Mercurial by Naomi Hughes (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📕

pulled up and burnt down and kicked through, and grow back again without regard. If he was going to die today, at least he would do it honestly. And at least he wouldn’t be alone.

He’d roused in the morning in the midst of a fevered nightmare only to find Elodie mired deep in her own. He woke her, as he always did. They stared at each other wordlessly, his arm still bracing her chest, one of her feet wedged between his, as their separate dreams seemed to crackle and spark in such close vicinity.

She shut her silver eyes, knowing that hers was the face that had haunted his nightmare. Unable to deny it, but equally unable to see her looking as tormented as she did at this moment, he gently kissed her.

And then Albinus knocked on the door to summon him to his trial.

Once, there was a girl who believed only in her brother. Her belief didn’t grow up within her like a green thing, as Tal’s did, but instead coated her in the same way the violet poison in her pocket would soon coat an arrowhead. She had spent the night hardening her belief until it cleared into an invisible, shatterproof cocoon around her. It did not let fear through. It did not let anything through at all.

The soldiers gave her a cursory weapons check when she arrived at the gate to the great garden courtyard where public trials were held. They found the poison, but she had put it in a flask and then sprinkled sour beer all over the container, so their only reaction was to wrinkle their noses, assume she was a drunk—which was only helped by the fact that her whole self smelled of sour beer after last night—and keep searching her. The miniature crossbow was harder to hide, so she didn’t try. It folded up cleverly to look like some sort of mechanical toy and she let them assume that was what it was.

The arrowhead was hidden in a hollow she’d carved out of the rubber sole of her boot. The arrow was nothing but a small stick, too innocent for the guards to bother with. And then they finished with her and just like that, she was let through, and had the next twenty minutes to scout out the perfect position from which to assassinate the Destroyer.

Once, there was a girl who was afraid.

She was afraid now. She had always been afraid. Her fear and her rage were twin hearts beating within her. Her power was a beast on a chain lunging to get free. She felt small and fragile, and so she made herself terrible and powerful, her skin lustrous with a wreath of white flames as she entered the garden. Her face was set in lines of carelessness, of cruelty. The Iron Crown shone on her brow. The willow trees and river birches seemed to shiver at her passing.

No one would sense her fear. No one could see her weakness.

But Tal did. She could feel his attention on her even as the guards marched him to the high stone stage. They stopped in the spot where the rock was blistered and scored, charred from the many death sentences the Destroyer had carried out here before. When they locked manacles around his wrists and turned him away from her and kicked his knees out from under him, she felt him wince as if his pain resounded through her own body.

Her fury rose. She twitched a finger and a noose of fire curled around the neck of the soldier who’d kicked Tal. She ought to end his life.

No. She ought to end this whole travesty of a trial.

But then what would she do? She let her eyes lift to the audience. Cobalt-and-rust pendants fluttered in the breeze and metallic bunting hung between the towering trees like moss. The whole garden turned on a strange air, something between celebratory and hungry. A large portion of the city had turned out for the event, perhaps nearly a thousand people who were shaken by the empress’s death, eager to evaluate their new ruler, and of course morbidly eager for the spilled blood of the accused as they always were.

The Destroyer was the sole judge in these proceedings. She could ensure that Tal’s blood didn’t spill. She could proclaim him innocent, or upend the law regarding silver Smiths. But making such a move to protect her bodyguard on the very first day of her reign would mean giving her enemies an immeasurable amount of leverage…and then Tal would die anyway.

She remembered how he’d looked when he’d woken her this morning: tousled hair, unnaturally bright eyes, cheeks flushed with fever. He had perhaps a few days left to live, each more painful than the last as his heart struggled to circulate blood clotted with tiny crystals, as the phage shredded his veins and vital organs. She wasn’t sure she could bear watching him go through that.

We were made to withstand such things, he’d said last night. But she wasn’t built the same as him. She could withstand so much less than he could. Her whole self was so much less than he was, and that frightened her as much as anything ever had.

A strangled whimper pulled her thoughts back to the soldier before her. The noose was burning through the skin on his neck, making a horrible sizzling sound. Tal was looking at her over his shoulder. His eyes were grave. In her mind she heard again what he’d said last night: the more time that goes by the more it will overtake you.

She set her jaw. It would not overtake her. She released the rope of fire and it fizzed out. She itched to call it back the moment it dissipated, to let it curl reassuringly in her hands, the way a guard might grip a sword hilt to settle himself before a fight.

The soldier gasped gratefully, hands over