Page 97 of Vilest Things
“She led the invasion.”
The voices play in her mind. They have become a part of her memories, clinging like Lankil’s ash stuck irremovably to her skin.You’ll never win this war. The blood will be on your hands. The land will be lost. The south is lost. Yi has burned.
Anton’s brows disappear into his hair. She knows he doesn’t choose feminine bodies when he has the option, but he really ought to more often with how expressively he uses these features.
“For Sica?”
The pieces, at last, click into place. Calla pulls her eyes to the edge of the map, to the borderlands ending in the sea.
“Sica isn’t real.” She says the words, and the palace finally exhales in relief. One small statement, then the truth slots back into the world. “Sica is an invention to explain to later generations why the kingdom is war-torn. No foreign kingdom lies to the north of the borderlands. The crown was never hidden for safety. Talin fought a civil war, and when Sinoa Tuoleimi was vanquished, she fled here and died with her crown.”
A loudthunkcomes above them. Calla stiffens, waiting for something to follow, but the sound echoes and fades, turning the palace quiet again. Anton doesn’t wait further: he runs for the staircase.
“Be careful, be careful!” Calla hisses after him.
They climb up the spiral staircase and enter a turret. It curves narrowly enough that Calla’s shoulders start to scrape against the sides, centuries-old paint flaking off and dusting her jacket. A pulse beats in her ears. It accompanies her steps; it doesn’t stop when they finally come to a halt at the top of the staircase, emerging into a cold room with glass for a sloped ceiling.
Calla tries to make sense of the scene. Before her eyes, a flare of light beams into the room. It enters the body sitting on the throne like an arrow wholly piercing into flesh, sharp tip and feathered stem alike absorbed.
The body is dead; that much is obvious. There must be some sort of qi at work, though, preserving her corpse in place instead of it turning to ash after so many years. Her skin sags broken and gray, reeking of rot. She’s covered in a thick film of dust that smothers her eyelashes and the lines of her once-bright clothing. Nonetheless, Calla still recognizes the slope of her nose and the face she’s seen for years in the mirror. However she did it, Sinoa Tuoleimi was reborn exactly as she appeared over a hundred years ago.
The only item on her body that isn’t crumbling is her crown. A band of gold metal encircles her head, etched with decorative carvings—with mythical creatures and complex sigils—across the surface. The ridges at the top curve into sharp points, dotted with turquoise green gems. For all she doubted this crown, Calla can feel its power. It lodges in her throat, trembles through her lungs. Level a city, wage ten wars—she doesn’t doubt that the previous wearer of the crown could do it.
And Otta sleeps at her feet.
“She’s frozen too,” Anton remarks.
A carpet runs the length of the room, ending at the throne seating the dead queen. He’s right, to Calla’s surprise. The rise and fall of Otta’s chest is near-imperceptible, going so slowly as to appear absent. While Otta occupies one end of the carpet, Calla and Anton hover at the other. No makeshift weapons anywhere, unfortunately.
No matter.
Calla steps onto the carpet, and perhaps Anton reads her intent in the way she moves. His hand snakes out. Catches her elbow.
“She can’t hurt you right now,” he pleads. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”
Calla doesn’t look back at him.
“You can’t have us both, Anton.” She tears her elbow out of his grasp. “Either kill me now to save her, or let me kill her.”
It won’t take much. A hard strike on the head—she won’t feel anything. Calla nears, putting one foot in front of the other, and though she is walking toward Otta, she finds that she cannot look away from Sinoa Tuoleimi the moment her eyes flicker over. The crown ripples with power. If she listens closely, she can hear it humming, whispering promises of what it could achieve. It’s not entirely selfish volition that has her pivoting, her fingers reaching for the crown. This is the one hard object in this room she could use as a weapon. If she’s going to succeed…
Calla’s fingers come down on the crown, and the room floods with light.
Qi heaves through the ceiling like the wind of a monsoon, sweeping through the glass and shattering each panel into dustlike fragments. Sinoa Tuoleimi bursts into ash, and when Calla is thrown back, thudding into the wall and staying pinned for seconds after, she knows there is enough qi swirling to kill them in an instant. It snarls and curls and grows fangs, but before the pure power can puncture through her throat and rip her apart, it dissipates, satisfied.
Calla gasps, scrambling for air the moment the room settles. The crown is warm in her hand. A droplet of blood trickles down her nose.
Sacrifice, she thinks absently, clambering upright. That explosion of qi didn’t kill them because there were sacrifices made for it to consume, plucked from the vessels outside and funneled into the room. How did Otta know to do this? Where would any of these instructions have been kept, and if Calla didn’t hear a peep as the fucking princess of the Palace of Heavens, then howelsedid Otta Avia stumble onto knowledge like this?
“You didn’t follow instructions.”
“Shit,” Calla mutters. She missed her chance. While the throne is only occupied by ash now, Otta Avia slowly gets to her feet at the base of it, dusting off her hands. Her clothes remain pristine when she straightens up. Not a speck of dirt or any hint that she traversed the borderlands to get here.
“What is it?” Otta asks. “You thought I was going to lie there nicely while you decided how to bludgeon me?”
At the other end of the throne room, Anton has crumpled to the floor too. The blast pushed him back, near the edge of the spiral staircase.
“Don’t be presumptuous,” Calla returns. She’s waiting for Anton to lift his head, but he doesn’t stir. “Maybe I came to wake you so you could see the surprise I brought you.”
