My bones thrummed, and I felt each drop of water as it hit the backs of my hands. She wouldn’t let me live if she won this battle. But that’s not what worried me the most. I thought of the paper crane, stained with blood, lying tucked within Nisong’s journal in my travel chest. I’d sworn to myself there would be no others like her – and though I found that promise harder and harder to keep, I knew Nisong didn’t feel the same way. She saw the crown as her right, the way I once had. Anyone who opposed her, or even those who simply stood in the way, were obstacles to be crushed. She craved destruction the way I had once craved my father’s love.

I couldn’t let her rule over the Empire, not if I wanted to keep my promise in even the smallest part. “We have to get down there.”

Ragan had already turned toward the palace, Lozhi in tow.

I rushed to catch up to him. There was something grim and forbidding in his face, the easy smile a memory as faded as the dry season after a wet season rain. Lozhi looked at his face and shrank back, ears low and tail tucked in. There was something familiar in that expression. I’d not seen Ragan and his ossalen interact much. They were consistently apart, and Ragan didn’t often talk about Lozhi. I’d always supposed that Ragan’s teachings had directed him to behave differently with Lozhi, and that this was superior to the way I’d interacted with Thrana. Was this why the Alanga had been depicted without ossalen? Had they kept theirs shut away the way Ragan did?

But there wasn’t time to examine the bond between ossalen and Alanga.

The gates were open, and down in the crush of things I could hear the panicked voices, the captains directing their troops, the creak of armor and the sound of steel being unsheathed. Archers hurriedly strung their bows with trembling fingers. No one looked much to me, but then, I still wore the plain oilskin cloak over my finery.

Urame, however, noticed me. “They’re marching here, Eminence,” she said as she approached. “The full force of them. And they do not look much diminished. It will take them time to wind up the switchbacks, but your construct didn’t work.”

Even now, I wanted to bite back, to tell her it had – Nisong had just discovered it sooner than I’d anticipated. But what was the point? The end result was the same. We were facing down a force we couldn’t win against. “Ragan can shake the earth,” I said. “He’s even more competent than Jovis. We can get through this.”