How would he react to seeing her, after their days apart? More tears? More of that dead-eyed stare, his pale face drawn with hatred?
She turned away from them, retreating to the shadows with her hands in fists. She tried to will her cowardly, aching heart into something black and unfeeling. The words sat unused on her tongue:
I love you, Remy. I’m sorry, and I love you.
• • •
Unsteady and aching, she returned to her rooms to continue her punishment—no water, no food, no rest.
Only memory would sustain her now—the memory of Rozen’s blood.
Rozen’s throat, punctured and gaping.
Rozen’s body, limp in her arms.
Remy’s quiet voice: No. You’re the monster.
Over and over, Eliana forced herself to watch each terrible moment. She mercilessly pushed her body through exercises in her room—practicing punches and kicks, using the bar of her bed to pull up her body. When Harkan arrived at the appointed time, she whirled on him, sweat-drenched and shaking—and her vision, at last, rimmed with gold. She swayed, but she did not fall.
Harkan’s face was grave. “El, you look terrible.”
“I know,” she said, her voice hollow and dreamy.
Zahra drifted at Harkan’s elbow. “Are you ready, my queen?”
Eliana existed in a golden forest, dense and unkind, where pushing past every brambled branch sent shocks of lightning flying up her spine. The world tilted. The way through this strange wild was painful and stifling, but it was hers.
Without hesitation, she reached for the candle flickering on the bedside table. The casting in her palm buzzed and thrummed, as if it had freshly emerged from the Forge’s hearth fire.
And then the candle’s flame flew to her, coming to rest at her fingertips.
She stared at it, turning her hand around it, caressing it. The flame hovered, trembling, on the back of her hand, across her knuckles, in the bend of her palm.
She closed her fingers slightly, dimming the flame. She opened them, held her palm flat. The flame sprang to brilliant life. She cupped both hands beneath it, spread her fingers wide. As if following the steps of a dream, she thrust the flame toward the ceiling. It slammed into the rafters, spreading fast, until it had outlined them in strips of fiery gold.
Harkan cried out in alarm.
A jolt of heat shot up her fingers into the joints of her shoulders, as if twin wires connected her castings to the flames, and they were tugging on her, calling her away from her body to join the flames instead.
She stepped back from that pull, her skin going cold and clammy with sudden dread. An answering spike of heat shocked each of her castings, singeing her palms. The flames were stubborn, clinging to her. They were insatiable in their desire—both for her and to break free of her. Controlling them felt like wrangling a herd of wild animals using only her uncertain will.
“You created them, my queen,” came Zahra’s voice, low and calm beneath the fresh snap of fire. “You can unmake them as well.”
Eliana sank to the floor, needing the solidity of the stone to anchor her to the incandescent sensation of her own body. She didn’t know how to douse these flames, other than to follow the taut thread of instinct vibrating inside her. She held her hands out, palms down. Slowly, she lowered them to the floor, imagining that she could press down on the fury of those flames and cow them into submission. Her castings grew hotter the closer her palms came to the floor, as if they were absorbing the fire’s heat. The flames overhead began to shrink; the room slipped into darkness.
Eliana flattened her hands against the stone. She bowed her head, breathing deeply through her nose.
The flames diminished. The room was still and black.
She looked up—stiff-shouldered, nose burning—and, through the acrid haze of smoke, found Harkan’s wide eyes.
She nodded at Zahra, smiling faintly. “I’m ready.”
Zahra’s mouth was a dubious black line.
But Eliana held her gaze. I won’t wait any longer. You will take me to the Nest. Now.
Zahra relented, with a slight, unhappy nod. “Then we’ll leave tonight.”
• • •
As Zahra led them down to Tameryn’s cave, Eliana held on to the strange sensation firing through her veins. She was feeling the beginning of near-death, she suspected. If she didn’t eat soon, if she didn’t sleep, it would be her end. With every step she took, her mind suspended in its fevered state, the discs in her palms blazed hotter, like twin stars turning.
When they reached the shore of the black lake, Zahra said quietly, “Wait here,” and then disappeared into the water. The glassy surface swallowed her without sound or splash.
Harkan caught Eliana’s arm. “This is a terrible idea. You’re not well enough to go to this place. You need sleep and food. You know now what it feels like to summon fire. You can recover that feeling easily, after you’ve taken some time to rest.”
Eliana watched the lake without blinking. “You don’t know that. I have the feeling now, and I must take advantage of it while I can.”
Harkan came around to block her view. “El, you can’t defend yourself against whatever awaits us if you can hardly stand.”
She blinked, glared, stepped away from him only a little unsteadily. “I can do much more than stand.”
Zahra reappeared. “The way is clear. Are you prepared to swim?”
Harkan stared furiously at Eliana for a moment longer, as if that would somehow dissuade her.
She placed a hand on his arm. At the touch of her casting, he flinched—barely, but enough.
Once, she would not have had to ask him to trust her.
Times had changed.
“Trust me,” she said—a command, not a request.
Then she walked into the lake, not stopping until it rippled black at her shoulders. She held her breath, heard Harkan do the same, and pushed out beneath the water.
13
Corien
“He began in the far north, all those years ago, when the one they called Kingsbane was still alive. He carved an army out of the ice and black mountains. He taught himself how to build monsters. This was the beginning of his Empire. The dawn of our great enemy.”
—The Word of the Prophet
On a flat stretch of frozen land, crowded by mountains and overlooking an icy black sea, the angel who had named himself Corien sat in the bones of an evolving fortress, drinking himself into a stupor.
Or at least, as much as he could drink himself into a stupor, given the fact that even as powerful as he was, he still did not quite fit into his stolen body, and he never would.
He gulped down the rest of his drink, examined the empty crystal goblet, and then hurled it against the far stone wall, hoping the sound of it shattering apart would satisfy him, bring him some momentary relief from his raging dark thoughts.
It did not.
He stood up, only a little bit woozy, even after seven glasses of wine. To amuse himself, he exaggerated the unbalanced sway of his body, as if he were ready to topple over.
“I’m drunk,” he announced to the empty room, which was a lie. Everything about him was a lie—his drunkenness, his outward calm, even his name.
Corien. After finally battering his way through the Gate and escaping the Deep, he had, in a fit of pique, shucked off the mantle of his angelic name. That name belonged to his previous life, the one tainted with exile. He had not spoken the abandoned name since. Some days, if he searched his memory for it, he returned empty-handed.
It was just as well. That angel had been a prisoner. A victim and a failure.
This angel, reborn, was a visionary.
• • •
In those first giddy days after escaping the Gate, nameless and liberated, he had begun his search for a body to possess.
He had hunted for years, determined to be particular. If he was going to inhabit a human body, then he would settle for nothing less than the most beautiful one he could find—which he did, at last, on a tussocked hilltop in Celdaria. Some pathetic, lonesome shepherd who neither understood his own beauty nor recognized how it drove every living soul in the nearby village mad with desire.
Corien didn’t even remember the man’s name. He paused only long enough to note the fine lines of his cheekbones, the full curve of his mouth, the lean strength of his body, forged over many years of herding sheep in the mountains.
Herding sheep. Even now, Corien often felt a twinge of shame and wounded pride, imagining the humble beginnings of his assumed form.
But, then, it was a rather marvelous joke, wasn’t it? Once a human shepherd, now the angelic emperor of the new world. There was something immensely satisfying in that dichotomy. When his pride bristled, Corien thought of that delicious contradiction and was soothed.
He approached the windows on the far wall, which allowed him a breathtaking view of the arctic vista outside. Or it would have been breathtaking, perhaps, if he had true breath to take.
He leaned his forehead against the cold pane. His exhalations painted the glass with tiny infant clouds. He wiped them away with the end of his sleeve. Lies. Falsehoods. A manufactured pretend.
Bitterly, he looked down upon the network of industry sprawling across the ice: His kin, inhabiting human bodies of their own, swathed in furs, directed hundreds of human slaves to haul rocks, clear snow, forge weapons, add rooms of stone and iron to the fortress. Other angels worked deeper in the mountains, some distance away, in underground laboratories. Still others, in cavernous chambers that offered some respite from the merciless wind, ran new adatrox through training drills. They taught the dull-eyed brutes how to move and fight once more, now that their minds were no longer their own.
Corien rubbed his aching temples. His generals and a few trusted lieutenants took on a generous portion of the mental burden—directing the adatrox, managing the recruiting efforts in Kirvaya, overseeing the logistics of the laboratories.
But this was his enterprise, his great work. His nascent empire. He could only stomach relinquishing tiny pieces of control. He considered it crucial to demonstrate his power to the angelic ranks. Show them that he was worthy of their loyalty and of his self-styled title. Keep them fighting and devoted, even as the days turned relentlessly on. Even as the Gate remained standing, separating them from the millions of angels still stranded in the Deep.
More importantly, Corien reminded himself, he was indeed powerful enough to maintain control over this frozen base he had named the Northern Reach, as well as the efforts in Kirvaya, and in Borsvall, and…
He closed his eyes, reaching out with one tentative overture, like the stretch of a fledgling wing: Rielle? Are you there?
She did not answer.
Instead, a sharp rap sounded on the door to his rooms.
He turned his thoughts away from Celdaria, tucking them safely into the deepest layers of his mind, before snapping over his shoulder, “Yes? What is it?”
His favorite servant entered with a low bow—Alantiah, a young angel with great potential. She inhabited the body of a sharp-eyed young woman with pale skin and rich, auburn hair.
“The angel Bazrifel has returned from Borsvall,” Alantiah announced, “and seeks an audience with Your Majesty to deliver his report.”
Corien examined his reflection in the glass. His mouth was chapped and discolored from too much drink. His hair fell over his forehead in unkempt, greasy strands. He needed to bathe. He needed a distraction, and to feel like himself again.
He needed to not think about Rielle for a few hours.
He certainly did not need to talk to the fool Bazrifel. He already knew, from a cursory sweep of Bazrifel’s thoughts, everything he needed to know: King Hallvard Lysleva was dead at last. His son and heir, Ilmaire, a milquetoast sop of a man, would soon take the throne and was losing his mind with panic at the prospect. The general sentiment in Borsvall was one of fear. Lack of faith in the royal family—in Ilmaire, specifically. Worry about the mysterious sickness that had bedridden their king. A lingering grief over the mysterious death of their beloved princess, Runa.
A hatred toward their southern neighbor, Celdaria. A hatred that was beginning to change. Celdaria remained the enemy, its leaders still the likeliest suspect in Runa’s murder.
But the Celdarian Sun Queen, Lady Rielle Dardenne…well. She had saved the capital from destruction, after all. She, at least, deserved loyalty. Trust. Maybe even affection.
Corien glimpsed all of this in Bazrifel’s mind, and his spirits lifted. All was unfolding as he had engineered it to.
“Tell Bazrifel to return to his post,” Corien said unnecessarily, for he had already tossed a thought of dismissal Bazrifel’s way. But he enjoyed barking out commands. He relished the sensation of words sliding across his stolen tongue.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Alantiah, turning to leave.
“But you, stay.” Corien glanced at Alantiah’s reflection, noting how her face lit up with anticipation—and how her thoughts bloomed against his mind, deferent but delighted. “I require a bath and your company.”
He shrugged off his coat, then his vest and silk shirt, then his boots and trousers. He opened another bottle of wine and took it with him into the bathing room, Alantiah’s bright gaze following him, rapt and eager.
As Corien watched her prepare his bath, distantly admiring the plump lines of her body, he allowed himself to look once more toward Celdaria. Like cracking open a door to peek inside a room he knew he shouldn’t enter, he reached for Rielle, and though only an instant passed before her image manifested before him, it felt like an endless, unbearable age.
Through Rielle’s eyes, he saw the scene. She, Ludivine, and Audric were traveling home to Celdaria by horseback, accompanied by an entourage of Borsvall soldiers. The chavaile Rielle had named Atheria had not shown herself since the incident at the Gate. Corien sensed Rielle’s heartache, her longing to make amends with the godsbeast, and nearly sent her a feeling of comfort. A press of affection, a mere brush of his thoughts against hers.
But he refrained—barely. He clenched his fists and stepped back from the desire as if it were a physical entity too dangerous to approach.
He knew it was wise to limit his time with Rielle. Doing so enhanced her longing for him, her curiosity, her frustration.
It also prevented him from doing anything foolish that would turn her forever away from him—such as inspiring her to stab the sniveling traitor Ludivine while she slept or slip poison into the besotted Audric’s supper, or taking control of her mind entirely, forcing her to leave her home and come to him.
“Shall I leave you to bathe alone, Your Majesty?” came Alantiah’s gentle voice. “Or do you require company?”
He blinked, struggling to clear the fog of Rielle from his mind. Alantiah stood before him, loosening the laces of her dress. Her boldness pleased him; theirs was a practiced dance. One that would distract him for an hour or two, and then leave him feeling hollow once more.
Rielle’s party had stopped to rest in a sunlit woodland. The Borsvall guards formed a perimeter, their backs turned. Audric stretched out on the grass, yawning, and rubbed his hands over his face. Rielle curled up beside him, and when he cradled her head in his hand and kissed her brow, her subsequent happiness blossomed, tender and warm, until Corien could hardly see for his despair.
Alantiah’s mind was nearby, open and willing. He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her against his body, kissing her with such force that she cried out into his mouth.
Before he lost himself in her desire, Corien sent Rielle a final thought, sly and thin, as she watched Ludivine examine her blightblade scar. Its ugly blue lines glittered in the sunlight, like t
he blade-strewn ruins of a battlefield.
The idea was already there, in Rielle’s mind. She had proclaimed her intentions before the Obex. She had spent many hours, as they traveled, quietly examining the possibilities. She simply needed encouragement, and that, Corien was only too happy to give.
Repair, he murmured to her.
Restoration.
And then, unable to resist touching her, he drew the trailing end of his thoughts down the soft length of her spine, and whispered, Resurrection.
14
Rielle
“How did you bear the death of your father? How did you come to live with your grief? My own sends me violent dreams. Unlike Ingrid, I don’t have the command of an army to distract me. I have only the endless stack of petitions on my desk. The skeptical eyes of a kingdom upon me. Instructions for my impending coronation whispered to me by bitter magisters who loved my father and my late sister, Runa, and who have no affection for me. I would laugh, if I wasn’t afraid it would make me cry. In conclusion, did I mention that my capacity for self-hatred is limitless?”
—A letter written by Prince Ilmaire Lysleva to Prince Audric Courverie, dated October 25, Year 998 of the Second Age
me de la Terre buzzed like a sticky hive, every courtyard lining the central avenue packed to the brim with citizens eager for a glimpse of the Sun Queen’s return.
Rielle hardly noticed, her nerves singing in anticipation of seeing Tal, and Sloane, and Queen Genoveve. And Evyline, Dashiell, Maylis, the rest of her Sun Guard. Poor Evyline would have been absolutely beside herself since they fled Carduel.
You should wave at them, Ludivine suggested, and smile.
I’m rather busy at the moment, Rielle replied.
You can worry about Tal and Evyline, and wave and smile at the same time.
Rielle obeyed, begrudgingly. There, is that better?
Your smile looks rather like the painted-on smile of a ravenous doll, Ludivine observed, but, yes, that’s better. It’s important that they see you happy to return home. Many rumors have been circulating since we left Carduel.
Kingsbane Page 17
