Page 106 of Eyes of Kings

No more.

The divine crown tightens around her head. She draws to an abrupt stop outside the wall. Night gathers thickly around the capital, the shadows heavy without opposition. Where there used to be lights wired along the top of the wall, illuminating passage through the main gate, most sections have been reduced to ruin, bulbs shattered and pulled from their flimsy electric sockets.

Sinoa dismounts. She climbs over the destruction. Lands solidly on the bloodied grass inside. She breathes it in. This could have been so easy. Her brothers did not need to invent such lies to pull her title away from her. One hundred years of suffering in Talin—it’s alltheirfault. One hundred years of turmoil, caught between the heavens and the earth, and it is because the kingdom would not listen when Sinoa Tuoleimi made her claim.

She flexes her palms. Begins to walk.

It is only when the crown plinks atop her head that she realizes Anton Makusahas not been following. She swivels around, frowning to be cut off from his qi. He is so much more powerful than he could believe, only he cannot access even a fraction of it. It does not belong to him. It belongs to the heavens.

But the crown lets her take it.

“What are you doing?” she calls. He has dismounted, at least. Stepped over the rubble slowly, eyeing their surroundings. A small amount of light streams from the nearest apartment blocks, some windows glowing blue or white. Most stay dark.

When his gaze lifts, Anton’s eyes swirl with power. Even despite what Sinoa has taken.

“There’s something I must ask.”

She shifts on her feet. “Let it wait until we get to the palace,” she urges. “August will be there already. We must kill him.”

August entered first, with his forces, his Weisannas—who listen only to him at present. They will bring the capital to heel, leave behind no opposition, and because August will inevitably refuse to coronate her, she must kill him, then call for the allegiance of the Weisannas. She is a Tuoleimi, after all. As far as the entirety of Talin understands it, she is Princess Calla who grew up in Er, and the Weisannas are born to serve the royals. It is not so delusional a leap. Far less than if Otta Avia had made the grab.

“Was it always a game to you?”

Sinoa narrows her eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“I could not contend with your true purpose. This, I understand.” Anton is peering up at the city while he speaks. “It only seems fair that you offer me the truth now. If I could not have your affection, why keep this going for so long? Why not let go of me when we were young?”

She can’t help it. Sinoa laughs out loud.Ah. So he knows. In the years she was gone, someone else sank her hooks into him, and it is hard to pull off a performance when she has had little time to study.

“Do you know who you are, Anton?” Sinoa snaps. “Don’t say a word aboutfairuntil you understand where you came from. You are owed to me. After all the heavens have done, you aremine.”

Anton’s jaw tightens. Horror carves into the line of his mouth. Across his brow.

“No.”

“I don’t have time for this.” Sinoa reaches out with her qi, engulfing Anton in his entirety. When she pulls, he moves against his will, dragged toward her. “You will not leave me,” she says. “You will rule at my side—”

A flash of light, to her right. Sinoa turns too slowly. The collision is brutal and sudden, and Sinoa’s hold snaps, her body flying across the field, slamming into a building already half decimated. The sharp edge of a window slashes down her arm. She hisses, bringing her elbow close and focusing until the wound stops gushing blood.

She should have gone and done it after leaving the palace in the mountains. The thought did occur to her. It was on the way. When Sinoa was running through Rincun, en route to Eigi to join August’s forces, she should have found the place where the godling of greed stashed her first body, and burned it to ash.

Sinoa pulls deep. She is well-versed in the divine crown. She spent battle after battle learning how to tap into its deepest reserves. Her opponent takes shape before her, and Sinoa would know those blank, unseeing eyes to the ends of the earth. Where Sinoa goes, she does too.

She rises to face the godling of greed.

Calla rises from her crouch.

The impact of her attack was more forceful than she expected. This form of hers is hard to be delicate with. Before Sinoa prepares a defense, Calla is already moving again, drawing her qi from her chest, into her palms, sending it screaming forward. She remembers nothing of her life in the heavens, but sheremembers everything about the Palace of Heavens, about its training, about her drills. The generals that came through, tapping her arms, moving her feet. When she seizes a Crescent’s fallen sword from the rubble, she swings fast. Sinoa finally blocks with a tremendous surge of her own.

Calla flies back. She crashes into the remains of a watchtower, which has detached from the wall and crushed several Crescent Society sentries. A metal bar protrudes from the damage, and Calla’s palm stings when she uses it to push herself up. She wheezes through a cough.

Near another piece of the wall, Anton has backed himself into a tight space, knowing he cannot interfere with this sort of fight. Calla catches his gaze as she reaches for her sword, and he tilts his head up, signaling the top of the nearest building. A tall water tank, on the rooftop.

Sinoa strides forward. Her face is red. Her mouth twisted. She claws her hand, and several paces away, Calla feels the motion around her throat. She’s wrenched off her feet, hauled an inch from the ground.

“I never could have imagined encountering an immortal sostupid,” Sinoa spits. “You have the power to claim your own segment of the kingdom. You have the power to situate yourself the ruler of the whole north if you wanted. And you come aftermeinstead?”

“Me,” Calla barely rasps past the obstruction around her throat.Mine.