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Excerpt

Chapter One

I was convinced the universe had a sense of humor. A sick one.

Had someone once told me that I, a girl from Seattle, would one day be the Empress of a forgotten people, would one day discover that I wasn’t human, I would have laughed in their face. And, depending on how I felt and who they were, maybe hit them for telling such a stupid joke.

Now, as I followed General Tenia, my general, deeper through to tunnels of the Below to meet with an awakening god, I was starting to believe a joke like that wasn’t stupid enough.

Thanks to the dim blue light from the surrounding crystals, I missed the tunnel’s sharp decline and stumbled. General Tenia smirked as she glanced back at me.

“Watch yourself. The Below tends to have rocks underfoot.”

The three guards she’d ordered to accompany us snickered. I pushed off the slick wall, squeezing my hands into fists. It’d be petty, but the urge to lash out for such a remark burned through my veins.

“Noted,” I said curtly.

General Tenia chuckled and kept moving. Out of all the subjects I’d inherited after taking Sotera’s throne, she hated me the most. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t to blame for the state the Below was in. Had I fallen and broken my neck, I had no doubt she’d be delighted I’d died without making too much of a mess.

I rested my hand just over the inside of my left forearm. Sliver, the sword I could fashion out of my own crystal bone, lay just beneath my skin. The farther down we went, the more I kept a watchful eye on the guards at my back. General Tenia had told me they were necessary. I agreed not because I believed her, but because I had to believe I could defend myself regardless of what I was up against. I was Empress, after all.

“Long live the Empress of Glass.” Rune’s voice, mired in threat, curled through my head. In my memory, I imagined the warm brush of his breath as he whispered the words into my ear. I wondered if he would grieve if my own foolishness and naivete got me killed barely a month after my coronation.

Mostly, I wondered how hard he might laugh.

“How much farther?” I asked, trying to get my bearings. General Tenia was one of the few still alive who knew the way, and I already had little trust in her. The air down here was cold enough to prickle the hair on my arms and growing colder still.

“You’ll know when we’re there,” General Tenia answered. “Empress,” she added as an afterthought. “Grislehaut will make sure of that.”

The narrow tunnel briefly opened into a larger chamber, and we emerged at the empty underground city where Sotera had forced me to use my magic to create monstrous crystal beings; the same beings she later used to collapse the earth beneath Seattle.

Now, half of this city—and much more of the Below—lay crushed beneath corpses of skyscrapers, crumbled asphalt, and the twisted metal and shattered glass of cars. There were human bodies buried among the rubble, but there was no reaching them. Already King Bendeti had flooded so much of the cavern floor with seawater we’d had to take a boat to even reach where we were. The air smelled thickly of salt.

One of the guards spits onto a half-buried street sign. “May they all rot.”

I was beside him in an instant, hand pressing over his heart. The magic of Those Below thrummed through the crystal of his body, begging me to take it. Begging me to kill him.

“Take that back,” I warned.

He tried to escape my touch, eying my hand as though it were a sword. “Apologies, Empress! I only meant— They—”

“Those above didn’t do this. Your former Empress did. The humans aren’t our enemy.”

“Perhaps not. The same can’t be said about the High King of the Wilds,” General Tenia drawled.

I whirled on her. “He’s an ally, too.”

Though only part of her face was flesh, General Tenia managed to impressively arch a single eyebrow. “I suppose that’s why he hasn’t answered any of your requests to meet with him. Silence is the response an ally would give.”

It’d only been a month. How many times had I told myself that? Only a month since I took the throne of Those Below out from under Rune. A busy month where I was sure he’d been consolidating more allies and preparing against the surprise threat Father Dumas and the worshippers of the Mother Tree now posed. All that and an awakening god, of course.

Rune’s lack of an answer had nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with how I’d stabbed him in the back and stolen the one thing he craved above all else: power.

“Are we going to keep gawking at the scenery, Empress?” General Tenia jerked her chin at the collapsed city, causing the metal pieces clasped in her hair to clink together. “I know how you enjoy the view.”

Every word she spoke reeked of insubordination. I should punish her. Draining the magic from Those Below was the least of what I could do. But as of yet, I couldn’t bring myself to be as bad as the Empress I’d replaced.

Maybe that mercy would be what finally killed me.