No wonder the Lumians made no art. Perched on the edge, arms loose around my bent knees, I stared out the window onto miles and miles of grey ocean and white ice. The ice looked just like my thoughts, or rather the lack of them. Neither provoked any thoughts, never mind a new idea to escape.
Just visions of red-stained snow.
Jem was not getting to me, especially not the matter of fact way he’d spelled out his village’s demise, as if death were a foregone conclusion. As if he knew the villagers wouldn’t resort to cannibalism right away, but would bicker and stall and sit in silence, until the ache in their stomachs grew too desperate and they too mad to hold back.
But then apparently Jem had had a long time to think about this, and he still didn’t know. His vision was only theoretical.
My life, for theirs. Jem acted as if it was such an easy choice. As if I should actually care about this backwater village, with the even more backwater peasants, with the white-haired man who would torture others to save them.
Jem’s snow demon flew past the window, failing to provoke a flinch in me. Just another round, another check-in. After setting a biscuit in a tin next to me, Jem had left me alone. That was hours ago.
A biscuit. The last biscuit, rock-hard yet gritty and with as much taste as the snow.
I tore at my black hair, messing it up, as if somehow the motion would make my thoughts behave. Messed it around like I was a madman, not a prince, and of course that was it. Jem wanted me to go mad. He wanted to hobble me.
The blue firefly buzzed in front of my eyes. Eyes hooded and my head resting on my knees, I stared at it. When I didn’t give the response it wanted, it dove at me, whining like a pesky insect. I swatted it away.
“Ouch, don’t do that!” came Dajana’s tinny voice.
“Fuck off,” I muttered.
The firefly returned to the window, but out of reach. “If I didn’t know any better, I would think you wanted to die more horribly than anyone has ever suffered in all of history.”
I snorted. All of history, was it? And just how much history did Lumi or Sentei or the rest of the frozen wasteland have? “Why not? It’s not like there’s anything I can do.”
The firefly made a strangled sound like a bee buzzing. Bees. That was something Lumi didn’t have. No bees, no honey, or even locusts. “Of course there is!”
“The storehouse—”
“The storehouse? The storehouse is useless. The entire city is about to starve.”
And then people would start to die, and the survivors with empty pits instead of stomachs would go mad, and then no one would be safe.
“Your Highness!” Dajana shrieked, her voice so high that it was nearly unintelligible. “Are you really going to wait to be sacrificed for a bunch of half-starved mongrels?”
Half-starved mongrels. I opened my mouth to ask her what she thought of Haori exchanging kisses with another boy. Were the Sentei like Nuriyites? Or did the Sentei simply think of Lumi as peasants to be shoved into a mine when they needed metal, and left to starve when they didn’t?
“Then what?” I asked, instead. “What is your great plan? How can I possibly stop the Dark God from coming?”
“I’m glad you asked.” I loathed the sound of her voice, so smug and dark and blood-ridden. Nothing like Jem’s, as bland as the bread, as if allowing even a little horror at what he recited would shatter him with grief.
“So you finally have a plan. Good for you.”
“It’s a plan you will love. Something you will beg me to do.”
I turned my head back to the window, waiting for the snow demon’s next rotation. The snow demons didn’t need to rest, it seemed, and lived bound in their snow shells until the shells were destroyed.
Was that how Jem saw himself? As if he were merely a snow demon, left in Prince Hemi’s body to do his bidding? But he was so much more.
“Your Highness!”
Was she really trying to reprimand me? I ground my teeth. “What?”
“All you have to do is kill Jem.”
My shoulders tensed, and in this position, it felt like my whole body had turned to stone. Or ice, like the snow demons or the fortress walls.
“See? I told you you’d like it.”
Slowly, the vertebrae in my neck grinding as if fashioned from stone, I turned back to that smug firefly bastard.
The firefly buzzed. “He only has one weakness. His fleshy, soft body. He has snow demons to defend him, but they can’t protect him from someone already close to him. Someone he would hesitate to hurt. Someone who he’s brought into his own room, where he sleeps undefended.”
“Because it wouldn’t matter,” I said. “If Jem dies, someone else will continue the ritual.”
“No one else can.”
“Of course they can. Jem is too clever to leave such an obvious hole. He probably has a dozen people ready to step in based on every contingency.”
“No, he doesn’t. He can’t.”
My body unfurled as the blood drained from my face, settling and solidifying in my belly. I turned my head slightly, peering at the firefly. Peering at it like I could read her thoughts on the insect’s tiny face.
“No one else can be the Dark God’s vessel.”
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