“Yes, I do,” Eli said. “Because, while you can force everything else in this world to dance for your delight, you can’t make me do the one thing you need above all else. You can’t make me love you.”
Benehime dug her nails into his head. You will love me, she snarled.
“If you wanted love, you shouldn’t have killed Nara,” Eli snarled back. “Because you’ll get none from me.”
The rage on Benehime’s face was a horror to behold, twisting her lovely features into a hideous mask. But then, as fast as it came, the rage was gone, replaced by something worse.
Slowly, terribly, a smile began to spread across Benehime’s lips. She sat up, staring down at Eli from her perch on his chest. And then, in a beautiful, fluid motion, she rolled off him. Eli didn’t move as she stood, not even to test the bindings on his limbs. He just lay there, meeting her white eyes with his own unwavering glare. Show no weakness, a voice very much like Josef’s whispered in his mind. Hold your ground.
Benehime straightened to her full height. She loomed over him, white and terrible with that cold smile on her lips, and the air grew thick with the pressure of her will. It surrounded Eli like tar, pressing in until he could scarcely breathe.
You think you are anything without my love, arrogant boy? she whispered. You’re nothing without me. The only worth you have is what I give you.
Eli rolled his eyes. He’d heard that one before. “You’re wrong,” he said, grinning wide. “I’m worth two hundred and forty-eight thousand gold standards. Now that Den’s dead and Josef’s king, that’s more than anyone else in the world.”
Benehime closed her eyes. I should have known better than to expect sense from you, but to choose a bounty over my favor… Her voice trailed off, and then, without warning, her face softened.
I love you, Eliton, the Lady whispered, opening her eyes. Despite all you’ve said, all the insults, all the selfishness, I love you. Nothing can change that. But since you would choose a bounty over my favor, even in jest, it’s obvious you need to be reminded of the value of my love. All these years living in the light of my good graces have made you forget how easy you have it. I think it’s time for you to relearn the harsh realities of the world.
Before Eli could answer that, Benehime reached out and touched his chest. Her fingers burned through the cloth of his shirt, and Eli didn’t even have time to brace before the pain exploded through him. It flooded his mind, burned over every inch of his skin, ground into his bone, but then, as quickly as it had started, the pain was gone.
Benehime’s hand left his chest, leaving only the feeling of emptiness and the knowledge of what he’d lost. The mark of the Shepherdess, the sign of Benehime’s favor that had been inside him so long he couldn’t remember life without it, was gone. Suddenly, Eli felt painfully weak and small, like he’d deflated. It must have shown, for Benehime began to laugh as she straightened again.
Let’s see how you live up to your words, she said haughtily. But don’t worry, darling, I haven’t taken everything from you. After all, you still have your bounty.
Eli opened his mouth to say she was bloody right about that, but before he could make a sound, he realized he was falling. Above him, Benehime’s face shone down like the moon, her lips curved into a cruel smile.
I hope it’s everything you dreamed of.
Her voice rang in his ears as the white world vanished, slipping away through the cut in reality she’d opened under his back. Suddenly, he was surrounded in a whirl of color—blue sky and green trees and tall white spires topped with gold. That was all he caught before he crashed into something cold, hard, and uneven. Eli rolled on instinct, clutching his chest as the breath was knocked clean out of him. When his lungs were working again, he opened his eyes to see the tip of a sword hovering right in front of his nose.
Eli raised his hands on instinct. He was on his back in some kind of paved yard surrounded by soldiers in white surcoats, all of whom had their swords out. Overhead, a great citadel rose like a mountain, its seven, gold- tipped spires scraping the pale morning sky.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Eli muttered, lowering his hands to rub his aching eyes.
“Arms up!” the soldier barked.
Eli raised his hands again, smiling at the guards. It wasn’t his best smile, but it was all he could manage. Of course, of all the places Benehime could drop him, where else would she choose but the front gate of the Council of Thrones?
“That’s him, all right,” one of the guards said, nodding toward the wall of the guardhouse where Eli’s poster was pasted prominently. “Looks just like his picture.”
If the fact that the most wanted criminal in the Council had literally fallen from the sky bothered them, the guards hid it well. They hauled Eli to his feet without fanfare and marched him into the citadel through a side gate. Once inside, they said something to another guard who was wearing a long white coat, and then took Eli down a long set of narrow stairs as though following long-standing orders.
Despite all the jostling, Eli saw little of the journey. His mind was still reeling from how quickly his situation had changed. It was a strange realization to have while he was surrounded by guards marching down a seemingly never-ending stair into the dark underbelly of the Council of Thrones, but it was slowly dawning on Eli that he was free. The mark was gone. He’d done it. He didn’t know how long it would last, but for now, in this moment, he was free.
His face broke into an idiotic grin, and Eli practically floated as the guards pushed him along a suspended walkway through a huge, dark, cavernous room. He was so lost in his happiness, he didn’t even notice where he was going until the guards sat him down in a worn but surprisingly comfortable chair. And then, to his great astonishment, they left.
Shocked out of his happy daze by his sudden abandonment, Eli looked around, casing his surroundings with the attention to detail Giuseppe Monpress had drilled into him. He was alone in a small, windowless office with strange, curving metal walls held together by rivets. Desks covered in papers took up most of the space. The walls were covered in papers as well, drawings mostly, but one wall, the wall he was facing, was different.
There, pasted in neat rows from the ceiling to just above the desks, hung every bounty poster he’d ever had, starting when he was only worth five hundred and going all the way to the current sum of two hundred and forty-eight thousand. The sight of his own smiling face repeated over and over was so puzzling and unexpected that Eli didn’t realize there was someone else in the room with him until she spoke. But even though he hadn’t seen her, the scratchy, smoke-stained voice told Eli exactly who it was.
“Hello, Eliton.” Sara stepped out from behind him, her pipe dangling between her teeth. “Been a while.”
Eli took a deep breath. “Not long enough.”
His mother smiled, and Eli felt the joy of his freedom shrivel away to nothing.
CHAPTER
5
Miranda leaned back in the padded chair and ground her palms into her eyeballs. Powers, she was tired. Six hours of sleep was not enough for this nonsense. All she wanted to do was lie down and never get up, but she couldn’t rest now, not when there was still so much to be done.
From the moment she’d gotten back to the Tower after leaving Mellinor, Miranda had been trying to figure out what to do about a disappearing star. The problem was overwhelming, mostly because she knew so little about the stars or the Shepherdess who ruled over them.
The Shaper Mountain had told her stars watched over other spirits that were like them, sort of like a Great Spirit but on a much larger scale. She knew that most of them were ancient, though not as ancient as the Shaper Mountain, and that they had a great deal of free will and awareness compared to the smaller spirits. Other than these few basics, though, she knew nothing. She didn’t know where to find the stars, how many existed, or even how to recognize one if she saw it. With so little to go on, Miranda had had no choice but to start at the beginning and proceed methodically.
Before she could worry about what a star’s disappearance meant, though, she had to know if this was an
