Teia looked at Kip, wide-eyed. Then she squeezed him hard again, but this time with glee. In the perfect light of early morning, they flew over the sea and shoreline. They flew over Sapphire Bay. They flew over the morning parades and luxin fireworks. Teia waved to the bewildered crowds, and many waved back, laughing.

Whites fly, too, indeed.

The cable passed over the east side of Big Jasper, high over houses and warehouses and ships and the wall.

Teia looked at Kip, and he looked at her. She was glowing with joy and morning light, her skin radiant, her eyes holding a million colors Kip had never seen. And they were flying, and they were holding each other, and they were safe, and they were alive, and they were breathing pure glory, and Orholam’s Eye gazed on them with the approval that only young lovers know, and in that moment Kip knew the difference between love and infatuation, and love and hunger, and love and the longing not to go unloved. And he wanted to know nothing more than this, and he wanted this moment to freeze forever and thought to cease.

He kissed her. And she kissed him. And it was infatuation, and it was hunger, and it was longing to be loved, and it was an all-consuming fire so hot it devoured worry and loneliness and fear and time and being and thought itself. They kissed, embracing, flying, and for a hundred heartbeats, there was no war, no death, no pain, nothing hard, nothing terrible, nothing but warmth and acceptance.

And as they slowed, nearing the end of their flight, when Kip pulled away from her at last, and gazed again into her eyes, he knew he was lost in her. And he knew at last the difference between love and necessity.

Chapter 95

“This convocation is now in session,” High Luxiat Amazzal said. “None may enter. None may leave.” Karris wondered if, out of all the High Luxiats, they’d chosen Amazzal solely for his voice. He had a great booming, deep, powerful voice. Maybe the voice and the beard. He had a braided beard in the Atashian style. It was enormous and perfectly white, woven with white silk thread and pearl beads.

With a gravitas that imbued even simple actions with meaning, he held up the end of a thick iron chain. Half a dozen young luxiats were holding coils and coils of the stuff. It was a single, long chain. Unhurriedly, he walked to the main doors and wrapped the chain around the handles, rattling and clanking. There was some sound there that set off Karris’s Blackguard senses. But maybe it was just thinking of Gavin being in such chains. Gavin, here. Home again. Gavin, her love, perhaps broken.

A young assistant brought High Luxiat Amazzal an enormous lock, and he snapped it on. He repeated this at each of the doors, unwinding the chain from each relieved young luxiat’s arms, walking to each, taking his time, and winding the chain securely. By the time he reached the last door, the last assistant was trembling with fatigue. He was sweating, clearly terrified he would shame himself by dropping the chain.

Finally, they came back up the side aisle, fully encircling the nobles and drafters seated in the audience hall.

Karris realized she was supposed to be praying. She was off kilter still. Seeing her son—her son?—had been more of a shock than she’d thought it would be. He was staring at her, too.

But he wasn’t only staring. He was wearing a crown. Her son had been made Prism-elect. Karris hadn’t imagined that Andross Guile would demand that a new Prism-elect be named, not while his own son was Prism. That would have meant a loss of power for his family. Unthinkable. Or at least it should have meant a loss of power for the Guiles. Karris knew Andross wouldn’t have given such power to Kip. Andross didn’t hold Kip, didn’t control him. Not yet, though no doubt he was working on that.

But this was altogether unforeseen. A failure of intelligence, in both senses of the term.

Andross had another Guile in play: Zymun. And he’d kept him out of sight until the moment came to play him. Karris hadn’t even known that Andross knew she had a son. He hadn’t only known it; he’d insinuated himself into Zymun’s life somehow. The only thing worse than having to face her abandoned son was to face him after Andross had picked him up like an abandoned toy and taken ownership of him.

She couldn’t think about this now. She didn’t even recognize this ceremony, and somehow she was sitting in the front row.

Damn, her whole side hurt from that idiotic dive into the water. Tomorrow she wasn’t going to be able to get out of bed, she was sure of it.

But sitting here in front, she couldn’t even try to massage her shoulder. If only Lord Bran Spreading Oak didn’t like her so much. He was old now, but still perfectly genteel. She’d known the Spreading Oaks since she was a girl. Back then they’d had six sons. One had become a Prism, briefly. All were dead now: raiders, fever, the wars. When she was twelve and thirteen years old, Lord Bran had hoped she’d marry his youngest, Gracchos. He’d been a kind boy, more poet than warrior.

He’d died a hero’s death that had accomplished nothing in a battle that hadn’t settled anything.

Karris looked back to Zymun. She couldn’t help it. Was there something about him that drew the eye like iron to lodestone or was it only her? No, no. He was very handsome. He was Prism-elect. Everyone was at least glancing at him frequently. But only Karris stared with her gut churning.

She looked away, to the other Colors sitting on the platform with him. Delara Orange looked sober for the first time in months that Karris could remember. Karris’s eye was drawn to the two she didn’t know: Caelia Green and Cathán Sub-red. The dwarf Caelia Green of new Tyrea seemed like she could be a natural ally. Gavin would need those in the days to come. Karris should have already made her acquaintance. Cathán Golden Briar was the newest Color, stepping into Arys Sub-red’s place after she had died in childbirth. Cathán was a cousin of both Arys Greenveil and Ela Jorvis, and therefore to Ana Jorvis, whom Gavin had thrown off his balcony, albeit accidentally.

If Karris had been looking for someone to look at who would set her mind at ease, she was looking in the wrong place. She looked back at Zymun, and away again. Dear Orholam.

One time when she and Gavin had been hunting a sub-red wight, they’d come upon a family that had fought the wight briefly and chased it away. Through dinner, the father had acted strangely, but denied he was hurt. The next morning, he stood up and screamed. He’d taken a flame crystal in the groin. It had unmanned him, and ashamed, he’d hidden the injury. The flame crystal had cauterized the wound closed—until infection made the skin burst apart when he stood, spurting blood and pus everywhere. He’d died, of course. They wouldn’t have been able to save him even if they’d known.

Looking at Zymun, she felt like that. Stomach diseased, like a grotesque pregnancy. Sixteen years of shame and failure had distended her belly, filled her with poison.

Is not the one test of a mother how well she cares for her child? Karris had abandoned this boy. She’d not taken him once to her breast. Hadn’t even looked at him, as if he were a monster, or worse, as if in looking at him, she would love him.

And now, she was looking at him, and it was too late. Her heart was dead.

Success, Karris. Your fears were unfounded. You are colder and harder than you knew.

But the ache in her stomach only got worse. She couldn’t look at Zymun. She needed her head in this, and it wasn’t.

She knew it was kind for Lord Spreading Oak to give her his seat, but she wished he hadn’t. She felt exposed up here. People were looking at her as if they expected her to do something. They didn’t know about Zymun, did they?