The rain began with a scream.
It struck the palace roofs in silver-purple sheets, bursting against ruby chimneys and diamond gutters, hissing where it touched the heated stone. Across the high terraces, white flags snapped like frightened birds. Below them, in the black-trimmed houses of Purponex, people poured into the streets carrying children, baskets, lanterns, anything they could save from the rising water.
“Goi ses mones!” they shouted.
The words rolled through the kingdom in waves. Calm the winds. Calm the high seas of the purple lands.
But the winds did not calm.
Queen Efficiah stood barefoot in the birthing chamber, one hand pressed to the crystal window, and watched the twin planets drown beneath the storm. Purponex hung beyond the palace like a vast violet stone, its mountain ridges shining wetly beneath the two suns. Farther away, connected by a bridge of light and old royal power, Purplox turned slowly in the darkness, its oceans swelling against its continents.
The suns had vanished behind the clouds. One was usually pale lavender and white; the other burned orange at its heart, a strange purple rim flickering around it. Tonight, neither could be seen. Only the moon remained—a dark purple sphere scattered with white lights—and even that seemed to be breaking apart.
A bright fracture crossed its surface.
Efficiah’s fingers tightened against the window.
Behind her, the newborn cried.
The sound was small, furious, and alive.
Efficiah turned. Her silver body gleamed in the low violet light, purple beauty marks shining across her shoulders and throat. Her long purple hair clung to her back, damp with sweat. She had spent decades carrying the child, feeding her through the womb with the slow exchange of power that made royal births so rare, and now her knees trembled beneath the weight of exhaustion.
Still, when the midwife lifted the baby into her arms, Efficiah smiled.
“Let me see her,” she whispered.
The midwife crossed the room through the curtains of falling water-light. “Your Majesty, the child’s eyes—”
“I know.”
The baby opened them.
One eye was light purple, almost lilac. The other was dark as the forest at midnight. Within both, tiny sparks moved like stars caught beneath ice.
King Elimos came to Efficiah’s side. He was tall and slender, his dark purple hair tied at the nape of his neck, his clothes soaked from the storm patrol outside. Water streamed from his sleeves onto the polished floor. Yet he seemed not to notice. His dark purple eyes had fixed upon the baby with an awe that stripped away the king in him and left only a father.
“She’s looking at us,” he said.
“She has been waiting a long time,” Efficiah replied.
Elimos touched one finger to the infant’s cheek. The baby seized it with surprising strength.
For one breath, the storm quieted.
Then the moon cracked again.
A boom shook the chamber. The palace trembled from its jeweled foundation to its highest white tower. Somewhere beyond the walls, a bell began ringing wildly, and frightened voices rose from the courtyards.
Elimos pulled away from the baby. Purple light crawled over his hands.
“No,” Efficiah said.
“I have to go.”
“You have just come back from the eastern forest.”
“The western sea is climbing the walls.” He looked toward the window, where violet rain ran in rivers down the glass. “If the moon breaks, the tides will follow it.”
“And if you go back into that storm?”
He faced her. “Then I will bring the storm to its knees.”
The queen stepped close enough that their foreheads touched. His skin was cold from the rain. Hers still burned from the labor that had brought their daughter into the world.
“You always speak as if the kingdom is a beast you can wrestle,” she murmured.
“It is a beast,” he said. “But it is ours.”
Efficiah gave a breathless laugh, though fear pressed hard behind her ribs. “You mean ours to protect.”
“Ours to protect.”
Beyond the window, lightning flashed purple-white over the forests. The kingdom of Purponex stretched from the palace walls into three great wildernesses: the White-Violet Forest, where pale trees grew in spirals and their leaves chimed in the wind; the Purple-Black Forest, where the Great Purple Outlanders lived among thorned roots and poisonous blossoms; and the Deep Forest, whose ancient trunks reached beneath the soil and drank from hidden freshwater springs.
The Purplosh People had once belonged to the forests as naturally as the roots and rain. Their bodies were purple and black, scattered with white specks like fragments of stars. Some had clawed hands, some long ears, some narrow faces and glittering teeth. They could sing a person’s life away, bending melody into a weapon, and during war they could poison water, soil, even the breath in an enemy’s lungs.
For years Elimos had fought them beyond the borders. He had returned from those battles thinner each season, carrying scars that glowed when the weather changed. Worse than their attacks was the sickness spreading among them—a flesh-eating disease that twisted their bodies and drove their minds toward confusion and violence. Wherever the disease went, the Purplosh People tore through the Deep Forest, destroying the trees that held the planets’ balance.
Now they were moving toward the palace.
Efficiah looked down at her daughter. “She needs you here.”
“She needs a kingdom to inherit.”
“She needs a father.”
Elimos’s expression broke. For a moment the power gathered in his hands dimmed.
Then another bell rang, deeper than the first.
From the courtyard came a cry: “The western gate is flooding!”
Elimos kissed Efficiah’s brow. “Keep her safe.”
“Come back to us.”
“I always do.”
He turned, but Efficiah caught his wrist.
“Say her name.”
He looked back at the child. “Elruba.”
The baby blinked, and the lights in her eyes flared.
The storm answered with thunder.
Efficiah released him.