Folding the Sky

-40-

It was the last thing Kalindi had been expecting, and yet somehow she had seen it coming from miles away.

    She wavered for a second at the kitchen's threshold, but it was only a second. She was the first to approach Enzi, her head held high, an echo of the recent times it had once supported a glittering, bejeweled crown.

    The tangy, sour scent of blood stung her nostrils, making it hard to breathe, but she pretended not to notice. "Enzi," she said, her voice high, lofty. She refused to let her eyes fall to the blade suspended just before her or the body below her, and instead kept her gaze trained on Enzi's stoic face. "Explain to me what the hell you're doing here. That's an order."

    "Order me around all you like," replied Enzi, his sword level, not the slightest tremor in his grip. Of course there wasn't. All of the Royal Guard was trained to immaculate levels of skill, and even among their ranks, Enzi was one of the strongest. "Her Majesty has already given me an order, and her word is absolute."

    Kalindi sucked in a long breath. She was almost positive she was right, but it didn't make it any easier to actually form the words: "She told you to kill me?"

    "Let's just say that while some of us are going to make it out of this night alive, I was sent to make sure it won't be you," said Enzi with a shrug. His eyes lowered to the bloodied boy below him; he nudged the slumping body with his toe. "Our intel said you would be here tonight, so I hired this chemist here to take care of you. I thought my job was done once I'd silenced him, but I should've known it wouldn't be so easy."

    The air rang with a heavy silence for a moment. The first casualty of the night had already fallen. How many more would occur, Kalindi wondered, before the sun next rose?

    "I don't understand." This came from Jem, stepping forward, one hand raising to rest against Kalindi's shoulder. Kalindi relished in the gentle weight of Jem's fingers, a silent reminder that she wasn't alone. "If the Queen wanted us dead, she could've saved buckets of time and money by just killing us that day in Celandine.  She can't find Vernon without us, and without Vernon the dreaded war will break out. Does she not care about any of that?"

    "Who said anything about dreading the war?" said Enzi, tightening his grip around the sword's handle. "War is opportunity; war is power. Naino needs power. Kiro could be something great, something important—a true nation, but it needs something strong enough to pull it together. With a war, Naino could do that."

    "You're not saying what I think you are, are you?" Sorin added, and though he remained in his feline form, it did nothing to soften the dripping venom in his tone.

    "What?" Jem said. "What's he saying?"

    He let out an aggravated breath, squeezing himself in the narrow space between Jem's and Kalindi's ankles. "You can't declare war without a decent reason," he said, tossing the soldier an acidic glare,"and a princess's death at the hands of a foreign power is a pretty good fucking reason."

    Chike, the last to step into the room, let out a quivering breath. "This whole time, it's never been about stopping the war, has it? It's been about starting it."

    "And making sure we win. Which is why we still need Vernon, which is why we still need you," Enzi said, and now his dark eyes landed on Sorin, a serpentine smile ghosting across his lips. "In fact, you're the reason for this lovely change of plans. Once I gathered that the Celestials had added you—Vernon's very own adoptive son—to the team, the rest of them more or less became expendable. We no longer needed to waste any more time, and when I told the Queen as such, she was delighted."