Kingsbane

by Claire Legrand

  And then, distantly, past the vision of himself that Corien had created, came a cry from Atheria. Corien’s grip loosened. He frowned a little, looking past her.

  “Something’s wrong,” he muttered.

  She turned, searching the trees. “Atheria?”

  “Something else. Something that should not be here.”

  He released her from the veil of his mind, but the echo of him remained beside her, like a ghost of her own body. All at once, she saw the world as it was—the pine forest, identical to the one in which Corien had visited her, but darker, still brightening with the dawn. Atheria, standing before her, wings outstretched as if to protect Rielle from an attacker.

  And beyond Atheria, a slender young woman—her skin a few slight shades darker than Rielle’s own, dark hair gathered in a single braid, eyes wide and brown and strangely familiar. She stared at Rielle as though she were witnessing something unthinkable.

  Behind the girl, far back in the trees, shimmered a faint ring of light.

  “She shouldn’t be here,” Corien said again, his presence in her mind one of utter confusion. “She doesn’t belong here.”

  Feeling Corien so bewildered sent fear shuddering down Rielle’s spine. “Who are you?” she snapped. “What is your name?”

  The girl answered, falteringly, her accent and pronunciation so clumsy that at first Rielle could not understand her.

  But then she repeated herself, and this time Rielle heard her plainly. It was a lie; it was some terrible trick of Corien’s. Her exhausted mind was breaking at last and could no longer be trusted.

  “My name is Eliana,” said the girl. “I am your daughter.”

  44

  Eliana

  “Studies authored by practiced marques, and confiscated by the Mazabatian government, emphasize the importance of discretion when traveling. One errant word, one misplaced stone on a path, could alter the course of a future history in infinite ways—some minute, others gargantuan. Even a marque who is vigilant and meticulous when traveling carries the potential for catastrophic devastation in their blood.”

  —Meditations on Time by Basara Oboro, renowned Mazabatian scholar

  Eliana waited tensely for Rielle to respond, trying to ignore the enormous godsbeast standing between them.

  She waited so long that she began to doubt herself. The woman across the wood was Rielle, wasn’t she? Simon had given her a detailed description, and she could see, on Rielle’s face, similar features to her own. Her nose, the clean turn of her jaw, her arched eyebrows.

  How utterly strange to see pieces of her own face on this stranger, to know that this person she had never seen before had given her life. Trying to wrap her mind around the concept felt like trying to circle her arms around the entire world.

  She stepped forward, hesitant. Remy had taught her key words and phrases in Old Celdarian over the last few frantic days, enough to communicate the essential: Do not ally with the angels. What you do will bring the world to ruin. The angels will rise and destroy not only this world, but others as well. I can help you.

  She had practiced these sentences until they’d rubbed grooves into her mind. But now, standing here, in this world that was both her own and not, they eluded her.

  The air was too thick with magic, too hot and vital, as if it did not quite fit in her lungs. It clogged her throat as she breathed, burning the back of her tongue. Her castings sparked to life, more eagerly than they ever had before. The heat of them smarted against her palms, and she bit back a yelp of pain.

  “Mother?” she said. “Can we talk, please?”

  For a moment, Rielle stared at her, muttering under her breath in Old Celdarian far too quickly for Eliana to decipher anything but a few scattered words: Lies. Believe. Kill.

  Corien.

  Eliana stiffened. “Corien? Is he here?”

  Rielle’s face changed, her expression shifting from one of bewilderment to something dark and malicious. She spat something in the direction of the godsbeast, and the creature launched itself into the air, clearing the wood. Even before Rielle’s arm moved, Eliana felt the pull in the air, the tightening of it. She knew something terrible was coming, that magic would soon hit her, but it was such an immense sensation to be faced with Rielle’s wrath that for a moment she couldn’t move. Time became a tangible substance, viscous and tacky. She saw the ripple in the air as Rielle’s power surged toward her, felt the heat of its passage.

  It struck her hard in the gut like the flat of a monstrous hand, burning a narrow stripe across her abdomen.

  She fell, the wind knocked out of her. Soundlessly, she gasped for breath in the dirt, and then she felt another surge coming and turned, scrambling to right herself, and thrust out her palms in Rielle’s direction.

  Her power snagged on the wind, which sent it gusting at Rielle in two sharp points like arrows. Rielle dodged one of them; the other grazed her left shin, making her legs buckle. She fell, catching herself hard on her hands. She whipped her head around, her glare so furious that Eliana felt pinned to the ground.

  She raised her hands, brandishing her castings. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, hoping she had found the right words. “I want to talk.”

  Rielle advanced on her; her wrists flicked sharply. The ground beneath Eliana rippled, throwing her high in the air. Another fist of magic caught her, flinging her back into the trees. She slammed into the trunk of a pine and slid to the ground. She wavered in and out of blackness, and then looked up, head spinning, vision sparking with stars.

  Rielle had thrown her some twenty yards deeper into the forest—and twenty yards farther away from where Simon’s threads waited. All it would take, he had told her, would be a single conversation. A few words, a look passed between them. A moment of connection. A seed of an idea planted in Rielle’s mind—that the angels were the enemy, that joining them would lead everyone to ruin, including herself. That, he had said, might very well be enough to change the future.

  But neither of them had expected this, and as Rielle stormed toward her through the trees, the earth cresting like waves on either side of her, trees felling themselves at her approach, Eliana realized all at once, with a terrible, sinking feeling in her gut, how rash they had been. How foolish and utterly naive. So tired of fighting and so eager for an ending that they had flung themselves into a conflict they did not fully understand.

  “Wait,” she cried, scrambling backward over a clump of tree roots. “Please, just listen!”

  With a quick turn of her hand, Rielle uprooted the tree against which Eliana sat. The tree went flying, crashing back into the forest, and Eliana fell twenty feet into a clump of brush. She slammed hard into the ground; the impact shook her mind free of its panic.

  She let out a harsh, angry cry and pushed herself to her feet, and this time, when Rielle’s power came rushing at her, she thrust up her palms, holding them before her like a shield.

  Their magic locked, the overwhelming heat of Rielle’s crackling against the shaking wall of her own. White-gold sparks flew from her hands. A terrible noise emanated from their interlocked power, like the grinding of metal against stone.

  Eliana squinted past the blinding heat between them and caught a glimpse of Rielle’s eyes—a sharp, clear green, rimmed with exhausted shadows. And at the outer edges of her irises, twin rings of gold glimmered, spinning fast.

  “Listen to me,” Eliana cried. “I don’t want to hurt you. I must speak to you.” Sweat dripped down her back. She felt fevered, her vision turning cloudy and red. And the stripe of burned flesh across her stomach pulsed with such a searing pain that she could barely hold herself upright. But she held fast, her legs shaking, and forced herself to meet Rielle’s eyes.

  And for a single, still instant, once their gazes had locked, Eliana saw a flicker of emotion pass over Rielle’s face. She lowered her arms slightly; the in
credible pressure of her attack lessened.

  Eliana smiled a little, though the ribbon of pain across her stomach was expanding, brightening like the rising sun.

  “My name is Eliana,” she cried over the roar of their sparking power. “I can help you.”

  But then, before she could say more, a foreign presence punched its way into her thoughts. She swayed and fell hard to her knees, and then a familiar voice said to her, Ah, Eliana. This is not our first time to meet, it seems. How curious.

  Corien. The Emperor. She pushed herself to her feet, looking around wildly. She lost all sense of Old Celdarian and reverted to Venteran. “Where are you?” she screamed. She flung out her shaking hands, aiming them to her left, then her right. “Get away from me! Get out of my head!”

  But it’s such a nice head, Corien said, and contains so many secrets. Oh, well, now, this is certainly very interesting. He hummed a little, as if pondering a delicious meal. This is very interesting indeed. What a life you have led. What interesting company you keep.

  She ran stumbling into the forest, dodging the explosions of Rielle’s power. Hot bolts of magic sliced trees in half, sent enormous clumps of earth and rock flying into the air. A stone caught her on the small of her back; two more struck her left calf, the nape of her neck. She swayed, nearly fell. Saint Tameryn’s prayer leapt into her mind. Through the pain flaring up her body, she seized onto the familiar words.

  I fear no darkness, I fear no night.

  She whirled, scooped up shadows from the trees, and imbued them with all her desperation and fear. They became a flock of dark birds, knife-winged and knife-beaked, and spun wildly back toward Rielle. Eliana saw her knock them out of the sky as easily as pushing aside a cloud of flies.

  She tried again. With the dawn I rise.

  She wiped sweat out of her eyes, pulled sunlight from the air and flung it over her shoulders. She heard the impact of Rielle’s fists, saw each of her sunlit knots flying off into the trees like shooting stars.

  How valiantly you fight, came Corien’s voice, thin with derision. Your father would be proud.

  Eliana fell, tore open her hands against the ground, pushed herself up. The sweat stinging her eyes; the pain of her stomach, her skull, her legs; the blinding fear of Corien’s thoughts pressing against her mind like squeezing fists. She could hardly see as she half crawled up a gentle slope, pulling herself up by her scraped-raw fingers.

  And then, at the top, a sight that made her cry out with relief—Simon’s threads, some fifty yards away, still circling faintly in the air where she had left them. But were they too faint? Would she step through them and return to a time that was not her own? Would she end up on the other side of the world from him, from Remy, from everyone?

  But Rielle was close behind her, striding calmly through the forest, flinging every obstacle she encountered out of her path. And with every passing moment Eliana could feel Corien sinking deeper and deeper into her mind. She hoped the rift in time would shake his hold on her.

  She hoped he had not glimpsed the whole of her life.

  She took one last look over her shoulder, unable to resist looking once more at Rielle, and then jumped through the threads, crashing hard to the ground on the other side.

  “Close it!” she cried.

  She forced her eyes to stay open until she felt hands on her shoulders and heard Simon say her name. She breathed in and out, testing the fullness of her mind. Finding that it was her own once more, she let out a sob and reached blindly for an anchor. Simon’s hand caught hers, and then he saw the wound on her stomach and swore, and said her name again, urgently. He turned her face up to his, but the sky was too bright, a spinning white canvas of trees.

  Her pain ordered her to surrender, and she obeyed.

  45

  Rielle

  “I’m writing this, desperate. Audric, he has beaten me. My body is in agony. He is moving against you. He has been gathering those loyal to him, planning his attack for months. He asked me for my loyalty, and I said I would be a friend to you both—to House Sauvillier and House Courverie. And he beat me for it. I can hardly breathe. I fought him, but not well. He ripped my castings from me. I barely escaped. I’m hiding now. I’m leaving this letter with a friend who I hope will get it to you faster than any other messenger. Audric, he intends to—”

  —An undated letter written by King Ilmaire Lysleva to Prince Audric Courverie, confiscated by Lord Merovec Sauvillier

  The ring of light disappeared shortly after Eliana jumped through it, snapping closed with a sharp nick like the rap of a blade against wood.

  Rielle watched the spot where the light had been, following each white-gold spark as it scattered and vanished. And as she stood there, the mad swirl of her thoughts diminished, leaving her feeling hollowed out. From beyond the forest canopy came the cry of Atheria, who circled nervously overhead.

  Rielle whirled to face Corien. “What are you playing at? Is this some sort of trick you’ve designed to punish me?”

  He watched the place where Eliana had disappeared, frowning, his gaze distant. “Not a punishment. I knew nothing of this before it happened.”

  “You’re deceiving me. You want to drive me mad.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You lie.”

  He finally looked at her. “Not to you, and not about this.”

  “I hate you.” She turned away, touching her blazing-hot temples. “I hate you so much I taste it like poison on my tongue.”

  He followed her as she walked unsteadily out of the trees. “That girl wasn’t some illusion I conjured, Rielle. She was real.”

  “Stop talking to me. Both in and out of my head.” Rielle stepped out into the sunlight, squinting. She whistled for Atheria. “I don’t trust a word you say. I don’t trust either of you.”

  “It’s wise of you to mistrust the rat. But I’m just as puzzled by what’s happened as you are. Well.” He paused, his eyes turning distant once more. “Not quite as puzzled, perhaps.”

  Atheria knelt, and Rielle scrambled atop her. From her high perch on the chavaile’s back, she glanced down only once more at Corien, steeling herself against his steady, moon-bright gaze.

  “You made a fool of me today,” she said tightly, looking out upon the woods she had shredded. “Chasing after some figment of your twisted imagination like a madwoman.”

  “Rielle, I swear to you—”

  “I care nothing for your promises,” she snapped. “Not today. And you would be wise to stay away from me until the memory of this day has faded.”

  Then she turned her back on him and urged Atheria up into the sky.

  • • •

  They landed on the terrace outside her rooms, and once Rielle had walked shakily inside, she sank to the floor, hugging her middle. She laid her cheek against the carpet and wept—long, ragged sobs that rubbed her throat raw.

  Atheria watched from the terrace, wings folded against her body. One anxious hoof pawed against the white stone.

  There you are. Ludivine’s voice rose swiftly. You can’t just run away like that. Audric’s out of his mind with worry.

  Rielle could not breathe beneath the weight of Ludivine’s relief. It clung to her like a membrane, sticky and gelatinous. She buried her head in her arms, tugging on her hair.

  “Leave me alone,” she whispered. “Stop talking to me. I can’t bear it. I know about the saints, about what they did to you. Their lies, their great deception. You never told me, and now how am I supposed to trust you?” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Do you want vengeance? Is that why you’ve befriended me?”

  No.

  “You plot against me, right here in my home.”

  No. Ludivine’s thoughts were heavy with sadness. Darling, how can you think this of me? I love you.

  “I can’t trust you,” Rielle whispered. “I can trust
no one, not even my own mind. My skull will crack open. I will split apart.”

  I’m sending Audric upstairs.

  “No!” Rielle croaked. “Not him. Not now. Evyline. Send me Evyline, and stay away from me.”

  Ludivine said nothing more, and a few minutes later, the doors to her rooms opened to admit Evyline, Dashiell, and Riva.

  “Just you, Evyline, please,” Rielle said, and when the others had left, and Evyline had knelt beside her, Rielle turned to her, reaching blindly for her. Her pounding heart would not slow. “Please sit with me, and say nothing.”

  Evyline settled herself awkwardly on the rug. She clasped Rielle’s hand in her own. “Yes, my lady. For as long as you need me.”

  And for a time, Rielle cried in peace, reassured by the solid, unquestioning weight of Evyline beside her. Through her tears, she watched Atheria’s tail flick back and forth, a pendulum of feathered gray.

  Then the doors flew open, and all peace was shattered. Audric said her name, striding fast across the room, and Rielle squeezed her eyes shut against the sound of his voice. She could not put the image of the girl Eliana out of her mind. Those huge dark eyes. Her pitiful pleas for mercy.

  “Leave us, Evyline,” Audric instructed, kneeling beside them.

  “No,” Rielle whispered. “I need her.”

  “Stay, then,” Audric said at once. He touched Rielle’s hair. “What’s happened, darling?”

  She caught his face gently in her hands, wound her fingers in his soft curls. “Don’t leave me. No matter what happens, don’t leave me.” Fresh tears rose to her eyes; she could not dislodge the sudden, bone-shaking fear that she would lose him.

  He locked eyes with her and said softly, “I’ll never leave you. You are my light and my life.” He kissed each of her palms and then the salty corners of her mouth.

  She turned her face up to receive him, like a flower desperate for the sun. “Evyline,” she whispered, “you may leave us now.”