Page 54 of Eyes of Kings

Calla and Yilas burst into the palace infirmary, scaring the medic on duty. Chami’s pulse is weak beneath her paper-thin skin. When Calla sets Chami on one of the beds, Chami stirs a fraction, though her eyes don’t open.

“I think it’s exhaustion,” Calla tells the palace medic. “But check her vitals. Just in case.”

Yilas pinches Calla’s arm silently, warning Calla to keep an eye on the medic while he works on Chami. Calla pinches her back without looking, conveying,Of course. They cannot speak about what happened. They cannot acknowledge it, or else—

Calla steers Yilas away, into a chair in the corner. The infirmary is kept dark. Its bulbs imitate candlelight, a soft glow cast up the plain walls. Calla almost can’t tell the difference between Yilas’s barely suppressed sniffles and her own frantic internal noise. The wet ground of her immeasurable secrets is starting to come loose.

“Why is this happening?” Yilas whispers while the medic works.

“I’m afraid the only one who can answer that is Chami,” Calla says, leaning against the wall. “And whatever it is, it happened long ago, unbeknownst to us. We’re just riding out the aftershocks.” Chami was not invaded when she saved Yilas—her eyes were as pink as they have always been. The old gods can only wake if they were put to sleep. They can only walk the mortal realm if they had already fallen upon it.

“She’s going to be fine, Yilas,” Calla promises. Reassurance does not come easily to her, but she tries. She has to try. “She’ll explain it all when she wakes. Whatever qi attack she managed, it was no small feat. She tired herself out, but she will recover.”

Yilas goes quiet. Her hands grasp her knees. Her shoulders hunch small.

The medic has stopped bustling around Chami. He’s crouched at her side, his finger on her pulse, counting the old-fashioned way. If his indifferent expression is anything to go by, Chami’s vitals are normal.

“You should have finished the job.”

Yilas isn’t looking at Calla when she says it. She’s staring at her hands, her fists opening and closing. At first, Calla isn’t even sure if Yilas is speaking to her.

But Calla knows exactly what Yilas is talking about. When did she startrelying on her two former attendants, after all? When did she become an outlaw in the kingdom she was set to inherit?

“I couldn’t,” Calla whispers.

“It should have been that night,” Yilas returns. “The moment you committed your massacre in the Palace of Heavens, you should have gone into Earth and finished the job. Why didn’t you?”

It is a fair question. It is a decision that does not make sense to anyone other than Calla.

“They were looking for me already.”

“You could have jumped. And then we wouldn’t have any of this—the kingdom in turmoil, the heretics in San-Er. Matiyu is in the hospital, Calla. Someone attacked him. If it didn’t happen today, it would have happened the next day. Everything that is happening now is happening as a result of what you started. Why didn’t youfinish it?”

One of the lights flickers, then dies. Somewhere nearby, footsteps echo into the wing.

“Yilas,” she says, “you know I don’t jump.”

But Yilas, clearly, cannot imagine why. Cannot fathom that this body isn’t hers. That she is an unknowable entity who sprang forth from Rincun. That Calla Tuoleimi, in those five years she’d been in hiding under King Kasa’s nose, had been more afraid of losing this body of hers than anything else.

“Look at what’s happening around us anyway,” Calla goes on. “If I had succeeded in killing Kasa that night, it would have sped us forward to this outcome. Would we have August inherit the throne?”

“Why not?” Yilas asks. “I mean it, Calla. I understand your war against him while it is you or him. Either he rules and you fall, or you rule and he falls.” She swallows hard. “But back then, how was he going to be any worse?”

The footsteps are coming closer. It isn’t just someone hurrying through the wing—they’re heading straight for the infirmary.

“Because I want better thannot as badfor the kingdom,” Calla hisses. “I was wrong. I’ve been wrong every step of the way. I thought myself some savior, hand-selecting August as a replacement and giving him supreme power because he cares about keeping the people fed. That’s notenough. What about letting Rincun speak its own language?”

Yilas slumps in her seat.

Calla sighs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” She scrubs her brow. Clears her throat so that her voice is level again. “I know the side we’ve put up isn’t perfect. But we have one chance to pivot away from how things are, and that’s by defeating August. Otherwise, nothing changes in Talin. The provinces funnel everything toward San-Er, and San-Er stays shrouded in darkness. We will be miserableforever.”

Yilas looks up. Tears bead at her eyes, threatening to fall.

“Calla,” she says quietly, “we’re not so miserable.”

“I was.”

It slips out before she can help it. Perhaps Yilas will understand it superficially, that Calla could not spend a day longer in the twin cities. The capital where civilians live one on top of another, where shelters use cages instead of beds, where there was not one empty gap left in San until they expanded the wall.