She had no time for his worry, or his doubt.
“If you won’t come with us and help me,” she said when he still hadn’t spoken, “will you at least keep Simon and Remy from finding out? Will you not say a word about any of this?”
“Magic, thievery, and a secret mission to a black market run by wraiths?” Harkan gave her a tired smile. “I can’t let you have all the fun alone.”
Zahra cleared her throat. “May I remind you that, even without your company, she wouldn’t be alone?”
Harkan’s expression tightened. “Of course not. My apologies, Zahra.”
His uneasiness—with Zahra, with the entire situation—was palpable, and sat uncomfortably around Eliana like a layer of dirt she couldn’t scrub from her skin. Briefly she wondered if she should insist he remain behind to help cover her tracks. The sight of her using her castings could forever change things between them.
But that change had already occurred. She knew this, even if she wasn’t ready to accept it. There was no path left to them but the one leading forward.
She took Harkan’s hands in hers, trying to ignore the ache of regret in her heart and smile at him as she had always done. “Thank you. I could do this without you, but I don’t want to.”
He kissed her fingers, avoiding her castings. A flicker of darkness moved across his face, as if the sight of the discs and their chains was distasteful, something he longed to wish away. Eliana considered admonishing him for that, but decided against it. After all, she wasn’t yet comfortable with the chains binding her wrists. Why should she expect Harkan to be?
“When do we begin?” he asked.
“First I must practice using these,” Eliana replied, raising her hands—and not meeting Harkan’s eyes. “And when Zahra says I’m ready, we’ll leave.”
• • •
The next night, as the castle slept, Eliana sat on the cold, damp stone of the belvedere in Saint Tameryn’s cavern. With Harkan sitting beside her, she lifted her arms into the air, palms rigid, and began to pray.
The Wind Rite seemed appropriate for her first practice. She would pray to the wind and call upon her power just as she had done at the beach.
She could see it clearly in her mind. The air would open for her as easily as a door. She would gather it in her palms, and miniature storms would bloom in the cradle of her fingers. She would send them flying, like messenger birds, and then call them back to her. Their arrival would blow the hair back from Harkan’s face, cool her own hot cheeks. Zahra would approve and take her to the Nest. Eliana would return triumphant to the palace, and Navi would live, and Remy would love Eliana again, if only because she had saved the friend he so adored.
After a few seconds of expectant silence, Harkan asked quietly, “Is something supposed to be happening?”
Eliana cracked open one eye.
The cavern remained still and silent. The air did not so much as quiver against her skin.
She dropped her arms. “I feel absurd doing this.”
“You have tried for only forty-seven seconds, my queen,” Zahra pointed out.
“Is there something I should be doing to help?” Harkan asked. “Shall I pray as well?”
Eliana didn’t think he was mocking her, but she nevertheless bristled. “If you pray with me, I’ll kill you. Doing this alone is bad enough.”
“I’ll sit quietly, then.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Zahra’s voice was patient. “Try again, my queen.”
Eliana shifted, feeling the reassuring pressure of the knives strapped to her body. She exhaled sharply, closed her eyes, and raised her hands once more. With her eyes shut, she shifted her imagination, pictured something new. Instead of miniature storms, a set of strings. An instrument. She would pluck threads of air from the cavern, sculpt them into a new shape with mere taps of her fingers, compose a symphony using the power in her palms.
She slowed her breathing, measured each inhale and exhale. Long minutes passed, during which she forced her mind through memories of Remy’s incessant ramblings about the empirium—how it was a power left behind from the creation of all things. The footprints of God. A power that bound the air to the earth to the water, wind to sunlight to time and space. The command Obey me, obey me cycled through her mind until her thoughts became a muddled fog. The muscles in her arms, sore from forging her castings, burned hot as fire.
At last she dropped her arms, spat out a curse, pushed herself up from the ground, and walked away.
For a few moments, the only sound in the cavern was the occasional drip of water into the vast, dark lake.
“We’ll keep trying,” Harkan said, his voice cheerful. “You can’t give up after only a few minutes.”
“I agree, my queen,” added Zahra.
Eliana scoffed. “It won’t work. The only time this has worked has been…”
She hesitated, an idea forming slowly. As it did, her mind cleared, and a grim sort of satisfaction overcame her.
Zahra made a reproachful sound.
“What is it?” Harkan asked.
“Twice my power has surfaced,” Eliana said, turning back to them. “Once on the beach, and once last night as I forged my castings. In the Forge, nothing happened. I didn’t summon a storm or crack open the earth or anything so dramatic. But I felt something. I felt near a precipice, an understanding. For a moment, my body opened up as if to receive a new light, and I could see beyond the world as you see it, to something greater.”
Zahra nodded. “You glimpsed the empirium.”
Eliana glanced at Harkan. “You think this is mad.”
Harkan hesitated. “I do. But here I am, and here I’ll stay.”
How generous of you, Eliana wanted to snap. “In both instances,” she said instead, “I was exhausted, hungry, parched. My mind was stretched thin, my body close to breaking. In the Forge, the heat and strain were unbearable. On the beach…” She hesitated, pushing past the mental wall that kept her grief from consuming her. “On the beach, my hands were hot with my mother’s blood. And my power awoke.”
Harkan searched her face. “You think that by returning to such a state, you can summon your power again.”
“My queen, I must advise against this,” Zahra said. “My knowledge of elemental magic, and your own mother’s practice, is not complete, but I know this much: magic forced through duress is unstable, unkind, and bound to break.”
But Eliana had already decided. “I have no other choice, and neither does Navi. We’ll come here again tomorrow night, at the same time. And the night after that, and the night after that, until it’s done.”
Then, with one last glance at the silent cavern, Eliana turned away and began the walk back up through the mountain.
• • •
The next day, after a bath so frigid it was painful and a breakfast she did not eat, Eliana tied her hair back into a severe braid and joined Simon in a corner of the palace’s central library.
A table and two chairs awaited them by an open window that let in the morning breeze. On the table sat a bowl of water, five metal scraps, a chunk of rich black soil, a squat candle and matches, a pitcher of water, and two glasses.
Eliana looked away from the water, her throat dry as she swallowed.
In silence, they read the passages the temple scholars had marked. They attempted small exercises with the materials spread out before them—Eliana muttering prayers as she directed her castings at the water, the earth, the flickering candle; Simon reading notes scrawled in the margins of various texts.
Lunch arrived, brought by wide-eyed servants. Simon wolfed his down immediately; Eliana ignored hers, and her dinner too.
Night fell. Nothing had responded to her—not the candle flames, not the water in its bowl.
“Disappointed in me?” she asked, ignoring her growling stomach.
“I don’t expect you to learn how to use your castings in a day.” Simon glanced at her uneaten dinner, but said nothing.
• • •
The next day brought more of the same, as did the day after that.
At night, with Harkan and Zahra at her side, Eliana tried and failed to conduct magic in Tameryn’s cavern, and in the small hours before dawn, she sat in her room, alone, and relived the moment of Rozen’s death. She recalled Rozen’s last words: Finish it.
In the mornings, her sleepless mind heavy with the weight of grief and guilt, Eliana exercised her body.
In the afternoons, she met Simon in the library, and on the third day of this, as she stood in a pool of sunlight, reciting the Sun Rite, her vision shifted and darkened.
She staggered, dizzy.
Simon hurried toward her, but she shook him away, catching herself on a nearby chair.
“It’s fine,” she told him. “I’m just tired.”
He was watching her, in that still, keen way that always left her feeling too seen. “You’re not sleeping.”
“I am.”
“There are shadows under your eyes.”
“I always look like this.”
He laughed, a soft, bitter sound. “I know what you look like.”
Eliana shook his words from her skin. “Read me that passage again.”
“Which passage?”
“I don’t know, the…” But she could not gather her exhausted thoughts well enough to remember.
“You can’t think if you don’t eat.”
She glared at him. “I’m eating.”
“You’re not.” He slammed his book closed. “Eliana, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but—”
“I can’t sleep. Is that what you want to hear?” Her voice cracked, but she refused her eyes their tears. If she cried, she would realize how hungry she was, how tired and frustrated, and her magic, her useless castings, would have defeated her. “I try to eat, and it makes me sick.”
She turned away, her jaw clenched.
After a moment, Simon asked quietly, “Is it Remy that’s keeping you from sleep?”
She nodded. It wasn’t entirely a lie.
“You should try talking to him again. It’s been days. Neither of you will heal like this.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t bear to hear him tell me yet again how much he hates me.”
“You’re the adult here. He’s the child. Reach out to him, remind him you’re here. Remind him you love him.”
“It isn’t as easy as that,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You didn’t see his face, when he said those things to me. When he screamed at me. The way he looked at me… Like all the life had been sucked from his eyes, leaving only a flat sort of hatred behind.”
Her voice buckled under. She heard Simon move closer and held her breath, both hoping and fearing that he would touch her.
“If it would help,” he said, “we can wait a day or two to resume our sessions. You can rest. There’s time for it. We’re safe here.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was so gentle that it startled her. “Eliana, I want to help you. I can’t bear seeing you like this.”
Her body warmed at his words. Such tenderness in his voice—her mind hardly knew how to process it. She turned back to face him, and at the sight of him standing there, his scars half lit by the waning afternoon light, his expression fiercely earnest, she nearly succumbed to the urge to go to him. He would hold her, if she wanted it. He would fight her, if that’s what she preferred.
He would take her to his bed and help her forget every insurmountable thing that now faced her.
She stepped away from him. She refused to stray from the path she had set for herself. Navi depended on her focus.
“Thank you,” she managed, “but I think I just need some sleep.”
• • •
Eliana entered Navi’s room as if she were stepping across a plate of brittle glass.
Navi lay on her bed, a sheen of sweat making her sallow skin gleam. Her breathing came in thin wheezes. Dark tendrils spread across her flesh, as if her veins now held ink rather than blood.
The nurse sitting on watch rose and bowed his head. “Would you like privacy, my lady?”
Eliana nodded, though in truth, she didn’t want to be left alone with Navi. What if she turned violent again? What if Eliana were forced to defend herself and ended up killing yet another innocent woman?
The sensation of Arabeth sinking into Rozen’s throat came back to her—the phantom press of it, flesh giving way to blade, blade sinking into muscle.
She turned away from the memory, denying its hold on her heart.
With the nurse gone, she opened a door leading to a large terrace. The air in the room smelled stale, clogged with the smoke of incense and prayer candles. For a moment she stood at the open door, steeling herself in the chill evening breeze before perching gingerly on the nurse’s abandoned chair.
She scolded herself for her hesitation. Were it not for her, Navi would not have been captured by Fidelia. She would be well and whole.
Gently, she held Navi’s hand. “I don’t know if you can hear me, and I hope…” Her voice failed. She tried again. “I hope you’re not in too much pain. I have a way to help you.” She forced herself to look at Navi’s face, which even in sleep looked strained.
“I’m going to leave soon, I think. I hope.” Eliana laughed a little, her thumb nervously rubbing the back of Navi’s hand. “I think I’ll come back. But even if I don’t, if I can’t, I’ll find someone to send medicine back for you. Zahra says she knows a place, a secret place, where they have the antidote to the crawler serums Fidelia put inside you. Isn’t that wonderful?” She shook her head, looked away. “God, what am I doing here? I sound ridiculous.”
“No, you don’t,” came Navi’s sleepy voice. “Please, keep talking.”
Eliana flinched, startled. “Sweet saints. I thought you were asleep.”
Navi smiled faintly. “I was. But then this irritating friend of mine came into my room and started chattering at me.”
“You need better friends.”
“Impossible.” Her hand tightened around Eliana’s. “My friend is journeying to a secret place to help me, apparently. What better friend could I ask for?”
Eliana drew a deep breath. “You won’t tell anyone?”
“If I did, wouldn’t that diminish the chances of you finding this magical medicine Zahra promised?”
“It’s not magical. It’s medicine. An antidote.”
“I won’t tell anyone. Just…” Navi struggled to move closer.
“Stay still, please.” Eliana shifted to the bed’s edge. “I’m right here.”
“Promise me it isn’t dangerous,” Navi whispered.
“I can’t do that.”
“You are more important than I am, Eliana. You must protect yourself.”
“Because I’m the Sun Queen?” Eliana muttered.
“If I die, my family and people will mourn me. If you die, the world will fall.”
“The world may fall anyway. It’s fallen before.”
“The people suffering under the reign of the Empire need hope more than they need me. And you are that hope.”
Eliana turned away. “I don’t know how to be anyone’s hope.”
Navi touched her cheek, turning her back. “You’re mine already. Did you know that? I’ve prayed to you all my life, before I knew your face. And since I learned who you are, I’ve prayed to you instead. You, Eliana, the Sun Queen of my prayers and my dreams. I lie here in this stinking bed as Fidelia’s poisons eat me alive, and I think of you and pray to you, and when I do that, I feel a lightness in my heart that helps me bear the rest of it. For even if I die, you will live on, and you will ride into the Emperor
’s city on a steed of light and burn down every one of his towers until all that remains is ashes.”
Eliana blinked back tears, blotting Navi’s brow with a soft white rag. “You need to rest. You’re talking like a madwoman.”
“I know what I see when I close my eyes. I know what my prayers tell me. My prayers are of the empirium, and the empirium doesn’t lie.”
“The empirium is dead. It died long ago.”
“And now it lives again, in you.” Navi kissed Eliana’s hands, her face tightening with pain, and Eliana realized, her stomach turning, that Navi lay bound to the bed with cushioned ties. “Go, before I become something other than myself. And be safe, Eliana. Wherever you go, whatever you do for me, it is not as important as what you can do for them.”
“Them?”
“Everyone else,” Navi replied, beginning to pant.
Eliana could no longer bear to watch her. She left quickly, sending the nurse back inside. As she walked away from Navi’s room, she heard her friend’s terrible cries of pain and covered her mouth with her hand.
• • •
In the small eastern library, Eliana found Remy sitting at a window beside one of the royal librarians—a young man, fair of skin and hair, with two canes to help him walk propped against the table. He was opening a book for Remy to see, and from her hiding spot, Eliana saw on the tome’s binding the familiar colorful sigils of the ancient elemental temples.
Remy pointed at the open book, his eyes alight. “Saint Ghovan! I’ve read his eagle had a wingspan of eight feet.”
“Only eight?” The librarian smiled, shaking his head. “This is a godsbeast we’re talking about, my friend. The imperial eagles had a wingspan of up to twenty feet. Saint Ghovan’s was especially grand. This particular account”—the librarian gently turned the brittle page, skimming down the lines of text with one gloved finger—“ah, yes, here it is. This account, written by Saint Ghovan himself, reports his godsbeast to have a wingspan of twenty-two feet.”
Remy’s eyes widened. “Saint Ghovan wrote this? This is his actual writing?”
The librarian grinned. “His very pen marks, little one.”
From behind a towering case of books bound in dyed leather, Eliana watched them, numb. She had resolved to try speaking to her brother again, but now, so near to him, her courage vanished.
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