The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-10-24T06:53:42+00:00

* * *

I felt the poor sleep keenly when I dragged myself awake well into the next day. The inside of my head felt muddy, congealed. I sat on the edge of the bed with my knees drawn up, gazing through the windows at a bright, clear noon sky and thinking, I am going to die.

I am going to DIE.

In seven days—no, six now.

Die.

I am ashamed to admit that this litany went on for some time. The seriousness of my situation had not sunk in before; impending death had taken second place to Darr’s jeopardy and a celestial conspiracy. But now I had no one yanking on my soul to distract me, and all I could think of was death. I was not yet twenty years old. I had never been in love. I had not mastered the nine forms of the knife. I had never—gods. I had never really lived, beyond the legacies left to me by my parents: ennu, and Arameri. It seemed almost incomprehensible that I was doomed, and yet I was.

Because if the Arameri did not kill me, I had no illusions about the Enefadeh. I was the sheath for the sword they hoped to draw against Itempas, their sole means of escape. If the succession ceremony was postponed, or if by some miracle I succeeded in becoming Dekarta’s heir, I was certain the Enefadeh would simply kill me. Clearly, unlike other Arameri, I had no protection against harm by them; doubtless that was one of the alterations they had applied to my blood sigil. And killing me might be the easiest way for them to free Enefa’s soul with minimal harm. Sieh might mourn the necessity of my death, but no one else in Sky would.

So I lay on the bed and trembled and wept and might have continued to do so for the rest of the day—one-sixth of my remaining life—if there had not come a knock at the door.

That pulled me back to myself, more or less. I was still wearing the clothes I’d slept in from the day before; my hair was mussed; my face was puffy and my eyes red. I hadn’t bathed. I opened the door a crack to see T’vril, to my great dismay, with a tray of food in one hand.

“Greetings, Cousin—” He paused, took a second look at me, and scowled. “What in demons happened to you?”

“N-nothing,” I mumbled, then tried to close the door. He slapped it open with his free hand, pushing me back and stepping inside. I would have protested, but the words died in my throat as he looked me up and down with an expression that would have made my grandmother proud.

“You’re letting them win, aren’t you?” he asked.

I think my mouth might have dropped open. He sighed. “Sit down.”

I closed my mouth. “How do you—”

“I know nearly everything that happens in this place, Yeine. The upcoming ball, for example, and what will happen afterward. Halfbloods usually aren’t told, but I have connections.

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