do, tell me how to change to make you love me again.” Her voice rose to a frantic shriek. “Tell me how to love you and I’ll do it!”
The pain in her head faded as Benehime’s fingers released their grasp. The White Lady snatched her hand away and looked down with a disgust so intense Nara barely recognized her.
Why would I need you? she said, her voice cold as a glacier’s heart as she pulled the thief closer. I already have someone to love me. Good-bye, Empress.
Nara doubled over as something inside her, something deeper than she’d ever known her soul could go, twisted and broke. All at once, she could no longer feel her body. She tried to breathe, but her lungs wouldn’t obey. Looking down at her shaking hands, Nara saw her skin turn gray, then white, then vanish altogether. Her bones shrank before her eyes, growing smaller and brittler until they snapped under their own weight. Her chest ached, and she looked down to see that it was caving in.
She would have screamed then, but there was no longer breath in her crumbling throat. As her vision went dark, her last thought was a memory. She was kneeling in the swamp again, and Benehime was reaching out, her lovely fingers curved in an inviting gesture, her light lighting up the world. Before Nara could rise and go to her, the moment was gone, and she fell to dust with Benehime’s name on the last remnants of her lips.
Well, Benehime said, shaking her hand as though she could shake the last feel of Nara from her skin, that’s that.
On her lap, Eli was staring at the pile of dust that, seconds ago, had been the most powerful ruler in the world. “What did you do?” he whispered.
She was no longer worthy of being my star, Benehime said. So I removed my blessing and allowed age to catch up with her at last. Eight hundred years is a lot to handle all at once. I guess she couldn’t take it.
Eli’s voice was shaking so badly he could barely get the words out. “But she loved you.”
Everything loves me, the Shepherdess said with a shrug. Even you. Isn’t that right, darling?
Eli said nothing, and the Shepherdess tightened her grip, her sharp fingers biting into his ribs.
None of that, she whispered. I won. You’re mine, remember? Now, don’t you love me, darling?
Eli turned to her with a slow smile. “Of course I do.”
Benehime smiled back and gave him a kiss on the nose. Then she motioned for him to get off her lap. Eli moved to sit where she motioned, leaving the Shepherdess some space as she turned to talk to the Lord of Storms.
Their conversation was low and tense. It sounded like an old argument, and though Eli tried to listen, his attention kept drifting to the Lady’s floating sphere, which was hanging in the air by his elbow. Particularly, his eyes kept going to one small island off the coast of the western continent where the fires were still burning in a destroyed city as dawn broke over the eastern sea.
Josef Liechten, King of Osera, was spending the twentieth hour of his reign in the still-smoking shell of Osera’s throne room, listening to old men argue.
He sat on the steps of the throne beside the one remaining iron lion. The other lay toppled on the floor, its head melted to slag by the foot of the war spirit whose cold corpse lay collapsed in the rubble of what had been the throne room’s western wall. The throne was crushed as well, the carved stone bench and backboard pounded into gravel. That was probably for the best. Sitting on the stairs listening to his mother’s advisers bicker over Osera’s future was bad enough. If Josef had been forced to sit in her chair for it, he probably would have walked out.
He was close enough to walking as it was. The advisers weren’t even talking to him, just yelling at each other over his head about what must be done. Apparently, there were a lot of musts. Disgusted, Josef turned and looked out the crushed wall of the throne room. Through the large hole the war spirit had left, he could see the whole of the royal city, or what was left of it.
The stylish stone buildings and narrow lanes that had once covered the western slope of Osera were now little more than blackened piles of rubble. Entire blocks had shattered when the war spirits fired from the Empress’s palace ships had landed, leaving craters of blasted, burned dirt where houses and shops had once stood. The Spiritualists had managed to get most of the fires under control, but a few stray lines of smoke were still rising from the docks, and, of course, there were the war spirits themselves. Their corpses were everywhere. After Eli had done… whatever it was he’d done and the Empress’s fleet had vanished, the war spirits had toppled over and gone cold. They hadn’t moved since, but the damage was done. Everywhere Josef looked, Osera was destroyed, and try as he might to remember that his island had rebuilt before, it was hard to feel any kind of hope.
Josef sighed and rested his chin on his fist. Eli’s eternal optimism usually grated on him, but he could have really used some right now. How long did the useless thief mean to disappear for, anyway?
“Sire?”
Josef flinched and glanced up. All the old men were staring at him. Powers, he’d missed something again, hadn’t he?
Seeing his panicked look, the oldest of the ministers, a man Josef remembered seeing with his mother in court as a child, though he couldn’t remember the old bastard’s name now to save his life, repeated the question.
“Minister Archly was asking your opinion on how we should prioritize our emergency response. Should we focus on evacuation or should we concentrate our attention on saving what we can of our remaining structures?”
“We must do all we can to help the people, of course,” put in another minster, whom Josef could only guess was Archly. “But our infrastructure is Osera’s most valuable asset. We should—”
“Can’t have infrastructure without people,” Josef said, glad of a simple question. “Our first priority is to make sure we save as many people as possible. We’ve given the Empress too many Oseran lives as it is. I’ll not give her any more.”
“Of course, sire,” the old minister said, his voice strained. “But what about—”
“Figure it out,” Josef growled, standing up. The old men all started talking at once then, but Josef just pushed past them, stalking off toward the blown-out doors.
The Oseran palace had been as hard hit as the rest of the city, but, remarkably, the royal wing was still intact. Josef stomped through the empty corridors. He’d sent the servants to help with the recovery, and so far he didn’t miss them. After all the noise and chaos of the last two days, the silence in the empty halls was much more comforting than having someone around to make his fire. Josef jogged down the hall and quietly opened the door to his chambers, tiptoeing through the parlor and into his bedroom, where he stopped to let his eyes adjust to the dark.
Nico lay in his bed, a dark shape buried beneath the covers. He’d carried her here himself when they’d cleared the survivors off the storm wall. She’d been awake then, but was sleeping now. Josef let out a breath. Seeing the steady rise and fall of her chest calmed him better than anything else.
Walking to the bed, Josef eased himself down to the mattress. He kept his eyes on Nico to make sure the motion didn’t disturb her, but Nico didn’t stir. Smiling, Josef leaned against the heavy headboard and closed his eyes against his own tiredness.
He hadn’t slept since the night before last, when he’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for Adela. Now that he was sitting, he could feel the tiredness in his marrow. Even the Heart on his back felt heavy. He wanted more than anything to lie down beside Nico and let her calm breaths lull him to sleep, but there were still fires in the city below. People were still digging their families out of the rubble, and all the ministers wanted to do was argue over infrastructure.
Josef gritted his teeth. He should have sent the old men down to dig through the broken houses themselves. That would have taught them. But, of course, he’d never do that. He could chop a palace ship in two, but Oseran politicians still made him feel like a stumbling boy. They’d probably taken his “Figure it out” command as a chance to do whatever they liked, but Josef wasn’t really sure he cared. After all, they knew more about running a country than he did. Maybe it was for the best if he just stayed out of things.
He must have drifted off in the dark room. One moment he was looking at Nico; the next he was jerked awake by the sound of someone knocking on the door. Stiff and more tired than ever, Josef forced himself to his feet. He walked quietly to the door and opened it a fraction to see one of the guardsmen who’d stood with him on the storm wall.
