He did not move, and neither did I. It felt good, leaning against his solidity, resting in his arms. It was an illusion, but for the first time in a long while, I felt safe.
I don’t know how long we stood there, but we both heard it when the music changed. I straightened and looked around; the handful of guests who had been on the patio with us had gone inside. That meant it was midnight—time for the main dance of the evening, the highlight of the ball.
“Do you want to go in?” Nahadoth asked.
“No, of course not. I’m fine out here.”
“They dance to honor Itempas.”
I looked at him, confused. “Why should I care about that?”
His smile made me feel warm inside. “Have you turned from the faith of your ancestors so completely?”
“My ancestors worshipped you.”
“And Enefa, and Itempas, and our children. The Darre were one of the few races who honored us all.”
I sighed. “It’s been a long time since those days. Too much has changed.”
“You have changed.”
I could say nothing to that; it was true.
On impulse, I stepped away from him and took his hands, pulling him into dancing position. “To the gods,” I said. “All of them.”
It was so gratifying to surprise him. “I have never danced to honor myself.”
“Well, there you are.” I shrugged, and waited for the start of a new chorus before pulling him to step with me. “A first time for everything.”
Nahadoth looked amused, but he moved easily in time with me despite the complicated steps. Every noble child learned such dances, but I had never really liked them. Amn dances reminded me of the Amn themselves—cold, rigid, more concerned with appearance than enjoyment. Yet here, on a dark balcony under a moonless sky, partnered by a god, I found myself smiling as we wheeled back and forth. It was easy to remember the steps with him exerting gentle guiding pressure against my hands and back. Easy to appreciate the grace of the timing with a partner who glided like the wind. I closed my eyes, leaning into the turns, sighing in pleasure as the music swelled to match my mood.
When the music stopped, I leaned against him and wished the night would never end. Not just because of what awaited me come dawn.
“Will you be with me tomorrow?” I asked, meaning the true Nahadoth, not his daytime self.
“I am permitted to remain myself by daylight for the duration of the ceremony.”
“So that Itempas can ask you to return to him.”
His breath tickled my hair, a soft, cold laugh. “And this time I shall, but not the way he expects.”
I nodded, listening to the slow, strange pulse of his heart. It sounded distant, echoing, as if I heard it across miles. “What will you do if you win? Kill him?”
His moment of silence warned me before the actual answer came. “I don’t know.”
“You still love him.”
He did not answer, though he stroked my back once. I didn’t fool myself. It was not me he meant to reassure.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I understand.”
“No,” he said. “No mortal could understand.”
I said nothing more, and he said nothing more, and thus did the long night pass.
I had endured too many nights with little sleep. I must’ve fallen asleep standing there, because suddenly I was blinking and lifting my head, and the sky was a different color—a hazy gradient of soupy black through gray. The new moon hovered just above the horizon, a darker blotch against the lightening sky.
Nahadoth’s fingers squeezed again gently, and I realized he’d woken me. He was gazing toward the balcony doors. Viraine stood there, and Scimina, and Relad. Their white garments seemed to glow, casting their faces into shadow.
“Time,” said Viraine.
I searched inside myself and was pleased to find stillness rather than fear.
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Inside, the ball was still in full swing, though there were fewer people dancing now than I had last seen. Dekarta’s throne stood empty on the other side of the throng. Perhaps he had left early to prepare.
Once we entered Sky’s quiet, preternaturally bright halls, Nahadoth let his guise slip; his hair lengthened and his clothing changed color between one step and another. Pale-skinned again; too many of my relatives around, I supposed. We rode a lift upward, emerging on what I now recognized as Sky’s topmost floor. As we exited, I saw the doors to the solarium standing open, the manicured forest beyond shadowed and quiet. The only light came from the palace’s central spire, which jutted up from the solarium’s heart, glowing like the moon. A fainter path ran from our feet into the trees, directly toward the spire’s base.
But I was distracted by the figures who stood on either side of the door.
Kurue I recognized at once; I had not forgotten the beauty of her gold-silver-platinum wings. Zhakkarn, too, was magnificent in silver armor traced with molten sigils, her helm shining in the light. I had last seen that armor in a dream.
The third figure, between them, was at once less impressive and more strange: a sleek, black-furred cat like the leopards of my homeland, though significantly larger. And no forest had given birth to this leopard, whose fur rippled like waves in an unseen wind, iridescent to matte to a familiar, impossibly deep blackness. So he did look like his father, after all.
I could not help smiling. Thank you, I mouthed. The cat bared its teeth back in what could never have been misinterpreted as a snarl, and winked one green, slitted eye.
I had no illusions about their presence. Zhakkarn was not in full battle armor just to impress us with its shine. The second Gods’ War was about to begin, and they were ready. Sieh—well, maybe Sieh was here for me. And Nahadoth…
I looked back at him over my shoulder. He was not watching me or his children. Instead his gaze had turned upward, toward the top of the spire.
Viraine shook his head, apparently deciding not to protest. He glanced at Scimina, who shrugged; at Relad, who glared at him as if to say Why would I possibly care?
(Our eyes met, mine and Relad’s. He was pale, sweat beading his upper lip, but he nodded to me just slightly. I returned the nod.)
“So be it,” Viraine said, and all walked into the solarium, toward that central spire.
27. The Ritual of the Succession
At the top of the spire was a room, if it could be called that.
The space was enclosed in glass, like an oversize bell jar. If not for a faint reflective sheen it would have seemed as though we stood in the open air, atop a spire sheared flat at the tip. The floor of the room was the same white stuff as the rest of Sky, and it was perfectly circular, unlike every other room I’d seen in the palace in the past two weeks. That marked the room as a space sacred to Itempas.
We stood high above the great white bulk of the palace. From the odd angle I could just glimpse the forecourt, recognizing it by the green blot of the Garden and the jut of the Pier. I had never realized that Sky itself was circular. Beyond that, the earth was a darkened mass, seeming to curve ’round us like a great bowl. Circles within circles within circles; a sacred place indeed.
Dekarta stood opposite the room’s floor entrance. He was leaning heavily on his beautiful Darrwood cane, which he had doubtless needed to get up the steep spiral staircase that led into the room. Behind and above him, predawn clouds covered the sky, bunched and rippled like strings of pearls. They were as gray and ugly as my gown—except in the east, where the clouds had begun to glow yellow-white.
“Hurry up,” Dekarta said, nodding toward points around the room’s circumference. “Relad there. Scimina there, across from him. Viraine, to me. Yeine, here.”