They reached the first of several metal doors, the number forty-seven painted tidily on a rectangular plate at eye level.
Eliana bent, fumbling with the keys. Her bandaged hands felt suddenly clumsy, and the screams of those trapped in this building wrapped her in a gummy fog that slowed everything except her racing heart. She thought of Navi, couldn’t help but think of Navi and wonder if she was dead. If after everything they had done to save her, she had died anyway at the hands of the Empire.
“Let me,” Jessamyn snapped, snatching the keys.
Once they were inside, flickering light from the corridor poured into the black room, illuminating a woman in a stained tunic and trousers, barefoot, huddling in the far corner in a pile of her own waste. Her pale skin was cut upon, bruised. Bulbous sores marked her temple, her throat, her left arm. Dark tendrils capped her shaved head, framed her cheeks and brow.
Eliana’s heart sank. This woman’s transformation had already begun, which meant she would be volatile.
Jessamyn strode forward. “Can you walk?”
The woman’s eyes flicked to each in their party. She nodded, bestial in her nervousness. Her hands twitched atop her knees.
Jessamyn grabbed her arm, hauled her to her feet. “Catilla, help her if she needs it.”
Catilla hurried forward, guiding the woman out of the room. “I’ll have to fight, if we’re attacked,” Eliana heard her explain. “But don’t be afraid. Just stay back, keep yourself safe, and when the fighting’s done, keep running. We’ll get you out of here.”
They hurried from room to room, gathering prisoners where they could and leaving the dead where they lay. Some rooms they left untouched, for at the sound of the keys, the prisoners inside launched themselves at the doors, roaring and howling.
With each abandoned room, Eliana felt a scream building inside her—a scream not of rage but of exhaustion. It was too much, this fight. Too immense, too incalculable. Once, she would have been angry to be in this place, to see its carnage. Now, she proceeded numbly through it, half listening to the whimpers of the seven prisoners they had collected, killing any guards who intercepted them with a numb efficiency.
At the final door—1, read the metal plate—they heard nothing, no roars, no cries of pain. Eliana glanced back at the others. The second prisoner they had freed—an older woman, gray-haired and brown-skinned, leaned heavily against Jaraq. Another stood, clear-eyed and square-jawed, with another, half-conscious prisoner in her arms.
The first prisoner hovered wide-eyed just behind Catilla, clutching her arm.
Jessamyn unlocked the final door and pushed it open. Immediately, a shot rang out. She cursed, barely yanking the door closed in time. The bullet ricocheted off metal. More shots rang out, frantic and unthinking, one right after another, until silence fell once more.
Eliana glanced at Jessamyn. “Leave it.”
“They’re out of bullets,” Jessamyn replied.
“Unless they have another gun.”
“We should go,” the square-jawed prisoner suggested. “Before others come.”
“Please,” whimpered the first prisoner, her face pressed against Catilla’s sleeve. “Please, go.”
Jessamyn hissed a curse and pushed open the door, her revolver aimed to kill. Eliana followed, daggers at the ready.
But neither weapon was necessary. In the far corner of the room, huddled around a bleary-eyed prisoner, were two men. Healthy and fair-skinned, pressed tunics reaching their knees, high collars buttoned primly at their throats. One lowered his revolver to the floor, then raised his trembling hands into the air.
“We are physicians,” he said, his voice thin. “We are not soldiers. Please, have mercy.”
“Physicians?” Jessamyn spat out. “You mean you’re the ones who have been torturing these women.”
The man’s face crumpled, tears spilling down his cheeks. “No, please, it’s not like that!”
“It’s exactly like that,” the square-jawed prisoner said over Eliana’s shoulder.
The other physician, however, did not raise his hands and did not beg. Instead, he fixed Eliana with an icy, scornful glare.
“‘We are the ones he calls at night,’” he muttered. “‘We are the vessels of his might.’”
Eliana’s castings lit up like fire, sending hot spikes of urgency up and down her limbs.
Jessamyn cursed, stepping away from her. “What’s that? What are you doing?”
“What’s he saying?” Catilla asked, her voice tense.
“‘We speak the word that he has prayed,’” he continued, and then his eyes shifted. Their color quavered and paled. “‘Upon his wings, our souls remade.’”
Eliana felt what was about to happen before it did, but she couldn’t move away. A presence, charged and furious, burst from the mind of the physician on the floor and scrambled, seeking, for Eliana’s own. It seized her, held her still in that fetid, dark room. The world shifted, rearranging itself.
She stood once more in the red-carpeted corridor from her dreams. She had not seen it since that long-ago night in Astavar when Navi attacked her. But now, seeing it again, the eternal space felt as familiar as it had then felt foreign. Galvanized lights buzzed along the gleaming, polished walls. Endless rows of doors arched to sharp peaks.
One, at the farthest visible end of the corridor, flew open, admitting a beam of light so bright and white that it terrified her. An instant of that, and the door slammed shut.
Then the next followed, and the next, and the next, each door closer to the spot where she stood—flanked by her reflections in the polished wood, red bubbling hot between her toes. When each door opened, a bright light emerged, accompanied by a sound—faint at first, an unintelligible susurration at the edge of her mind. The doors opened at a faster and faster rate. The cutting white lights they emitted sliced the red hallway into slabs of meat. The hissing sounds became whispers and formed a word.
Eliana.
She turned, wrenching her feet from the carpet. She ran, but the doors followed, the lights sizzling at her heels.
Eliana.
Far ahead of her, on the right, a door stood open, admitting no light. She ran for it, desperate for the shield of darkness, and tumbled inside. She slammed the door closed, pressed herself against it, turned the latch with shaking hands.
She stood, breathing hard, cheek hot against the cool wood.
Then a hand touched her neck, and another, her wrist.
A voice kissed her temple, ecstatic and familiar. “There you are.”
The Emperor.
Corien.
Her mother’s long-ago lover. Leader of the angels, the immortal destroyer.
He wound his fingers through her hair, tighter and tighter, until her scalp smarted and tears sprang to her eyes. “Eliana, Eliana. A lovely name. Lilting and sweet. I wonder what she would have named you. I wonder if she’s watching us, even now.” He pulled her back to his body, shapeless in the dark. “Rielle,” he howled, voice cracking. “Can you see this? You died for nothing!”
Eliana kicked and clawed at him, groped wildly for the door. She could hardly breathe; she was made of terror and nothing else, no blood, no lungs.
“I have her now,” Corien announced, breathless, shrill. “I have her, Rielle, and you can do nothing to save her!”
A shot rang out, and then another.
Eliana blinked and was released.
She fell to the floor, gasping. The impact jarred her knees. Her breaths tore ragged paths out of her throat. Her cheeks were hot and wet.
Jessamyn helped her rise. Behind her stood the others, wide-eyed. The first prisoner hid her face in Catilla’s arms, her cries pathetic and howling.
“I killed him,” Jessamyn said, gesturing at the two dead physicians behind her. “I killed them both.”
“The Empe
ror? Oh, God. Did you? Did you kill him?” Eliana sagged against Jessamyn, laughing through her tears. “Then I don’t have to. It’s done. It’s finished. Isn’t it finished?”
“No, Eliana.” Jessamyn frowned at her, clear-eyed and steady. “Not the Emperor. Nothing’s finished. We have to run.”
Nothing’s finished. Never had two words filled Eliana with more despair.
Shouts from down the corridor made the others turn. The prisoners cried out; one of them burst into tears.
“Can you fight?” Jessamyn snapped, shaking Eliana a little. “Or will I have to do this by myself?”
The cruelty in Jessamyn’s voice, the uncaring viciousness, tugged Eliana back to her body. Simon would have done the same. He would not have shown her a moment of compassion, not until the mission was complete.
She nodded, retrieving Arabeth and Nox from the floor. “I can fight. I will fight.”
Then she pushed past Jessamyn and the staring, huddled prisoners and led the way back into battle.
27
Ludivine
“Without fire or metal or raging waves,
Without shadows that mask or light that saves,
Without earth that shatters or wind that flies,
Still we burn, and still we rise.”
—The Revolution’s Prayer, attributed to Ziva Vitavna, considered the architect of the human revolution in Kirvaya
Something was wrong in the city of Genzhar, but Ludivine couldn’t determine what it was.
All she had been able to deduce was that something was happening in the far north, in the frozen mountain range called the Villmark, where few people lived, and the autumn nights were long and dark.
She knew there were missing children in the Kirvayan capital—elemental children, all of them—and that several people in the palace had allowed them to be abducted. Magisters. Royal advisers. Influential courtiers.
Last of all, she knew that angels were involved. She could sense their faint mental footprints, the dust of them like ash darkening her breath.
Beyond that, she knew nothing.
The scar from the blightblade was affecting her strength, her mind’s ability to focus. But this blindness went deeper than that. A veil had been drawn across her angelic sight, specifically engineered to muddy her connection to Rielle, to obstruct her view of the minds living in the capital, and Ludivine knew of only one being strong enough to fashion a barrier so thorough, so unmovable.
For the first time in years, she tried to speak to him herself.
In the dark of her room in the Obex temple, eyes closed, Ludivine steeled her resolve. She breathed in slowly through her nose and out through her mouth, ignoring the faint throb of her scarred arm, then opened her eyes.
I’m here, Corien. I’m willing to talk.
Silence answered her. She tried again.
What of the missing children? What have you done with them? Where have you taken them?
A thin curl of amusement coiled against her mind. She read the language of it at once, how droll and stupid he found it that she would ask him outright things she knew he wouldn’t answer.
He didn’t speak to her directly—she hadn’t imagined that he would—but she could nevertheless feel his disgust, the force of his hatred so immense that it pushed her from her bed to the floor, to her hands and knees. She trembled on the carpet, fighting with all her stolen human strength to keep her body upright, fighting with her angelic strength to keep Corien from carving open her mind and killing her.
Then he did speak, every word viciously articulated: At least I show Rielle what I really am, and what I really want. I don’t lie to her. Can you say the same?
After a moment that stretched on, relentless, until she had nearly blacked out, he disappeared.
And Ludivine collapsed onto the rug, tears rolling down her cheeks, because the relief of his absence was absolute, as euphoric as the moment she had escaped the Deep in his wake—and because he wasn’t entirely wrong.
She was a creature of lies, just as he was—and too much of a coward to admit it.
But she refused to waste the moment by thinking about the right or wrong of her actions. Instead, she savored the sensation of her aching chest, her tightened throat, the hot tears on her face, the taste of their salt on her lips.
She remembered—before the Deep, when she had still existed in her own, true body—how crying had often felt like a release. She remembered the pleasure of taking lovers, the satisfaction of food in her belly, the warm wash of sunlight upon her skin.
And now, how pale it all was. The unnatural crime of what she had done kept her from experiencing true sensation. From the moment she had taken this body—slipping inside it as Ludivine’s last breath had glided out—she had known she would never be happy inside it. Existing in a human body was a shadow of a life compared to what she had experienced before the Deep. The empirium had punished her for it, had punished Corien for it, and would continue punishing them for it as long as they were alive. They had lost their bodies in the Deep, and trying to remake them by taking others that did not belong to them was a misalignment, an evil beyond any measurable crime.
But where Corien would tear apart the world to seek revenge for this loss, Ludivine only wanted one thing—a simple thing, a small thing. She cared nothing for the wings she had lost, the centuries spent rotting in a void, even the fate of her kind.
After all, they were the ones who had done this. They had started the great ancient war, and that war had condemned them to the Deep.
But Ludivine was hardly more than a child, and had been even younger when the Gate was sealed shut. This war had never been hers to wage.
Her tears slowed, leaving her with a lump lodged between her collarbones. Her body felt hollow, stretched thin. She climbed to her feet, wiping her face, and dressed in her gown, her furs, her thick boots. She left the Obex temple for the long, snowy path that would take her to the city.
If she couldn’t find out what Corien was planning on her own, she would need a soldier to help her.
Luckily, in the palace just down the mountain, lived someone perfectly suited for the task.
• • •
Hours later, in the deep of night, Ludivine entered the luxurious royal apartments of the girl queen Obritsa Nevemskaya.
She watched the child lying in her bed—sleepless, frowning, her posture impeccable and poised even as she lay in her bed.
Ignorant to the angel who had just entered her room.
Ludivine settled in a chair, not yet ready to reveal herself, and brushed against the girl’s troubled mind. She had already seen the important things: Obritsa was hardly the silly, coquettish girl she had appeared to be upon their arrival. She was an operative for the human revolution stirring throughout Kirvaya, fighting to unseat the tyrannical elementals who had for so long ruled the country and kept humans enslaved. She had been raised by the leader of said revolution, could make a quick, clean kill with any number of objects. She had been chosen as the queen by the Magisterial Council, who had in turn been convinced to appoint her by one of their own—Akim Yeravet, Grand Magister of the House of Light, himself an ally of the revolution, if only because he saw their victory as inevitable.
All of that would have been an interesting enough story—a human girl, child of radicals, perfectly positioned to facilitate an uprising.
But then there was the delicious little detail that Obritsa was not, in fact, human.
She was a marque.
Ludivine watched as Obritsa rose from her bed and curled up on a chair of scarlet brocade by the fire. She glared at the flames, her thin little mouth pursed with anger. Ludivine caught a glimpse of the terrible red dreams the girl had suffered for the past few nights since she had begun wandering the city, determined to solve the mystery of the capital’s missing children for herself. Such vio
lent dreams—red with anger, red with blood. Dreams Obritsa did not understand.
But Ludivine did.
With a delicate shift of thought, she made herself known.
Obritsa straightened, eyes widening. She reached for her ankle, seeking the knife she usually kept in her boot. But she had forgotten her feet were bare, and when she realized this, anger swept through her, so clear and precise that Ludivine could taste it on her tongue. Anger had a particular flavor to it—meaty, acrid, slightly charred.
Then, at last, Obritsa caught sight of her.
“Lady Ludivine?” The girl blinked, blinked again, and then shrank back in her chair, summoning forth a nervous, shy smile. She clutched her dressing gown closed at her throat.
Amused, Ludivine watched her transform.
“Sweet saints,” Obritsa murmured, laughing a little, “you’re not supposed to be here. I’m hardly dressed, and it’s the middle of the night! However did you get past my guards? This is decidedly odd. Wait a moment.” She hesitated, exchanging her smile for an anxious frown. “Has something happened to Lady Rielle or Prince Audric? Are you ill? Oh, please tell me, Lady Ludivine. I really cannot bear your silence.”
“You’re a wonderful liar,” Ludivine observed. “You’ve convinced Rielle and Audric—particularly Audric, because he trusts easily—but you never had me convinced, not for a second.”
Ludivine felt Obritsa’s quick mind scrambling. The girl fashioned a light trill of laughter. “You’re acting rather strangely, Lady Ludivine. I don’t know what to make of what you’re saying.”
“I know you’re a marque. If you don’t cooperate with me, I’ll tell everyone what you really are, and I won’t lift a finger to help you when they come for your head.”
Obritsa froze, calculations turning in her eyes.
Then her expression hardened. Ludivine smiled. This shrewd, sharp-eyed little wolf was the real Obritsa Nevemskaya.
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