After Harper leaves, I brave the slush and muck of the streets to head to the courier’s office, where two packages have arrived from the Aquilla villa in Serra. The first is my midwinter gift for Livia. After checking to make sure it’s intact, I open the second package.
I catch my breath at the glimmer of Elias’s mask in my hand. According to a Kauf courier, Elias and a few hundred Scholar fugitives disappeared into the Forest of Dusk shortly after breaking out of the prison. A dozen Empire soldiers tried to follow, but their mangled bodies were found on the Forest’s borders the next morning.
No one has seen or heard from the fugitives since.
Perhaps the Nightweed killed my friend, or perhaps the Forest did. Or perhaps, somehow, he found some other way to evade death. Like his grandfather and mother, Elias has always had an uncanny skill at surviving what would kill anyone else.
It doesn’t matter. He’s gone, and the part of my heart where he lived is dead now. I tuck the mask in my pocket—I’ll find a place for it in my quarters.
I head for the palace, Livvy’s gift nestled under my arm, mulling over what Avitas told me: The Commandant kept an eye on me in Blackcliff because it was my father’s last request. At least, that’s my suspicion. She’s never acknowledged it.
I asked the Commandant to give me the mission to shadow you because I wanted to learn about Elias through you. I didn’t know any more about our father than what my mother told me. Her name was Renatia, and she said my father never fit the mold that Blackcliff tried to force him into. She said he was kind. Good. For a long time, I thought she was lying. I’ve never been those things, so it couldn’t be true. But perhaps I just didn’t inherit my father’s better traits. Perhaps they went to a different son.
I berated him, of course—he should have said something long ago—but after my anger and incredulity settled, I understood the information for what it was: a crack in the Commandant’s armor. A weapon I can use against her.
The guards of the palace let me pass into the imperial wing with only nervous glances at each other. I have begun rooting out the enemies of the Empire—and I started here. Marcus can burn in the hells for all I care, but Livvy’s marriage to him puts her in danger. His enemies will be hers, and I will not lose her.
Laia of Serra had the same type of love for her sibling. For the first time since meeting her, I understand her.
I find my sister sitting out on a balcony that overlooks her private garden. Faris and another Black Guard stand in the shadows a dozen feet away. I told my friend that he didn’t need to take the posting. Guarding an eighteen-year-old girl is certainly not a coveted position for a member of the Blood Shrike’s force.
If I’m going to kill, he’d said, I’d rather do it while protecting someone.
He nods a greeting to me, and my sister looks up.
“Blood Shrike.” She stands but doesn’t hug me or kiss me the way she once would have, though I can tell she wants to. I nod to her room curtly. I want privacy.
My sister turns to the six girls who sit near her, three of whom are dark-skinned and yellow-eyed. When she first wrote to Marcus’s mother, requesting that the woman send three girls from Marcus’s extended family to serve as her ladies-in-waiting, I was stunned, as was every Illustrian family that had been passed over. The Plebeians, however, still talk about it.
The girls and their Illustrian counterparts disappear at Livia’s gently given order. Faris and the other Black Guard move to follow us, but I wave them off. My sister and I enter her bedchamber, and I lay her midwinter gift on the bed and watch as she tears it open.
She gasps when the light shines off the ornate silver edges of my old mirror.
“But this is yours,” Livia says. “Mother—”
“—would want you to have it. There’s no place for it in the Blood Shrike’s quarters.”
“It is beautiful. Will you hang it up for me?”
I summon a servant to bring me a hammer and nails, and when he returns, I remove Livvy’s old mirror and plug the spy hole behind it. Marcus will just have his spies cut a new one. But for now, at least, my sister and I can speak in private.
She sits on the vanity chair beside me as I hammer in a nail. When I speak, I keep my voice low.
“Are you all right?”
“If you’re asking the same thing you’ve asked every day since the wedding,” Livvy lifts an eyebrow, “then yes. He hasn’t touched me since the first time. Besides, I approached him that night.” My sister lifts her chin. “I will not have him thinking I fear him, no matter what he does.”
I suppress a shudder. Living with Marcus—being his wife—is Livvy’s life now. My disgust and loathing of him will only make that more difficult. She did not speak to me of her wedding night, and I haven’t asked.
“I walked in on him talking to himself the other day.” Livvy looks at me. “It wasn’t the first time.”
“Lovely.” I hammer in a nail. “An Emperor who is sadistic and hears voices.”
“He’s not crazy,” Livvy says thoughtfully. “He’s in control until he speaks about doing violence to you—just you. Then he gets twitchy. I think he sees his brother’s ghost, Hel. I think that’s why he hasn’t touched you.”
“Well, if he is haunted by Zak’s ghost,” I say, “I hope it sticks around. At least until—”
We lock eyes. Until we have our vengeance. Livia and I haven’t spoken of it. It was understood the first moment I saw her after that horrible day in the throne room.
My sister brushes out her hair. “You’ve heard nothing more of Elias?”
I shrug.
“And what of Harper?” Livvy tries again. “Stella Galerius has been angling to meet him.”
“You should introduce them.”
My sister furrows her brow as she watches me. “How is Dex? You two are so—”
“Dex is a loyal soldier and an excellent lieutenant. Marriage might be a bit more complicated for him. Most of your acquaintances aren’t his type. And”—I lift up the mirror—“you can stop now.”
“I don’t want you to be lonely,” Livvy says. “If we had Mother or Father or even Hannah, it would be different. But, Hel—”
“With respect, Empress,” I say quietly. “My name is Blood Shrike.”
She sighs, and I attach the mirror, straightening it with a touch. “All done.”
I catch my reflection. I appear as I did just a few months ago, on the eve of my graduation. Same body. Same face. Only the eyes are different. I look into the pale gaze of the woman in front of me. For a moment, I see Helene Aquilla. The girl who hoped. The girl who thought the world was fair.
But Helene Aquilla is broken. Unmade. Helene Aquilla is dead.
The woman in the mirror is not Helene Aquilla. She is the Blood Shrike. The Blood Shrike is not lonely, for the Empire is her mother and her father, her lover and her best friend. She needs nothing else. She needs no one else.
She stands apart.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Laia
Marinn rolls out beyond the Forest of Dusk, a vast white carpet dotted with iced-over lakes and patches of forest. I’ve never seen a sky so clear and blue or breathed air that feels as if it’s filling me with life every time I inhale.
The Free Lands. Finally.
Already, I love everything about this place. It is familiar in the way my parents would be familiar, I think, if I could see them again after all these years. For the first time in months, I do not feel the chokehold of the Empire around my throat.
I watch Araj give the final order to the Scholars to move out. Their relief is palpable. Despite Elias’s assurances that no spirits would trouble us, the Forest of Dusk weighed heavier and heavier upon us the longer we spent within it. Leave, it seemed to hiss at us. You don’t belong here.
Araj finds me beside the once-abandoned cabin I’ve reclaimed for Darin, myself, and Afya, a few hundred yards from the border of the Forest.