Mask of Shadows (Untitled #1)(87)
I sniffed, throat tight, and nodded.
Amethyst sighed. She lifted my new mask to the top of my head and wiped the sticky mess of tears and wayward ash from my face. “We are the Left Hand of Our Queen, no one else. You are Opal. We’ve a sad, sorry job that should not exist, but this is our world and we are what we are.”
And I was what I was—what Nacea had made me, what Erlend had made me, what Our Queen had made me. There was no innocence left in this world, left in me, not after all we’d done. I’d killed seven people, wiped them from this earth, and I’d kill more. I had to.
I could not let someone else, someone clean, someone who didn’t wake at night with a weight on their chest and no air in their lungs, the ghosts of those they’d killed clawing at their throat, know the terrible unease deep within my bones.
I would be Opal from now till I died so no one else had to be. I would kill the lords whose heritage was built on war and hate, and I would never be free of it, but the world would be free of them.
Amethyst slipped my mask back on and squeezed my shoulder. She turned me around.
Our Queen nodded to us. “Are you well enough to be walking?”
“Well enough, Our Queen.” I knelt, Amethyst on my right and Emerald at my left, the only three to stay by Ruby’s side till the sun rose and his pyre crumbled to smoldering ash. Our Queen’s voice and quiet footfalls left me shivering. “I had to see him off.”
The three days since my fall and Winter’s betrayal felt like three decades to my shattered arm and fractured ribs. I moved so slowly that the world passed me by with each blink.
“I’m glad you are well.” Her fingers traced the edges of Ruby’s bloodstained mask. “You are new, my Opal, but you know the troubles that plague our young nation and threaten the peace so many died for.”
I winced. My blank mask only twitched. “Yes, the war criminals you let fester in your court have finally risen against you.”
Emerald’s hand closed around my arm. I swallowed. Elise had been spirited away by Winter to the ice-ridden peaks of old Erlend for some last-stand war she wanted no part in, and if Our Queen had even tried, Winter and his cohorts wouldn’t still be alive. No forgotten Nacea, no lords threatening chaos and war, and no civilians left floundering under Erlend rules.
“Yes, they have.” Our Queen waved Emerald off. She wore no gauntlet today, no metal corset. Soot and mud hemmed her plain gray funeral dress. “And it is time they were purged from our lands. You will bring me their heads.”
Emerald and Amethyst nodded. I only stared, bones aching and rage gnawing away the last of the fear within me.
“Emerald, tell Nicolas and Isidora I need to speak to them.” Our Queen dismissed her with a nod and a frown, not taking her eyes off me. “Please wait by the gate, Amethyst.”
She might’ve freed our land from the grip of magic, but she used us as a substitute. We were little different from her shadow, taking her every order, killing who she pleased, and whispering secrets in her ear. She’d lost nothing and gained a throne.
“I have a job for you, Opal.”
“Your wish is my command, Our Queen.” I bowed, back straight and broken arm snapped to my side despite the pain.
Eight out of ten, surely, if Ruby were not ash and bone.
“Is it really?” She shifted forward, dark dress littered with dried ash. The runes across her eyelid folded. “You’ve lost so much, Sallot, and I—”
“I used to love you.” I shuddered, memories of runes and shadows and paring knives slipping under skin fresh in my mind, and shook my head. “I adored you. I would’ve died for you. I thought you were Lady-sent to save us, to pull us from the chaos magic and greed had brought down upon us, but you’re just like us. You’re not any different from them, maneuvering people like pieces to keep your power.”
She flew at me, fingers curling around my collar and pulling me close. My mask clattered to the dirt at our feet. “I am nothing like them. The decisions I made, everything I gave up, I did it for you, for each and every one of you, and you have no idea of the costs. You may be able to repay your debt in blood, but I’ll take mine to the pyre. I will never be free of what I did for this country.”
And I would never be free of what her people did to mine.
I grabbed Our Queen’s hand, prying her weak fingers from my throat one by one. Weaker than me, and poppy tincture still flowed through my veins. Her last act of magic had left her with more than scars. She stumbled.
“None of us will.” I let her go.
She picked up my mask with trembling hands, gaze stuck on the rough interior. “We cannot let our people suffer through another war.”
“Your people.” I helped her to her feet. “My people are dead.”
“Lord del Weylin has made himself a king and raised an army of drafted civilians and Erlend allies. His rebellion must be crushed before it becomes a war, and the people he would throw unprepared into battle must be freed.” She held out my mask, the finish bone-white and blank. “And our Elise was taken against her will. We cannot abandon her.”
The brittle calm my wrath had brought broke.
I took my mask and hid my face. “You’ve never managed to kill Lord del Weylin.”
The last Erlend lord clinging to the past. To tradition.
The source.