Dark of the West (Glass Alliance, #1)
Joanna Hathaway
For Nyema and Kirstin, who first believed in this story—and in me
Acknowledgments
I’ve discovered it takes a small army to get a rookie writer off the ground and flying in the right direction, and I’m forever grateful to those who, at different stages, have challenged me, encouraged me, and breathed great life into this story: Radhika Sainath, Jack McBride, Katie Bucklein (my “Delta”), Hafsah Faizal, Kristen Ciccarelli, Dylan Matthews, Reza Hessabi, Rachel Medlock, Kirstin Lindstrom, Stephanie Vaillant, Rose Hathaway, Colleen Mumford, Isabel Iba?ez Davis, Jennifer Todhunter, Sarah Dangar, Alli Smith, Jim Window, Lindsay Diamond, Peter Callahan, Alyson Bowen, Timothy Vienne, Diana Pho, Zohra Ashpari, Kamerhe Lane, Hema Penmetsa, London Shah, Mike Kern, Michael Mammay, Michella Domenici, Snowfall, Brenda Drake, Alex Cabal, Samuel Hathaway, Scott Struthers, Dorina Moldovan, Louba Podvoiskaia, Sarah Kim and my entire Pitch Wars class.
Endless thanks to my fantastic editor, Elayne Becker, and everyone else at wonderful Tor Teen, including Kathleen Doherty, Seth Lerner, Lucille Rettino, and Patty Garcia. Thank you also to Marisa Aragón Ware for creating this truly beautiful cover. As well, much gratitude to the brilliant team at Curtis Brown, Ltd: Tim Knowlton, Holly Frederick, Maddie Tavis, Jonathon Lyons, Sarah Perillo, and Sarah Gerton. A special thank-you to my incredible agent, Steven Salpeter, who makes this journey better than I ever imagined.
And finally, thank you to my family—I love you beyond measure.
PROLOGUE
War is no good for the young, or for love.
The Commander learned this long ago, that it’s the youngest and most in love—with life, with the world—who splinter quickest beneath its weight. Yet here he stands at the door of a crumbling sandstone building, its once elegant pillars destroyed by mortar fire, a feral dog panting on its steps, and he’s wondering if he might still be in love.
Behind him, three dusty trucks idle, leaking petrol. White flags hang adrift in the sun. It’s a ceasefire, the long-awaited truce, but it feels hollow and anticlimactic somehow. He knows, now, he could just as easily be fighting for the other side. Enemies to allies. Friends to foe. He’s seen it all, and his soldiers keep their weapons drawn and ready, their eyes skittering across the rooftops of this battle-scarred town. The world—North and South—has been torn apart and left weeping. An entire generation of wasted courage.
He might still be in love.
The local children emerge from hiding, eyeing his uniform, the fox and crossed swords symbol on his cap. The Commander looks too young for his rank. He is too young for it, but this war has bled his family dry and here he stands. The little faces watch, waiting—blue eyes, brown eyes, a garden of curiosity. They can’t see the long-ago mountains behind his gaze, the ache of her smile in his heart. The girl who once promised to love him for a thousand days.
The girl who brought them this ceasefire.
Alone and uncertain, he imagines what his brother would do, then strides through the shell-strafed entrance to meet his fate. A deserted foyer greets his leather boots. Its ruined walls sag in defeat, a fractured chandelier wobbling above and winking near a hole of blue sky. There are ghosts of another life everywhere. Mangled photographs. Abandoned trunks. Ceramic vases like floral tombs. Everything is withered in the heat, forgotten and left behind beneath the whistling panic of mortar shells.
He walks, following the ghosts, his steps as those of one to a grave.
Seath of the Nahir waits for him in the parlour. The aging revolutionary sits at a table covered in silt and debris, a rifle resting across his lap, his lean body lounging in one of the only usable chairs remaining. He has a greying black beard, a steady hand on his open map. Weary triumph on his sun-worn face. The girl seated beside him is much, much younger. She has her own gun, her own expression, but the Commander only allows himself to see her as a phantasm to the right of his vision—in his mind she is exactly as she once was: raven hair long, breaths gentle, posture straight and formal, a princess.
He doesn’t dare behold her fully now.
Aeroplane propellers growl in the sky above, rattling the damaged roof. They belong to the young Commander, a memory of strength and a reminder of the power he once held in a time long past. The thrill of the engines that once gloried in his veins. And yet here, today, the sky can’t save him from the earth.
Not from this negotiation that belongs to Seath.
With no proper chair, the Commander is left standing before the table, sweat along his pale neck, weighed down by illustrious badges that shouldn’t be his, listening as Seath discusses the Nahir’s terms and speaks about lines on the map he wants for his people, the helpful things he will do in exchange. The ways he will help the Commander defeat their new, shared enemy.
The Commander eyes the map, wondering what exactly he’s to keep and what he can surrender. They were never that clear on this part.
“We do acknowledge your concerns,” he says to Seath, since his own nation once fought for the same right Seath now demands—the right to be known. “But I’ll offer nothing until the permanent ceasefire is signed. Our alliance must be certain this time.”
“And what does that guarantee me?” Seath responds, tapping the barrel of his rifle. “I’ve heard Northern promises before, as my grandfather did, and my father. And I’ve seen the way they turn out for us.” He gestures at the mutilated room, at the young Commander. “You think you’re different? That you won’t betray me for a chance at more? No, I won’t sign away my loyalty so easily. I’m a valuable card in this game.”
“We are different. We’ve fought the same battle as you,” the Commander tries. “We fought to be equal. We wanted something better.”
And they had. The Commander believes this, clings to this truth, even as he knows this same honourable intention was swiftly buried beneath the tracks of armoured carriers, squandered before a valuable lie, used to gain a new kind of power that, while never as vain as that of the kings, was still enough to leave endless bodies bleeding out before a wretched cause.
Seath tilts his head. “And I’ve heard those same words from your father, too.”
The Commander waits, perspiring.
He’s realizing this game might actually have no end. Honour can’t be purchased with blood or sold for lines on a map. His father has tried. Seath has tried.
Now even he has tried.
And he no longer knows why he is here, this place he never wanted to be. He’d give anything to do what’s right—but what is right? Feeling so suddenly on his own, at a loss for the next step, he ignores Seath and lifts his gaze to hers.
The lines disappear as he looks into her familiar face at last. Tawny skin, sable eyes, the picture of her Southern mother. She’s the one who has known his true heart. The one who begged him to stay alive only long enough so that they could enjoy a new world together—the world that never came.
She’s the sky.
She always has been, and something long dead struggles to life in his chest.
He can’t know it, not completely, but here at this table, new war hovering on the horizon, it’s his eyes that she needs, too. She’s been staring since the moment he stepped through the door. Staring, lost, while her fingers grip her rifle, her lips moving over a memory, his name. The cautious glance from him pulls her back to herself.
It keeps her from running.