Page 29 of Eyes of Kings

In retrospect, she had done it quickly because the real Otta Avia would have come back otherwise. This was before Sinoa Tuoleimi quashed the girl who was born Otta into utter nothingness.

Before Anton started to watch her at the formal dinners. Before he saw something kindred in her behavior, in the way her gaze drifted to the head of the table and stayed there, longing for the seat.

“Calla,” he calls over his shoulder, squinting through the rain.

Seven years. He kept Otta alive for seven years, because she was arrogant enough to wield her mortal qi beyond her control and burned herself on it.Anton could have let her die, could have pulled the plug at any moment. Instead, he twiddled his thumbs around her sleeping body, made her his only purpose in San-Er, and all the while he was incubating a weapon for August to wake.

Calla throws her gaze wide, trying to find his voice up ahead. She’s walking with Tsosia, the two of them embroiled in contentious discussion. A somber mood smothers their march back toward the capital. They’re trying to decide where this went wrong. Trying to pin blame elsewhere in an effort to preserve their alliance. The Crescents had two casualties. Three, if they were only counting bodies, but one managed to jump into a regular guard at the camp, taking over and then leaving with haste.

“There’s someone heading toward us,” Anton warns.

Though daybreak presses close, it’s still too dark to travel without assistance. The small dot of a flashlight is unmistakable in the distance. Getting closer and closer.

Calla excuses herself from Tsosia’s side, pulling forward to join Anton. Her hand moves to her sword.

“A messenger?” she suggests.

“Bibi could have sent someone,” Anton says, “but be on your guard.”

Calla nods, then shouts for the Crescents to halt and stay back, kill their lights. She gestures for Anton to follow her. They will greet the traveler.

“Don’t mention anything about Otta,” Calla warns as they walk. “Even if it’s Bibi.”

“Of course,” Anton says. They cannot try to explain Otta.

It already seems like an impossible matter. The pieces that had fallen into place, the role that they each played to get where they are today. Anton would have a hard enough time explaining to his sister that he hadn’t realized the truth. How can he go a step further to explain that it really is a coincidence he found himself eventually choosing a side between Calla Tuoleimi… andCalla Tuoleimi?

His breath catches, his gaze swiveling quickly.

If the old gods were around, this throw from the godling of unlikely destiny would be too preposterous to prevail. Sinoa Tuoleimi was reborn and renamed Calla Tuoleimi. Calla Tuoleimi was invaded by a child in the provinces. Calla Tuoleimi resented the takeover attempt but was only strong enough to slip into Otta Avia. Where did the kingdom’s fissures warp and bend? Shouldn’t Anton be able tofeela cosmic collision of this level? He casts his mind back to their first encounter during the games. A freezing-cold meat locker, the blood of his kill still fresh on his hands. Playing for the sake of his lover, languishing away on that hospital bed. The clash of blades. Falling and falling and falling.

“I can feel you staring at me,” Calla says, and her voice shocks Anton out of his reverie. He can’t help but jolt.

“Sorry,” he says. He clears his throat. “Still processing.”

At the end of everything, there is one question which Calla has not brought up herself, which Anton keeps circling around yet dares not ask in the open: How does an orphan child from Rincun push aside a reincarnated queen?

Whois the Calla who took over?

“Hello!” the traveler bellows from a distance. They’ve seen Anton and Calla walking toward them on the path. The storm muffles their voice. “Buira Makusa sent me!”

Calla stops walking. She considers the pronouncement for a beat before shouting, “Approach.”

The voice is familiar. Anton can’t place it until the traveler hurries forward, and then he recognizes him for one of the Crescents—the boy who Calla had been sparring with in the coliseum. Anton straightens, his hand twitching toward his pocket where his weapons wait, but Calla does not react.

“I’m glad to have made it in time,” Levi exclaims, slightly out of breath. “Buira would like you to turn back.”

Anton narrows his eyes. While Levi’s flashlight stays pointed on Calla, her expression is impassive. Her head tilts. A lock of hair unfurls from behind her ear, and there’s blood soaked into it, sealing the end into a spearpoint.

“Why would she say that?” Calla asks.

“There’s been an astonishing increase in San-Er’s…hereticactivity over the past night,” Levi reports. He starts, like he’s remembered something. “I have her note. Here.”

His hand plunges inside his jacket. Anton tenses once more, but indeed, Levi is only bringing out a folded note. He passes it to Calla.

“Buira recommends that you hold base in Eigi,” Levi reports. “As a temporary measure until the Crescent Societies have finished rounding up the heretics.”

“You’re rounding them up?” Calla asks, not looking up from the note.