And the world itself, green and verdant, waiting for a race of angels to build a new home upon its rolling hills, quaked and collapsed.
It happened quickly, as if the structure of the world had been hastily constructed and the arrival of the angels had triggered its demise. The sky shrank, no longer a luxurious expanse but instead a mere pinprick of light, retreating to an unreachable horizon. Green meadows and silver rivers faded abruptly to blackness.
The terrible cries in the air burrowed into Eliana’s skull. She sank to her knees, gasping for breath, but her efforts were futile. She couldn’t breathe in this place. There was no air, no water, no sense of depth or distance. She clawed at her chest and realized it no longer existed. She had no chest, no lungs. She was still alive. She had thoughts, and she knew her name.
But as she groped through the air, she found nothing—no legs, no hips or hands. She searched with her mind, which seemed the only thing left to her. She wanted to sob, but the idea of crying remained trapped in her mind.
It was then that the pain slammed into her.
Even without a body, she could register it. Her body hadn’t simply disappeared. It had been taken from her, ripped away by this place in which she now found herself—not a fresh, green world, ready to be remade into a new homeland, but rather a void, a nothing space between the world of Avitas and whatever lay beyond.
The human saints had lied.
Eliana added her own furious voice to the millions around her, all of them crammed into a space both endless and caged. She wanted to beat against the walls that held her. She would tear them apart, burst back into Avitas, and destroy the saints from the inside out.
Except…she was nothing but a mind. A consciousness, bodiless and impotent.
She howled and wailed. She raged for centuries, and then—
The world changed. She was herself again. She was Eliana.
She gasped, clutching her own arms, her stomach. She touched her face. She was alive. She was whole.
“Zahra?” she sobbed.
“I’m here, my queen,” came Zahra’s voice, soft and regretful. “Watch.”
Seven brilliant figures looked down upon that same vast green world, untouched and peaceful. A false world, a lie constructed to deceive the angels into submission.
And a good lie it was, a skillfully crafted one. Otherwise, the angels, with their powerful minds, would have never believed it.
Eliana reached for Zahra’s hand; she grasped it gently.
“How did they deceive you?” she breathed. “Why did you believe them?”
“They were excellent liars,” Zahra replied. “And they had help.”
She gestured at the seven figures, standing at a ripped-open seam in the fabric of the world. Eliana’s mind cleared, her heart still racing, for now she recognized them, from long years of Remy’s stories: Tameryn, dark-haired and golden-skinned, her daggers trailing shadows. Pale, white-haired Marzana, her shield wreathed in flame.
The saints.
Eliana would have fallen to her knees once more if Zahra had not been there to hold her up. There were Saint Ghovan and his quiver of arrows, Saint Nerida and her trident, Saint Grimvald and his hammer, Saint Tokazi and his staff.
Saint Katell, the sunspinner, her skin a rich, dark brown, her black hair coiled in a tight braided knot, carrying a blazing sunlit sword.
And beside her, tall and lithe, dazzlingly beautiful, was an angel—warm brown skin, wings of light and shadow framing his body.
“Aryava was a great leader of my people,” Zahra said quietly, “and had many who were blindly faithful to him.”
Eliana remembered Remy telling her the story of Aryava and Katell: an angel and a human saint, bound by a forbidden love.
“He died in her arms,” Eliana murmured, recalling Remy’s voice. “He died in the final days of the war.”
Zahra nodded. “He died fighting angels who understood his betrayal and the deception of the saints, and who led a final insurgency in an attempt to save us.” A beat of silence. Zahra’s voice was careful, deliberate. “This rebellion did not succeed. They were cast into the Deep, along with the rest of us.”
“And Aryava’s last words…”
“‘Two Queens will rise,’” Zahra said. “‘One of blood, and one of light.’”
Saint Grimvald stepped forward, looking out over what Eliana now knew was the Deep, disguised to seem otherwise. “If we send them here, we doom them. They cannot survive here, not as they are.”
Saint Katell nodded, her expression unreadable. “And if we do not, then they will destroy us.” She glanced at Aryava, a flicker of doubt on her face.
He took his hand in hers, his eyes soft. “This is the only hope for you,” he told her, quietly, “and for us.”
Then the saints and the false green world of the Deep disappeared into a swift, dark fog.
Eliana returned to herself, gulping for air as tears streamed down her face. On her hands and knees in Saint Tameryn’s cavern, she fumbled for Zahra’s hand and found nothing there. The loss of Zahra’s body struck her hard in the chest.
“My queen, please breathe,” came Zahra’s worried voice. “I know it is a great deal to understand. Perhaps I should not have shown you—”
“No, you should have.” Eliana breathed for a few moments, then sat back against one of the stone pillars, trembling and nauseated. “Humans were losing the war against the angels, and they discovered how to open a doorway into another world.”
“Not another world,” Zahra corrected gently. “Not even the saints were powerful enough for that.”
“So other worlds do exist?”
“Yes, my queen. They lie beyond the fabric of this one, beyond the reach of any being that has yet lived.” She paused. “Except—”
“Except for my mother,” Eliana said flatly. “And perhaps for me.”
Zahra inclined her head. “The Deep, however, is the farthest your saints could manage to delve beyond our world. They used their elemental powers to craft a lie, a false promise of a new world for my kind to inhabit and mold into a land of our choosing.”
“And then they forced you into this false world, where you were…” Remembering, she had to swallow against a surge of sickness. “You were stripped of your bodies.”
“The realm between worlds is a mere liminal space,” Zahra said. “The empirium functions differently there. It is distant, cold. It leaves a void in its wake. No physicality, no sensation. No sight or sound.”
“A prison. Just as we’ve always been taught. But you thought it would be a new home.” She looked up at Zahra through a film of tears. “You were willing to give up your own home in order to create peace between us.”
Zahra said nothing, her dark eyes full of a sadness so immense that Eliana could no longer look at her. Instead, she gazed beyond the small circle of light her lamp provided, over the black lake she could hardly see.
“How could you want to help us after we did such a thing?” Eliana whispered. “You fight for Red Crown. You fight against your own kind for us, who lied to you, who banished you into this terrible place where your body was taken from you.”
She closed her eyes. It was a monstrous act, too horrific to be believed.
And yet she had seen it. She had lived it.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you fought at the Emperor’s side to destroy us,” she said.
“And I don’t blame your saints for doing what they did,” Zahra replied. “They drove us into the Deep to save their people. It was the only option left to them. And you…”
Zahra cupped Eliana’s cheek, creating a pocket of soft, cool air against her skin. “For all your power, you are fragile creatures. We would have won, had the war continued. If your saints had not created the Gate, had not forced us into the Deep, then it is probable that you, and Remy, and Simon
, and the Lightbringer and the Blood Queen would never have been born. The human race would have been crushed into oblivion.”
Eliana shook her head, fresh tears gathering angrily. “But they deceived you. They murdered you, all of you.”
“And yet here we still exist, even if differently than we did before. And I shall not blame an entire race of beings for the crimes of a few.” Zahra’s fingers caressed Eliana’s forehead. “So frail, and so dear. Your lives blink in and out of this world like the lights of fireflies. And I will do what I can to see that you continue to.”
“How can you bear it? How can you even look at me, much less fight for me?”
In the lamplight, Zahra’s smile was soft. “I bear the life I have been given because it is the only one I have. And I fight for you, my queen, gladly, because the things that have been done to your people since your mother tore down the Gate and released my own are equally as atrocious as what your saints did to us, if not more so. The debt has been repaid, and yet still the Emperor kills. Still he terrorizes and destroys. And I do not believe he will stop at the destruction of humanity. I believe he will venture beyond Avitas, beyond the Deep, to the worlds that lie past the farthest reaches of what we now know to be true.” She paused. “If, that is, he obtains the power to do it.”
The clammy air had cooled Eliana’s sweating skin. She shivered, crossed her arms over her chest. “You mean, if he finds me.”
Zahra’s silence was all the answer she needed.
“Why does he do this?”
“Because he wants answers he has not yet found.”
“What answers? And to what questions?”
Zahra hesitated, then said slowly, “Will you forgive me if I delay that particular discussion? It is not a light one, and you look rather drained of color just now.”
Eliana gave her a wan smile. A profound weariness sank into her bones. She touched the scabbing wound from Navi’s attack.
“You’ll help me practice?” Her voice sounded small and foreign to her own ears, as if Zahra’s vision had remade it.
“I will, my queen.”
“I’d prefer to practice with you, rather than Simon.”
Zahra’s mouth twitched. “I can’t imagine why. He’s such a pleasant person, after all.”
Eliana laughed a little, rising unsteadily to her feet.
“However,” Zahra continued, hesitant, “I do encourage you to consider forging a casting for yourself. And that I know very little about.”
“And Simon might know much more. Is that what you think?”
“It is.”
Eliana sighed, scrubbed a hand over her face. “The moment I’m ready, you’ll take me to the Nest? You won’t delay?”
“No, my queen. I pledge this to you.” Then she paused. “And might I suggest we return to your rooms for now? I know you are eager to begin practicing, but after what you’ve just experienced, perhaps a few hours of rest would be of more benefit.”
Eliana nodded unhappily. “Very well.”
They crossed the narrow bridge back to the shore. Eliana watched her boots cross the slick stones.
Gently, Zahra answered her unspoken thoughts. “You asked me why I fight for you—for you, specifically. I do so, my queen, because in your mother’s veins lived the power to save not just one world, but many. Not just humans or angels, but both, and perhaps other races we do not yet know about, in worlds we have not yet found. She had this power, but so do you. And I believe you will triumph where she could not.”
Eliana let Zahra’s words ring in silence. She bore the weight of them back through Tameryn’s cave and up into the palace, as if they were a pack of stones bound to her body, slowly pressing deeper and deeper into her skin.
• • •
When Eliana returned to her room, Remy was waiting for her.
He whirled as she entered the room, his flushed face streaked with tears.
Eliana froze, ice flooding her limbs. He knows. Someone told him.
“El, you’ll never believe it,” he said breathlessly. “You’ve got to come. Come now. They won’t listen to me or Simon. They’ll only listen to you.”
He grabbed her hand, tugged her desperately out the door and down the hall. She allowed him this—dumbstruck, her relief making her stumble—and didn’t recover her voice until they’d reached a suite of rooms on the palace’s first floor, outside of which stood two guards. They bowed at her approach and opened the doors at once.
Behind her, having followed them downstairs, Zahra drew a sharp breath of surprise.
Eliana stepped inside the room, where several people had gathered—King Eri, King Tavik, Lady Ama. Hob, and a passel of royal guards. A woman in healer’s robes, tending to the leg of someone hidden from view.
Simon turned at Eliana’s entrance, an unreadable expression on his face, and then stepped aside.
Beyond him, filthy and battered, sat a ghost.
Eliana’s shock rooted her to the floor.
Harkan.
7
Rielle
“Not for love or church,
not for country or crown,
Only to the Gate do we pledge our hearts
Until the end of days, until the skies crash down.”
—The Vow of the Obex
Rielle awoke in the warm nest of Audric’s arms and immediately regretted opening her eyes.
It had become grossly apparent, over the last few days aboard the Kaalvitsi, that her power was no protection against seasickness, and without sleep to bring her respite from the rolling sea, her stomach pitched with the waves.
She groaned, curling her body against the sensation, and hid her face once more in Audric’s chest.
He laughed, groggy with sleep. “You can fly on a godsbeast and stop a tidal wave in its tracks, but the sea bests you.”
Rielle grunted in protest. “Nothing can best me.”
Audric kissed her brow, the warmth of his hands soothing her. “Our last day on the water. We should arrive this morning.”
“And then we’ll have the return journey on this horrible, stinking death trap.”
“The Kaalvitsi is a fine ship.”
“I hate it,” she declared, “and I hate you for loving it.”
“For someone who claims to hate me, you certainly do kiss me a lot.”
Grinning, Rielle moved up his body to kiss his neck, his jawline. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. I love you like the moon loves the sun. I love you so much I could die from it.”
Audric groaned at her touch, a smile playing at his lips. “Your seasickness is making you talk nonsense.”
Rielle giggled, her body stirring in that sweet, urgent way that it always did around him. She climbed atop him and pinned his arms to the bed, delighting at the flare of want in his eyes. “I’m tired of waiting, darling. I feel fine. I really do. My strength has returned, and I’m no longer bleeding, and I need you.” She circled slowly against him. “What do you think?”
Audric cupped her hips, helping her move. His voice darkened, sending a delicious thrill down her body. “I can’t imagine a better cure for seasickness.”
She relished the sight of him leaning back against the pillows, his eyes drifting shut. He groaned low and slow, in that deep, chest-rattling way that made her belly tighten.
“You’ll be gentle with me, won’t you?” she said softly. “Given my tender stomach.” She leaned over him, unbuttoned his tunic, kissed her way across his chest. He murmured her name and slid one hand up her thigh, raising the hem of her nightgown. The other hand he moved into her hair, winding his fingers through the wild waves and tugging slightly—as they had discovered, over the past several weeks, that Rielle very much loved.
She smiled in approval. “Ah, but not too gentle.”
Audric moved the hand
on her hips between her legs and rubbed his thumb in soft circles, his gaze intent upon her. “Just the way you like it.”
Rielle clutched his shirt in her hands, moved her hips against his fingers, bent lower to kiss him—
And suddenly Audric was gone, and the room around Rielle had changed.
It was a dark chamber, lushly appointed, with a wall of square windows overlooking an icy landscape, mountainous and unfamiliar. Perhaps a northern country—Borsvall? Kirvaya? Astavar? She looked down at her body and saw she was no longer wearing her sleeping shift. Instead, a gown of black velvet, spangled with gold embroidery in abstract shapes, hugged her body like a soft glove. The neckline was low and wide; the wintry air pricked her exposed skin.
And in a chair by the windows, overlooking the ice, sat Corien, alive and whole, wearing a long black coat over a fine vest and trousers, and holding a glass of red wine.
At once, Rielle wanted to both move toward him and run from him. Her indecision kept her frozen.
Corien glanced at her, his eyes glittering with tears. Rielle’s breath caught in her throat.
“Having fun?” he murmured.
She managed a step toward him. “Where are we?”
“You’re in bed with your lover,” he mumbled into his glass. “And I’m far away, scheming how best to ruin him.”
Heat flared in her chest. “Impossible. He’s too good for you to ruin. And besides, he has me to protect him. Touch him, and I’ll burn you again.” She raised her chin, approaching him slowly. Her palms itched with the urge to punish him for speaking of Audric in such a way. “Was it fun for you, when I burned you? Do you crave more pain from me?”
Corien watched her, unmoving. “I crave you, and anything you can give me.”
As Rielle continued her approach, she remembered to observe the room—the landscape out the windows, the stars in the sky, anything of note in the room itself. Papers, paintings, artifacts that would give away Corien’s location. Audric would want her to gather information.
Corien chuckled into his drink, knocked back the rest of it, and set the empty glass on the small table beside him. “Spying on me, are you? You’ll see what you can see and then take it back to him like a faithful dog?”
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