Page 68 of Vilest Things
Sinoa… I won’t let you…
Calla’s breath comes short. She can’t hold on to one thought for long; the pain is all-encompassing. Maybe Otta is trying to kill her. Maybe this is how she deteriorates until she goes entirely insane and runs herself through with her sword.
“What do youwant?”
Calla draws her sword and swings. She only cuts through air, the whistle of her blade joining the night chorus.
Fuck.Fuck.
Forward she goes. Her vision blurs. She stumbles down alleys and up hills. Barely keeps her balance on descending stone steps and finally hurls herself into a pillar for something to clutch to. This cannot continue, but Calla can’t return to the campsite like this, nor can she admit to anyone that something is wrong.They would investigate. They would figure out that she’s doubled. That she has occupied someone else for the entire life she remembers—and there’s no reason she deserves the power she has.
Her fingers come off the pillar covered in ash. When Calla looks ahead and focuses, she recognizes the shape of the building before her as a temple. Its columns smolder white under the moon. The overhanging, upcurved eaves glitter gold.
“Please,” she manages aloud. If there are gods in this world, she’s begging for relief.
Calla staggers toward the temple, her foot crossing where dirt turns to marble flooring. She feels qi pulse the air around her. The thrumming behind her eyes sears with the physical press of a knifepoint.
Long live Her Majesty,a scream calls in her head, suddenly as clear as day. It’s a chorus of voices in unison, not from this temple but from across the city, echoing and echoing.Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years. May our sacrifice give her new life. May she be reborn, and win the war once our enemies have perished.
Calla falls to her knees. Her sword scrapes against marble, brushing away a thin film of ash. There’s color beneath, an inlay built into the base before the steps begin. She barely has the conscious capacity to make the decision, and yet she finds herself swiping at the ash, scratching and brushing until the image is clear.
She doesn’t understand.
This is her face, staring back at her from the very composition of the temple floor. It’s an impossibility. Calla today may be an invader, but Princess Calla Tuoleimi was still born like any other child, eight years before a girl from Rincun jumped in.
Calla clears the ash below her face.
SINOA TUOLEIMI QUEEN OF THE PALACE OF HEAVENS
This must be a hallucination. She can’t rein in the pain anymore. Something is trying to tear her apart from the inside out. She’s going to die if she doesn’t stop it.
“Calla, stay right there.”
The night floods with yellow. Her chest shudders. The new sigil on her arm feels entirely aflame, as though she might possess the raging sun in her bones.
“Galipei?”
He comes into view. His sword is drawn. “Hands up.”
Long live Her Majesty. Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years. Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years. Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years. Long live Her Majesty ten thousand years—
“Shut up!” Calla gasps, clasping her ears. “Please.”
You’ll never win this war. The blood will be on your hands. The land will be lost—
“Calla Tuoleimi,” Galipei bellows, “you have three seconds to surrender yourself before I bring you in by force.”
The south is lost. Yi has burned. You have nothing but—
“One.”
Sinoa, I will never see you again.
“Two.”
Long live Her Eternal Majesty.
“Thr—”
