The man’s fist smashed into Harkan’s jaw, knocking him backward. And then he flung a dagger at him, and it landed hard and true in his gut.
Harkan’s body jerked. Through a fog, he remembered the pain, how it was as if fire had shot inside him, spreading outward from his abdomen, as though his veins had been scorched by Eliana’s castings. His hands flew to the knife in his belly, and he looked down at it and laughed. Then he sank to his knees, falling hard on his side, and he faintly heard Catilla’s voice, urging him to get up, to run, before her voice abruptly ceased.
He remembered scrabbling in the dirt, fumbling for his gun, his dagger, anything, because this man, whoever he was, was killing everyone—there went Viri, and the girl Roen, and Qarissa, and Rogan, all of whom Dani had recruited from the farmlands outside the city. And then Harkan saw, through a flash of furious thought sent in despair from Zahra, that this man was named Varos, and that he was a member of Invictus. That he had left Willow in flames and executed every member of Red Crown who remained there.
That he intended to hurry next to the beach and make sure that no rebels on the beach interfered with—
And Zahra realized it at the same time Harkan did, for she was delving frantically through Varos’s mind with what strength she had left. She howled when she saw the truth, a terrible, shrieking wail that shook Harkan’s bones.
Simon.
Simon was leading Eliana not to freedom, but to the admiral.
Simon was not Red Crown.
He was loyal not to the Prophet, if the Prophet was even real. That much Zahra could not see. A figment, a lie? Part of the ruse? Perhaps.
No, he was loyal to one being only, and he intended to take Eliana across the ocean to the doors of his palace.
The Emperor.
Zahra howled with rage, but Harkan was faster. His fury crystallized his pain; his despair sharpened his slipping mind.
He pulled himself to his hands and knees, found his rifle. Turned, saw Varos drawing his sword out of Catilla’s gut, and fired everything he had left.
Varos fell, his gut shredded.
Another scream pierced the air, as full of sorrow as Zahra’s had been of rage.
Harkan, his eyelids fluttering, the pain in his gut traveling up to pound at his temples, found the source—a woman with freckled brown skin, a red-dyed braid. Lithe and dangerous; a soldier, certainly. She stared at Varos’s body, frozen with horror, and then a brilliant light flashed from the beach.
The girl turned, shielding her eyes. She looked back once at the slain Varos. Her bright gaze cut to Harkan, and he watched her expression harden, a veil of hatred dropping over her eyes. Then she turned and fled down the cliff paths, joining the imperial army as they converged on the beach.
Harkan dragged himself closer to the cliff’s edge, watching this light, this fallen sun, streaking toward the water.
Dimly, he heard Zahra screaming, “I can’t get to her! I can’t stop her! Stop, my queen! No! No!” And he felt Zahra’s rage, the fist of it pummeling against some cage that he too, could sense, as if someone had erected an invisible shield between them and Eliana, keeping them immobile while she ran unknowing toward betrayal.
Harkan lay his cheek on the hot stained ground, laughing a little, his eyes stinging from tears and the grit of sand. He listened to Zahra sob and wail, fighting uselessly against whatever force was imprisoning her here on these cliffs of death. Then he closed his eyes, listening to the distant sounds of gunfire from the docks below. Sharp, efficient. One after another.
An impressive marksman.
Better even than Gerren.
• • •
“That’s what happened?” he whispered.
Zahra’s touch was cool and still against his cheek. Yes, Harkan. That’s what happened.
But this, she added, this happened too.
These memories were his own—older, deeper, and dear. So distant that, given the circumstances, he wouldn’t have been able to find them on his own.
But with Zahra’s help, he did.
• • •
First, seven years old. Passing messages to Eliana, from his balcony to hers. Moving his palm across the flame of his candle so she would see a flashing light from her window. The first time they had written a code between them.
Second, ten years old. His brothers leaving for the war front, after which he had been inconsolable for weeks. His only comfort had been playing games with Eliana on the floor in her bedroom, helping care for Remy when Rozen was out working her mysterious job. At night, lighting candles for the windows. May the Queen’s light guide them all home, Rozen had said, over their heads—his, and Eliana’s, and little Remy’s, all bowed together over storybooks, listening with bated breath for a door to open with good news that never came.
And third, fifteen years old. A killer now, at Eliana’s side. Reluctant, but devoted. And at last, he had kissed her. That first night, in his bed, both of them trembling with nerves, all awkward angles and sweating brows, and Eliana whispering his name against his neck. He had been afraid to touch her, desperate to touch her. After, his cheek against her chest, listening to her pounding heart, trying to catch his breath. The smell of her in his bed. Burying his face in the pillow she had used. Breathing her in.
• • •
“Yes,” he whispered, smiling a little. His eyes were wet, as was his mouth. “Yes,” he agreed, “that happened too.”
And then he looked up at Zahra’s faint ripple of a face, so odd and unsettling in the air, and knew that he was dying, for how else would he—untouched by the empirium, unremarkable and ordinary—be able to see Zahra’s face at last?
How strange that the face of an angel who loved humans would be the last thing he would ever see.
“Will you help her?” he asked. His chest began to seize, his lungs fighting for air that would not come.
“I will find a way,” Zahra promised. “Until the world ends, I will fight for her.”
“We both will,” said a voice—a man, leaning over him. Copper-haired and blood-streaked. His voice torn, heavy with pain.
“Patrik?” Harkan tried to form the word, but it came out garbled. Frustrated, he tried again. His voice failed him.
He felt a warm hand on his cold face. “This fight isn’t over yet.” A slow breath, puffing against his face. A tiny, furious sob. “God. Harkan. I’m so sorry. We tried. We tried so hard. I’m sorry. You did so well, my friend. You’re all right. It’s all right.”
A burst of fear, sudden and wild. Zahra?
I’m here. Me, and Patrik. He’s alive. Some of us are alive. We’re here. We will go on.
Does she still love me? Harkan could no longer speak. His thoughts were a whisper, fading. But he needed to know. He needed, he needed.
Oh, Harkan, Zahra replied, soft and sad. She never stopped.
54
Rielle
“This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. In the eyes of the empirium, a war is but a sigh; an age is but a blink. We must not let ourselves be confined by a narrow human understanding of events. We must accept that we cannot understand the world’s workings and allow the will of free human decision to evolve unfettered.”
—Children of God: A History of the Empirium
They were calling for her death.
She heard them as she ran—the people of the city into which she had been born, the only home she had ever known. She heard their cries rising like flocks of black birds taking frenzied to the sky.
Kingsbane!
Kingsbane!
Kingsbane!
Their screams for justice, their shouts for her death—they carried her swiftly out of the gardens, through the stable yards and the armories, into the temple districts.
The city bells began to chime, and she laughed a little, wiping the tears fro
m her face. Audric had sounded the alarm. He would perhaps send the city guard after her. Would they shoot to kill? She hoped they would. She would melt their swords and fuse their feet together with the molten metal. She would cut their hands from their arms and let them bleed out beside their useless arrows.
Ludivine was screaming at her, distant and distorted, as if Rielle were hearing her through oceans thick with black water. She gathered up every scrap of energy she could find and shoved it at her, pushing her away. She couldn’t see Ludivine, couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t think of her. For if she thought of Ludivine, she would think of Audric, and if she thought of Audric, she would crumble. The pieces of her would collapse, a toppled, ill-fated construction.
Rielle, please, don’t leave me! Ludivine’s last words, which Rielle pushed away with her tired mind. She was pressing hard against a door, desperate to keep Ludivine far from her, but her body was trembling, she was exhausted and could hardly see—but then Corien was beside her. His eyes were dry and clear, his arms steady. Together they closed the door to the part of her mind where Ludivine lived. He put his hand to the latch and turned the key.
Almost there, he murmured, his voice a light on the cold horizon. Almost free.
• • •
The city guard did try to stop her.
They tried, and they failed.
Her father’s soldiers, dozens of them. They followed their commanders’ shouted orders and ran at her, eyes wide. They knew they would die, that something was terribly wrong. She was the Kingsbane, after all. The Blood Queen. She would cut them down, sure as breathing. She had done it to their late king. They had seen the vision, just as everyone else had.
Rielle swept her arm at them, like clearing a table of debris.
They fell all at once, dissolving, and by the time they hit the ground, they were mere glittering swirls of ash.
She ran through the dissolving echoes of their bodies, choking on ruin.
No one tried to stop her after that.
She stumbled out of the city, running into the mountains. The entire valley was clogged with people, but her path remained clear, untroubled. Corien was helping her, she realized, so suddenly, sharply grateful that she felt faint. Her mind spun around a single, indisputable fact: He was the only one left to help her. The only person living who could look at her and see a girl, and not a monster.
She thought of Garver and Simon, sitting in their little shop, their dinner growing cold as Corien’s vision played out across their table. Sweet Simon, watching his Sun Queen crumble before his eyes.
It was just as well for him to see the truth. She had hidden it from him, from all of them, for far too long.
She looked up at the sky only once, called for Atheria only once. But the godsbeast did not come. The sky remained empty, a spill of moonless black.
Furious, she plunged into the trees. So, she was truly alone. The realization settled around her like a suit of armor, slowing her feet. But she pushed past the extra weight, muscles burning.
She was alone. She was alone.
She repeated it to herself, twenty times over. Fifty. One hundred. She would keep repeating it until it no longer hurt her.
She was alone.
But not for long.
• • •
She found him standing in a deep wood.
There was a girl sitting in the grass at his feet—light-brown skin and hair like white silk. Queen Obritsa of Kirvaya, eyes wide and haunted, shadows dark across her tear-streaked face.
An unmoving figure in ragged travel clothes lay beside her, their head resting in her arms. An adult—pale brown skin, a soft cap of shaggy brown hair.
Rielle remembered him too. The queen’s bodyguard. Artem, was his name.
But then Corien was opening his arms to her, his face awash with pity, and she crashed into his embrace. She pressed her face to his chest, breathed hard and short against him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. His hands trembled as he stroked her hair, her shoulders, the ruined tatters of her trailing sleeves. “Look at you. My poor, darling girl. I’m sorry you’re hurting.”
She opened her eyes and looked past him at the capital. Baingarde shimmered, fire-colored, against the inky backdrop of the mountains. She refused to blink. Her tears turned the city into a blurry, glimmering inferno.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she whispered at last. “And don’t apologize. It’s good that they know. I’m glad they know. And besides,” she added, curling her fingers into the stiff black wool of his coat, “I won’t be hurting for long.”
55
Eliana
“The Sun Queen is selfless and pure. She protects and sacrifices. She never breaks. She is never tempted. She shines and she shines and she shines, and she gives all her light to others and keeps none for herself. That is what many of us have believed. But does that sound like a particularly kind life to you? Does that seem a life that any child of this world deserves?”
—The Word of the Prophet
When Eliana awoke, she was sitting in a chair, her arms and legs bound. It was a plain wooden chair, and she was sitting on the deck of a ship. An enormous ship, sleek and black, with red-and-black sails like mourning veils dipped in blood.
Like the tattered gown that clung to her—sweat-stained, bloodstained, drenched from the spray of water.
Awareness came to her in unsteady waves. She squinted at the horizon. There was Festival, slowly receding, but still close enough that, if she jumped, she could make the swim.
But she couldn’t jump without Remy.
She would escape these bindings and find him. Together, they would swim for the shore. They would find another boat, or maybe disappear into the cliffs around Festival. They would reunite with Harkan, Zahra, Patrik.
She reached for her castings—and found nothing. No answering spark of power, no heat flaring to life in her hands. She flexed her fingers. The lack of the chains she had made, the lightness of her palms without the weight of the discs resting inside them, made her stomach heave. Her hands were naked, stripped bare; her power was trapped inside her with nowhere to go.
She looked around, fury sharpening both her vision and her injuries. Her body ached from Jessamyn’s blows, spots of pulsing pain lighting a path across her body. She didn’t understand why Jessamyn had attacked her, what she had become in this new future, but her questions all disappeared when she saw Simon approach her across the deck.
He had exchanged his Jubilee finery for the sleek uniform of an Empire soldier. A trim, square-shouldered coat that fell to his knees. Red on black, trimmed with gold. The crest of the Emperor on his chest. A gleaming fresh sword at his belt.
And he wasn’t alone.
He dragged Remy along with him—one hand gripping his arm, the other holding a knife to his throat.
Eliana’s mouth went dry. She recognized that jagged blade.
Arabeth.
That, absurdly, was the thing that made tears spring to her eyes at last.
He had taken her favorite goddamned knife.
“Let him go,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“El,” Remy said, tear tracks shining on his cheeks. “Don’t do anything they say. If they kill me, they kill me. Don’t give in. Don’t let them win.”
“He won’t hurt you, Remy,” Eliana said automatically.
Simon raised an eyebrow. “Won’t I?”
His voice belonged to the Wolf, iced over and unfeeling.
And Eliana realized, slowly, the truth bleeding slow and cold down her body, that he would do it. He would. He had killed everyone else. He had stood not twenty feet from her and shot them all down.
Remy began to sob.
“It’s all right,” she lied, her voice trembling. “It’s going to be all right.”
She looked away from him, unable
to bear the sight of his fear. Instead she focused her rage on Simon’s implacable face. Her memories slapped her, merciless—Simon moving inside her, pinning her to her bed. Simon kissing his way down her body. Simon murmuring words of love against her skin.
Her tears came faster. Her mind spun, searching futilely for answers. And still Simon stood there, Remy weeping in his arms. He watched her expressionlessly, as if she were a stranger, as if they hadn’t shared a single moment together, much less a bed.
“How did you do this?” she whispered. She wanted to yell at him, curse at him, tear herself from the chair and launch herself at him, claw his eyes from his skull, bash his head in, tear out his guts with the blade he was pressing against her brother’s throat. “Why did you do this?”
No answer came. Instead, Admiral Ravikant approached from across the deck, still wearing his awful beaked mask. He held his hands behind his back. He stood in silence, observing them all.
Then he said, “Scarlett, you lied to me.”
“And you knew it,” she said quietly. “You were, what, toying with me? Stalling for time until your ship was ready? Until the army arrived?”
“I’m not going to explain myself to you,” he replied. “Instead I want to tell you what’s going to happen here. I want you to understand your future.”
Away from the crowded ballroom, his masked voice no longer sounded so muffled and strange. In fact, it was almost familiar, though Eliana couldn’t identify it. A note of alarm sounded in her mind; a frantic instinct was screaming at her, warning her.
“Who are you?” she whispered. “I know you.”
“You will be put into a cell,” he said, “until you’ve showed me that you merit something better. The Emperor has given me permission to treat you this way, because you have proven yourself undeserving of kindness. If you try to attack me, or Simon, or any of my crew, if you make even a single move of aggression, I will begin cutting your brother. I won’t kill him. I will cut him, and I will keep cutting him, and I will make you watch. He will beg me to kill him. You will beg me to kill him. And I won’t do it. I will keep him alive and awake so that he feels every moment of pain. So I suggest you do as I tell you.”
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