Page 120 of Give the Dark My Love

Through the narrow door, golden light swirled—but it was not under my command. The bodies of the dead Emperor’s Guard stood and moved to the entrance, blocking us inside the room. I had no doubt that all the dead guards we’d fought were standing—and fighting my revenants. Neither side could die again, but they could be hacked to pieces.

Bright light crackled through the crucible in Governor Adelaide’s hands. She was barely able to control the power of this broken crucible. She stumbled as she struggled to maintain a connection—but maintain it she did.

“The guards won’t strike,” Governor Adelaide told me. Unspoken was the threat,yet.

My panicked eyes met Grey’s. The Emperor could do nothing for us. Nessie would be able to hold off Master Ostrum, but the raised guards would eviscerate my revenants. We were far too outnumbered.

“What do you want?” I asked. My knuckles were white as I clutched my crucible.ThatI could not give her.

But her answer surprised me. “Freedom,” she said. “It’s what our people want—need. We’ve struggled as a colony for nearly two centuries. Look at him,” she added, her lips sneering in disgust at the Emperor. “He’s a pathetic child. Why should he take our trade routes and pocket our profits? Why should we bend to his laws rather than make our own?”

Growing up in the north, I had never cared about politics. Who took what throne... none of that had mattered in my village. We would still pay taxes; what did we care who they went to?

“You killed your citizens to free them?” I asked. I almost didn’t recognize my cold voice.

“No,” the governor said. “I will immortalize them. They will be the greatest heroes in the legends that will come.”

I thought of the grave in the forest. Governor Adelaide had paid for barges to take us from the city so that we could pay our respects. While we mourned and prayed, she had planned a revolution with the soldiers that would claw their way up through the packed red earth.

“You understand, don’t you?” Governor Adelaide said. There was sincere pleading in her voice, but when I glanced behind her, I could still see the dead guards, trapping us within the cell. “This was worth it. Our nation, free at last. It will all be worth it.”

I looked down at the crucible in my hand. Made from the ash of my parents, the soul of my sister.

“No,” I said, but my voice was barely audible.

“You know I’m right,” the governor continued, taking a step closer to me. I did not move back. “I remember you. The girl from the hospital. You were working your fingers to the bone to save the sick.”

“You made them sick.”

“But I cared about them,” she said, and I remembered the way she walked the halls, giving comfort and hope to the patients. “Even if he hadn’t been here in this cell, do you think the Emperor would have cared about the plague victims?”

The news sheets had mocked the Emperor’s cowardice, true, but no one had been surprised by it. No one expected him to care about the dying poor.

“You’re from the north,” the governor pressed. “You know firsthand how unfair life is in the villages. I couldn’t stop that as governor. I want to helpeverycitizen of Lunar Island. But the laws are twisted and unfair, tipped to balance in the Emperor’s favor. The rich stay rich. And your people...”

“Stay poor,” I said, finishing the sentence in a whisper.

“You see, don’t you?” Governor Adelaide said.

Maybe in the past, I would have believed what she wanted me to believe. But my eyes saw more now. My eyes saw the golden glow of my family’s souls imbued within the metal of the crucible in my palm. My eyes saw the shell of my sister, fighting to protect me even now, even after she had died.

My eyes saw right through the governor. This wasn’t about Lunar Island being a free nation. This was about her taking the Emperor’s place.

She must have realized she was losing me. “Please,” she said, her voice cracking.

“I have heard that word so many times in the last year,” I snarled. “Mothers holding babies dead from the plague. Fathers watching their families wither to nothing but black and twisted limbs. Lovers pleading with Death. I am done withplease.”

“If you stand with me,” Governor Adelaide said, “we would be unstoppable. I can give you this island’s freedom. I can give you the whole Empire.”

“You’ll give me nothing,” I spat. “I’ll take what I want.”

Something slammed into me from the back, making me hit the ground so forcefully that the breath was knocked out of me. Metal clanged against wood. I turned as Ernesta threw away the pieces ofchair that Master Ostrum had splintered under the force of his sword after she had knocked me out of his range. She stopped the next blow with her shoulder, a sickening squelch filling the room as steel met flesh. I clutched my crucible, and white light stitched the gaping wound back together again as I healed Ernesta as quickly as I could. It drained me to use necromancy for healing, and I feared the moment she would be too far gone to save.

I turned to Governor Adelaide as she backed away from me. Her eyes tracked the battle; she relished in it. Master Ostrum and Nessie were both revenants, and while my sister was stronger, Master Ostrum was armed.

Master Ostrum lunged—not at Nessie, but at me. I scrambled back as Ernesta jumped between us.

If Governor Adelaide could not convince me to join her in her revolution, she would simply kill me and take my crucible—strong and powerful—for herself.

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