And now, with Ludivine’s blightblade scar a constant smarting tug on Rielle’s senses, the need for her to master this deeper power seemed more urgent by the day. Surely the two ideas were linked—transforming fire to feathers and restoring ruined flesh to its former self.
Akim Yeravet, Grand Magister of the House of Light, cleared his throat. He stood before the table a few paces away, his expression one of barely contained eagerness.
“Lady Rielle?” he prompted quietly. “Are you quite well? Shall I instruct the musicians to begin another dance, and we can proceed in a few moments, after you’ve had a drink of water?”
Rielle blinked, clearing her muddled thoughts. She, Audric, Ludivine, and the Magisterial Council—as well as Queen Obritsa and her ever-present silent guard—sat on a raised dais at the head of the room, before a table heavy with the dregs of their supper.
Beneath the table, Audric found Rielle’s hand. His thumb smoothed a gentle circle against her wrist.
Right now, Audric is wishing you both could retire to your rooms, Ludivine said quietly. He is also thinking how proud he is of you, and how tired he is. How desperately he loves you, and how beautiful you look in the light of all these candles. And how, after spending a few hours loving you, he would very much like to visit the Zheminask archives and ask the librarians for permission to view Marzana’s journals. Ludivine paused, then said slyly, I did not intrude upon his thoughts enough to know the specifics of how he should like to love you, but the general sentiment, I think, is one that would leave you quite satisfied.
Rielle laughed a little and found the strength to stand.
Thank you, Lu, she said. I needed that.
I know. Then more quietly, accompanied by a gentle press of tender feeling: Please don’t worry for me. The pain of my scar is one I gladly bear.
Rielle stood, bowed her head to the queen, and then turned to face the room at large.
Give me time, Lu, Rielle said firmly. Soon your pain will flee from me in terror.
Then she began to speak. “Queen Obritsa. Grand Magisters. People of Kirvaya. Thank you for your generosity in hosting myself, my prince, and my Celdarian family.” She hesitated, then extended her hand to Audric. He took it and rose to his feet. She hated making speeches. She silently pleaded with him to find the words that she could not.
Of course, he understood at once.
“We know that these times seem unnerving,” he said, his rich voice easily filling the room, “that dark whispers and black rumors shadow your streets, just as they do at home in Celdaria. But we are not afraid of the days to come, whatever they may hold. Your new queen is one of vigor and energy, with a lifetime of work and achievement ahead of her.”
Starry-eyed and rapt, Queen Obritsa sat up a bit taller in her too-large chair.
“We have recently rekindled a friendship between our nation and the kingdom of Borsvall,” Audric continued. “There is much work yet to be done to rebuild that friendship, but in my view, it is work of great promise, and it will mean that your neighbor to the west will be stronger, steadier, and more able to come to your aid if the need should arise. Across the entire northern span of this great continent—from Celdaria, to Borsvall, to here in Kirvaya—there will stand a united region of friendship, strong enough to weather any storm. And, of course, we now have our Sun Queen.”
Audric looked at Rielle, the adoration on his face so unabashed she would have felt embarrassed if she weren’t so pleased to see it. “I know you have all heard of her great deeds—first in Celdaria and more recently in the Borsvall capital. And that is only the beginning of her power. Every day, she grows stronger. Every day,” he said, his voice softening, “I love her more deeply than I did the day before.”
The room murmured, waves of delight and curiosity rippling throughout, and Rielle’s cheeks warmed to hear it. She would forever remember the sight of Audric in this moment—lit by the candles flanking their dinner plates; his clean, square jaw freshly shaven; the steady, solid presence of him at her side a tangible force, physical and gentle and hers.
Audric turned back to face those gathered in the hall. “We are not afraid. We look to the future with clear eyes, and we urge you to join us in this—to hold hope in your own hearts and to come together in the face of uncertainty, rather than allow it to fracture us.”
Rielle beamed up at him, a quiet pride kindling in her chest at the sound of his voice—so similar to the one that murmured endearments against her skin every night, and yet so different, so poised and practiced. The voice of a king. Was it possible to love a person so completely? Could one’s heart literally split open under the weight of such feeling? She would have grabbed his coat and kissed him right there in front of everyone if Ludivine weren’t insistently poking at her thoughts, begging her to restrain herself.
Instead Rielle turned away from him, lifted her hands to the ceiling, and summoned to her palms all the fire lighting the hall.
Thousands of tiny flames rushed to her, accompanied by gasps and cries from the crowd. She stood, arms outstretched, a skull-sized knot of fire in each hand. She held them there for a moment, the flames quivering and eager, and marveled at the ease of her own power. Her mind felt supple, energized. She felt that she could have run all the way home to Celdaria without breaking a sweat. She could have slammed her palms to the ground and shattered mountains on the other side of the world.
Instead, she exhaled slowly and pushed her palms out as if to nudge open a set of doors.
The fire rushed out from her fingers, silent and spinning, a thousand tiny kernels of light rather than the pointed flames of their previous lives. Fire stars, winking amber. Rielle held her breath, her eyes unfocused. She saw nothing but vague, dark shapes—the tables, the crowd, the tapestries hugging the walls—and connecting it all, a thin, shimmering expanse of gold.
How marvelous, how strange and spectacular, to remember that this beauty of the naked empirium was hers alone to see.
She sighed with pleasure, then flicked her fingers once more.
The fire froze in the air—across the tables, above the feathered heads of the nobility, throughout the room from floor to ceiling—each glittering grain held suspended by Rielle’s will.
She barely heard their cheers, their astonished applause, and only at last acknowledged Queen Obritsa because Ludivine urged her to. The girl was beside herself, nearly weeping with enthusiasm. She even embraced Rielle before her horrified guard pulled her gently away.
Rielle spared a thought of pity for her, and for all of them—their blindness, their ignorance and inability. She gazed at the beauty of her own creation and tried to imagine what she must seem like to their eyes. An inhuman creature, perhaps; something indecipherable and colossal.
Something closer to God than they could ever hope to be.
19
Eliana
“And when the horn of Veersa sounds,
Rise, my neighbors, my family, my friends.
Rise against the tide of malice;
Stand firm on the soil of your homeland.”
—“The Battle Cry of Lady Veersa,” traditional Astavari war hymn
The doors to Navi’s rooms slammed open, the Horn of Veersa’s long, low wails so deafening that Eliana felt their hum in her teeth. Her hand flew to Arabeth.
“What will we do?” she asked. “How far away is the Kaavalan Passage?”
Four royal guards entered the room and began helping Navi to her feet.
“Don’t worry,” she told Eliana, moving stiffly. “The mouth of the passage is over one hundred miles away. We have time to prepare a counterattack.”
Leaning on one of her guards for support, she tugged on trousers, boots, a tunic and sweater, and a long coat. She tightened the sash, then grabbed two knives from a drawer in her bedside table and shoved them into sheaths at her belt.
Desp
ite everything, Eliana smiled a little. “You’d never know you were lying here half alive only a few days ago, slowly transforming into a monster.”
Navi shot her a wry look. “You’re going to anger my guards, Eliana.” She glanced at one of the guards in question, a broad-shouldered woman with a square jaw and freckled skin. “Ruusa, you may have to carry me downstairs.”
Ruusa nodded once. “I will carry you to the edge of the world, Your Highness.”
“What’s downstairs?” Eliana asked.
“My fathers’ war room,” said Navi. “My brother will be there, and Lady Ama. I don’t know what we’re facing, and any intelligence we receive from scouts will be delivered there. After that…”
Her voice trailed off.
“Your fathers’ armies will be able to stop them,” Eliana said into the silence, forcing steadiness into her voice. “Astavar has stood free for years, thanks to them.”
“Except now we have something they want even more than they’ve wanted to destroy our kingdom and our people,” said Navi, glancing over at her. “We have the Sun Queen.”
Eliana had had the same thought. She lifted her chin against the sick swoop of guilt that inflamed her body. “I’ll ride out to meet them and surrender myself. That will hold them off for a while, give the rest of you the chance to escape.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Navi said crisply. “Whatever you could do to them wouldn’t give everyone in Astavar the chance to flee to freedom. And even if it would, I wouldn’t allow you to risk yourself in such a way.”
“You wouldn’t allow me.” Eliana followed Navi and her guards out of her rooms. Her castings were warm buzzing nets around her hands. She nearly ripped them off and hurled them out the window. “No one will allow me anything. What if I want to surrender myself? Does that mean nothing?”
“No, it doesn’t.” Navi paused in the threshold of her sitting room, fixing Eliana with a steady, patient stare. “And I think you know that. I know you don’t like hearing such things, but—”
Cannon fire detonated outside, near enough to shake the floor, the door to Navi’s rooms, the sculpture of Tameryn and her black leopard on the nearby table.
Another boom followed shortly thereafter, and another, and a third, each one nearer than the last, and the Horn of Veersa kept baying over it all, like a pup howling for its mother. Screams, shouts, and the distant sounds of gunfire began floating in through the open windows in Navi’s bedroom.
“That was close,” Eliana muttered. “It sounds like they’re right at the doors.”
Navi looked back through her rooms, her expression suddenly taut with fear. “I don’t understand. The passage is over one hundred miles away. How could they have gotten so close unobserved?”
The answer came to Eliana swiftly.
The only way an imperial army could have taken the Astavari lookouts so completely by surprise was if someone had hidden their approach. And the only creature powerful enough to do that was the Emperor himself. But was such a thing possible? Imagining the kind of power required to maintain mental control of that magnitude, and from that distance, made her head spin.
“My lady,” Ruusa urged, “we must hurry downstairs. Your fathers will want you to head for the tunnels—”
“I would sooner submit myself once again to Fidelia’s laboratories,” Navi snapped, “than hide underground while my people face the Empire’s guns alone. No, we’ll go to the war room. At once.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Eliana said quickly, taking hold of Navi’s hands. “I have to find Remy.”
Navi nodded. “Of course. On the third floor, in the north wing, there hangs a tapestry of Saint Tameryn in prayer. Behind it is a narrow door. Follow the passage, and when you reach a fork, enter the second hallway from the right. It will lead you to a door flanked by guards. This is my fathers’ war room. The guards will allow you entrance without question.”
Then Navi squeezed Eliana’s hands, pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Savrasara, Eliana.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s an old Astavari word, one we learned from Saint Tameryn’s writings. Roughly translated, it means, You carry my heart. An expression of love and of warning. It is a great responsibility, to be trusted with another’s heart.”
A tingle crept down the back of Eliana’s neck. Something terrible was about to happen. She sensed it—a subtle rot in the air, a shift in the angles of the world—and could tell by Navi’s knotted brow that she felt it too.
“An odd time to tell me such a thing,” Eliana said lightly.
Navi’s smile did not reach her eyes. “It’s always the right time to say such a thing.”
The loudest boom yet detonated, shattering the glass roof that allowed sunlight into Navi’s sitting room.
Ruusa’s tone brooked no further arguments. “My lady, I must insist.”
“Go,” Navi whispered, releasing her. “And hurry.”
Eliana turned and ran toward the central library, assuming Remy would have gone there for solace after seeing her. Another boom from outside shook dust from the dark rafters overhead, rattled vases on pedestals and the artwork hanging from the walls. The corridors were chaos—servants and castle staff hurrying for shelter, guards running for their posts. The sounds of approaching war, and of people utterly unprepared for it.
And then, in the corridor outside her rooms, Eliana ran straight into Harkan. A detonation, followed by the unthinking shove of a sobbing, wild-eyed servant, knocked them into each other’s arms.
For a moment, Harkan held her to his chest. Then he pulled back to look at her, the relief passing over his face so palpable and obvious that Eliana found herself wishing she could love him again as she once had. It was a realization that came over her with the force and clarity of a punch to the jaw.
“Where’s Remy?” Harkan asked, looking round.
“I don’t know. He came to Navi’s rooms, we barely talked, and then he left. I’m trying to find him and take him with me to the war room. Navi’s there, and the kings.”
Then Eliana paused. Harkan’s face was strangely closed to her, as if he was striving for the kind of unreadable cool cruelty that Simon wore like an accessory to his everyday clothes.
That same creeping sense of dread came over her—the approach of something inexorable and terrible. “What is it? Harkan, what’s happened?”
In the cool midday light spilling through a nearby shattered window, his eyes glinted, bright and full. He muttered, “I’m sorry, El. But there’s no time to find him. Forgive me.”
Before she could move or protest, he had grabbed hold of her, his grip determined. He grounded himself against the wall as she kicked at him, trying to wrench herself away. But he held fast, and then one of his hands came over her mouth and nose, a soaked, sour rag clutched inside it, and she realized what was happening in the few seconds of furious awareness she had before the blackness reared up to drown her.
Harkan was drugging her, just as Fidelia had done all those weeks ago in Sanctuary.
She screamed out his name, her voice muffled against the rag and the hard grip of his hand.
“I can’t lose you, not again,” she heard him say into her hair, his voice so choked with tears that he hardly sounded like himself. “I’m so sorry, El.”
And then his voice faded, and so did she.
20
Simon
“In holy lore and sacred art, particularly concerning the saints, the image of the wolf can often be found. Though not a godsbeast, the animal is significant. A pack of wolves raised the orphaned Saint Tameryn, and godsbeasts were often found in the company of wolves. The beast has an affinity for creatures touched by the empirium, but do not mistake it for a guardian. The appearance of a wolf can also mean uncertainty. A precipice. A portent.”
—A footnote from The Book of the Sai
nts
When Simon strode into the kings’ war room, he knew at once that Eliana wasn’t there.
It was a terrible, marvelous thing, to be able to so keenly sense her presence. He was no angel—though as a marque, somewhere in his veins existed angelic blood, dormant and useless, snuffed out by the goddamned Blood Queen along with everything else. He was no angel, and yet back in Orline, after only a few days spent observing Eliana from a distance—before they had sparred in her home, before he had been able to, at last, look her in the eye and see that face of hers, uninterrupted and unimpeded—after only a few days observing her, he had known her. The way she moved through a space, the sound of her footfalls against the ground, the lines between her eyebrows when she frowned.
Her father’s full mouth, his serious brow, his dark eyes. Her mother’s fierce jaw, the delicate turn of her wrists.
From the first moment he had set eyes on Eliana, he had known her in his bones, in the knit of his muscles, in the roar of his blood. As a boy, he had cradled her tiny infant body in his arms and done everything he could to hold on to her even as the world ripped itself apart at their feet. And now, as a man, her closeness changed the air around him, drawing his senses taut as bowstrings and lighting his skin from the inside out, as if he had consumed a brew of stars that wouldn’t stop spinning.
But in the war room, the air remained dull and unremarkable, and he knew she wasn’t there even before he scanned the room to confirm it.
Ordinarily, he wasn’t one to make a scene, but in that instance, he felt dangerously close to it.
“Where is she?” he said very quietly, and then a soft cry from the far side of the room alerted him to Remy.
The boy ran for him and slammed into his front. Face muffled against Simon’s shirt, his arms tight around Simon’s torso, Remy mumbled, “Navi said Eliana went to find me, but she hasn’t come back. We sent guards to find her.”
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