Page 159 of A ?Sky Beyond the Storm

“Gird your loins, Shrike.” Musa gives me a sidelong glance. “You’re about to get quite the promotion.”

“We have been torn asunder by civil war,” Quin goes on. “A fourth of our standing army lies dead. We betrayed and destroyed cities in our own protectorate. Our Empire stands on the brink of dissolution. We do not need a regent. We need an Imperator Invictus. We need an empress.”

He turns and points at me. “And there she stands.”

At that moment, the sun, drifting in and out of the clouds all morning, breaks through, washing the training ground and the river beyond in pale light.

“Witness!” Quin isn’t one to waste a moment of drama. “Witness how the skies crown her!”

The sun hits my braid and the crowd titters in awe. A part of me wishes Laia hadn’t re-braided it, for if my hair was a mess, perhaps this nonsense would end.

“Empress! Empress!”The chant begins with the Martial army. It spreads to the leaders of the Plebeian Gens. Then the Illustrians. The Mercators.

The Scholars remain silent. So do the Tribespeople.

As they should. For I cannot accept the crown. My nephew still lives.Heis Emperor, no matter what Quin says.

“I don’t want this.” I glare at Quin. “I don’t even want to be the bleeding regent. Wehavean emperor.”

“Shrike.” Quin lowers his voice. “Your first duty is not to yourself or your Gens or even your nephew. It is to the Empire. We need your strength. Your wisdom.”

The Martials still shout.“Empress! Empress! Empress!”

Harper, I think.What the bleeding hells do I do? What do I say?But he is not here. Instead, Laia speaks up from beside me.

“The Augur prophecy, Helene.” And before I can tell her to call me Shrike, she grasps my shoulder, turning me toward her. “Do you remember?It was never one. It was always three. The Blood Shrike is the first. Laia of Serra, the second. And the Soul Catcher is the last. What is your beginning, Shrike? It is Blackcliff. And what are the words carved on Blackcliff’s belltower?”

“From among the battle-hardened youth there shall rise the Foretold, theGreatest Emperor, scourge of our enemies, commander of a host most devastating.”I feel faint as I say it, because now, I see what Laia is getting at. For in her way, she, too, survived Blackcliff. She, too, is a battle-hardened youth.

The chanting goes on, the crowd hardly noticing the conversation going on beneath the pavilion.“And the Empire shall be made whole.”

“I’m the second: the scourge,” Laia says. “Elias was the last: the commander. And you—”

“The first,” I say faintly. The Greatest Emperor. So Cain had known. Skies, he as good as told me, months ago, the first time I sought him out in his blasted cave.

You are my masterpiece, Helene Aquilla, he’d said,but I have just begun. If you survive, you shall be a force to be reckoned with in this world.

“Empress! Empress!”

“The Augurs knew, Helene,” Laia says. “This is your destiny.And the Empire shall be made whole. It means you can change things. Make them better.”

“But will you?” Afya says. “Will you renegotiate the Tribes’ place in the Empire, Helene Aquilla? The Scholars’? If you don’t, we cannot support you.”

“I will,” I say, for if I make this promise, I’ll have to keep it.And the Empire shall be made whole. “I swear it.”

“Empress! Empress! Empress!”

The sound echoes in my head, too heavy a burden, and I raise my hands, desperate for it to stop.

“If you wish me to be your empress,” I call out, “then you must first know my heart.”Father, I think.Wherever you are, please give me the words. “In the Empire’s darkest hour, it was not a Martial who stood withme, but a Scholar rebel.” I nod to Laia. The crowd is silent.

“When Keris and her allies were determined to destroy our world, it was not the Martials who challenged them first, but the Tribespeople. We are nothing if we are not united. And we are not united if we are not equal. I will not rule an Empire intent on crushing Scholars and Tribespeople under its boot. If the old way is what you wish for, then choose another to lead you.”

This is not what they want. I know it. For it is not simple or neat or clean. It does not sweep the sins of the Empire under the rug, or allow those who have always had everything to return to that life. But it is what they will get, if I am their empress. And they deserve to know.

“Moreover”—I glance at Quin—“I will not forsake my family. Citizens of the Empire.” I rake the crowd with my gaze. “I will not marry. I will bear no children. For if I am Empress, then the Empire is my husband and my wife. My mother and my father. My brother and my sister. And I name Zacharias Marcus Livius Aquillus Farrar my sole heir.” I draw my knife and cut my hand, letting the blood soak the ground. “This I swear, by blood and by bone.”

There is a dead silence, and I look to Quin, waiting for him to give the order to have me removed. Instead, he offers a surmising glance before putting his fist to his heart.

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