Blood Heir

23

Shamaïra’s dacha had a garden covered in overgrown vines and potted plants of every species imaginable, some of which Ana hadn’t come across even in her studies at the Palace. She pushed past the ferns, venturing deeper into the silence. The scent of fresh, overturned mud and melted snow and the mysterious fragrance of plants lingered in the cool night air. Behind the yard loomed the vast outline of the Syvern Taiga.

Ana leaned against a wooden trellis, wrapping her arms around herself. The cold crept into her bones, but she might as well have been frozen—a girl carved of ice.

She felt as though if she let herself thaw, she would lose everything.

Someone moved behind her. Ana knew that presence like it was a part of her: warmth and light and flame, the smell of the kitchen hearth and freshly baked ptychy’moloko and hot tea served in a silver samovar. She turned, and it was like gazing at a stranger. The boy she had known had been soft, cheeks round and pale from the comforts of the Palace, hair shorn short. He’d laughed easily, his eyes had sparkled, and if she closed her eyes she could see him turning from the fire in the kitchen, sweat shimmering on his forehead and soot on his face.

Now, only twelve moons later, he towered over her, muscles replacing his thin freckled arms, chin chiseled and shadowed with scruff. His hair had grown to his shoulders, swept up in a ponytail that shone like a flame when it caught the light. There was a hardness to his coal-gray eyes that had never been there before.

They watched each other for a minute, Ana looking for traces of the boy she’d known. It was as though he had become a stranger. She reached out, tentatively, to touch a cut on his neck.

Something melted in Yuri’s expression. “It’s me, Kolst Pryntsessa,” he murmured as he caught her hands, his own rough and calloused. Ana choked down a sob as she looked at them, remembering how the creases of his fingers had always been stained white with flour.

As Yuri pulled her into his arms, she buried her face in his strong shoulders, searching for the scent of baked goods and sweat and kitchen soot. Instead, she smelled fire and smoke.

But he was still Yuri—her Yuri, the one who had sat outside her chambers during her worst nightmares. The one who’d brought trays of pirozhky pies to her just so he could crouch outside the crack of her door and whisper to her.

“Call me Ana,” she whispered when she finally drew away, swiping at her tears.

“I thought you were dead,” Yuri choked. He was crying, too. “The Court announced—”

“I didn’t kill Papa.” The words tumbled from Ana’s mouth brokenly, pleadingly. “I was trying to save him—but I couldn’t—”

“I know,” Yuri said. “I know you, Ana. You always shared your treats with me, no matter how much you liked them. You cried over your pet rabbit for moons on end. You would never do anything like that.”

His confirmation sent fresh tears to her eyes and made her feel weak and strong at the same time. “Papa was poisoned, Yuri.”

“Poisoned?”

Ana nodded. “I saw a man that night—it was the Palace alchemist who left many years ago. He fed my Papa something, and I watched him die.” She shuddered, and Yuri locked his arm around her firmly. “I was trying to draw the poison out.” Ana closed her eyes, leaning into her friend, and the words spilled from her. “It was a slow poison, Yuri—it smelled exactly like the bitter medicine Papa was taking all along. It was never helping him to get better—it was making his illness worse. That night was the final dose.”

Yuri stiffened by her side. “Deities,” he cursed softly.

Ana paused at Yuri’s terrified expression.

“Ana,” he said, his hand tightening on her shoulder. “There’s something you must know. The Kolst Imperator—your brother… he’s sick.”

Her head spun at the words. “What?”

“It’s exactly what your father had. The Palace thinks it’s a genetic condition passed down from him. Coughing, weakness, and confusion of mind.” Yuri shuddered. “But if what you’re saying is true, then he’s being poisoned as well.”

Coughing. Weakness. Confusion of mind. Ana grasped the trellis behind her to stop the world from spinning. The image of her father’s face came to her then, pale as a tomb, blood foaming from his mouth, the whites of his eyes showing as he contorted.

Nausea twisted her stomach. “That’s impossible,” she said, but the words sounded hollow even to her ears. It couldn’t be that Luka was being poisoned. Pyetr Tetsyev had not worked at the Palace for many years.

Unless Tetsyev had had inside help. Ana thought of that night, of how the alchemist had entered the Emperor’s bedchambers without raising a single alarm.

Yet all she had were wild guesses—until she found Tetsyev himself.

All the answers she sought lay with him.

Ana clasped her hands to stop their shaking. “I’m going back to Luka. One more day, and then I ride for Salskoff.” She would speak with Ramson about fulfilling her end of the Trade later. She had lost too much—she couldn’t afford to lose Luka, as well. “Is my brother… What is his condition?”

“I left the Palace almost ten moons ago.” Yuri bowed his head. “When I left… he still held Court sessions but spent the rest of his time in his chambers.”

Ana felt sick as she thought of Luka, alone in his chambers, the poison slowly consuming his body and mind. Desperation twisted a sharp, cruel blade in her, and for a moment she thought of leaping on a horse and riding to Salskoff.

Think, Ana.

If she returned empty-handed, without Pyetr Tetsyev, she would be treated as a murderer and a traitor.

The Cyrilian Imperial law granted a fair trial, and from the laws she had carefully studied under Papa’s guidance, new evidence was grounds for further investigation.

She needed Tetsyev to clear her name. Once she had her title and her innocence again, she would reveal everything and hunt down the conspirators.

“I’m going to get the alchemist, and then I’m going back,” Ana repeated, and this time, her voice was steady.

Something flickered in Yuri’s eyes. “You’re going back? Ana,” he said, and grasped her hands. “The future doesn’t lie in Luka or the Palace or Salskoff. Cyrilia’s rulers have stood by for centuries watching the oppression of our kind. If there’s a future, Ana, it isn’t there.”

It felt as though the small spark of hope in her heart was slowly withering to ash. “Why not?” Ana whispered. “Once I tell Luka all of this, he’ll fix it. We’ll fix it. Together. Just like…” Her voice broke. “Just like I promised May.”

But there was a sadness to Yuri’s eyes that she had never seen before; it descended on the traces of laughter and childhood like the fall of autumn upon summer. “I’ve seen too much and been through more in the months since I left the Palace, Ana. These cracks in our Empire… they can’t be fixed by one person alone. The time is past for us to rely on a benevolent ruler.”

Ana snatched her hands back. She felt very cold. This boy who stood across from her, tall and distant and utterly unfamiliar, had become no more than a stranger to her.

Before she could respond, footsteps sounded.

They drew apart as Shamaïra appeared at her dacha door, her face somber. She caught Ana’s eye and approached.

Ramson followed. He carried May’s small body carefully. The Affinites from the Playpen trailed behind, soft-colored lamps swinging from their hands and casting light into the darkness.

Ana took the child from Ramson.

How did the people of Chi’gon bury their dead? May had left the kingdom of her birth before she could even remember much about it; the glimpses that Ana had seen of the Aseatic Isles kingdom were in the stories and songs that May’s Ma-ma had told her.

It came to Ana then, with a stirring of the breeze that brought to her the loamy scent of soil. Winter, a child crouched in the snow, nursing to life a small white flower. My child, we are but dust and stars.

“We bury her in the earth,” she whispered.

Shamaïra gave a single nod. “It is time,” she whispered, “to return her home.”

They buried May in the ground, surrounded by flowers and plants and the life that thrived in Shamaïra’s backyard. They sprinkled flower petals around her. Shamaïra hummed a Nandjian hymn.

Ana slipped a flower—a single white daisy—between May’s small hands and planted a kiss on the child’s forehead. She smoothed May’s hair for the last time before she stood back. Ramson and Yuri picked up their shovels, and Ana watched as May slowly disappeared into the gentle earth.

A breeze stirred between the vines and the ferns, bringing with it the fragrance of snow and flowers. May was light and life and hope; the gods would return her to the earth and the flowers and the life that carried on all around her. She would live on, in the sun that warmed the earth and the stars that made the night a little less dark.

She would live on in the eyes of every Affinite who would see hope.

They stood there for a long time, heads bowed, eyes closed. The wind whispered, the flowers murmured, and Shamaïra’s hymn threaded all the way up into the sky of silent, watchful stars.