CHAPTER TWO

Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

S alome could not wake up. She was vaguely aware that the night had passed, and that she had slept right through the day, but, oh, she could not move, could barely breathe, could only lie, lost in a maze of dreams.

Icarii, tens of thousands of them, spiraling over an ice-clad peak so high it dwarfed an entire continent.

A woman, black-haired and beautiful, screaming in agony as wings were torn from her back.

StarDrifter, standing not in the topiary garden, but in a mysterious dark forest, holding out his hand in seduction.

Her own mother, standing at a window in the Palace of the First, waiting in the night for a shape to spiral down from the heavens.

StarDrifter again, screaming himself as terrifying creatures tore out his wings, and murdered a lovely birdwoman before him.

A woman that StarDrifter had loved before all others.

Salome’s own back burned, and she moaned, remembering—even though she knew she should not be able to—that day when she was three and her mother had taken her down the back streets of Yoyette, to a man who specialized in…

Removing wing buds.

It must have hurt, even though the tiny child Salome had been given strong drugs to render her unconscious. In her dreams Salome imagined the pain she must have endured, imagined the days and nights spent twisting in agony as her mother applied soothing poultices to her back.

Imagined her screams and whimpers, and her mother begging her to remain silent in case her husband, and the man Salome had always called “father,” came to inquire the reason he’d not seen his daughter for days on end.

The pain in her back increased, and Salome drifted closer to consciousness. She was fighting to wake now, hating the sense of being out of control, not being able to move…

Oh, gods, she was lying on her belly, exposing her back to full sight!

She tried to roll over, but now the pain in her back was coupled with a great weight, as if someone leaned down on her.

“No need to struggle so, you contemptuous bitch. Your secret is out.”

She recognized the voice. It was the emperor.

No, this must be a dream also. This could not be happening.

Someone hit her on the side of her head, hard and cruel, and Salome gave a great cry, and managed to open her eyes.

Someone—the emperor—was leaning over her.

Another man, no, two men, were holding her down at shoulders and hips so the emperor could trace his fingers down her back.

Down her scar.

“No!” Salome screamed, trying desperately to struggle, but was unable to move under the men’s hands and the remaining effects of the drug.

She had been drugged. The Icarii bastard had drugged her!

Then the full import of her plight struck Salome.

Her outside blood had been discovered. She would be thrown out of the First. Her son would become a slave. Gods…gods! Everything was over.

Salome thought of all the people who loathed her, and quickly realized she would be very lucky to survive into the next day.

Her panic was indescribable. She had no anger, not at the moment, only an all-consuming desperation to survive, somehow.

“To think what we’ve been hiding in our midst all this time,” the emperor said, and Salome could hear the sheer joy underscoring his words.

His greatest enemy. Undone.

And undone so badly…

The emperor stood back, and Salome did not try to speak. There was nothing to say.

But, oh, where was Ezra? What had they done with her son?

“Toss her out on the midden heap,” said the emperor, “and tie her to a stake, so that any who wish revenge for all her slights over the years may take it at their leisure.”

The grip of the men holding her changed, and they hauled Salome naked from the bed.

Just as they dragged her toward the door, Salome managed to say something.

“Fools,” she whispered hoarsely, “you have been distracted from the true crime enacted here. Look, he has taken the Weeper. StarDrifter has taken the Weeper.”