Page 110 of The Gilded Ones

They’re all safe. Now I can concentrate on my task.

I run towards the thrones, keeping to the edge of the chamber, well away from the fighting in the middle. It’s deadlocked below me. The deathshrieks and alaki push against the jatu, but the jatu, for some reason, are able to push back.

How are they so strong?

A whooshing sound ends this thought. When I look up, the emperor is just before me.

I gasp, stunned. “How did you—”

He knocks me into the wall so hard, it crumbles. By the time I look up, dazed, he’s standing above me, a cruel smile on his face.

“Surprise,” he says as he picks me up by the heel.

He slams me against the wall. Stars explode in my head. Blackness comes in waves. I can barely think, barely move. What just happened?

Deka? I hear Ixa’s voice as if from far away.

When I look up, he’s exploding into the room. The moment he sees me lying there, bleeding, he roars, enraged. DEKA! he shouts, barrelling towards the emperor, teeth bared.

They snap at thin air. The emperor’s body has vanished, as if it was never there. I blink again, shocked. Where did he go?

“Ah, the shapeshifter,” Emperor Gezo’s voice says from somewhere behind Ixa. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

When Ixa whirls, the emperor is standing behind him, his crossbow cocked. He fires dozens of arrows in rapid succession, loading and reloading so fast, I can’t even see them move. All I feel is a tremendous wind blowing past me, and when I look up, Ixa is pinned to the wall by golden arrows. He’s roaring as he struggles against them.

DEKA! he calls, his anger changing to panic. He gnaws at the arrows, trying to free himself.

Panic jolts me when I realize they’re made of celestial gold. He won’t be able to move them no matter how hard he tries. All he’ll do is worsen his wounds.

“Stop, Ixa!” I shout. “You’ll only hurt yourself!”

“Such touching concern for a mindless animal.” Emperor Gezo’s voice is just next to my ear, and when I look up, his body blinks into the space beside me, the motion so fast, it’s almost invisible. He smirks at my shock. “You really should be more concerned for yourself, Nuru,” he says, grabbing me by the throat and slamming me into the ground.

The floor cracks under me, and my head rattles against my helmet. Blood begins to pour from my ears and nose.

Emperor Gezo leans over me again, a smirk on his lips.

His eyes seem different – darker… Now that I’m looking directly into them, I realize they’re more similar to mine and White Hands’s than they are to a regular human’s. They’re completely black, just like an elder alaki’s. No wonder he prefers to wear masks.

“What are you?” I gasp, horrified.

The emperor slams me against another wall. “Haven’t you guessed?” he gloats, picking me up again. “I’m a jatu, a male descendant of the Gilded Ones.” He slams me against the floor.

“But the jatu are human,” I say, scrambling backwards in horror. “They bleed pure.”

The emperor grabs my foot, drags me along the floor. The smile on his face is almost serene now. He’s enjoying this – enjoying hurting me.

How could I have ever thought he was benevolent?

He keeps slamming me against the wall.

“Very few of the jatu you’ve met are true jatu.” SLAM. A hit. “We are all mortal – finite.” SLAM. Another hit. “We do bleed red.” SLAM. Yet another hit. “We also die like humans.” SLAM. SLAM. More hits. “But the mark of our kind is strength and speed far greater than even that of the alaki.”

He slams me against the wall one last time.

Everything is black now. I can barely open my eyes, I’m in such pain – white-hot splinters like fire shooting across my nerves, body throbbing, bones aching. “So your kind hid… All this time you hid…”

The emperor crouches before me, amused. “We were always fewer in number than our sisters, so we made the alaki and everyone else believe that we had died out, lost our power. Then we gave ordinary human soldiers the name to add to the confusion. All the while, we were hiding in plain sight, waiting for the day when you emerged and we could win this power struggle for ever.”

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