Page 2 of Eyes of Kings

As her people started to die for her sacrifice, Sinoa breathed in.

The godling is cast into the mortal realm with as much subtlety as an explosion.

She squeaks upon crash-landing, the throne room floor freezing against her back.For fuck’s sake. They didn’t have to shove her out of the heavenly realm like that—even if she was being expelled.

The godling sits up. She scans her surroundings. On the throne sits the dead princess with her crown, stolen, despite her bloodline. The palace has been frozen to preserve the power waiting to be unleashed. The white mountains wait quietly beyond the windows.

Yes, this is her fault. She can acknowledge that. And here she is, paying for it.

The godling gags. The pantheon will say that she owes them—of course she needs to monitor the fate of the divine crown. The pantheon promised to cover up her wrongdoings, make it seem as though she volunteered to descend. She felt so bad about the grievances committed in her name that she would save the rest of the gods from suffering. The mortals will hear this tale as though the gods are selfless, honorable entities, but that is far from the truth.

Those petty bunches want someone to suffer, purely so they can convince themselves they’re doing something to help the situation. The pantheon ispowerful enough to influence the mortal realm, but their heavenly realm is far from infallible. Her handiwork broke the heavens. Qi leaks from the ether. Rot is spreading into each tier of the pantheon. How horrible would it be for the mortals to learn that, in the end, their gods fare no better than them.

The godling slinks over to the dead princess on all fours, bracing for the chance that Sinoa Tuoleimi might suddenly wake. No—nothing. She’s committed to her gruesome deal, dead as a rotted plank of wood. She has rolled anew on her mortal fate, despite the odds that it will be the very same game board when she wakes. The godling warned her about this. But that is the trouble with helping mortals.

That is the trouble with the godling’s domain.

She rises, breathing onto the dead princess’s face. A sharp blade of qi shoots from her throat. It settles over Sinoa, over the crown. When the war begins again, the godling will be the only one who can retrieve the divine object. She must secure herself some advantage, after all. While she is still capable, while the dregs of her heavenly qi remains accessible.

The godling lies down at Princess Sinoa’s feet. Once Sinoa Tuoleimi is reborn, the godling will wake too, rendered in a mortal body. The king of the heavens has declared it. He calls it governance; she understands it is his hatred and his love offered in kind. For her mistake, this will be her last gambit, but it will be her domain’s greatest undertaking yet. She will pull Sinoa from the game board and place herself on it, finally a participant in this rapacious turn for Talin.

Invoking such power caused the heavens to break. What are they to find on the other end of it—and who can soothe it, save for the one who started it?

The godling closes her eyes.

When Princess Calla Tuoleimi is born with a mighty cry in San-Er, the godling opens her eyes at the other end of the kingdom. She’s cold. Half of her child body is buried under snow at the base of the mountains, as naked as a mortal birth.

And, as expected, she doesn’t remember a thing.

CHAPTER 1

NOW

It started out of nowhere, suddenly and relentlessly, pouring from the heavens. An hour after the coup, the kingdom was awash with rain, its downpour concentrated over San-Er most heavily. Before the Crescent Societies had finished installing its people, the Rubi Waterway rose too high to bear, flooding the streets, pouring downstream and off the cliffs, into the sea. It was pandemonium.

But San-Er went on. Prizes needed to be reaped, palaces restructured. War had started, the capital its first hotbed for negotiations, and because Calla Tuoleimi wore the crown, she had opened a very limited window of time in which she could stake her claim over a kingdom that did not belong to her.

It’s been three days.

The droplets pitter-patter onto the window. Dawn breaks over the twin cities, and Calla stares blankly at the patterns tracing down the other side of the glass. She had commandeered a departed noble’s ground-floor quarters so that she could be quick if she was needed during the night. The south wing is usually better at letting in some light, but San-Er at the street level has always been a realm of darkness, even if it’s the Palace of Union. The second-, third-,fourth-floor balconies overhead crowd together to block the new day and most of the rain. Only the barest flush of blue-gray begins to crawl into Calla’s quarters, over her desk, her chair, her calloused hand splayed on the pillow.

Then her lover, his breath still deep with sleep.

Movement sounds in the hallway. Hushed voices, exchanging a new day’s instructions. Calla rises to her elbows, her silk nightshirt gliding against the sheets. The Crescent Society clerics have posted a group of their sworn members to act as Calla’s guards. For protection, they claimed. A show of support for their partnership.

She would be remiss to see their presence as anything other than a warning.

“It’s early, Princess.”

She glances over. In the dark, the lines and planes of Anton’s face—his true face, the one he was born with—are mere suggestions. The shape of his jaw, the tension in his brow. She locates each telltale mark by an innate pull.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks. She keeps her volume low, hidden under the cover of darkness too.

Anton yawns, scrubbing his face.

“I had a dream,” he mutters, “that San-Er flooded with the sea.”

When his eyes flutter open, the light in the room changes. Calla thought she was hallucinating when it first appeared. An hour after the coup, down came the rain and out poured a hazy yellow light frombehindAnton’s black eyes. She turned him this way and that, trying to discern if it was a faulty bulb overhead or some trick of reflection. No one else could see it. Anton asked what was wrong, but Calla didn’t know how to answer.Tuoleimi yellowwas her first thought.Why are you glowing Tuoleimi yellow?