Page 2 of Under the Iron Sky

“I’m sorry,” she started to sob. “I know this performance means a lot to you, and now Vander’s dad is going to tell Aleena what I did and—I didn’t mean to disappoint you.”

Mother sighed, fingers softening slightly. “Do you know why we call Aleena the ‘Light Bringer’?”

Soraya managed a shaky nod. “B-because before her reign, Vordell was c-covered in darkness. We were struggling to move forward, and … it was Aleena’s idea to harvest energy from the three suns to use as a power source.”

As she spoke, her eyes drifted to the purple glass flowers that wound around the doorway of her balcony. According to every grown-up Soraya had ever met, sun panels were just about the greatest invention since, well, ever. They looked like a sheet of pretty glass, but they converted sunlight into Light which they used to power everything: buildings, weapons, transport—even Bertok had been created with a jolt of it.

At first they’d only been fitted to large buildings, but as the technology advanced, they did too.

It’d been about ninety years since someone had thought to fashion them into glass flowers. Sunflowers were everywhere now, on rooftops, winding around buildings and bridges and monorail tracks, covering the planet in such beautiful variations of flowers and colors that the capital city was now commonly referred to as The Garden rather than its given name, Lumirel.

Soraya watched her mother finish the second braid, then flip open the box on the vanity table to reveal a beautiful gold crown laid atop a purple cushion.

“Aleena fought off the dark,” Mother said, carefully removing the crown with both hands. “Before her reign, our world was cold and dull and terrible—just as my life was before I had you.” Pride shone in her green eyes as she lowered the crown onto Soraya’s head. “That was why I was so excited when you got the part, darling. Not because I wanted to lord it over Kaemon or any of the council members, but because you—” She wrapped her arms around Soraya, the sword carved into the back of her metal handguard resting perfectly over Soraya’s heart, and pulled her into a tight embrace. “You are my Light. You are all the best parts of me and your father without any of our flaws. There is nothing you could ever do to disappoint me.”

More tears slid down Soraya’s face, but she didn’t mind these ones. She smiled at her mother in the mirror, at the golden arms wrapped around her shoulders that always seemed to make everything better.

Behind them, Bertok’s ears twitched. He raised his head, the gears in his mouth whirling softly as he yawned. “The ceremony is about to start. Are you both ready?”

They said their goodbyes, and Bertok escorted Soraya through the palace halls to a glass elevator. When the doors slid closed, Soraya leaned her head against the glass, watching as everyone on the streets below slowly disappeared. First the crowd that’d been gathered by the palace gates since the early hours waving white-and-gold flags, then the formation of arrow-shaped golden fighter jets in the courtyard readying for the aerial procession that was to close the opening ceremony.

The elevator stopped on the very top floor. From this high up, Soraya could see all the way to the gold-capped mountains in the north, and to her left, the Emerald Sea glittered in the distance.

There were no windows or walls in the throne room, just seven stone pillars, one for each of the major cities of Vordell, all positioned to hold the stone dome roof above their heads and the giant glass lotus atop it. The first Sunflower ever created. Its iridescent petals looked as though they were made of rainbows, even the smallest bigger than a man, while the glass roots sprouting from beneath varied in length and thickness as they wrapped around each of the pillars and spread down the side of the palace.

Golden cameras hovered in the air like mechanical stars, likely already transmitting footage of the throne room to holographic screens all over the planet. Armored guards were posted all around the room, most standing, while a few were mounted on metal horses that puffed bursts of gray smoke from their nostrils. Soraya idly wondered how many elevator trips it’d taken to get them all up here, or if they’d had to take a sky bus …

Bertok escorted her to the children in costumes stationed by Aleena’s throne, then padded off to stand by an armored guard.

As she took her place at the front, Soraya threw her father a little wave. He waved back, his famous smile brighter than any of the three suns burning overhead, before quickly schooling his face into neutrality when his superior officer stepped into the room.

Nerves started to claw at Soraya’s insides the moment he looked away. There were just … so many people. There had to be at least a hundred colorfully dressed politicians and lords and ladies sitting and drinking from silver chalices in the pews facing the throne, then there were all the guards, the musicians, the familiars.

The thought of performing for the people in this room was nerve-wracking enough, never mind those below.

She was going to throw up.

A woman wearing a golden hooded gown ran her hands down her harp, softly plucking her ringed fingers over the strings, and the room was lulled into stillness with the soft, melodic notes of the Vordellian national anthem.

All chatter and noise fell away when a second elevator appeared at the end of the throne room, and even the breeze itself seemed to hold its breath as the glass doors slid open and the mighty Queen Aleena was wheeled into the room.

Although no one would dare say it out loud, Aleena was a husk of the woman pictured in stained-glass murals all over the planet. Each year she made fewer appearances while the machines keeping her alive seemed to get bigger and bigger.

Her wheeled chair was a near-identical copy of her throne, and while the golden dress she wore was as beautiful as it was intricate, no amount of finery could hide the worn skin beneath her aged milky eyes.

Soraya had never been able to understand why she went to such lengths to stay alive. She was well over a hundred years older than anyone else on the planet and yet, despite outliving all of her children, grandchildren—and even a few great-grandchildren—she remained. Was she really so reluctant to let go that she’d live for another hundred years with all those tubes and wires sticking out of her body?

Her mother escorted Aleena across the floor, the only guard the ruler ever needed or requested. She’d served their queen since before Soraya was born, but it still left Soraya speechless to see the stark difference between the woman who tucked her into bed each night, and the cold servant of the crown.

She watched her mother assess the room, taking everything in, each sweep of her eyes like the slow drag of a blade against skin.

Aleena met the eye of every person as she made her way through the pews. Everyone knew that the bit of gold fabric covering the lower portion of her face was only there to hide the oxygen mask beneath, and that the silky hair falling to her hips like liquid sunlight hadn’t been her own for a long time.

Still, the queen held her chin high as she glided past lords and ladies and soldiers alike, not at all bothered that the soft clink, clink, clink of the guard walking beside her wasn’t loud enough to disguise the whirring of the machines bolted into the back of her chair that kept her alive. A true queen right down to her bones, even with death breathing down her neck for decades now.

The harpist stopped when Aleena was in front of her throne, the shining glass roots on the ceiling casting a soft yellow glow over her gaunt features.

She glanced around, her eyes soft as embers when they met the cameras overhead, as though greeting every person on the other side. When she found Soraya, when she saw a version of herself that hadn’t been for an age, a ghost—despite not being able to see her mouth, Soraya swore the queen smiled.