“The first time you threaded,” said Remy, “was when Eliana healed me. And you were holding on to her, and she was using her power. So”—he shrugged—“just do that again.”
Eliana stared at him. “We can’t possibly re-create that moment. You would have to be dying again.”
“Well, not that exact moment. But you’ve been doing lots of little things with your castings—moving branches, flooding streams. Maybe you need to do something bigger.” Then Remy examined Simon’s face. “Maybe you should try healing him this time instead.”
Eliana could hardly contain her surprise, and yet the idea made a certain sense. She looked to Simon, letting her eyes roam over the ravaged landscape of his face, what she could see of his arms.
He looked as though someone had slapped him. “No,” he said, backing away from her. “I won’t allow it.”
“It could work though,” Remy insisted. “Your whole body’s been beaten up. You told me you’re always hurting.”
Eliana frowned at him. “What does that mean?”
“Never mind,” said Simon, shooting a glare at Remy. “I’m fine.”
Remy rolled his eyes. “He told me just last night. He said, ‘Will you please, for the love of all that is good in this world, leave so I can go to bed, because my body is screaming at me and soon I’ll be screaming at you.’ And then I asked what that’s supposed to mean, and he said that he’s always in pain because of his training with the Prophet.” Remy paused, looking smug. “And then I went to bed.”
Silence fell between them. It took Eliana several long beats before she could look at Simon again. When she did, she saw that he had closed his face to her. He was all Wolf now—cold and hard, jaw square.
“Don’t do that,” she said quietly. “Don’t pretend with me.”
His smile was sharp. “Isn’t that what we do, Eliana? We pretend, you and I.”
“Not anymore. If you’re going to send me back in time, if we’re going to attempt this madness, then you’re going to look me in the eye and tell me only truths.” She glared up at him. “Are you in pain?”
For a long time, he said nothing. Then something in the lines of his body relented.
“Yes,” he said tightly. “Always.”
“Because of the Prophet?”
“And many others.”
Her throat ached at the sight of him standing there, battered and brave, bearing his pain in silence. “Will you tell me, someday? Will you tell me what happened to you?”
He caught her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I hope I’ll have the time for it,” he said against her skin, and then he turned away from her, leaving her swaying a little in his absence.
Remy gave her a shrewd look. “I’ll leave you alone, then, for a while. If that would be helpful?”
Eliana made a face at him, which he enthusiastically returned. And then, once he was gone, she took a deep breath and turned around to find Simon watching her thoughtfully.
“Well?” She gestured at his face. “Can I try?”
“I don’t know what I’d be without my scars,” he said quietly. “They remind me of what I’ve done, and what’s been done to me.”
“And don’t you want to forget at least that second part?”
He shook his head. “No. My anger fuels me. Without my pain, I’m nothing.”
“I don’t believe that. We are more than what’s been done to us. We are more than our anger. And I think we have to try this. Or, we can sit out here watching your threads fade again and again and wait for the Empire to find us.”
It had begun to rain, hardly more than a light mist, and the thin silver curtain of it painted the clearing a queer iridescent shade, as if the light were coming from within the raindrops themselves, and not from the clouded sky.
Simon nodded curtly. “Fine.”
They sat on the ground, in a dry patch beneath a broad oak draped with ropy white moss. Eliana’s nerves took root in her belly. She made a show of arranging herself in the grass, and when she looked up again, Simon was watching her, his eyes guarded and grave.
Before she lost her courage, she took his face in her hands and closed her eyes, and then, after she had grown used to the unbearable intimacy of it—their knees touching in the grass, his cheeks rough under her palms, his breath moving the ends of her hair—she said quietly, “Hold on to me. Like you did in Karlaine.”
At once, he slid his hands up her arms, cradling them gently. As though a broken circle had been completed, she felt calm settle within her. Linked securely to him, she focused all her thoughts and energy into the twin sleeping suns of her castings. They began to vibrate, awakening against his skin. She felt herself shifting, gliding, as if slipping between two cool layers of the world, cut away from each other to create a space for her between them. Her jaw relaxed and her tongue softened. She was liquid and warm; she hummed along with her castings.
“Does it hurt?” she whispered.
“Not yet,” he said dryly.
She smiled a little, and when she opened her eyes, her vision was a hazy gold, but Simon’s eyes—that brilliant, burning blue—cut through the shimmer to lock on to her.
Each time she accessed her power, it became easier to fall into the realm of the empirium. To let her mind loosen and stretch, to direct her vision to peel away the veneer of the human world. How precious it was, how simple and fragile, the shell upon which they all walked and fought and loved—wind and water, earth and flame. And beneath that, a diamond world, a glittering country. The true golden vastness that had existed, always, and would continue to exist, always, no matter what empires ruled the world or what queens rose and fell.
She shuddered, letting out a cracked breath. For as she slipped inside the roaring river of her power, letting its currents bear her farther and farther away from where her body sat in the dirt, she began to see Simon, truly see him, as she never had before. Just as she had seen Remy, and Patrik, and Jessamyn, in that horrible pasture in Karlaine. The light they carried, the light that made them. Creatures of the empirium, all. Jagged and lacking where wounds had carved bits of them away.
“Oh, Simon,” she whispered, for now she saw the light of him, how he blazed and teemed. And even more clearly, she saw the hurt that had been dealt him. As she had seen Jessamyn’s wounded legs and Patrik’s broken arm, so did she now see the scars mapping Simon’s body like a snarl of shadows encasing the sun. Scars up and down his limbs, his abdomen, his face and chest. Even more brutal, the cruel lattice of his back, where the marque wings had once lived. And these weren’t even the worst of his scars. Those lived in his mind—pulsing and wicked, a thick black web so dark it surpassed her understanding.
But she felt them through the golden reach of her power. She felt the jarring pain of every blow, the cut of every blade, and what each had done to his tired mind.
“What is it?” His voice came to her softly. “What do you see?”
She shook her head and leaned forward, gathering him closer. Her forehead met his.
“Please tell me I’m not hurting you,” she said, tears clogging her voice.
“You’re not.” His hands slid up her arms to cup the back of her head. “I’ll tell you if you do.”
“I see everything that’s been done to you. Every lash, every cut and cruelty. I can’t even understand all of what I see. Simon.” She said his name again and again, as if every utterance could restore a stolen piece of himself. “Simon, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t cry for me.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, to the corner of her mouth. “Please don’t.”
But she would cry, and she would help him. She couldn’t possibly do it all at once in this garden, and maybe not ever. Those scars in his mind—they were too deep for her to soothe. She sensed the truth of that. They were too cruel, had been carved too skillfully. Maybe, if she had years to s
tudy her power and practice. But that was time they did not have.
Still, she moved her hands down his face. She traced soft lines with her fingers, drawing paths through the golden sea of the empirium, and pressed her palms against the broad, solid plane of his chest. She found a gnarled scar that had been carved across his breastbone—jagged and wide, uglier than the others.
A cruel cut from Rahzavel’s blade, inflicted upon Simon weeks ago, just before their battle against the crawlers in Karajak Bay. In a shuddering, liquid-gold flash, she saw the Invictus assassin’s grinning white face bearing down on her. She felt the blade piercing her own chest as it had pierced Simon’s, carving away skin and muscle. She heard Simon’s terrible, ragged howl, and a second scream—Rahzavel’s—mocking him.
“No,” she whispered again and again, drawing her fingers up and down the scar slowly, until she knew the map of it. Until it was as familiar to her as the bones of her own hand. Then she pressed her palms against it—twin suns against one dark hurt. She poured all the energy she could summon into him, into the lack where Simon should have been, and then, trembling, she felt his hands in her hair.
“Eliana,” he said, his voice thick, “open your eyes. Look.”
She did, feeling supple and faint, her vision clearing just enough to see what Simon saw.
Threads—a dozen of them, perhaps more. Bright and unwavering. They hovered in the branches just overhead and in the cool misting air around them and in the tangled grass. Immediately Eliana sensed their strength, their steadiness. How they yearned for Simon’s power as her own castings longed for hers.
Slowly he released her, reaching for the threads, and his face was open and soft, as it had been in Karlaine, and this time Eliana did not look away. She watched him until the burn of her eyes became unbearable. She blinked, wiping her wet face with unsteady fingers.
And then Simon murmured, “Go. Through that passage, there.”
He had woven the threads into a shimmering hoop of light. It outlined a shift in the air, a discoloration. One of the threads, the brightest, clung to his palm.
“Where does it lead?” she asked.
“To the house.” His focus was remarkable and carried a weight, as if a net of steel wires bound him to the threads shimmering before him. His voice was soft and deep, sleep-colored. “It’s all right. It’s quite safe. I can feel its strength.” And then he glanced at her, once, and she would never forget that unguarded expression on his face—how in awe he was of what was happening and how completely he understood that it was her doing.
“Go, Eliana,” he said quietly. “I’ll hold on to you. It will feel like walking into winter, for a moment, and then out again.”
She stood, shaky, hating that it was necessary to walk away from him, and as she stepped through the ring of shifting light, the reality of what had happened truly registered. It was her power that had made this possible. Her strength, her focus.
Your father was the Lightbringer, Simon had said, and you are the light.
And here she was, proving this to be true. Her power could destroy, but it could also restore. It could heal and illuminate. She could summon storms, but she could also mend hurts. Her power was full of rage, and yet capable of extraordinary tenderness, a dichotomy of darkness and light existing as one.
An immensity of relief overcame her as she stepped out into one of the mansion’s sitting rooms, where Harkan sat with Remy by the fire, mending torn shirts.
Remy was on his feet at once, grinning. “I told you it would work,” he told her, and then he was leading her to a chair beside Harkan. “Is Simon coming?”
“In a moment, I expect,” murmured Eliana tiredly.
Remy jumped to his feet and hurried toward the receiving hall.
As Eliana watched Simon’s light fizzle out across the carpet, she shook her head, laughing a little. “I’m no Blood Queen,” she whispered. She sat back in her chair and breathed away the threads’ lingering chill. “I’m not her.”
Harkan set down his mending. “Of course you’re not,” he said, giving her a small smile. “I could have told you that.”
“Yes, but I think I’m finally, truly realizing it. That I’m my own self, and not her. I have power, yes, but I shouldn’t always be afraid of it.”
“I’m glad for you. Truly.” He reached for her hand, then hesitated.
She took his instead. “It’s all right. You can touch me.”
His smile seemed to shrink with every passing second. “I feel as though I can’t anymore. You’re so far from me now. You feel beyond me, and mighty in this way I don’t understand.”
“And if I am beyond you?” Eliana watched him steadily. “Does that mean we can’t even be friends? Will you drug me again?”
He pulled away from her, his face raw with shame. “I’m sorry, El. I wish I was more, for you. I wish I was better at this. I wish I hadn’t…”
His voice dropped into silence.
Eliana swallowed against a hard knot of hurt. She had not been prepared for this conversation, nor for the terrible, distant sadness on Harkan’s face. She knew so well the way he held himself, the subtle ways he wore his despair. But then the front door opened and shut, and a few seconds later, Simon was storming into the room, Remy at his heels.
Simon stopped when he saw her, and then he smiled, a broad, easy grin. It was something she had never seen before on his face—such a real, true expression of unabashed happiness. For a moment she could hardly feel her own body. She was only a shapeless, fizzy, foolish joy, watching Simon smile.
“It worked,” he said, breathless, and then he went to her in two long strides, and she was rising to meet him. His arms came around her, tight and strong, and she pressed her face against his shirt, breathing in the rain on his collar and the sweat on his skin. In his arms, she nearly forgot herself. She nearly tilted up her head to kiss him.
But Remy, and Harkan. And the open door, which could admit visitors at any moment. If she was going to kiss him, she wanted the kiss all to herself.
So she stepped back from him, her fingers lingering on his sleeves, and when she turned to find Harkan, schooling her face into something more neutral, something less giddy, he was gone.
• • •
That night, Eliana could find neither sleep nor a sense of calm. When she closed her eyes, she saw an overwhelming assortment of images—the memories Simon’s scar had held, of his torture at Rahzavel’s hands. The threads hovering at his fingertips. The web of wounds in his mind.
Harkan’s empty, brave smile.
Opening her eyes was no better, for the first thing she saw was the door, and she knew that past the door was the hallway, and at the end of that was Simon’s door. Was he sleeping, or was he also lying awake, his brain as frenzied as hers?
A few minutes more, and she sat up, swung her legs out of bed. She got up, then sat back down. Then she rose again and went to stand crossly by the window, staring out into the wet woods.
It would be easier, she thought darkly, if he came to her, since she apparently could not find her courage.
Just when she had decided to climb back into bed and find relief in the touch of her own hands, a shape manifested in the corner of her room—black and vague, flickering in and out of itself.
Eliana’s hand went to Arabeth, ready on her bedside table. “Zahra?”
“Oh, my queen,” came the wraith’s distorted voice, still not as strong as it had once been, before her imprisonment in the blightbox. She dropped to the floor. The insistent pressure of her shifting form pulled on the air, bringing Eliana to her knees.
She touched the chill empty shadow of the wraith’s head, her streaming dark hair. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
A knock on the door interrupted them, and when Eliana opened the door, she found Simon on the other side, glowering, and past him, the house bustling t
o life as people left their rooms, tugging on boots and coats.
“What’s happened?” Eliana demanded.
“Red Crown scouts have arrived with news,” Simon replied. “Empire forces are coming north from the southern regions of the continent. Reinforcements, and unexpected ones. Our intelligence said nothing about this. They’ll be here in less than two weeks.”
Eliana’s skin turned cold. “They know I’m here,” she said, seeing the truth in his eyes. “They’re coming for me.”
37
Rielle
“I’ve now spent weeks ensconced in the Belbrion archives—and once I gained the trust of their head librarian, Quinlan, I even gained access to a different, superior library. I have sworn not to give you further details, except to say that these archives belong to a rather eccentric woman named Annick, whose intellect and character I trust completely. She and Quinlan are lovers, and while Annick was at first unhappy to welcome me into her home, we have become fast friends, due to a shared fascination with texts on the empirium. And this I must tell you, Audric, before anything else: During my weeks of study, I have come to understand that, whatever happens, we must trust Rielle. The prophecy, this talk of a Sun Queen and a Blood Queen…it is folly. Humans aren’t all goodness or all badness, and reducing Rielle to this choice—presenting her with two impossible and inhuman extremes—is a terrible cruelty, and it will be our undoing. We must allow her to live a life of her own making.”
—A letter written by King Ilmaire Lysleva to Prince Audric Courverie, dated May 9, Year 999 of the Second Age
Rielle had insisted they arrive back in me de la Terre on foot, rather than flying straight to Baingarde on Atheria, but there were problems with that plan—namely, that she had flown back quickly with only Tal and Ludivine and had therefore left the Sun Guard behind to make their journey by more conventional means.
And then there was the problem of the city itself.
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