The Sovereign brings princess Luca and soldier Touraine collectively one final time within the thrilling conclusion to C. L. Clark’s beloved queer political fantasy trilogy.

Learn an excerpt from The Sovereign (US), on-sale September thirtieth, beneath!
PART 1
BY PLAGUE
CHAPTER 1
GLASS
Touraine and Sabine stood behind the queen of Balladaire as she knelt on the half-frozen earth earlier than the Royal Oak. Her cane lay on the bottom at her facet. She held a small gold casket between trembling gloved palms, and poured among the darkish grains of ash instantly right into a gap within the earth.
Thick banks of snow have been heaped in opposition to the rose hedges to clear the paths. The air felt simply as thick, sound muffled so even the wind within the naked branches overhead was muted.
Touraine shivered. They’d been standing there for a very long time.
Luca lowered the casket with the remainder of Gil’s ashes into the grave. Her breath caught and he or she stopped together with her hand above the pile of grime and snow that might have lined all Luca had left of the person she’d cherished most. Luca didn’t transfer however for the jerking hitch of her shoulders.
Touraine shared a glance with Sabine. The marquise’s eyes have been purple. Touraine scrubbed her personal tears from her cheek and knelt at Luca’s facet. She felt Sabine drop to Luca’s different, and collectively, they held her.
Their contact sapped the final wall holding Luca collectively. She collapsed into them, burying her face in Touraine’s coat.
Round them, the guards saved their silent vigil, making certain nobody would interrupt the queen’s mourning.
They let Luca keep there till her shudders grew to become shivers and her enamel chattered, much less grief than chilly. Then they helped Luca scoop the earth down onto the little gleaming casket. The metallic was chilly and exquisite, etched within the curling oak leaves adorning a lot of the palace. Phrases marked the perimeters, however Touraine couldn’t make them out earlier than Luca buried it utterly.
Slowly, Touraine and Sabine helped Luca to her ft.
“Thanks.” Luca dabbed at her face with the again of 1 gloved hand and turned towards the palace.
They adopted her in silence till Touraine requested, “Are your mom and father buried there, too?”
Luca shook her head, a single sharp twist, her mouth tight. “It was thought unwise to maintain the ashes of the plague lifeless.”
A couple of moments later, although, softer, she added: “He would have appreciated that, although. To be buried with them. I want—” Her voice broke. “I want he may have been. That they’d all—” Luca huffed. She didn’t communicate once more.
On the door to Luca’s chambers, they stood awkwardly collectively.
“In case you’d like, we may play a sport of échecs?” Sabine ventured a wry smile, although her eyes have been nonetheless purple. “Trouncing me would possibly cheer you up. Or tarot?”
Touraine smiled. For days, Sabine had been making an attempt to get them to play a model of tarot that concerned taking off their garments. She hadn’t succeeded but. Luca solely ever nodded, mentioned all proper, after which—
“There’s an excessive amount of work to be achieved. I’ve to write down to the lords on the southern coast about ships, after which ensure the Beau-Sang seneschal has the property below management till Aliez de Beau-Sang returns from Qazāl. If she ever returns. After which—”
“I perceive,” Sabine reduce in softly, however heavy with disappointment.
“I’m sorry I can not entertain you.” Luca’s tart voice was ragged on the edges. She raked her hand by way of her hair and closed her eyes. Her lids have been puffy with weeping and shadowed blue with exhaustion. She seemed like Touraine felt.
Sabine flinched, then checked out Touraine for assist, however Touraine didn’t know what she was meant to do. She shrugged apologetically. “Luca’s proper.”
Touraine couldn’t chill out, both. Not with worry driving her shoulder. Since Luca had informed her concerning the Withering two days in the past, Touraine couldn’t cease herself from imagining the illness stealing by way of the town and into her physique, sucking her power away. The havoc it might wreak simply as Luca was settling into her rule. To not point out the questions Luca had requested her.
Will you be my basic? Will you be my spouse?
One query Touraine had answered. One she had not.
Pruett’s letter nonetheless burned at the back of Touraine’s thoughts, additionally unanswered.
“Then I’ll go.” Sabine dipped a curt model of her flourishing bow. “I’m certain I’d solely be a distraction.”
“Sabine—”
“Don’t go—”
Sabine waved her hand dismissively and clicked her tongue. “No, no. I’ll depart you to it. However the world received’t fall if you happen to spend a single day to care on your personal happiness. Good day, Your Majesty. Your Excellency.”
Luca sighed and entered her rooms. She sat on the small desk the place she and Touraine ate collectively or performed échecs. Proper now, it was strewn with papers. Missives, requests, accountings. She buried her head in her palms, letting her hair curtain over her face.
“She doesn’t perceive.”
Touraine let her shoulders sag and her head fall again. On the ceiling, extra positive swirls of oak leaves, curled in plaster alongside the borders of it, weaving out and in of carved vines. She pressed her palms to her eyes to stave off her headache. “Possibly she’s proper.”
For the final two days, Touraine and Luca had locked themselves right here, in mattress or on the desk, hashing out worst-cases and best-cases for the nation. They’d seen solely what solar got here by way of the window, and more often than not they saved it closed in opposition to the midwinter chilly. Breakfast plates would stay on the desk hours later as a result of Luca had requested to not be disturbed. Immediately, although, they’d taken a respite, if just for sorrow.
On cue, Touraine’s abdomen growled so loudly that Luca startled. She blinked owlishly at Touraine. The smallest trace of a smile tugged at her mouth. Then Luca’s personal abdomen growled even louder.
“All proper.” Luca pinched the bridge of her nostril. “All proper. Our baser natures have spoken.”
“Shall I ask for meals to be introduced up?” Touraine walked to the bell pull to name the lunch service again in. Or—early dinner, extra like.
It wasn’t arduous to get used to another person delivering her meals; she’d not often cooked as a Sand. What differed was the selection. The flavour. Having it introduced on to her and served at her leisure till she was happy. Even with fears of poison in the back of her thoughts, Touraine had crammed out these previous months, regaining muscle and softening her sharpest edges. Luxurious.
The previous couple of days, although, she’d barely tasted it in any respect, if she even had an urge for food.
She knew what Pruett would say, if she may see the wealthy meals, the positive wool clothes lined in silk, the eiderdown mattress stuffing and goose feather pillows.
Luca didn’t appear to be listening. She stared, unfocused, over the desk.
“She is correct. No less than somewhat. I’m sorry that you simply’re right here now. Whereas I’m like this, I imply.” She met Touraine’s eyes. “There are such a lot of issues I’d like to point out you. The artwork within the palace, all of the sculptures, the theater— Have you ever ever been to a play? An opera?”
Touraine shook her head, an eyebrow raised. “ I haven’t.”
“I want I may take you, and even rent performers.” Luca’s face fell. “It’s simply that…”
“You’re afraid.”
Luca’s face went pink.
“I perceive,” Touraine mentioned shortly. “It’s not sensible.” To make themselves a goal within the Queen’s Field on the Théâtre Royal, or to ask strangers into the palace. Fili Guérin, who Luca referred to as “the Rose,” was nonetheless at giant, together with the remainder of the Fingers. A little bit enjoyable wasn’t well worth the danger, it doesn’t matter what Sabine mentioned.
Luca chewed on her backside lip.
Touraine narrowed her eyes. “What?”
By now, she knew this expression, the second of a battle Luca hadn’t fairly labored out—normally when she knew what she wished, however knew it wasn’t the correct reply.
“We may exit anylight.”
“No. Completely not.”
It was the incorrect factor to say. Luca seized the thought like a terrier and dug her heels in. The fervor ate up her grief. “We will. Not clearly, after all. But it surely’s winter. We’ll be so lined up nobody will acknowledge us.”
“Lined up in… these?” Touraine held up the sting of her cloak on her shoulders, displaying off the positive embroidery, the rabbit-fur lining.
Luca ducked her head back and forth. “Adile can discover us one thing to assist us mix in.”
There was a decided gentle in Luca’s eyes, and Touraine wasn’t certain it was pleasure alone. There was one thing manic about the best way she started stacking all her papers collectively. Often, she even glanced again towards the door, as if in search of Sabine. Luca wished to show one thing.
She at all times wished to show one thing.
Touraine sputtered a wordless protest, and Luca stopped striding across the room. She curled an arm round Touraine’s waist and slipped behind her, resting her head on Touraine’s shoulder and kissing her as soon as on the neck.
“Include me,” she whispered.
Touraine took a shaky breath. “This can be a dangerous thought.”
“All the perfect ones are.”
“You sound like Sabine. We may keep right here, as a substitute. I’ll make it value it.” She tightened Luca’s arm about her, dug her nails in.
She felt the minute shake of Luca’s head in opposition to her cheek. “We’ll watch out.”
There was no altering Luca’s thoughts now. Touraine sighed and sank into Luca’s embrace. The heat of it. The benefit. A courageous particular person would possibly even name it happiness.
It couldn’t final.
This wouldn’t final.
The heat of Touraine’s hand in hers. The wonderment in Touraine’s eyes as she watched the road performers act out a story from the Chevaliers des Fruits for the primary time, whereas snowflakes caught upon her lengthy lashes.
Even the laughter of her individuals as they loved the present. Quickly, they’d know what she knew, and it might all crumble round them.
Luca shouldn’t have let Sabine’s phrases prick her like she did, however she was glad they’d come out. She didn’t wish to spend the day locked up with the ache in her coronary heart. Nonetheless, she saved her plain scarf pulled excessive on her cheeks, and her coat was easy sufficient to belong to a service provider. Touraine stood out somewhat extra, as a Qazāli with golden eyes, however—as Touraine tilted her head again and crinkled these eyes in laughter, Luca couldn’t fairly deliver herself to care. The chance was value it.
They slipped away on the finish of the present, and Luca noticed Deniaud and Mareau, additionally in plain garments, peel away from their posts and observe alongside at a discreet distance. Luca didn’t have her cane with its sword in the present day; as a substitute, she used a crutch. It might assist to distinguish herself from the queen together with her cane, however, and he or she hated to confess it to herself, she was counting on the aids greater than she used to. The crutch was extra supportive.
They stopped at a stand for piping-hot crêpes full of preserves and cream. It wasn’t the type of factor the palace kitchen served. Luca moaned as she ate it and caught Touraine’s mischievous look. Luca couldn’t assist it: she laughed. Holding the remainder of the crêpe in entrance of her face and making an attempt to maintain her meals in her mouth, she laughed. Touraine laughed, too, they usually might need been nothing extra and nothing lower than two ladies in love within the days earlier than the world ended.
As a result of this may not final.
However Luca may attempt to make it final so long as potential. She was queen. She may try this a lot.
Touraine shivered pleasantly with chilly as she and Luca left the stables. There’d been no incident whereas they have been within the metropolis, although her neck had prickled and he or she’d tried to not look over her shoulder too typically. She had her personal pair of guards now, to shadow her round like Deniaud and Mareau. She trusted them effectively sufficient, however she didn’t belief anybody over her personal senses and instincts.
Each time this ended, no matter it was, she didn’t need it to be due to a knife within the again.
Nonetheless, Touraine had loved the road present, and the crêpe after, and even the small cup of ingesting chocolate, although it was nonetheless too candy for her style. It made her consider Ghadin with a pointy twist of guilt. She would go to the lady tomorrow, possibly. She had loads to clarify to her, together with the upcoming marriage—
Icy moist thudded into Touraine’s again. She ducked, rolling out of place and onto her knees, reaching for the knife hidden in her boot.
A number of paces behind her, Luca hiked her arm again to throw a ball of snow, whereas Deniaud ready one other together with her traditional devoted focus.
Touraine shouted in outrage and scooped up her personal handful. The snow trickled in her naked palms, nevertheless it was sticky and straightforward to press into form. She launched it and grinned; it might hit true—then Mareau jumped in entrance of Luca, taking the blow within the chest.
“That’s dishonest!” Touraine seemed to her personal guards, fanned out behind her. Certainly one of them raised a doubtful eyebrow. His title was Aubrille. “Cowl me.”
Aubrille’s mouth fell open as if he have been going to protest, however Baudriel grinned. She was youthful, and keen. “Sure, Your Excellency.”
Touraine ran for Luca and her tiny military, ducking below a wild throw from Luca, dodging a extra exact one from Deniaud. Earlier than Deniaud loosed her second volley, she was hit by certainly one of Touraine’s guards and fell to the bottom in give up. Luca backed away, holding her empty hand in entrance of her, bent over with laughter.
Touraine nearly skidded to a cease on the sight. The queen of Balladaire, laughing. The break up grin on that normally condescending mouth, the haughty glare now flushed with exertion and the chunk of the wind. It made Touraine’s chest too full to take a correct breath.
She didn’t cease, although. She crashed into Luca, scooping her up and barreling her into the pile of snow the groundskeepers had shoveled apart. Luca squealed—Queen Luca Ancier fucking squealed—whereas Touraine peppered kisses throughout her face.
Then they sobered and the actual world threatened to smother them, held off solely by the thick snow and the chilly. The warmth between them made it straightforward to disregard somewhat longer. Luca pored over Touraine, her mouth parted with their heavy respiration, a cloud of mist. Touraine kissed her slowly, urgent her deeper into the snowbank.
Luca smiled in opposition to Touraine’s mouth. “, we have now a mattress. And a fireplace.”
And they also went contained in the palace, to mattress and hearth and all the opposite heat between them.
Luca dreamed of it ending. She dreamed of it ending typically as of late. She dreamed of Touraine in Le Fontinard, arrested by Luca’s personal troopers. She dreamed of burning Touraine on the plague fires, as she’d burned her mother and father. She dreamed of holding a knife to Touraine’s throat till a deep-red line break up the pores and skin whereas Touraine begged her, please don’t. Within the dream, Luca tried to tug again, however her arms have been leaden.
Luca jerked awake. She sensed the vacancy of the mattress instantly, however reached with greedy fingers regardless. The opposite facet of the mattress was nonetheless heat.
“Touraine?”
“I’m right here.” Touraine’s voice got here from the window, fast and soothing.
Luca rolled over within the mattress to look at her. Her robust profile was shadowed in opposition to the sunshine of the moon reflecting on the snow. Luca admired the glossy play of the Shālan gown in opposition to Touraine’s broad again and the curve of her bottom, at odds with the twisting agony of her desires. Touraine was right here, alive. This was actual. Her sigh of reduction was loud within the silent night time.
“Unhealthy desires?”
“Sure.” Luca went to Touraine, digging her toes into the smooth rug, avoiding the naked patches of stone. The fireplace had died right down to its coals, however the room nonetheless had sufficient of its warmth that Luca didn’t flinch—an excessive amount of—on the air on her bare physique. “You?”
Touraine chuckled darkly and turned, sweeping Luca in shut. Luca buried her nostril in Touraine’s neck and inhaled. She smelled so good. Of intercourse and sweat and the final lingering of a smoky cologne.
“Aye. What this time?”
The reality caught in Luca’s throat. How did you inform the girl you have been sleeping with that you simply dreamed of killing her? With a historical past like theirs, with a potential future like theirs—it was higher to maintain some secrets and techniques.
“Him,” Luca lied. Which him she meant, it was arduous to say. Gil. Nicolas. Her father. Sky above, poor Tiro, even, or Bastien. It wasn’t a lot of a lie. All of them haunted her nights. Simply not each night time. Simply not tonight.
“I’m sorry,” Touraine murmured into Luca’s hair.
“Don’t apologize.” Luca squeezed Touraine’s hip. Extra truthfully, she mentioned, “Each morning I get up and suppose, that is solely the start. There might be extra pyres quickly, and it’s my job to repair it.” She felt herself winding up once more and dispelled the constructing stress with a sigh and a shake of her head. “What woke you?”
Touraine turned again to the window, her chest rising in opposition to Luca with every deep breath. The night time exterior was darkish, however the spillage of sunshine from La Chaise made the horizon glow as if it have been dawn. Luca wished she may set her life to this regular rhythm.
“I dreamed about my troopers. The battle—the Taargen Battle. The insurrection.” She sounded as if it have been nothing, however Luca felt the stress Touraine held between her shoulder blades.
She rubbed the spot till it relaxed. When Touraine regarded Luca, although, her darkish brows have been knit with fear.
“We should always inform Aranen and the Excessive Courtroom tomorrow. I’ll ship phrase to Qazāl. We simply must determine when.”
Luca hesitated. “It is going to be winter pageant quickly. Individuals are at all times in search of omens winter will finish quickly—not that they’d admit it aloud.”
Touraine snorted. “Uncivilized.”
“Mm. We may very well be that good omen. A purpose to rejoice earlier than…”
“It’s positive.” Not dismissive, fairly, however unbothered.
“And the opposite matter?” Luca pushed.
“Common of Balladaire’s armies.” Touraine’s voice was husky and low. “You wish to make one other Cantic out of me.”
“Not a Blood Common.”
“Is there every other variety?”
The query caught Luca off guard, her mouth hanging open. She grew severe. “Every part and everyone seems to be threatening my throne. I want you to assist me preserve it.” She searched Touraine’s face steadily, grave as an oathtaking.
Touraine sat with that gravity a second, then smiled sadly. “It’s what I at all times wished.”
Luca pulled again. “It’s not humorous.”
“I’m not joking.”
As a substitute of elaborating, Touraine swept her palms up Luca’s waist and to her breasts as she pulled her right into a kiss, deep and hungry for solutions. For certainty. As if she’d discover it in Luca, when Luca was misplaced in a fog herself.
They have been rulers. They couldn’t afford uncertainty.
Luca hiked Touraine’s gown as much as her hips and backed her in opposition to the windowsill. Touraine gasped beneath her contact.
Touraine dreamed of it ending.
She’d lied to Luca.
She hadn’t dreamed of troopers. She’d dreamed of a scaffold in Qazāl, a heat breeze throughout the again of her neck. Dry mud from the east swirling with the damp river air from the west. Grit beneath her boots and the raucous sound of voices cheering.
Pruett was on the lever, as she had been when Beau-Sang was executed, as she had been after they killed the rebels that first day in Qazāl. Solely, it was Luca’s neck that Touraine tightened the noose round. Pruett smiled. After which, within the fucked-up approach of desires, it was Touraine’s hand on the lever, pulling it, similtaneously she watched Luca drop proper in entrance of her, her neck snapping.
Bare and nonetheless breathless with pleasure, Touraine fought sleep. Tried to recollect this sense, proper right here.
As a substitute, she thumbed her grief rings and thought guiltily of Pruett whereas Luca breathed peacefully, curled into Touraine’s facet.
Touraine and Pruett hadn’t at all times been lovers. They hadn’t even at all times been buddies. The primary time they’d fucked had been proper earlier than they marched off to combat the Taargens. Worry of the preventing to return, pissed off helplessness that they’d no management over their lives, and all of the pent-up sexual pressure of their pressured proximity, bursting like a blister.
Touraine hadn’t informed Luca the whole lot in Pruett’s letter. Pruett wished Touraine to hitch her. To assist her lead Masridān. A spot of their very own, for the Sands, the place nobody would look down on them.
She didn’t want to inform Luca that as a result of she wasn’t going to depart Balladaire, not after the guarantees she’d made to Luca and the Qazāli.
Moonlight spilled lovingly over Luca’s pores and skin, delicate gentle, blurred gentle. Touraine stroked the brief hairs curling round Luca’s ears. Luca’s mouth, normally pinched and condescending, was slack. She was smooth now, like this. All her rigidity gone for this one secret second.
It was so fragile, this factor between them.
Fragile and exquisite and stained with blood.
How may it presumably final?
CHAPTER 2
THE WARLORD
The solar shone vivid into the Conqueror’s Sq., onto the heads of the remaining troopers of the King’s Personal. Out of 100 women and men, twenty-four remained. They’d fought like canines to the bitter finish, Pruett may say that a lot for them. Amongst them have been the Masridāni blackcoats who’d remained loyal to Balladaire. Additionally like canines to the bitter finish. They stood of their ranks, sure hand and foot earlier than the statue of Common Rosen Cantic within the middle of Samra’. A breeze ruffled Pruett’s coat. A purple coat, slashed in black.
“A day for justice,” Pruett muttered to herself.
From her proper facet, Noé gave her an unreadable look. “Are you certain?”
She wished he wouldn’t ask her that.
“It’s what Cantic would do. It’s what she did do. That’s why there’s an enormous fucking statue of her proper in entrance of us.”
Each of the Sands gazed up on the basic. Her stone tricorne, that implacable frown. The fucking lady had formed the whole lot Pruett had ever achieved even right down to this second.
“I’m with you, Qā’id.” Kiras was a steadying presence at Pruett’s left facet, hushing the second and third ideas threatening to swallow Pruett up.
Most of the Samra’een watched from home windows and rooftops above, from their carts and their stalls. Some huddled collectively in worry and suspicion, some cheered and shouted victoriously, some even pelted garbage on the once-conquerors. A marked flip from a metropolis that had gone belly-up for the Balladairans to begin with, however possibly that was the best way of it right here—allegiances molting for the most recent season.
Reverse the ranks of prisoners stood the Masridāni blackcoats who’d sworn that allegiance to her. Pink paint daubed on their coats or purple patches sewn into the sleeves.
How shortly issues modified.
How boring that they have been nonetheless a lot the identical.
Pruett raised her hand, and the blackcoats—her blackcoats—raised their muskets to their shoulders.
“Please, Qā’id! Mercy, please!” A sobbing voice erupted from the entrance row of the prisoners. Governor-Common Yoroub dropped to his knees, dragging down the prisoners tied to him. The Balladairan troopers sneered down at him in disgust. All his sucking as much as them, they usually nonetheless didn’t suppose he was value a rank shit.
Granted, neither did Pruett.
“Please, Qā’id! I may help you, I do know this metropolis higher than anybody else, please—”
“Maintain.” Pruett lowered her hand.
She met his darkish eyes. He was pitiful. His robes have been stained with weeks’ value of jail grime; his as soon as rigorously shaven face and robust chin have been lined with a thick development of matted beard. His luxurious curls have been knotted now. Even begging, he didn’t drop his Balladairan cadence. Possibly he couldn’t. Possibly the accent was as ingrained in him because it was in her.
Silence so deep that the clicking of her boots on the stone pavers echoed by way of the sq.. Even the myriad growls and chirps and hisses at the back of her head went quiet. Pruett went to a knee in entrance of him. Her lip curled into that fishhook smile.
“I requested you for assist as soon as,” she mentioned. How silly she’d been, hoping for one thing like welcome. “You referred to as us savages.”
“I didn’t know—”
“You despatched troopers within the night time to ambush us.”
Yoroub solely sobbed. He’d earned this for himself. Now he’d die as he lived—leashed to Balladairan heels.
Pruett stood and seemed for one different prisoner. Common Marquis de Moyenne was held between two Sands, other than these about to be executed, and sure in irons as a substitute of ropes. He was too priceless to throw away, as a lot as Pruett wished to do away with him.
In a murmur for close by ears solely, she requested him, “Have you ever thought of my phrases? You may spare your males and be effectively in your method to Balladaire within the cut price.”
“A Moyenne doesn’t give up.” Moyenne tried to spit at her, however he was so dehydrated no moisture got here out. Say that for the noble, he had an even bigger pair on him than Yoroub. “And solely the duke regent can cede territory to an invading military.”
Pruett’s fishhook smile grew extra vicious. “You and I each know that’s not true.”
The rights of the Balladairan army hierarchy had been drilled into her deeper than her personal needs. As an energetic subject basic and a member of the Excessive Courtroom moreover, Moyenne outranked all of the Balladairans on the different garrisons in Masridān. Pruett wanted to safe Samra’, and Masridān as a complete, however with out Moyenne’s cooperation, she was one bloody battle after one other, and the opposite cities wouldn’t fall as simply as Samra’.
Properly, she thought. Let the blood start.
She spun on her heel to the blackcoat lieutenant ready for her sign.
She raised her hand. She let it fall.
Because the Conqueror’s Sq. full of blood as soon as extra, Pruett raised her eyes to Cantic’s immortal stone gaze.
Congratulations, you outdated bitch.
The following day, Pruett was within the Governor’s Corridor, the place she’d made her base, when a younger Masridāni messenger knocked on her door. He saluted eagerly when she opened it. Kiras saved between them. He was younger, a latest recruit—not a blackcoat below Balladaire, however an keen malcontent who’d been ready for an opportunity to overthrow these bastards, if solely anybody in Samra’ had had half a backbone just like the qā’id.
“What?” Pruett snapped.
“Captain Noé is on the Outdated Hospital. He informed me to fetch you, sir.” He spoke in Shālan. The Masridāni dialect slithered away from Pruett and took just a few further seconds to parse. When she did, her coronary heart plummeted to her abdomen.
“Is he damage?” Pruett didn’t give the younger man an opportunity to reply, her lengthy strides forcing him to chase her. As ever, Kiras adopted.
“It’s not him, Qā’id,” he mentioned, trotting at her facet. “Just a few individuals. They’ve gone… humorous.”
“Humorous?”
The child ducked his head into his shoulders. “Unwell, I imply.”
Pruett’s palms itched with that Balladairan-bred worry of illness. Anybody else, it might have been referred to as superstition, however civilized individuals didn’t have these.
They wound by way of tight roads of excessive buildings, a mixture of grey stone and the well-known red-clay brick. Pruett pulled out a rolled cigarette from the gold case she’d commandeered from certainly one of Moyenne’s males. The burn in her lungs gave her one thing to give attention to that wasn’t the dread in her stomach or the fear-scraped faces staring out at her from each nook.
It additionally dulled the constant throb at the back of her cranium.
“What’s your title, soldier?” Pruett exhaled a plume of smoke into the winter day. Hotter than it might be in Balladaire this time of yr, however nonetheless cool sufficient for her jacket.
“Saqr.”
“Is that what you referred to as your self with the Balladairans, or after I got here?”
“It’s my title.” He straightened his shoulders.
“As you want.” Not her enterprise both approach, whether or not he’d named himself for a hawk or his mother and father had. She remembered her outdated title. She didn’t surprise if her mother and father had named her imagining a happier little one. A happier life. That lady was lifeless. Offered and lengthy, lengthy gone. No sense making an attempt to puppet her corpse round.
Even among the newer buildings they handed, those manufactured from paler clay, had been painted purple to mimic the older ones. Stone, too. Pruett had requested about it after they arrived. Becoming, in a approach, for a metropolis soaked in as a lot blood as Samra’. From her personal takeover to Cantic’s, and possibly all the best way again to Emperor Djaya and past. It was why she’d chosen the colour of her coat. The colour of the flag in the event that they ever made one.
The hospital was one of many unique red-clay buildings, outdated and massive. It seemed like unique Shālan work, with the good keyhole doorways and ornate stone tiling. The motifs have been completely different from those in Qazāl—Pruett swore the shapes within the Masridāni tiles swirled into animals—however you could possibly inform there was a shared historical past between the 2 international locations. Within the small courtyard on the middle, water bubbled from the stump of two sandaled stone ft, and round it, individuals have been tended on pallets.
Saqr led her previous this courtyard and to a facet room. Noé stood within the nook, talking to a involved pair, their gazes drifting to a determine mendacity on the bottom.
“What’s happening?” Pruett requested.
Noé nodded right down to the handful of individuals within the room. Some darker skinned, some pale, some richly dressed, some not, in Balladairan type or Shālan. The one factor they’d in frequent was the clean stare they leveled at nobody. They registered neither her arrival nor her phrases.
Pruett jerked again in revulsion. “Fuck me.”
It was precisely just like the Sands who’d been taken prisoner within the Taargen Battle. When Pruett recovered them, they’d been like this. In the event that they have been acutely aware, they stared, unseeing, not reacting. Higher a minimum of, after they slept, if you happen to may name it sleeping.
Out of the blue, she felt chilly. Prefer it was that sky-falling terrible winter yet again.
A spike of ache lanced by way of Pruett’s cranium, bringing with it the sickly-sweet scent of dung and the style of hay. She pressed the heels of her palms in opposition to her temples and growled.
When the ache handed, Pruett bent down to higher look into one younger man’s face. She snapped her fingers in entrance of him. Nothing. He didn’t even twitch his eyelids.
“Oy!” she yelled. Nothing. She backed away. “Put them out of their distress.”
The order was met with silence.
“I mentioned—”
Kiras stepped near her, her hawkish nostril brushing Pruett’s cheek as she whispered, “Look.”
She flicked her head to the facet and Pruett adopted. The person and lady Noé had been talking to held one another, mooning at her with weepy eyes and snotty noses. She seemed between them and the younger man on the pallet.
Pruett grunted. “He yours, then?”
“Our brother,” the person mentioned in Balladairan, and the girl mentioned, “Mercy, please.”
Pruett walked over to them, gave them an extended lookup and down. Noé’s tender disapproval adopted her. She wanted one other smoke.
“When?”
“We discovered him like this three days in the past.” The girl glanced uncertainly at her brother. “We thought he’d hit his head working—a fall, from a constructing—however when he didn’t get higher, we introduced him right here.”
“ what’s incorrect with him?”
“No, my lord.” The person’s voice quavered solely somewhat.
“You understand how to repair him?”
“No, my lord.”
“Then I’ve obtained dangerous information for you. That is it for him. One thing in him is gone. He’ll by no means reply to his title once more, by no means acknowledge you, by no means communicate—” Pruett’s voice cracked and he or she cleared her throat. “He’ll by no means communicate to you once more. By no means smile. You need that for him? You need that for you? Dying is a mercy.”
That’s what the Balladairan officers had mentioned, earlier than taking pictures the Sands Pruett had risked her life to rescue. One thing had been gone in them, too, damaged by regardless of the Taargen clergymen had achieved. The opposite Sands hadn’t even been given the selection to care for them. It was both kill them fast or depart them to starve to dying, alone within the no-man’s-land between Balladaire and Taargen.
“We’ll care for him as finest we will.” The person lifted his chin and seemed down his nostril at her. There was love there. Loyalty. Devotion.
Made her really feel like shit.
Pruett sucked her enamel. “Good. Then you definately’ll care for all of them. These and any extra that come up. Samra’ thanks you.”
Pruett didn’t bask of their shock. She stomped out of the hospital, Kiras falling in beside her.
Exterior once more, within the clear air, she may breathe once more. The noise of the animals grew louder at the back of her head, nevertheless it was higher than dealing with her previous in these clean stares.
“You seen something like that earlier than?” Pruett requested quietly.
“No,” Kiras mentioned. A considerate line appeared between her thick eyebrows. “Head accidents, sure. Individuals born… completely different, sure. However awake and never awake on the identical time?” She shook her head.
“I’ve. One time. One trigger.”
Kiras seemed sideways at her as they walked, eyebrow cocked, ready. She wore a gold ring in it now. It was good-looking. The gold suited her brown pores and skin. Gold bangles on her wrists, too, within the Masridāni customized. Pruett dodged round a donkey. Touching an animal unintentionally was a certain method to name down a migraine, if it didn’t knock her unconscious.
“After we fought within the battle—”
“You and the opposite dāyiein?”
Pruett snorted. They’d been misplaced, all proper. “Aye. After we fought the Taargens, in the event that they captured a Sand, they didn’t kill us. They… used us. In some fucked-up ritual that allow them flip into bears or wolves. It left the prisoners—” She shuddered and jerked her head again towards the hospital. “Like that.”
The road between Kiras’s brows didn’t deepen, didn’t chill out. She took it in stride. Pruett laughed bitterly. In fact Kiras wasn’t fazed. She was an Eater.
“Every part that made them who they have been, they took it, gone.” Pruett snapped her fingers.
And now it was right here, in her metropolis.
Kiras mentioned one thing solemnly in Shālan that Pruett didn’t perceive.
“What?” They have been approaching the marble steps of the Governor’s Corridor.
“Rouh,” Kiras repeated slowly. Her accent was thick when she spoke Balladairan. “What makes you you and me me. Like a breath, the distinction between a corpse and an individual. The Taargens take that from individuals, for his or her magic?”
“Oh. The soul. That’s what the theorists in Balladaire name it. What separates man from the animal and permits us to be civilized. All the time thought it was a load of bearshit.”
Now Kiras’s frown did deepen. “Why would a soul be bearshit?”
“Properly, for one, the Droitists didn’t suppose Shālans had souls. We couldn’t be civilized naturally, in order that they needed to beat it into us like canines.”
Kiras’s lip curled, displaying off one sharpened canine. “I’ll slit whoever informed you you don’t have a soul from cunt to crop.”
Her vehemence stunned Pruett.
“And now?” Kiras tilted her head again towards the hospital. “That modified your thoughts?”
“No. This did.” Pruett tapped her temple. “Now I do know they have been stuffed with shit. Animals are hundreds extra civilized than we’re.”
She waited for Kiras to probe deeper, to select and choose at her, however all Kiras did was rake her hand by way of the messy facet sweep of her curls and say, “I’m sorry.”
“Aye. However what’s extra fucked,” Pruett mentioned, reducing her voice, “is {that a} Taargen priest is right here. Or was. Spies or worse. I’m not giving up this metropolis, Kiras. To not them or anybody else.”
Kiras’s golden eyes bored into Pruett’s. There was a flicker of one thing in there, however Pruett couldn’t learn it for the lifetime of her. It was what she appreciated most about Kiras. That inscrutableness. The stability. Sluggish and cautious, in contrast to another person Pruett may title.
Talking of animals. Pruett felt Sevroush in her head earlier than his winged shadow swooped above her. She held out her arm with the bracer and the vulture settled comfortably. He waited, head tilted, for her to offer him a bit of contemporary meat, however all she had was the dried meat in her pouch. He couldn’t frown, and but his disapproval was clear. He snapped the meat up anylight, then caught out his leg.
Pruett took the scroll to see what information Sev had introduced from Touraine.
She learn by way of it as soon as and her abdomen dropped, however there was no purpose to be upset. A last peace treaty signed between Balladaire and Qazāl. The princess was now the queen. After which the final traces—not saying, “Sure, I’ll come” or “No, I received’t come” however “I’ve enterprise right here for Qazāl.”
It was Touraine, all buttoned up in responsibility and obedience, and it wasn’t Touraine. It was a stranger, and he or she was hiding one thing.
“It’s good?” Kiras requested in a low, cautious voice.
“Sure,” Pruett mentioned tightly. “It’s good. Every part is sweet.”
The Sovereign brings princess Luca and soldier Touraine collectively one final time within the thrilling conclusion to C. L. Clark’s beloved queer political fantasy trilogy.
Luca is the brand new queen of Balladaire. Her empire is already splintering in her palms. Her uncle wasn’t the one traitor within the court docket, and the Withering plague will decimate her individuals if she will be able to’t unearth Balladaire’s magic. The one one that may help her desires the one factor Luca received’t give—the tip of the monarchy.
Touraine is Luca’s basic. She has the whole lot she ever wished. Whereas Luca seems inside Balladaire’s borders, Touraine seems outward—the alliance with Qazal is brittle and Balladaire’s neighbors are able to pounce on its new weak spot. When the military comes, led by none apart from Touraine’s outdated lover, Touraine should face the reality about herself—and the empire she as soon as referred to as dwelling.
A storm is coming. Touraine and Luca will stand in opposition to it collectively, or it is going to tear them aside as soon as and for all.
Magic of the Misplaced
The Unbroken
The Faithless
The Sovereign
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