Realm Al’Alatra

Black Crown Palace, Uxia Peninsula, Ba’Shien Empire

Turning 7776, Year 682

The Keepers strip me bare, tearing away everything I have left of home. The dress my mother made with its embroidery stitched by firelight when she couldn’t sleep. The pendant my brother’s best friend carved for me—the little three-tail fox with her citrine eyes. Even the thin jade bracelet my father gave me, which my mother gifted him in betrothal. All ruined and cast aside.

Once they’ve scrubbed my skin raw and doused me with cold and then hot water, oiled and incensed me and declared me clean, a flesh mage enters. Her robes and hair are white as bones, her fingertips blood-red. She presses a hand to my belly—dark eyes darting as she gazes off into the middle distance.

This is the defining moment—the one to determine if my path in this life continues forward or ends tonight.

In my previous life, I had been a chosen sacrifice. One who survived, killed the being meant to eat her, and gone on to become a chieftain. In the life before that, I’d been a prostitute turned pirate queen. I was born, am born in every life, to rise from the ashes.

But my veins run cold with fear as I wait.

“Her womb is empty,” says the mage after several heartbeats, drawing away. “And she is fertile.”

Though it’s what I’ve prayed to hear, my blood curdles with dread at the words.

I spend the next three days alone, deep underground in a cleansing chamber that is little more than a cell. At the end of it, I am bathed and oiled again and at last declared Renewed. Fit for entrance into the Emperor’s Heart. Fit for initiation. When I emerge naked into the muggy air of the first inner courtyard, the sun is just cresting the horizon, a hazy blood-colored orb creeping up into the brassy sky. Black trees with black leaves and fleshy pink flowers lend their citrus-and-musk fragrance to the air.

A palanquin awaits in the palace’s first inner courtyard, and the Keeper assigned to me ushers me onto it—pulling its curtains closed and remaining at its side as the men at each end lift me up and carry me forward. I see nothing of the palace as we make our way through it, but I try to remember the sequence of turns we take as they deliver me to its center. The Heart.

When at last our twisting journey comes to a stop, the curtains are pulled aside to reveal a small and windowless chamber. The ceiling is high. The walls and most everything else are a particularly dark shade of burgundy. At its center, illuminated like an altar by a circle of dangling lanterns, is a pillowless bed.

“Assume your Emberform,” orders my Keeper as the palanquin bearers hurry away with their burden. Swallowing, I will myself to meditate on my unseen form. Rose-colored flames bloom at my feet—hot but not scorching—flowing upward until they engulf the entirety of my body. For one beautiful moment I’m made of light, as though I’ve become thousands of tiny dancing stars and nothing else. Then my figure coalesces once more into solidity.

I peer up at the Keeper, suddenly so much taller and rendered in different colors than he’d been a moment before, and flick my snow-tipped tail. His mouth forms a grimly satisfied line as he takes in the gleaming black of my flanks, as his gaze catches on the brightness of my eyes.

“Sit and wait for him before the bed,” he instructs before leaving me alone in the chamber. I do as he bids, and for several moments of terrified silence I wait.

Then the door flies open, and in comes a monster.

A roiling black body of glittering scales and wild mane. Six legs that end in razor claws, a long tail that whips and writhes behind it, flowing as if through unseen waters. Its eyes too are black, and there are many of them—on its head, down its neck and back. Its mouth gapes to reveal saliva and wickedly pointed teeth as dark as a starless night.

Shadow blooms around me and my Emberform falls away, rendering me human and naked once more. The ground hits my knees before I realize that my legs have dropped beneath me, the impact reverberating through my bones. I want to scramble away, to scream, to do anything but kneel there frozen—waiting for this nightmare beast to devour me—but that’s exactly what I do.

And then there’s a flash of glowing shadow to mirror my own. The monster’s body dissolves at the outer edges, and what remains congeals into the form of a man. Tall. Swathed in black robes with billowing sleeves and streamlined darts at the waist. An enormous cloak gleaming with inky scales and furs drapes from his shoulders to curl at his feet, putting to mind both the bat-like wings and the tail of the beast he’d just been. His face is hidden entirely by a mask of stone—perhaps petrified bone—its only features the small spirals carved over its entire surface.

The emperor strides toward me, his cloak heavy as it drags across the floor.

A violent tremor runs down my spine, the fire of fear and disgust burning wild at my core—and then, in an eyeblink, it vanishes. Gives way to a mercifully blank, automatic state. I do as I’ve been instructed to do in preparation for this moment. I position myself on the bed on my hands and knees with my eyes closed, facing away from the man to whom I now belong.

He doesn’t seem to undress, but perhaps only moves panels of his robes aside. I clench my teeth, refusing to gasp at the sudden pain as he spears into me, at the force and ferocity of his work. But it goes on for so long, too long—until I feel my insides are being torn, and at last a small cry rips out of me. A shudder passes through the towering body pressed up behind me, and there’s a horrible, lingering exhale as of a hundred ghostly monsters breathing their pleasure at once.

His fingers dig hard into my hips as he spills into me, on and on, until he finally spends himself completely and withdraws. I remain as I am while the emperor steps back from me. There’s a sound like rushing wind as he resumes his Emberform, and moments later he’s gone. Only then do I flip over to lay on my back.

My emotions are beginning to return, and I can feel sobs building inside me like tremors in the earth, threatening to crack my facade of calm. But the door opens again in the next heartbeat. The Keeper spills back in with new palanquin bearers at his side. This time the platform sports no curtains. I’m on full display as they take me from Heart’s Temple, laid out with my hips raised above my head on a cushion, and through the whole of the Court of the Heart. My body trembles from head to toe, but somehow I contain myself. Hold inside the cries and curses aching for release.

When we finally come to a stop it’s at the very center of the Caged Gardens, where a lawn of lush moss is circled by rings of flowering vabra shrubs. There, another altar—this one a simple slab of stone—awaits, and my bearers place my palanquin down upon it. Coming to my side, the Keeper pulls a small bottle from his belt, opening it to tip a generous dose of its honeyed contents into my mouth. What begins as a tingling aftertaste spreads across my tongue, through my mouth and down my throat, numbing as it goes and leaving me feeling floaty and weak.

“Do not move or change form,” says the Keeper. “Until the sun’s face is directly above you, there—“ he raises a finger to jab it toward the domed roof of glass and wrought-iron, impossibly high, to indicate the crown-like ring of iron circling its peak. “And its light has shone upon your belly. If it is blocked by clouds, you may not move until it is not.”

Then the old man turns and, with the palanquin bearers following behind, leaves me alone with my legs splayed and my hips thrust toward the sky.

It’s not long before the first sightseers arrive, the other captive courtiers of the Heart and—for those more favored—their attendants. Many sport swollen bellies. While some cradle these burdens near constantly, others keep their hands conspicuously away. Perhaps not wanting to get attached, knowing there are no arms in this world capable of shielding their children from the fate the future has in store. Or perhaps because their skin burns at the idea of touching that part of themselves so close to a piece of him. I know mine would. Will.

Some of the onlookers come uncomfortably close, their gaze like oily snakes sliding all over me. Some—a particularly cruel-looking pair—are close to putting their hands on me when another of Heart’s captives appears, his presence alone enough to freeze them on the spot. Their gloss-tipped hands drop a heartbeat later, and they do their best to make an inconspicuous departure.

When they’ve gone past the newcomer, I get a decent glimpse of him at last…and nearly cry out as I recognize his face. Tears rise immediately to my eyes and stream down my cheeks.

No. Not him. Not Shen. Please, let me be mistaken. But the certainty settles over me like gravedirt, piling on as I drink in the sight of him. And it is him. My brother’s best friend, the kindest person I’ve ever known. Who went off into the Sunken City to become a doctor and who somehow, by the cursed will of all the worst gods, ended up here—a prisoner to the emperor’s pleasure, just like me.