Page 28 of Between Smoke and Shadow

“We need to run,” I say desperately. “Forget stealing magic or dismantling the crown. At the start of the season, let’s justgo.Once things settle, we’ll come back and finish the mission. Get revenge. Steal magic. Whatever else we want. But for now, we just need to survive.”

Ineed to survive.

Vale is silent for a long moment. My pulse grows heavier against my palm, more erratic. Like it knows it’s running out of time.

“We aren’t giving up, Rune,” Vale says. His voice is hard, harsher than I’ve ever heard it. “I know you’re scared, but you can’t back down. We’ll loseeverything.”

“We don’t have anything,” I bite back. “We havenothing, Vale. That’s the whole point. All we have are our lives. And I’d like to leave before I lose that too.”

His breaths are ragged through the darkness. He takes a step back, jostling a shelf as he leans against it. As the moments stretch, I press my hands over my eyes to keep from crying. I keep hoping he’ll say he understands, that he’ll readjust to get us out sooner than planned, but he doesn’t.

“I’m scared,” I admit after an eternity of silence. “I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not going to die,” he says. “You’re going to do what’s needed to survive. Find escape routes. Find information. Find Caleah. See if you can figure out where she is.”

“And what will you do?” I snap. I hardly recognize the ferocity of my tone.

“The rest,” he says simply. I have no idea what that means, whether it’s a lot or nothing at all. It certainly feels like I’m expected to do everything by myself.

Still, I feel the fight drain out of me. I’m too tired to question him. Right now, I only want to return to my room and sleep for the next three days.

A buzzer sounds from the ceiling. Another change of the hour. It feels impossible that we've been here for so long.

“I have to go,” I move to the door, pausing with my hand on the knob. “Hopefully I’ll survive to our next meeting.”

It’s a low blow, but I don’t feel guilty for saying it. Vale doesn’t respond before I slip out of the room, shutting it behind me. I tell myself he didn’t know what to say, even when I worry he didn’t care to say anything at all.

On the nightof the Flood Season Celebration, I polish shoes in Viana’s quarters. As I do, she stands on a round platform, surrounded by a handful of unfamiliar servants. Everyone here has their place, their task, and no one speaks. We’ve been silent, with only the sound of tapping makeup brushes and fastening metal buttons, for over an hour. Viana remains motionless through it all. She’s a perfect doll, staring at herself in the elongated mirror, practicing her smiles.

By the time I finish with the third and final pair of shoes, an older servant makes her final hair adjustment. Viana eases off the platform and inspects herself in the mirror. She alternates between grinning and frowning, adjusting her dark curls and touching the edges of her black lipstick. Her green dress, a long-sleeved gown with a high neckline and raindrop-shaped gems, is impeccable. Viana can’t find a loose thread to tug, but she looks anyway, twisting this way and that in the mirror.

“You look lovely, my lady,” the older servant says. “Like a queen.”

“Do not speak,” Viana snaps. She glares at the woman, and without looking at me, snatches a pair of emerald heels from my lap. “Your opinion means nothing.”

“Yes, my lady,” the servant says. She smiles placidly, as if Viana’s words don’t touch her. I wonder if her insides are secretly boiling as she smiles, or if she’s lived this life so long she’s finally numb to it.

The remaining servants step back against the wall of Viana’s quarters. Her bedroom is as lavish, if not more so, than what I expected. Like Saskia, she has green velvet curtains and a matching bedspread and an over-fluffed rug. Much of Viana’sdecor is in the shape of Harrick’s crown, and I’ve realized her feelings for him blur between admiration and obsession.

To be fair, she’ll likely be his wife. Clearly her tactics are working.

I move to my feet, returning the shoe polish to a service basket in the corner. Along the walls, there are multiple paintings of previous Savoan queens and glorious landscapes of places I doubt exist. If they do, they’re from the Architect’s memories of the Old World. They certainly aren’t from within our ruined kingdom.

We stand silently as Viana practices more laughs and smiles and sultry stares. When the overhead siren buzzes, a warning that the party will soon begin, Viana slips into her heels.

“I do look like a queen,” she says, grinning at herself. Her smile drops as she turns to me. “Let’s go, wench. It’s time to claim my crown.”

The royal courtyardis unlike anything I imagined. It’s almost frightening, the way we stand in a room without walls, looking down at all of Savoa. A thousand feet below, and far into the distance, the Wilds beckon. Lush forests and grazing beasts of all sizes, and in the distance, sharp-peaked mountains clawing for the sky.

I keep near the courtyard’s center, away from the thin iron fence and the drop beyond it. A magicked ceiling floats overhead, and I glance at it often, doubting it’s strong enough to protect from the coming downpour. I’m less than two feet from Viana, hands clasped in front of my waist. She has barely acknowledged me since we exited the lift, and I’ve never felt greater relief.

She and Saskia are seated in transparent chairs, legs crossed and shoulders poised. There’s a collection of desserts on the table between them, all delivered by me and Saskia’s new handmaiden. Between bites of cake, the two ladies whisper and snicker, openly gossiping about their competitors.

As they taunt the other ladies, I let my eyes wander the space. There is so much to look at that it’s hard to focus on any one thing. Hired commoners serve exotic food from two rows of white stone tables. There are platters of sizzling meat and tiered displays of colorful fruit; bowls of leafy vegetables and too many nightwater pitchers to count; an entire table of chocolates and cakes and raindrop-shaped pastries.

Additional tables line the right hand side of the courtyard, but these carry white stone trinkets. I’ve heard whispers that they’ll all turn red with the rain. I hate that I’m excited to watch. I hate that I love this at all, that I’m savoring the excess and wishing it was mine.

Beyond the crowd, high-backed chairs line a raised stage. Four are black and intricate, covered in metal carvings of animals, most unrecognizable to me. The final is much more throne than chair, standing tall above the others. And where the smaller ones are black metal, this one is yellowed bone. I study the fingers and skulls and femurs, the way they’ve been twisted, forced into place, splintering like dried wood. It brings me back tothatday, the one I’ve tried desperately to forget.

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