the lights and snow reflected silver in her dark eyes. “I wanted to show you because I think there is good and bad in everything, Ana. And it is the good of this world that makes it worth saving.”
Ana closed her eyes. The silence, the lights, and the snow made everything seem dreamlike, and she wanted for this night to never end. “When Ramson freed you, you could have taken your freedom without choosing the Trade. Why didn’t you?”
Linn placed her hands together and clasped her fingers to form an oval. “Action, and counteraction,” she said patiently. “My people believe that every action has a counteraction. Yin and yang; moon and sun; night and day. Ramson saved me, therefore I saved you.” She said this simply, confidently, as though it were as easy as differentiating between black and white.
Ana wrapped her arms around herself. In the absolute quiet, it felt like they were the only two beings alive, and the confession unfurled with a plume of her breath in the frosty air. “I’m afraid, Linn.”
“That’s good.” Linn gazed into the distance, where the ice spirits frolicked in their ever-shifting forms beneath the blue light of the Deities. “My mother told me that is when we can choose to be brave.”
“It doesn’t make it any easier.”
Linn cast her eyes down and smiled. “Want to know a secret?”
Ana found herself smiling back. “Sure.”
“I am afraid, too.” The words were a whisper in the wind. “But…there is something I want, a feeling stronger than my fear.”
“What is it?”
“Freedom.” Overhead, the shadow of a hawk soared beneath the shifting blue lights in the sky. Its screech pierced the night. “My traffickers stole my freedom and my voice. They led me to believe that there was nothing I could do. That there was no hope.” Linn’s eyes were closed. She drew a breath and turned her face to the shimmering lights outside. “I have waited so long to make a choice of my own. For every Affinite freed, like me, there are thousands of others still trapped in this system, invisible in the shadows. I choose to fight for them, for me. Which do you choose?”
Ana’s voice was hoarse when she said, “I choose to fight.”
Linn’s eyes flew open, and Ana could swear someone had cast in them all the stars in the night sky. “Good. Now, I have something to show you.”
Back in the dacha, Linn handed Ana a rolled-up piece of parchment. “I found this at the marketplace.”
Ana unfurled the poster, and the world around her seemed to crumble to ashes.
It was a portrait of Luka. He looked older than she had last seen him a year ago—or perhaps it was the way the artist depicted him. His jaw had strengthened and his shoulders had broadened, yet one thing that hadn’t changed was the radiant smile that lit his face. The artist had painted him with a fur-rimmed silver cloak, a tiger’s clasp at his throat, and the white-gold Crown of Cyrilia sitting perfectly on his head.
Gently, she ran a hand over his face, tracing the bump of his chin and the spot where his dimple should be. The artist hadn’t captured that. She let her gaze linger on him a few moments more before dropping to the line of gold text emblazoned beneath.
Kolst Imperator Lukas Aleksander Mikhailov
to announce the abdication of his throne and the crowning of
Kolst Contessya Morganya Mikhailov
on the fifth day of the first moon of Winter.
Ceremony to take place at the Salskoff Palace Grand Throneroom.
Ana’s teeth clenched. At least Tetsyev hadn’t been lying to her about that part. Four days—they would arrive on the cusp of Coronation evening.
She would get there, or she would die trying.
Hold on, Luka, she thought. I’m coming.
“He’s beautiful,” Linn breathed, her gaze on the snow-dampened portrait of Luka. “I had always pictured Emperor Mikhailov to be…well…monstrous.”
The words stirred a spark of anger within Ana. “Why?”
“Growing up in Kemeira, we were taught of the cruelty of the Cyrilian Empire, of the way Affinites are treated here.” There was no hostility on the girl’s face. She peered down at the portrait, brows creased, as though she were genuinely reflecting. “And after I came here, I learned how your people view us: as ruthless, cold-blooded warriors. I suppose we are all heroes in our own eyes, and monsters in the eyes of those who are different.”
Ana thought of the Vyntr’makt in Kyrov, of how the yaeger had looked at her, like she was the monster. “It is