Across the arena, Hat is kneeling over Esther, and her voice is hoarse and tight. “She’s still alive!”
I rush across the open arena to where Hat and now Dr. Rhana are both frenetically treating Esther’s wound. I reach Esther and collapse to my knees beside her. I grab her hand, and a surge of pain doubles through my system. It’s all I can do to hold on. Esther’s pain is excruciating, her fear mind-numbing.
“The only time I’ve felt worse,” Esther says with a tight, painful smile, “is when I learned you had the tattoo.” She winces as Hat presses a clean bandage on her wound.
A heartbroken sob gets trapped in my throat.
In a calm voice, Rhana says, “We need to get her to Med Ward.” She orders a nearby guard to bring a table so they can carry her; then she discusses the injury with Hat in hushed tones.
Rhana crouches beside me and speaks with a hand on my shoulder. “I know you’ve been practicing your abilities with Esther in Med Ward. Don’t look at me like that—Esther’s been visiting my ward for years. Of course I knew. The tattoo is yours now, and I don’t know what that means, but hopefully you can still help her. We’re out of anesthetic since the fires. Her heart is racing, and it’s going to pump too much of her blood out of that wound. When we get to Med Ward, I’ll need to cut into her to help her. So I need you to keep her calm, because it’s going to hurt. I need you to do this for Esther, Coin. Keep her calm. Send her mind someplace else. Let us save her life. Are you ready?”
Her confidence steadies me. “Yes.”
“Do it now, okay?” She positions herself behind Esther’s shoulder. Glenquartz positions himself at her feet.
My eyes are burning. My lungs. My heart. Everything I am is dissolving into fire. Esther’s pain is so great that I don’t know how to touch it. I close my eyes, as we grip each other’s hands, and I focus on soothing her aura.
“Esther Merelda Fallow,” I whisper like a lullaby into her ear. The sound of the arena drops away, and lights dance in my mind until they coalesce into an image. I don’t know what to show her at first. I don’t know what her happiest place is—the memory of her father, or farther, to the faint memories she has of her mother. I want to show her something beautiful. So I show her Hat, the first time we met.
Then I show her snowfall in the city. The chill is sharp and harsh against my skin.
I show her the snow in the alley I slept in—it glistened, untouched by footprints or cart tracks. It’s smooth and frozen and beautiful, and I think hazily that it wouldn’t be the worst place to die. I show a winter storm that came early one year, and I had to unbury myself from two crates and a tarp I was sleeping beneath.
I show her every moment of my life where the harsh world was beautiful, where laughter won out over everything. The look on a Legal’s face when he opened his door and found his living room empty and bare. Devil’s shelf of collected odds and ends, and her voice saying, “Find me something interesting from the palace.”
When I first called the tattoo beautiful, Esther said that beauty needed context. So I show her the first time I got caught while pickpocketing. The first execution I saw. Every hurt and injury. The ache in my chest when I stole food from a family who needed it, and the all-consuming hunger that filled my body when I didn’t. I share with her the moments I almost died, the feeling when Marcher told me my friend was dead. The moment I realized there was a tattoo around my arm and that my life would never be the same.
I show her everything.
Through it all, Esther’s hand is in mine.
I show her my most recent memories of Hat, including the moment Esther herself was stabbed and fell, and Hat—of everyone who froze, of everyone who was afraid—pushed her way through the crowd to try to save her. I show her Rhana, somehow every bit the fierce leader I wish I could be, smart and kind.
Then I show her what could be: Hat accepted as an apprentice of the medical ward, growing and training and becoming a skilled doctor who serves Seriden. I show her the Nameless building houses just outside the city walls and joining the farmhands and shop workers on their treks each morning, wearing clothes that fit. I show her—and my heart breaks—herself. I paint her cheeks delicately with fine lines, aged by years with grace and laughter. We sit together on twin thrones, ruling side by side.
There’s only one crown. We’ve done what our father asked. But why should one crown be the same thing as one queen?
The last thing I show her is the four of us. Her, a Royal in a pristine blue gown with gems in her dark brown hair. Me, the Nameless impossible heir dressed in black with a silver crown. Glenquartz, the first Legal promoted past lieutenant’s station, with the general’s stripes on his shoulders. And Hat, standing by his side, a white doctor’s apron and a beautiful blue-trimmed hat upon her head. All of us: a family together. The ones given to each other by chance and the ones we’ve chosen to love.
Esther’s hand grows weak in my grasp, and I feel my own grip slipping. I would lock us away forever inside this moment if I knew how. I hold on with every bit of strength I have left. As darkness seeps through my mind, I speak as much to myself as I do to her:
Hold on, hold on.
I don’t know which of us is the first to let go.
CHAPTER 24
I wake up the same way I fell asleep: holding Esther’s hand, kneeling on the floor of Med Ward, and Nameless. But I am no longer the same.
Esther groans and opens her eyes.
I pull my aching body to my feet. “Esther?”
Her left arm is strapped in a sling to keep her from aggravating her injury, but she’s breathing and alive.
“Well, if you’re here,” Esther says, “then that must mean you’re not dead. And I’m not dead. That’s good.”
“No one’s dead,” I say with a tremulous smile.
“Belrosa?”
I hold out my hand, and for the first time, when I imagine a violet wren with crystal eyes and a shock of blue feathers along its wings, I see it as it appears. It hops around my hand, surveying the room. I feel its claws pressing against the calluses on my palm.
When it turns toward Esther, it lifts its beak, and the most beautiful birdsong fills the room. It fills me with the feeling of flowing honey and the chime of cymbals. I realize it’s the sensation of my own aura, and I giggle with pride.
Esther puts out her hand, and I will the bird to hop over. She laughs with childlike delight as it tilts its body down and rubs the side of its head against her fingers, getting petted.
“And you…?” Esther asks.
“I can see it, too.” I pat the imaginary bird on its head.