“You may have started me on this path,” Cyte said, real anger in her voice now. “But I didn’t have to keep going. Give us some fucking credit, Winter!”
“I’m sorry,” Winter said. “You’re right. I know—”
“You don’t,” Cyte said. “But I’m going to keep pounding it into your head until you do. You’re a commander, but that doesn’t make you a god. You can only do what you can.” She took a deep breath. “You’re going to stop the Beast, and you’re going to come back. Just like you came back this time.”
There was a pause. Cyte shifted and rolled onto her back, next to Winter.
“Okay,” Winter said.
“Good.”
Another, longer silence.
“When I was riding away from the cavalry at Alves,” Cyte said, quieter now, “I could almost feel them coming up behind me. I heard the shots going past. And...” She swallowed. “All I could think was that I couldn’t die, because I had to be here when you got back.”
“Oh, Cyte.” Winter rolled onto her elbow, leaned over Cyte, and kissed her. “I’m sorry. Really sorry.”
“Good.” Cyte grinned. “Now. Did you say you went to Elysium?”
Winter flopped back. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Cyte said. “Get started.”
27
Marcus
There hadn’t been any bottles of flaghaelan in the palace cellars, but Marcus had found a quite respectable brandy from the Transpale tucked in a cabinet underneath a stairway. He’d liberated the whole bottle, despite the scandalized look he got from the steward. Once the world had a pleasant rubberiness to it at the edges, he’d made his way to the Prince’s Tower, where Raesinia had once had her chambers. It was dark and silent now, having been looted during the revolution and not yet refurnished, and he slunk through the too-?empty rooms to the roof. There, on the chilly flagstones, was where Raesinia had regularly “escaped” from her own palace by throwing herself to the gravel below.
He leaned against the battlement, taking another swallow from the bottle and feeling it burn its way down his throat and into his churning stomach. After a few moments of silence, he coughed.
“Sothe,” he said, and then repeated it in a shout. “Sothe! Where are you? I know you’re watching me.”
There was nothing but silence.
“Sothe!” He thumped the stonework with one hand, and winced. “You want me to sit here screaming your name all night?”
Something shifted in the shadow of a crenellation. Sothe’s voice was soft. “You said you never wanted to see me again.”
“Well, things have fucking changed, haven’t they?” Marcus shook his head, sending the world spinning. “You found Winter.”
“I did.”
“And you found out he—?she—?was...” He couldn’t finish.
“Your sister. Ellie d’Ivoire.”
Saints and fucking martyrs. Just hearing the name out loud sent his heart racing, a mix of terror and anticipation and other emotions he didn’t understand. Ellie, he told himself, trying for discipline. My sister. Ellie. She’s alive. Winter is my sister.
It was no good. There were two people in his head. Ellie, four years old, smiling and clever. And General Ihernglass, enigmatic, competent, lethal in a crisis. A little girl and a grown man. A child and a soldier. Now the world was insisting they were one and the same.
Don’t be stupid, he told himself. What did you expect? That Ellie would still be four when you found her?
But logic was a thin reed to cling to. He kept trying to push the two images together, like forcing a jigsaw puzzle piece into a place where it didn’t fit, and they kept springing apart again.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
“You might have told me,” Marcus said. “That’s why you found her, isn’t it?”
The shadow shifted as Sothe nodded. “Once I became aware of her identity, I was... torn. I thought she deserved to make the choice herself.”
Marcus had to admit he couldn’t see the fault in that. Balls of the fucking Beast. Could Winter really have chosen not to tell me? Let me live the rest of my life not knowing? It would have been easier for her, wouldn’t it?
“So, now what?” Marcus said. “Your conscience is assuaged? You’ve redeemed yourself?” He snorted.
“My conscience was never the issue here, Marcus.” Sothe stepped out of the shadow, into the half-?light of the torches on the walls. “I don’t try to pretend I haven’t done terrible things, or that I can make up for that. A person’s life isn’t like a ledger book, where this much good cancels out that much bad and all debts are paid. I will always be the person who killed at Duke Orlanko’s command and never asked why.” She bowed her head. “All I can hope for is to be someone else as well.”
“And you think this helps?”
“I thought that I owed you the truth.”
“Does Winter know?”
“Know what?”
“What you did to my—?to our parents. That it was you who took her family away from her.”
“She does. I think she is... still trying to understand how to feel about me.”
Marcus leaned back against the wall, stone cool against his cheek. The bottle sloshed gently in his hand, but he suddenly wanted nothing more to do with it.
“What are you doing here?” he said. “Don’t tell me you think this makes us even.”
“I left after Janus resigned because I had unfinished business with Orlanko,” Sothe said. “And... because I thought that perhaps Raesinia would no longer need my help. I have returned because I was wrong.”
“What happened to Orlanko?”
“I killed him,” Sothe said matter-of-factly.
“Good,” Marcus muttered. He pushed himself back to his feet and turned to face her. “So, now what? I warned you—”
“That you would kill me if you saw me again.” Something flashed between them. A knife, stuck point ?down in the crack between two flagstones, still quivering from the force of the throw. Sothe stepped slowly out of the shadow, light sliding off her black-?clad form. “This is your chance. I will not abandon Raesinia, not now. If you wish to take your revenge, I offer you this opportunity.”
Marcus looked down at the knife. In his inebriated state, he doubted he was much of a threat to Sothe. No, let’s not mince words. I’m no threat to her when I’m at my best, not unless I’ve got a company of sharpshooters backing me up. He bent, with an effort, and pried the blade from the ground.
She watched him steadily, not even glancing at the weapon. Marcus shook his head.
“I can’t,” he said with a sigh. “You know I can’t.”
“I do.” Sothe’s lip quirked slightly.
“That hardly seems fair.” He flipped the knife around and handed it to her, hilt first. She took it and slid it into some hidden recess of her costume.
“I’m not in the business of fair,” Sothe said.
“I haven’t forgiven you,” Marcus said. “Just because I’m not willing to cut a woman down in cold blood doesn’t mean I can accept what you did.”
“I do not require your forgiveness,” Sothe said. “You and I are both devoted to Raesinia in our own ways. I hope that we can at least agree on that.”