Page 39 of Heir

“How—” Aunt Hel shook her head. “I let this happen. For five centuries we have weathered every tempest from within and without. And I’m the one watching as we fall.”

The palace shuddered, and screams echoed from beyond the safe room. The roof cracked.

Musa glanced up. “You might want to move before that comes down. Ridiculous way for an empress to die, getting crushed by her own palace.”

The ground trembled, and a crack shot up one of the walls. The Empress threw herself at her nephew, knocking him to his back as the wall smashed down. Most of the lamps in the room shattered on the floor, and the sudden darkness was suffocating. Quil coughed as Aunt Hel pulled him up.

She turned to Musa, who relit one of the lamps. “Tell me true,” she said. “Without the scatter spears, can we hold?”

Musa shook his head and Quil didn’t think he’d forget his aunt’s face then, a detached sort of calm taking over as her hope leached away, as her world—their world—crumbled into heaps of rubble.

But Aunt Helene had survived the death of her mother. Her father. Her middle sister. Her youngest sister. The love of her life. Her comrades in arms. One after the other, taken from her. She’d seen her capital city fall, her people decimated. She’d clawed it back. She would again. He was certain of it. She’d give some order to turn all this around.

The Empress turned to Quil. “You need to get out of the city, Quil. Leave the Empire. I need you to—”

“Aunt Hel, you can’t send me away while our city burns with no explanation.”

“The Kegari will be after me, nephew. Take Sufiyan and Arelia. They’ll be safer with you, and skies know I don’t want to face Elias and Laia if anything should happen to their boy.”

Quil shook his head, glancing up at the ceiling. It wouldn’t hold for much longer. “I’m not leaving you.”

“I’m not going if he’s not,” Sufiyan said, the first time he’d spoken loud enough for anyone but Quil to hear.

The prince glanced at Arelia, who was peeling her curls off her face. “Me neither.”

But Aunt Hel didn’t look at them. Instead, she met Quil’s eyes with the same sadness as when Quil was returning to the Tribal Lands and she was saying goodbye. For a moment, he saw everything she’d been hiding. The well of feeling that drove her from city to city, that left her in deep silences—sometimes for days.

“I will fight,” she said to him. “Skies know I will. But, nephew, if I fall—”

“You won’t—”

“If I fall, you will be Emperor. It is your destiny. Youmustsurvive.”

“I—I don’t—”I don’t want it.Quil felt the words clawing up his throat, but he could not say them, not when his aunt was so clearly willing to die for the Empire and the people in it. To die for him.

A shrill shriek and another detonation. The roof above began to crumble. Aunt Hel reached over her shoulder, unbuckling the strap across her back. The blade that came free had a distinctive hilt made by only one blacksmith in the Empire.

“It’s a Teluman scim.” She shoved it into Quil’s hands. “One of Elias’s. I asked for it—for your coronation.”

At any other time, he’d have marveled at such a gift. The scim was a work of art, and Elias’s twin swords had been with him for twenty years.

“Empress!” Musa called. “There’s no time!”

“Save us, Quil.” Helene dragged him toward her so only he could hear, and now her voice was ragged. Panicked. “Save the Empire. Find out as much as you can about our enemies. But most importantly—” She looked around, as if she feared being overheard. “Bring—bring it back. It’s the only thing that will destroy them.”

“Bring what—”

“Tas!” she hissed. “He’s with the Ankanese. Find him. You know where he’ll be. He has it. Bring it back. As much as you can. I cannot say more.Thisis why you must leave. I trust no one else with this task.”

“Let me stay with you. Send the Blood Shrike—send Tas a message—”

“I dare not. The spy could be anyone and we cannot risk a message to Tas being intercepted. The survival of the Empire depends on you, Quil. Do not fail our people. We are Gens Aquilla. We are—”

“Loyal,” he said. “To the end.”

She touched her hand to his brow. “My boy. My heir. My blood. You are the best parts of me. I know you will not fail.”

The earth shook so violently that Quil’s bones rattled. Sufiyan steadied him as Arelia charged ahead, picking the safest way through the rubble.Quil stumbled after, turning back once. But the Empress and Musa had disappeared into the wreckage of the falling palace.

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