Yalira snorted because her tongue was too thick to make words. If only leaving were that easy.

"If you bed him, Valen will—"

"Valen will what? Put scorpions in her soup?" Rishi materialized out of the crowd and singed Alleta with scowling irritation. The bright gold, her scathing dislike, serpent-Rishi wilted the lioness into silent, mousy retreat.

"How annoying," Rishi grumbled as the queen disappeared. "Did she threaten you?"

Yalira shook her head. "You scared her off before she could finish on Valen's behalf."

"I'm sure you would have handled her without my rescue." Rishi's frown disappeared in sudden, cheerful appraisal. "Look at you! Drunk as a Lytvian bricklayer and twice as steady on your feet!"

"Why does Valen care so much?" Yalira asked, ignoring the compliment. "The man has an army of wives, surely you can't all still be jealous at this point."

A smile followed her shrug. "Jealousy doesn't begin to describe it."

"Not you, too?"

"We all want different things from him. The other wives complicate that," Rishi explained, waving her hand. "Valen wants Andar to suffer, but Alleta thinks she loves him. Dezma wants liberty for Kythis, but that would hurt trade to Crosao."

"And what do you want?" In the turbulence of the question, the room seemed to spin, unsteady as storm clouds where Rishi's whisper was the only anchor.

The gold-painted queen wove their arms together, leading Yalira into the crisp night. Away from the noise and heat, the air breathed with stillness. A held breath kept, a tense longing. In the empty courtyard, the lunar smile fell upon them in full glow.

"I want what all women want." Her light eyes burned for the space between breaths and she leaned forward. The answer faded into her secretive grin. "But you, Yalira, you might have so much more."

"I want nothing," she protested. "Except to leave Semyra."

In a mocking scoff, tone misleadingly pleasant, Rishi challenged, "Don't you?

"You could be the Queen. Not another foreign prize, not a peace treaty. Divine-touched! Beloved by Andar!" Outlined by the glow of the party, Rishi burned. "You want to save you people? You want to change the world? You cannot do anything sitting in a temple at the edge of a mountain."

Yalira flinched and rubbed at her bare arms. The words sang to that wicked shade of her rebellious spirit. Not the sequestered life of a High Priestess, not sentenced to obey and observe, but something more. Behind the walls of Antalis, it was not purpose, not power, she lacked, but autonomy.

Her mouth filled with the taste of sand.

"Are you going to lie to me—to yourself—and say you're fine with the way the world is?"

The stuttering struggle to build a justification, an acceptable answer, grew Rishi's smile. Yalira's heart broke for every suffering she'd seen in life, each dark prophecy that'd passed her lips. 

But heartbreak was not enough. 

It was no better than clean dressings to hide a festering wound—a gesture that eased her spirit but changed nothing. Yalira's slowed mind, thick tongue, could not find the words to absolve her.

"Sweet priestess, I had no idea Antala was so cruel."

Shame flooded her cheeks and burned at her eyes. Yalira the Loved. The reaching hands, the thrown flowers—how foolishly they had misplaced their affection. No longer High Priestess of a sprawling temple-city. Barely the High Priestess of a crumbling altar.

"Rishi, I have fought with everything I have and still I've regained nothing. How could I possibly change the world?"

The queen pressed her palm to Yalira's warm cheek.

"Haven't I already said? Tyr needs an empress."

The night air, heavy with jasmine, caressed over her skin. Moonlight poured as soft as a whisper. The moment lasted a heartbeat and a lifetime.

"Empress?" The word erupted as choked laughter.

"Yalira, listen to me. There are those of us who see all the threads of the world and the fists that hold them.

"I came to cut them loose. But I am a foreigner. Despite Andar's empire of nations, there is no room for an outsider queen to change the status quo."

"But I'm not from Tyr either, not really. I've never left Antalis." Yalira pulled away from Rishi's hand. "I'm a stranger to this city as much as the other queens."

"Then you'll make these people your people."

"The forum wants Lyroc's bride—the princess of Mala. They won't support me."

"They will."

"I'm not an empress!" Yalira's cry rang with quiet desperation. Fate and destiny had already lifted an unknown bastard girl into something more and now threatened to rip it away. There was nothing more in the world for her. It was the blackest of selfish ego to think otherwise. "I was chosen to be a priestess, to serve Antala."

"So you'll reign over a crumbling city? Praying over beggars and healing refugees? You would help hundreds when you might help them all."

Strained wordlessness drowned out the noise from the party. Even dressed as they were, snakes and peafowl, the gravity of Rishi's passion—tempered though it was—left no room for argument.

"Andar will have his way. He always does. Better to be empress than ninth queen."

Rishi's words echoed, the shivers of a cold bath. The heket-induced fog between Yalira's ears ebbed with each steadying breath. She turned away, ripping the feathered mask from her face.

The world was changing too quickly. The fall of Antalis. A city infested with death and deception. Written pages that should not exist, that erased the foundations of her identity.

The hazy laughter and floating indifference that had imbued the night swiftly retreated. Hollow and bleeding, that gnawing hole in her chest fed on doubt and fear.

Give me a sign. Show me I'm not some herb-addled girl.

Bathed in the light of her silver goddess, eyes staring into Antala's starlit domain above, Yalira was blind.

"Please," she breathed.

The full moon answered in stubborn silence.

Hypotheticals filled the vacancy. If Andar had never come to Antalis, she would be standing at the public altar in the temple-city. The elders would sing as she bled and bled and bled. Devoted. Adored.

Powerful only in submission.

She shivered. Her unbroken skin burned bright in the celestial glow. A spark caught and new fire glowed within her chest, each pulse molten in her veins. It hardened into understanding.

In a breath, in a heartbeat, her spirit screamed with a thousand voices, without a word.

Yalira dao Eheia did not want to submit.

Head clear and cloudy, bones singing in resolve, her feet grew reckless wings. The rough walls that stolen her beneath the Temple, the bonds of tradition and obedience, the blood she had spilled on altar steps, they could not hold her any longer.

Before thought could anchor her with consequences, Yalira turned back towards Rishi. Outlined the orange glow of the party, shimmering and dangerous, the queen waited. Words unspoken, her smile twitched. With a deep bow, eyes never dipping below the horizon, Rishi gestured toward the revelry, the tinkling of the golden skirt a choir of victory.

Leaving the courtyard, its refuge of cool quiet, was a step into another world. The revelry had grown louder and wilder as the moon slipped from its zenith. Even with the lingering scream of rebellion loud in her ears, the mass of bodies, the wall of noise, the riotous color of costumes, Yalira only had mind for those golden chimes.

A war cry. A drum beat. Siren song.

That beating heart, the pulse of the unknown, led with those bells.

And then shattering, bronze-colored silence.

As if the room forgot to breathe, the crowd shifted into a path, a labyrinth of steps toward a beautiful monster.

At the end of her descent, Andar stood in a world that swirled around him. A lion, a beast, a god, even unadorned, he needed no costume to pull those currents of attention for—the admirers who reached, the enemies who glowered—they could not escape their orbits.

Yalira felt that same gravity, its insistent tug. But where the others circled, helpless in the spiraling current, the monster in the pit below met her eyes and smiled.

Oristos, barely a shadow next to his king, turned to follow that bronze-edged gaze. Though Yalira had assumed the twine that held their friendship had been repaired, his jaw tightened at her approach.

"Have you come to prove yourself, priestess?" Andar asked. His words bore no mocking inflection, and yet the rooted confidence that seethed from him threatened to spill into Yalira's chest with familiar loathing.

The anger did not surface. In the aura of power and resolve, he could not touch her. Andar might have shattered the foundation of her world, but the clean fire of her spirit burned away the fear and doubt.

"No," she said. "I am here to submit."

Andar blinked, but otherwise bore no sign that this news surprised. Oristos stepped forward, gentle hands aiming to move her aside. Calm, endearing in manner, his words fluttered like startled birds. He reeked of smoke and opium, incense and heartbreak.

"Yalira, maybe this should wait until morning. No good decisions are made in the middle of night. You—"

A firm hand on his shoulder quieted his protests. Yalira watched those long fingers tighten in warning. Smile untouched, curiosity behind burning bronze, Andar waited until Oristos stepped aside.

It never became easier, the way Andar moved, the way he overpowered a room. Unfettered by the crowd, standing directly before him filled Yalira with bristling energy. The world itself was not big enough to contain him, and so it shifted and twisted in failing effort, sending all attention and thought tumbling toward him.

"Submit to what?" A contented purr. They both knew the words of their blood promise, the lunar signal of its limit. He had not forgotten, but for the curious ears that feigned indifference, he wanted her to say it.

Yalira would have been content to let him wait, to answer his own question. Submission had been their first meeting, and he had watched her give the barest minimum to fulfill their trade. Now, in the stronghold of his kingdom, Andar did not change his strategy. He waited and watched for the veiled rebellion.

He might hold to his same tactics, the plans and methods that had bought him early victory, but Yalira adapted. She would not be his ninth queen, no. She would be the spark to destroy an empire built on shadows and death.

Beloved by Andar of Tyr.

"To be your queen." And then, to kill the whispering tongues that might dissent, she added, "And complete the ceremony we started in Antalis."

For they had spoken their oaths on the crumbling temple stairs. Gallus had stood as his second, Tala as hers. Witnesses before a silent pantheon. Yalira had not argued when Andar had begged off their ash-covered vows for the sake of grand celebration. But now that it suited her purpose, she would not let them be forgotten.

With a confidence that was not her own, Yalira moved to twist her arm to his, the warm scars of their oath mirrored, her lips close to his ear. Breath hot against his neck, golden skin erupted with gooseflesh.

"You promised to raise me higher than any High Priestess. I hold you to it."

In his pause, Yalira could feel the surprise fade into careful calculation. She might have stepped toward him, but now it was his form that arced around hers. A taut bow, a gleaming blade—a weapon struggling to regain its target.

All the color and noise of the whirlwind night returned the moment he crushed his lips to hers. His hands twisted into the twists of her dark hair, the folds of bright fabric. Yalira hated the cage of bone and muscle and sinew that enveloped her.

Golden chimes echoed.

She smiled.

A/N:

Another early am post before work! This was one of my favorite parts to write and I hope you enjoyed it too :)

Let me know what you think!