kept walking.
He reached for the signal chain at his belt.
Milada picked up a fallen silver tray from a side table and threw it at his head.
It hit with a beautiful sound.
The guard dropped.
"Sorry," she said, stepping over him. "Family emergency."
The closer she came to the lower halls, the hotter the air became. Not fire-hot. Storm-hot. Every hair on her arms lifted. The lamps along the walls flickered red, then white, then went out entirely as something inside the palace pulled too much power through the veins of the building.
Voices shouted below.
Vectra's voice cut through them all.
"Areilycus. Stop."
The next impact cracked the staircase under Milada's feet.
She gripped the rail and looked down.
The transfer chamber had been opened.
Milada had never seen it before, but she knew immediately what it was. The doors at the base of the stair were made from dark glass veined with gold. They stood half torn from their hinges. Beyond them, the chamber dropped into the old heart of Silica Bluff, where the palace had been built around a natural pit of diamond stone and black machinery.
The room was full of people who should have known better than to be there.
Vectra stood at the center in white.
The Emperor stood behind her.
Calm.
Too calm.
Ari was on the far side of the chamber, barefoot in a torn ceremonial coat, one hand braced against the wall as if holding the entire palace in place by hatred alone.
His hair had gone silver at the temples.
One eye burned red.
The other was still his.
The chamber around him was ruined. A brass machine lay crushed under fallen stone. Fireflies flickered in broken glass cylinders, their red bodies flashing warning signals no one had time to obey. A physician crawled away from a split table, one arm hanging uselessly. Two guards stood between Ari and the door with spears lowered, which was optimistic of them.
Ari lifted his head.
The spears melted.
Metal ran down the guards' hands in silver streams. They screamed and dropped what remained.
Ari laughed.
It was not his laugh.
The sound came out uneven, breathless. The chamber responded to it. Cracks spread through the diamond floor. The red light in his eye brightened until every firefly in the room flared in answer.
The Emperor's expression did not change, but Milada saw his hand tighten.
"Ari," he said.
Ari turned on him.
The movement was so fast the nearest attendants stumbled back. The chaos around Ari gathered visibly now, a dark pressure bending the air against his shoulders and hands. The ruined transfer apparatus behind him began to lift from the floor piece by piece. Screws, glass, surgical hooks, copper coils, fragments of polished diamond. All of it rose around him in a slow orbit.
"You said it would stop hurting," Ari said.
The Emperor took one step toward him. "It will."
"You said I could hold it."
"You can."
"You said I was made for this."
"You are."
Ari's face twisted.
The orbiting fragments shot outward.
"Areilycus." Ari flinched.
So did Milada.
The title was gone. The softness was gone. The man speaking now was not father, not teacher, not savior.
Ari staggered back, then bared his teeth.
His canines had lengthened.
"Don't," Vectra said, not to Ari.
To the Emperor.
The Emperor ignored her.
Chaos moved under his skin, blackening the veins along his throat and hands. The chamber bowed under the pressure of two vessels answering each other. The walls groaned. Fireflies burst one by one in their cylinders, each pop small and obscene in the larger noise.
Milada reached the bottom of the stairs.
No one noticed her.
That was the only useful thing that had happened all day.
The Emperor lifted his hand.
Ari screamed.
The force that came out of him slammed everyone back. Vectra hit the broken transfer table. The Emperor skidded half a step, which was more movement than Milada had ever seen anyone force out of him. The guards went down. One of the physicians struck the wall and stopped moving.
Milada stepped into the chamber.
"Ari."
Nothing happened.
The chaos still raged around him. The broken pieces still circled. His red eye remained fixed on the Emperor.
Milada walked closer.
"Ari."
This time his head jerked.
Slowly, as if the name had reached him through several locked doors, Ari looked at her.
The chamber went quiet enough for Milada to hear the diamond rain overhead.
His face changed.
His red eye stayed red. His hands remained clawed at his sides. The chaos continued moving around him, restless and hungry.
But Ari saw her.
"Mila?"
The word was almost nothing.
Milada's throat tightened.
She did not run to him. Every instinct in her wanted to, which meant running was probably stupid. She crossed the ruined chamber slowly, stepping around broken glass, dead fireflies, and the nearest guard's abandoned helmet.
The Emperor watched her.
She did not look at him.
"Mila," Ari said again.
"Yes."
"You're not here."
"Terrible news. I am."
His mouth trembled.
The chaos flickered.
Vectra pushed herself upright against the table. Blood ran down her cheek. "Milada, do not—"
"Do not finish that sentence."
Vectra blinked.
Even the Emperor looked briefly interested.
Milada kept walking.
Ari backed away from her. "Don't come near me."
"No."
"I'll hurt you."
"You might."
"Mila."
"I said no."
The chaos snapped toward her like a warning. It cut across her cheek. Warm blood slid to her jaw.
Ari froze.
Horror broke through his face.
Milada lifted one hand and wiped the blood away with her thumb. "See? No harm done."
His breath hitched.
"You're bleeding."
"I've had worse."
"When?"
"Recently. Keep up."
Milada took another step.
The chaos retreated from her.
Fear was still Ari.
Guilt was still Ari.
Love was still Ari.
She could work with that.
"You left me," he said.
For a second, everything in the room became too sharp. The broken machines. The Emperor's stillness. The rain above. Ari's face, ruined by pain and betrayal he had not chosen but still felt.
"I could say the same thing," she said. Ari's eyes filled.
"I woke up and you were gone."
"I know."
"You said you would come back."
"I did."
"Too late!"
Milada stepped close enough now that the heat of the chaos pressed against her skin. Her body recognized it. Wanted it. Needed it. Bonnie's warning passed through her mind with unpleasant timing.
"I am here now," she said. "Better late than never."
Ari shook his head. "I don't want this, Mila."
The Emperor nearly burned a hole through the back of Mila's head. She could have said a million things. And a million things would hurt Theron, but never right her Areilycus.
"I choose you."
The chaos surged.
Vectra took a step forward. The Emperor raised one hand slightly, stopping her.
Milada saw the motion from the corner of her eye and hated him for it.
Always arranging the room.
Ari's hands shook. The black veins along his wrists pulsed under the skin.
"It hurts," he whispered.
Milada reached him.
Ari flinched before she touched him.
She stopped with her hand inches from his face. "I was wrong to leave you."
His eyes moved over her.
Wet hair. Torn dress. One shoe. Blood on her cheek. No weapon. No plan good enough to be called one.
Milada put her hand against his face.
The reaction was immediate.
Ari folded into the touch like his body had been waiting for her and only her.
The chaos lashed once, hard enough to crack the floor around them, then recoiled. His red eye flickered. His knees buckled.
Milada caught him badly.
He was heavier than she expected. Or she was weaker. Both were possible. He collapsed against her, arms wrapping around her waist with terrifying force before loosening. His forehead dropped to her shoulder. His whole body shook.
"I'm sorry," he said.
She held him.
"Shut up."
"I hurt people."
"I know."
"I wanted you."
Milada closed one hand in his hair and held him tighter.
"I'm here."
Ari made a small, ruined sound and went completely slack.
The rage left his body so abruptly the room seemed to lose pressure. The orbiting fragments dropped. Glass rained across the floor. The remaining fireflies dimmed.
His red eye faded to a dull ember.
Milada sank with him to the floor because she could not hold him upright any longer. Ari curled against her, face pressed into her shoulder, breathing hard but steadying. Every few seconds, a tremor passed through him and vanished under her hand.
The chamber remained silent.
Milada lifted her head.
Everyone was staring.
She looked at the Emperor.
He looked back as if she had just confirmed something he already suspected and hated.
Vectra wiped blood from her cheek with two fingers. "We need restraints."
"No," Milada said.
Vectra's gaze moved to her. "You are not in a position to give orders."
"Funny. I was about to say the same thing."
Ari shifted weakly in her arms. His hand tightened in the fabric at her back.
The Emperor stepped forward.
Milada forced herself not to pull Ari away. It would not help.
The Emperor stopped beside them and looked down at Areilycus.
For a moment, the mask slipped.
"You see," she said quietly, "why he needs guidance."
The Emperor's mouth curved faintly. "A practical diagnosis."
"It's a rare condition in this palace."
Vectra's eyes narrowed. "Milada."
The Emperor lifted his hand again.
She stopped.
He looked to Vectra. "Take Areilycus to his rooms. No restraints."
Vectra stared at him. "That is unwise."
"I was not asking."
Milada tightened her arms around Ari.
The Emperor continued. "Have the physicians wait outside his rooms. No one touches him unless he wakes in pain. No sedatives unless I authorize them. No fireflies in the room."
Vectra's expression changed slightly at that.
"No fireflies?"
"No."
Then Vectra nodded once.
Two attendants approached. Ari stirred instantly, panic flashing across his face.
Milada bent close. "Ari. Listen to me."
His eyes found hers.
"You're going to rest. I'll be with you shortly."
Ari's gaze shifted toward the Emperor, and the ember in his eye brightened.
Milada caught his face between both hands.
"No," she said. "Look at me."
He did.
"Rest first. Rage later."
His mouth moved weakly. "You'll come?"
"Yes."
This time she did not let herself think about whether it was true.
Ari nodded.
Vectra approached more carefully than the attendants had. To her credit, she did not touch him immediately.
"Areilycus," she said. "Can you stand?"
He looked at Milada.
She nodded.
Ari let Vectra and one attendant help him up. His hand stayed in Milada's until the last possible moment. When their fingers slipped apart, his face changed again, fear rising through the exhaustion.
Milada almost went after him.
The Emperor said, "He will be safe."
She looked at him.
"That word has suffered enough in your mouth."
Vectra paused at the door with Ari half-supported against her side.
The Emperor did not react to the insult. That meant he was either amused or furious. Milada had never enjoyed how often those looked alike on him.
"Take him," he said.
Vectra obeyed.
Ari looked back once before the doors closed.
Milada stayed where she was until he was gone.
Only then did she stand.
Her legs did not want to cooperate. She made them. One shoe, soaked dress, bleeding cheek, dead body running on borrowed chaos or whatever the hell Bonnie had called it. Fine. Let the palace see her like that.
The Emperor studied her.
Broken glass covered the floor between them.
"How did you get here?" he asked.
Milada smiled without warmth.
"Badly."