But Simon had cautioned her against doing so. It would only confuse things, he warned. It would only further muddy the waters they had already muddied by traveling to the past.
“Time travel has many repercussions, some of which even I don’t understand,” he had told her, fussing about her room, needlessly straightening furniture and pillows and her strewn-about clothes. “It’s not an act to be taken lightly.”
As if she took anything lightly in this world. As if she had ever been given the chance to.
She had lost hold of her slipping patience and ordered him out of her room. Never mind that she recognized his needless fussing as a manifestation of energy as nervous as her own. Afterward, she’d stormed across the floor in an ugly temper, unsure where to direct her anger and settling at last on everything. Then her mind, apparently eager to hurt itself, had wandered to Harkan, and she’d had to sit on the edge of her bed, very still, breathing slowly, for it felt like any sudden movement would throw her completely into chaos.
She wondered how he was faring, wherever he was stationed in the city—with Zahra, and Viri and Catilla, and all the recruits that had been assigned to them. Or had those disastrous few moments in the past ruined everything for Harkan’s team? Were they at this very moment walking into a trap? Were they already dead?
And now Dani was standing in her door, seemingly determined to strike up a conversation.
“I would really rather be alone right now, Dani,” Eliana said, bearing down hard on Nox’s curved, flat blade.
“Except for me,” Remy added from across the room.
“Except for Remy,” Eliana agreed.
“Well, I’m afraid you’ve got to tolerate me for at least a little while,” said Dani. “I’ve dug up one of my old gowns for you, and it just might fit.”
• • •
Eliana had to admit that it was a splendid gown.
A deep crimson across her neck, shoulders, and arms, fading gradually to pure, glittering onyx at the hem. A high neckline in the front, and long sleeves that clung to her arms as if they had been painted there. In the back, the snug bodice opened wide, a broad V that left most of her back exposed and came to a point at the dip of her hips. The fabric was light enough for her to twist easily, but boasted an array of intricate beadwork that caught the light when she turned. Ester and Patrik had sewn various cleverly concealed pockets into the wide skirts, each pocket narrow but deep, for housing her knives. And the skirts themselves flowed and twirled as she walked and spun, allowing for easy movement. The boots Dani had found for her were a bit dull, but supple and sturdy.
She disapproved of only two design elements: the caps of black feathers on the sleeves, and the fact that the beadwork spanning the gown had been sewn in the shapes of feathers as well.
“Can we at least remove the sleeve feathers?” Eliana said, ruffling them with a frown. “They’re rather angelic.”
“That’s the idea.” Dani bustled about, instructing Ester where to pin and pointing out what needed adjusting. “Everyone at these parties tries to reference angels as many times as possible in their wardrobe. It flatters the angels and demonstrates to them that you buy into the whole thing.”
“The whole thing?” Eliana asked.
“The Empire. Their perpetual, world-spanning rule. You know. The whole thing.”
Ester looked back, mouth full of pins. “Oh, is that what you call it?”
“I could call it other things, but I’m trying to curb my foul language,” Dani said.
“Whatever for?”
“You know, now that I think about it, I can’t remember why I ever decided that. So, fuck it.” Dani put her hands on her hips, inspecting Eliana from hem to hair. “You look beautiful, at least. That’s a joy for my tired eyes. We’ll have to do something with your hair though. You can’t wear that messy braid every day of your life.”
Eliana ran her hands down her front, turning left and right in the mirror. She winced a little as she brushed against the bandage under her bodice.
“You could cut it,” she mused. “I’m tired of managing it. The moment I take out my braid, it breeds a hundred new tangles. And cutting it might help disguise me a little.”
Dani made a thoughtful noise. “Now there’s an idea.”
“Remember how my hair used to look, back when I wore it short?” Ester pushed herself upright with a little breathless oof, then dropped a kiss on Dani’s head. “We could try something like that.”
“Yes, I do remember, and stop bending over, you beautiful pregnant fool.” Dani waved her hands at Ester. “Go sit down, put your feet up.”
Simon entered the room, his eyes locking with Eliana’s in the mirror. She resisted the urge to gape at him. He wore a long, black coat that buttoned at the waist over a vest of black brocade, with coattails that fell to his knees. A high collar, a gray cravat. Black gloves; silver cuff links gleaming at his sleeves. High, square shoulders, the architecture of which resembled wings in flight. He had shaven at last, though his hair was still a tousled mess.
When he moved past Eliana, the blazing nearness of his body tugged at her as surely as if he had touched her and pulled her along after him.
“Actually,” he said, addressing the others, “I wonder if I might speak to Eliana alone for a moment.”
Dani and Ester exchanged glances.
“For a moment?” Dani said, straight-faced. “Or perhaps for an hour or two?”
Ester elbowed her in the ribs and grabbed her arm. At the door, Dani turned once more.
“Just please don’t rip the dress,” she said. “If you do, I refuse to mend it.”
Ester pulled her into the hallway with a choked laugh and closed the door behind them.
In their absence, Eliana could only bear the thick silence for the space of a heartbeat.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” she said. “So clean and fine. I hardly know what to think of it.”
Simon smiled a little, then moved toward her and helped her down from the low, flat stool on which she stood. “And then there’s you,” he said softly, his blue eyes glittering as they moved over her body. He let out a long, slow breath, and for a moment she thought he would say something about her appearance. But then a shadow fell over his face, a darkness unlike any she had seen him wear before, flittering and strange, and he turned away from her. He went to the window and stood rigid before it, looking out over the wet, gray world.
“Patrik was fitting me for my Jubilee clothes just now,” he said.
Eliana raised an eyebrow. “Really? I would never have guessed. Isn’t this what you always wear?”
“I was standing there, listening to him prattle endlessly on, and suddenly I couldn’t be there anymore. I couldn’t spend one more moment in that room.” His fists opened and closed at his sides. “I had to see you.”
“Well, here I am.” The longer he stood there, brooding at the window, the greater her uneasiness became. The expression on his face, faintly reflected in the window, was a terrible one.
“Yes, and I can’t even look at you,” he said. “When I do, I want to abandon all of this. I want to forget my training and my mission, defy the Prophet, run away with you like a lovesick boy.”
She moved toward him, her heart skipping against her ribs. She knew she shouldn’t delight in his distress, and yet she did, because it mirrored her own—and because he was a man invincible against most things. But not this. Not her.
“Simon,” she said, reaching for him. Then she hesitated, lowering her arm. “Do you want me to leave?”
“I should stay away from you,” he muttered as if to himself. “Until we leave for the Jubilee, I should want you nowhere near me. And yet, here I am.”
She gently touched his arm and turned him to face her.
“I don’t want you to stay away from me,” she said. “How much ti
me do we have left? Less than a day.”
“Eighteen hours,” he said shortly, “before we leave for Festival.”
She had known that number, had been silently counting down with the passage of every hour. But hearing him say it brought tears to her eyes, and the ache in her chest grew, relentless, until it overcame the rest of her body.
He saw her tears and swore passionately, his face twisting into something almost furious, and reached for her. She met him halfway, their kiss hard and clumsy. His gloved hands slid into her braid, his fingers catching on the tangles, and she welcomed each sting of her scalp, because the small, sharp pain reminded her that she was alive, and so was he—at least for this desperate hour, at least for another seventeen after that.
He kissed her there against the wall, beside the window, his hands in her hair, and she pulled hard on his coat, tugging him as close to her body as she could. But it wasn’t enough. He was too far from her, and she broke away from him with a frustrated sob. A stupid, frantic voice inside her screamed that if she didn’t touch him, right then, that instant, he would disappear from her arms, never to be found again. She fumbled at his clothes, wild for the familiar, rough expanse of his skin. She reached beneath his coat, found his tunic, tugged it loose from his trousers, and when her palms met the warmth of his bare back, she pressed a kiss to his neck and sighed his name.
And then he was tugging up her skirts, lifting her against his hips, and when he entered her, it was swift and hard and everything she craved. She wrapped herself around him and held on, dizzy with him, utterly enveloped in him. His cheek scraped against hers; he whispered her name.
After, as they clung to each other, she pressed her forehead to his, breathing hard, and smiled a little. She touched his damp hair. “I still don’t love you,” she murmured, hoping it would make him smile, hoping it would soften her own grief.
But the expression on his face was utterly bleak, sharp and empty in a way that frightened her, and she knew it had been the wrong thing to say.
“Simon,” she whispered, but before she could apologize, he had taken her face in his hands.
“I need more of you,” he said, his voice low and hungry, his gaze roving restlessly across her face. His hands slipped down her body, tugging at her sleeves, her bodice. He buried his face in the bend of her neck, his teeth scraping against her skin. “Eliana, God help me, if I don’t have you again, I’ll lose what’s left of my mind.”
And there it was again—that strange, skittering darkness in his voice. An agitation in his movements, a slight manic curl in the laugh he breathed against her cheek.
She thought she understood. Time was hurtling them forward, and neither of them could do anything to stop it.
She kissed him, slow and warm, until he calmed, until her own unease had diminished, and then quietly led him upstairs to their room, where she helped him undress and said with her touch what her words could not.
51
Rielle
“Oh, the maids did dance, and the maids did sing,
And with every word their voices did bring
A season of storms and a shiny black wing,
A knife of steel and a solid gold ring,
A throat painted red and a knotted-up string,
And the merry maids sang and stomped and howled,
And the moors went black, and their rivers turned fowl.”
—“The Merry Maids of the Marrowtop Moors,” Traditional Celdarian folk song
Baingarde had never looked lovelier.
It was a chill autumn evening, the stars clear and cold in the sky, but all doors in the castle had been thrown open to the night nevertheless. Every room was alight with candles, every table piled high with steaming platters, and the sheer press of bodies drifting from ballroom to ballroom was enough to keep the air sweltering.
Each of the castle’s twenty courtyards had been strung with banners of gold and white, emerald and plum. Tiny brass lanterns hung from the trees throughout the gardens, their flames shivering in the crisp breeze. Bouquets of royal lilies had been delivered from Luxitaine, piles and piles of them placed thoughtfully throughout the castle. Spilling out of burnished copper vases, woven through fresh green vines that had only hours before been plucked from the royal greenhouses and wrapped around the gleaming banisters, they filled the air with a cloying sweet scent that made Rielle’s head spin, leaving her faintly dizzy.
And yet still, she danced.
The largest ballroom in Baingarde, surpassed in size only by the Hall of the Saints, whirled with color—brocaded gowns, gleaming in the candlelight; smart suits and pressed coats, their tails flying. At the far end of the room, on a stage bordered with velvet green curtains, an orchestra played merrily through waltzes and folk songs from every region in Celdaria.
One such song—“The Merry Maids of the Marrowtop Moors”—concluded with a dramatic flourish, the violinists sweeping their bows up into the air. Everyone dancing turned and applauded. The orchestra master bowed, her pale cheeks flushed from the heat.
Rielle blew out a breath, laughing from sheer exhilaration, and then beamed up at Audric. Dancing suited him marvelously, and they’d been dancing for nearly two hours straight. She felt drunk on the sight of him, his curls damp, his eyes sparkling.
He caught her staring and grinned. “See something you like?”
She flung her arms around his neck, stretched up onto her toes to kiss him. “I see everything I like,” she whispered against his mouth, and then they broke away from each other, laughing, because the dancers nearest them had begun to whoop and holler, cheering them on.
At the edges of her mind crowded too many worries to count—the thousands of people still gathered outside, kept from the castle by lines of royal and Sauvillier soldiers, undoubtedly growing increasingly discontented as Baingarde sparkled on through the night.
The lies of Corien and Ludivine, the ever-present echo of them fighting for her allegiance in some distant corner of her mind.
The phantom girl Corien had created to torment her—her own face, and Audric’s, so perfectly combined.
Far away in the Sunderlands, a falling Gate.
And Merovec, parading around the castle, a smile on his face and his mind worryingly closed. Ludivine hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that particular strangeness all night. Rielle felt her preoccupation like the persistent buzz of a fly.
But none of that could diminish her happiness. Not on this night. Not in this room.
The orchestra began the opening strains of a new dance, one from the Celdarian heartlands that sent up a cheer throughout the room.
Rielle grabbed Audric’s hand. “One more?”
He looked longingly past her at one of the food tables, which the cooks had just filled with platters of fresh pastries. “How many dances will that be?”
“Only seven.” She pouted up at him. “Please, darling. I love this one. Then we’ll grab a whole cake for ourselves and go hide in one of the sitting rooms upstairs.” She moved closer to him, her smile turning wicked. “We’ll have our fill of the cake first, and then of each other. We’ll look down upon them all as we ravish each other, and they’ll just keep dancing, far below us, and none of them will know a thing.”
He stifled a groan and rested his forehead against hers. “If you really do want me to stay here and dance, you’re going to have to stop talking like that.”
She grabbed his hand, grinning, and he spun her out into the floor, everyone nearby making room for them—but before the dance could truly begin, a few flutes and a single violin skipping through the passages of the opening reel, a dazzling bolt of pain exploded through Rielle’s skull.
She stumbled, hands flying to her head.
Rielle? came Ludivine’s voice, a shrill, frightened question, as if she were a child suddenly trapped in a dark room. Oh, God. No, no—<
br />
Then, without warning, Ludivine disappeared.
It wasn’t simply that she was no longer speaking; it was that her presence had been completely wiped clean from Rielle’s mind. It was the most disorienting sensation she had ever experienced, as if a crucial piece of her body had been brutally cut away.
She whirled, searching frantically through the crowd. Lu? What happened? Where are you?
“What is it?” Audric caught her arm. Beyond him, guests were beginning to stare.
“Something’s wrong. She’s gone.”
Audric tensed beside her. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“I mean I can no longer hear her, or even sense that she’s still alive.”
Then Rielle’s mouth flew open, a soundless exclamation of pain. The pounding of her head was spectacular. She sensed a tumult, somewhere beyond her. Something to do with Ludivine, something angelic. But it was like being shut out of a room, ear pressed against the door, knowing something was transpiring beyond the solid wood but not allowed to enter. Unable to enter. A locked door without a latch. Colossal and immovable.
She held her breath for a moment, struggling to clear her mind of anything but a single question: Corien, are you here?
Then there was an outcry from the doors on the far side of the room that led outside to the wide northern terrace and the gardens beyond. Gasps and shouts, cries of alarm, spreading fast. The gathered dancers split and scattered, and through their ranks burst Ludivine—eyes wide, face rigid and white.
She ran straight for Rielle, but Audric darted between them and stopped her, hands tight on her arms. Illumenor snapped white-gold at his hip.
“Lu, say something to me,” he said firmly. “With your mouth and your voice. No mind-speak. Tell me who you are.”
Merovec shoved his way forward, out of the crowd. “What’s the meaning of this? Ludivine?”
Then a slow smile unfurled across Ludivine’s face, and Rielle’s blood turned cold.
Corien? Wild, she searched the room for him. What are you doing? Release her at once!
Kingsbane Page 55
