She looked into the faces of her followers: old men, young women, children, soldiers, farmers, convicts. All she saw were corpses, more bodies for the Darkling to lay at her feet.
The Apparat wept, shouting his gratitude that the Sun Saint still lived, that she had once again been spared. In his wild black gaze, the girl saw a different truth: A dead martyr was less trouble than a living Saint.
The prayers of the faithful rose around the boy and the girl, echoing and multiplying beneath the earth, bouncing off the soaring stone walls of the White Cathedral. The Apparat said it was a holy place, their haven, their sanctuary, their home.
The boy shook his head. He knew a cell when he saw one.
He was wrong, of course. The girl could tell from the way the Apparat watched her struggle to her feet. She heard it in each fragile thump of her heart. This place was no prison. It was a tomb.
But the girl had spent long years being invisible. She’d already had a ghost’s life, hidden from the world and from herself. Better than anyone, she knew the power of things long buried.
At night, she heard the boy pacing outside her room, keeping watch with the golden-eyed twins. She lay quiet in her bed, counting her breaths, stretching toward the surface, seeking the light. She thought of the broken skiff, of Novokribirsk, of red names crowding a crooked church wall. She remembered little human heaps slumped beneath the golden dome; Marie’s butchered body; Fedyor, who had once saved her life. She heard the pilgrims’ songs and exhortations. She thought of the volcra and of Genya huddled in the dark.
The girl touched the collar at her neck, the fetter at her wrist. So many men had tried to make her a queen. Now she understood that she was meant for something more.
The Darkling had told her he was destined to rule. He had claimed his throne, and a part of her too. He was welcome to it. For the living and the dead, she would make herself a reckoning.
She would rise.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The problem with acknowledgments is that they quickly devolve into long lists of names suitable for skimming. But many people are required to make a book happen, and they deserve recognition, so please bear with me. (If it gets boring, I recommend singing aloud. Get a friend to beatbox for you. I’ll wait.)
As a new author, you quickly learn how much you’re going to ask of your agent: You need her to be a diplomat, a therapist, an advocate, and occasionally, a brawler. How lucky for me that I found all of these things in the remarkable Joanna Volpe. Many thanks to the entire team at New Leaf Literary and Media, including Pouya Shahbazian, Kathleen Ortiz, and Danielle Barthel.
My editor, Noa Wheeler, is clearly a master of the Small Science. She pushes here, prods there, asks the questions you don’t want to hear, and at the end of it all, you see your story transformed into something so much better. It’s almost like magic.