The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)(123)

Phalue pulled back a little, brushing the damp hair from Ranami’s cheeks. “You promised me before that you’d live here at the palace with me if I helped you. I won’t hold you to that promise.”

“I’ll do it,” Ranami said, breathless. She clung to Phalue like a woman drowning.

“No,” Phalue said, shaking her head.

For a moment, Ranami’s heart dropped to the soles of her feet. She couldn’t gather a breath to speak.

“I want more than that,” Phalue said. She took Ranami’s hands in hers. “You said you never wanted to be a governor’s wife, and I understand that now. You didn’t want to be a party to the way this island has been run. You didn’t want to contribute to the pain you saw and experienced. But I will do better. And I want to do better with you at my side. Ranami, will you be my wife? Please?”

Ranami pressed her forehead to Phalue’s, grinning so hard that her cheeks hurt. “Is this the tenth proposal? The eleventh?”

“I would propose a thousand times if I knew you’d say yes in the end.”

“You’re governor now. I shouldn’t let you debase yourself so.”

Phalue squeezed her hands. Her voice was soft, breathless. “Is that a yes?”

Ranami had thought their love would end in disaster. It still might. But she was willing to take the chance. “Yes.”





46





Jovis


Imperial Island

The woman emerged from the dimly lit hallway, looking as worse for the wear as I felt. She’d wrapped a makeshift bandage around a wound in her shoulder that seeped fresh blood, and her tunic was slashed across the middle and bloody. She looked exhausted, dark circles beneath her eyes, her black hair hanging limply around an unremarkable face. In spite of her injuries, there was a reserve of strength behind those eyes. My gaze dropped to her feet and I saw fresh spatters of blood on the hem of her pants. Somehow, I doubted that blood was hers. I leaned on my steel staff like a walking stick. Kill her! my mind screamed. The wrongness I’d sensed in the palace seemed to follow her like a cloud.

I might have attacked except for the creature at her side.

It was taller than Mephi by at least a head, though its back was hunched in pain and its chin low. Several bandaged wounds on its shoulders were stained with blood. Though its horns were longer than Mephi’s, it was almost entirely bald, random patches of thick hair sprouting from its belly, back and cheeks. By the possessive way this woman draped her arm about its neck, this creature was hers in the way Mephi was mine. I didn’t know what that meant.

“Who are you?” she asked again. “And what are you doing here?” Her voice traveled to me as though through a rolled piece of parchment.

A thousand lies filtered through my mind. An Imperial soldier. A guard. A friend? No, that was beyond idiotic. I didn’t know who she was, or where she stood in the palace hierarchy. I didn’t know what chaos had occurred here, or if she had the same powers as I did.

I tried the truth. “My name is Jovis. I’m a smuggler.”

Her brow furrowed as she glanced down. “I know that name.” Her gaze met mine. “The folk songs. You’re the one who’s been smuggling the children away from the Tithing Festivals.”

“That’s me. Jovis from the songs.” We could have been two strangers meeting on the street, not two people who’d recently won what had clearly been difficult fights. I looked her up and down again, trying to get an idea of who she might be. Her tunic, before it had been shredded, looked hand-painted. She wasn’t a servant. It was the only clue I had.

“Again, what are you doing here? The gates—”

“Were not guarded,” I smoothly finished for her.

She pursed her lips. “Ah. Of course. They wouldn’t have been.”

I shifted from foot to foot, my breath short. I couldn’t seem to take in enough air. “I was here to turn myself in.”

The look she gave me was incredulous and very clearly stated,“Are you addled?” And then a construct prowled from behind her, a growl low in its throat.

“Quiet, Bing Tai,” she said.

A sinking feeling started in my chest. Mephi looked up at me as though he could sense it. “Very bad?”

“Yours can talk,” the woman said. It was more an excited statement than a question.

“Excuse me,” I said, because I had the feeling I might know who she was now, “but do you mind if I ask who you are?” My mouth felt stuffed with cotton. Were the lamps dimming?

She straightened, her chin held high. “I am Lin Sukai, and I am your Emperor.”

The hallway began to spin. “That is . . . that is not what I expected.” My knees gave way and the world went black.





47





Lin


Imperial Island

I started with the small things. A bath, calling for a physician to stitch my wounds and Thrana’s, a simple proclamation to Imperial and all the known islands that my father was dead and I was now Emperor. I’d hired guards to man the walls immediately. I had the coin. What I didn’t have were constructs. I felt a little of the paranoia my father must have felt – how could I trust men and women I did not know?