From screaming.
From simply firing her gun into the broken chandelier above and letting the bullets be wasted in a moment of defiance of everyone who has brought them to this place. The people of the North and the South. From the east and the west. He’s too much as she remembers—fair hair stirred by light, grey eyes veiled. But he’s also different—wearied, thin, empty—and there’s nothing warm left, only a tired shadow of what came before. It breaks her heart. She remembers when his smile burned like the beautiful sun, bright as light on water. No steel in his blood.
She loved him then.
“I’m not my father,” the Commander says at last, “and I don’t wish to fight you any longer. You’ve already decimated our ranks. Be our ally and soon you’ll have your land back, forever.”
“Soon?” Seath repeats.
“You have my word. If you cease targeting us.”
“I’ll do my best, Commander. But I can promise nothing certain until the last of your guns have disappeared across the sea once and for all.”
She’s so tired of listening to words—words upon words upon words—and never a single promise with meaning. Never the truth. It’s the disease of war, on every side. She has lived two lifetimes in her short years, as a princess, as a sniper, and she’s beginning to think there is no place left for hope. Only victory will write the words that matter.
“Then we are at an impasse,” the Commander says, “as always.”
She brings her fist down on the table, silt sent flying. “Children are suffering, Commander! There’s no running water, no electricity. Your rotten shells land on the innocent along with the guilty, can’t you see? Fight your war against the North. Do what you will. But if you refuse our terms, then we make no assurances about your army’s safety anywhere in the South.”
Hot silence.
“Are you threatening me?” the Commander asks her, his shock evident.
But she doesn’t back down. Not this time. Dark eyes on faded grey, the night sky and the sea. Opposites who loved, adored.
Betrayed.
Seath conceals amusement, fiddling with the safety on his rifle.
“If I agree to your terms,” the Commander says carefully, “then you must promise me you’ll put down your gun.”
Seath of the Nahir nods. “For now, I do promise.”
“I wasn’t asking you.”
He looks at her, waiting, but she can’t agree to this, not in good conscience. The ones who valiantly resist the North are her blood, her family. She’s been brought to life among these Southern steppes. The suffering, the laughter, the love. An intricate world of a thousand stories, and it’s her home. She will not surrender it to another while there’s still breath left in her bones.
She replies in a local tongue, instead. One he won’t understand.
The Commander looks to the older man for explanation.
Seath pauses. Hesitates. “She says she’ll make no promises to you.”
The roof rattles again overhead, propellers snarling in a second pass, and she can see the ruin of her betrayal across the Commander’s face. The way he’s too young again, overwhelmed by the reality that it’s as if they never loved at all.
Strangers and enemies, like everyone else.
She wants to add something to soften this blow, to explain that war is no good for the ones like them, the ones who have held love between their own trembling hands. It’s only good for the steel-souled who scrub blood from boots. It’s for those who burn unflinchingly with a loyalty forced into their veins from their first breath, a dangerous allegiance that can’t be ended or surrendered, not even for all the world, not even for peace.
It’s not for them, and yet they’ve chosen it.
Her lips begin to form the words, but he’s already heading for the door, and she’s left desperate. She longs to remember him as he once was. With river water on his skin, young and beautiful, the boy she’d have given her whole world to.
She longs for her words to mean something.
She stands. “I was sorry to hear about your brother, Athan!” It’s the only thing she can think of.
He stops, staring at the door. “Which one?”
A breath of wind blows through the tattered silk curtains, and Seath frowns.
No one has ever apologized in this war.
It takes too much love.
I
MEMORY
1
ATHAN DAKAR
Savient
3,000 feet.
Darkened earth stretches beneath my plane, endless shadows and sleepy towns, and a thin band of light smirks ahead. Dawn, telling me to hurry the hell up and find the final target. Should have reached it five minutes ago.
I scan the ground again, a bit more purposeful now.
This Night Navigation exercise shouldn’t be taking this long. I’m supposed to fly cross-country from objective to objective, using only my instruments, but so far my route has taken me in circles. Somewhere back there was the third target—an illuminated munitions factory at the outskirts of town—and next, in theory, is a rail line running south.
“You were only supposed to fly us three degrees off course,” I scold my plane. “Now look what you’ve done. How am I going to correct for this properly when I can’t even see down there?”
She says nothing in reply, propeller thudding in the darkness, its metallic hum a constant tremor through my body, but her wings wobble suddenly as if annoyed I’m trying to pin the miscalculation on her.
Better check my flightbook.
“A good pilot routinely checks his map when flying,” Major Torhan likes to say. “A great pilot doesn’t need to, because it’s already in his head.”
Well, it would be in my head if I’d wanted it to be. If I were actually trying here, I’d have memorized the map before takeoff, followed my instruments perfectly, and this whole thing would be over and done with ahead of schedule. But unlike my fellow Academy pilots, who march around dreaming of spectacular glory in the squadrons, I’m less than eager about the prospect of an early grave. One lucky shot from the other side and all those push-ups will be for nothing. You’re just a bit of finely carved kindling, but no one ever mentions that part. Not to your face, anyway.
And certainly not when you’re the General’s son.
Since I’ve seen the way death looks up close—limbs burnt and black, like charred biscuits, ugly as hell—I think I’ll forget the final target and just enjoy this moment of perfect sky.
Dawn skies are meant to be gloriously on fire.
I yank the stick back and my plane growls in protest, shaking between my gloved hands. “Come on, you old beast,” I mutter. She’s not as impressive as the squadron fighters, more a training animal, and impatience nips as her rattling engine gathers strength for the climb. Thick grey cloud surrounds us, slipping over the wings. But light grows above, reaching through, and then …
Brilliance.
The sky is ablaze. Sunlight hits the eastern mountains in the distance, peaks cutting between the rays—a wild temptation of endless pine and jagged cliffs. Desire tightens in my chest, the urge to throttle forward and not look back. For my father, those mountains are power. Rich with coal and oil. Heavy with iron ore. They’re the lifeblood of his army and the foundation of our nation that even kings envy. But no matter how he tries to break them, carve them, exhaust them, they remain larger and more impressive than anything he can build. And one day I’ll crash there. I’ll burn up these wings forever and live by my own compass. Life at the Academy is a daily game of charades where I play my part and follow every order, but all I’d like is for just one person to look at me and ask, “Do you even want to join the squadrons, Athan Dakar?”