Blood of a Thousand Stars (Empress of a Thousand Skies #2)(18)

“I can’t decipher your real question, Empress. Please oblige me and ask it outright.”

“Aren’t you the same kind of charming as Dahlen,” Rhee shot back, “which is to say, not at all.” She immediately regretted firing back, if only because she wore her embarrassment on her sleeve.

Lahna smiled, as if satisfied with Rhee’s reaction. Ancestors. Who cared what this girl thought? It was true there was a deeper, veiled question. She’d become empress to take control of her destiny, and that of her planet. And yet since the very second she’d stepped into the role, things were constantly done for her—without her input. She was as powerless as she’d always been.

“What I meant to ask,” Rhee stated evenly, in her best diplomat’s voice, “is if Dahlen sent for me? If he’d intended to consult me at all?”

Lahna stopped abruptly and cocked her head. Her eyes narrowed, and the left side of her mouth tilted the tiniest bit higher. “Don’t you smell roses?” she asked.

Rhee was irked by the girl’s misdirection. “What?”

“Roses,” Lahna repeated, frowning. She obviously wasn’t going to let it drop.

Rhee looked around and realized they were passing through the east wing. “My mom’s garden—it’s right outside. You can see it from this window.” She crossed the threshold into a guest room. A breeze fluttered the curtains, cool despite the season. It would rain soon, and Rhee loved the hot thunderstorms of her childhood. She moved toward the window, but Lahna grabbed her forearm and yanked her down to her knees. For a second, Rhee’s breath caught: They were so close she could make out the fringe of Lahna’s eyelashes, see the soft lines of her mouth . . .

She pulled away forcefully. “Are you out of your mind?”

But before she could stand, an arrow sailed through the window, cleaving the air directly where Rhiannon had stood, even as Lahna shoved her roughly backward.

She came up against the wall and gasped. “How did you know?”

“The window should have been kept closed,” Lahna answered curtly.

Three more arrows whistled as they cut through the air, and Lahna unsheathed a sword with a speed Rhee had never seen. It was a blur, the metal reflecting light for a split second as she whipped the blade through each one in turn. She dropped to her knees again and rolled right up against the wall beneath the window, shoulder to shoulder with Rhee.

More arrows soared through. A dozen. Two dozen. White ribbons attached to the shafts looked almost beautiful as they whipped and trailed. Rhee could barely think over the noise of the arrows piercing the walls and the furniture. A blizzard of feathers spilled from the pillows. The air shimmered with cotton fluff and sawdust. The girls sat side by side, staring.

And then suddenly, it was quiet. The arrows had stopped, and in the vacuum Rhee could hear her own heartbeat. She let out a shallow breath.

Then there was the drumming of footsteps down the hall, then Dahlen’s voice moving from the hallways of the great palace and further away. She could tell he was outside now as he and his guards combed the gardens. The smell of roses only intensified; they were slicing through her mother’s bushes with their blades, hacking through the growth. Rhee willed herself not to cry.

The room was suddenly full of her guard: guards pulling her to her feet, guards asking her if she was all right, guards muttering and speaking in code. The Fisherman carefully shouldered his way into the room. His blue skin had turned a shade of purple as if he’d flushed with anger, and the features crowded along the bottom of his face looked puckered and angry. An unlikely ally who hailed from the Outer Belt, he’d helped Rhee disguise herself as a Marked child on Tinoppa by attaching the octoerces to her face. He had also saved her life—and Dahlen’s—by ripping the ceiling off the facility on Houl with a harpoon gun and ushering them to safety.

“Who left the window open?” Dahlen’s shout rose up from out below them.

The Fisherman gave the room a sweeping look of disdain. A hundred ribbons shuddered on the hundred arrows embedded in the door.

“A soon-to-be-dead man,” the Fisherman said. “I’ll weed out the traitor.” His eyes met Rhee’s for a moment, and he nodded just before he exited, saying nothing further.

Rhee moved away from her guards and bent to pull the ribbon off a nearby shaft. “That bastard,” she said.

Tai Reyanna pushed inside the room. The tan skin around her eyes was creased with worry as she grabbed a handful of the ribbons. “All the notes say the same thing.”

Welcome back, Empress. I won’t be ignored.

Your presence is humbly requested at the Towers of the Long Now.

Nero’s residence.

Lahna stepped through the maze of arrows that had pierced themselves into a pattern on the floor. “He’s not very subtle, is he?”

“No,” Rhee said. “Madmen seldom are.”





SIX


ALYOSHA


HE tried to call out, but the pressure on his chest was too much. Last thing he remembered, he and Kara had taken shelter behind a sand dune. He must have been thrown in the blast.

Kara. Where was she? He hoped there was magic in the world. He wouldn’t die. She wouldn’t either.

The pain was unbearable. Stupid. He was wavering in and out of awareness and could hear wailing, people calling for one another, tiny vibrations in the debris that surrounded him.