“You will stay away from my daughter, whatever you are,” he said, “or I will—”
“Do what? Kill me?” Corien chuckled. “My dear man, I’d like to see you try.”
Rielle’s father didn’t hesitate. He lunged at Corien, raised his sword to strike. Then his body jerked, his eyes clouded over, and his sword crashed to the ground.
“No!” Rielle ran to him.
He looked at her, head tilted unnaturally to the side, and struck her hard across the face.
Rielle staggered to the cave wall. When she touched her lip, her fingers came away red.
“Interesting,” said Corien calmly. “I only told him to stop you. His mind was the one that chose to strike you.” He turned to her, and she could feel through their connection a twinge of genuine sadness. “Could your father be angry at you for something? I thought you two had put that mess behind you.”
Rielle glared at him. “Release him, or I will destroy you.”
“If you try, they’ll be dead before I hit the ground.”
Tears gathered in her eyes. “I thought you…”
“That I loved you?” Corien’s face softened. “Child, I love you more than I can say. I’m doing this for you. If you don’t leave them, they will stifle, shame, and punish you for daring to breach the walls they are building around you.”
He approached her slowly. “They will use every memory you share with them—every sweet feeling, every kind moment—to wring out all the power they can from that miraculous body of yours. And they won’t stop, or even consider sparing you, because they will be too afraid of what faces them. If you hesitate, they will remind you of their supposed love for you and chain you with it until you back down and do as you’re told.”
He now stood so close she could smell the clean coldness of his skin, a spice of scent on his clothes. He cupped her cheek in one gloved hand. Heat blazed through her body, her power firing so completely alive at his touch that she felt fevered.
Helplessly she turned into his palm.
“Yes,” Corien lowered his head to whisper against her ear, “even him.”
Audric.
“You’re wrong.” She desperately hoped it was true. “He loves me, and he always will.”
Corien’s pity caressed her mind. “Who told you that? The rat?”
And as he said the words, an image came to her, shoved violently across the plane of her thoughts:
Audric, crying out in pain on Atheria’s back. The chavaile landed on a grassy plateau seconds before Audric hit the ground. He dropped Illumenor, clutched his head in his hands. His eyes flickered from a brilliant, stormy gray to brown and back to gray.
The image vanished, and though Rielle couldn’t know if it was real or imagined, it was enough. Rage erupted in her heart. “You will not touch him,” she growled.
Corien stepped back from her. “Rielle, wait—”
She rounded on him, thrust out her palm, screamed, “Get away from me!” and let her power fly.
• • •
Not the wind, not the earth or the shadows lining the room.
This power was more than that and all of it and none of it.
Simply, it was this:
The empirium, raw and blinding.
At Rielle’s feet, the unseen fabric of the world split open and detonated. A wave of light, a savage shudder.
Not far, but far enough.
• • •
When the aftershock dimmed, Rielle was on the floor. Her head spun. She looked down at her palms; they were covered in blood.
Her own?
She blinked.
Yes. The pain surfaced in sharp, jagged waves.
And Corien?
She looked around, dizzy, heard a horrible, keening sound, and found him crawling away from her, his clothes burned to ashes, and his body…
The blast had burned him.
He was an unmade creature, red and ravaged and glistening. He howled in pain, dragging himself across the cave floor toward an opening that led back to the hills.
“Don’t look at me!” he screamed at her, his words slurring. “Not like this! Not like this…”
She could see not a single recognizable feature on his face. But his agony, his shame—his anger—vibrated through her mind.
When she looked up again, he was gone.
Then a low cry sounded from across the cave—her father, struggling to breathe. And beyond him, King Bastien, Lord Dervin…
Still, still, both of them still. Not burnt, as Corien had been, but rigid. The light gone from their glassy eyes, their faces frozen in shock.
Rielle tried to rise, crashed back to her knees. “Papa?” She crawled to him, turned his face to her.
He gulped down air, his eyes dim.
“I’m here.” She touched his face; his cheeks were wet with tears. “It’s all right. He’s gone, and I’m here. We just need… Oh, God.” She turned to the cave passage down which she’d come, screamed her voice raw. “I need a healer! Someone, please, help us! Garver!”
“I…remember.”
“Papa? What is it?” She held his hands against her cheek. “You remember what?”
“‘By the…moon…’” He gulped emptily at the air. “‘By…the…’”
“Mama’s lullaby?”
He gave her a shaky smile. “‘By…’”
“‘By the moon,’” she finished, singing unsteadily, “‘by the moon, that’s where you’ll find me.’”
He nodded, closed his eyes. Tears slipped down his cheeks and into his neatly trimmed beard. A ghost of a smile touched his mouth.
“‘We’ll pray to the stars,’” she continued, a mere whisper, “‘and ask them to set us free. By the moon…’”
He shuddered once, his hands falling slack in hers.
She closed her eyes, pressed her face against his fingers. If she finished the lullaby, if she didn’t look, then it wasn’t really happening.
“‘By the moon,’” she whispered, “‘by the moon, that’s where you’ll find me. We’ll hold hands, just you and me…’”
She could no longer speak. She curled up beside him, pressed her face into his side, and lay there shivering and alone.
• • •
A familiar cry pierced the air outside the chamber, shaking Rielle from her grief.
A gust of wind followed by stamping hooves announced Atheria’s arrival, just beyond the door through which Corien had crawled.
She sat up, her heart pounding. Audric. What would she tell him?
He rushed through the door an instant later, windblown and frantic. “Rielle?”
“Here,” she croaked. She tried to go to him, but her legs wouldn’t work. She instead watched with mounting dread as Audric hurried to her, then faltered with a sharp cry—and then stared in horror at his father’s frozen face.
Rielle at last found the strength to rise.
“I tried to stop him,” she whispered, approaching him slowly. “I’m sorry, I…I burned him. He’s terribly wounded, but…” She gestured at the floor, where the smears of Corien’s bloody body marked his exit. “It wasn’t enough. Audric, I’m so sorry.”
“Who? Who did you burn?”
“His name is Corien,” she managed. “He’s an angel, Audric. He turned the Sauvillier men against us… And Ludivine…”
Despair crushed her, left her choked with tears, and that was good, that was true and real, for when Audric turned to her, saw the blood dripping down her fingers and the mark of her father’s hand across her cheek, his shocked expression shattered, and he gathered her tightly in his arms.
“Thank God you’re all right,” he whispered into her hair, his voice thick. “Rielle, I thought I’d lost you.”
She wrapped her arms around him, shook her head against his che
st. “Never. Never.”
You lie, Corien’s voice whispered, thin with pain. Even now, you lie to him.
She felt Audric’s shoulders shake under her hands and helped him sink to the floor.
“It’s all right,” she whispered as he wept against her neck. She took comfort from knowing that at least this one small fact was not a lie, and the truest thing she knew in this place of death: “I’m here, Audric, and I love you.”
48
Eliana
“In these dark times, not even the light of the Sun Queen is as powerful as the light waiting inside our deepest hearts, if we only have the courage to look for it.”
—The Word of the Prophet
“Hurry up,” Eliana whispered, crouching behind a stack of crates marked with the Empire’s winged emblem. The dock was slick beneath her feet, the frigid air sour and salty. “They’re disembarking.”
Zahra sighed irritably. “I’m trying. There’s a lot going on here, you know. Wait…”
Eliana tensed. “Did you find him?”
“Perhaps. Stay here.” Zahra disappeared into the night.
Eliana watched two uniformed adatrox patrol the deck of the ship to her right. A distant boom sounded from far across the water. She peered around the crates, down the narrow pier, and out to sea. Another boom snapped like an approaching thunderclap, and then another, each accompanied by distant flares of light against the starlit sky.
The main fleet, steadily moving toward Astavar, had begun to fire its guns.
“Come on, come on,” Eliana muttered.
“The far ship,” Zahra said, appearing so suddenly that Eliana jumped. “The sleek black one. Smaller than the others, with a thick hull. That’s where they are.”
Eliana let out a slow breath. “That might be a general’s boat. Ready?”
Zahra put a shifting dark hand on Eliana’s wrist. “Remember what I told you about my limited power since the Fall. I will only be able to mask your presence for a few minutes, at the most, before needing to rest again.”
Uneasy, Eliana nodded. “Save it for when we’re actually on the ship. I can get there unseen on my own.”
She closed her eyes, said a quick prayer to Saint Tameryn that she would hide Remy and the others on the smuggler’s boat—and that they would reach Astavar before the fleet did.
“May the Queen’s light guide them home,” Zahra murmured.
Eliana shot her a look.
Zahra shook back her hair. “What, I can’t pray to you now that we’re friends?”
Eliana rolled her eyes, then darted out from behind the crates and followed the docks to the farthest pier, keeping to the shadows.
Suddenly Zahra moaned, “Oh no.”
“What?” Eliana crouched beside a railing draped with netting and wiped her brow. “Wait, where’s the ship?”
“Out there.” Zahra pointed at a black ship slicing out across the water.
“Oh, sweet saints,” Eliana hissed, “can nothing in this world be easy?”
She made sure her knives were secure, then dove into the freezing water.
• • •
“Hurry,” Zahra cried above the choppy waves. “They’re speeding up!”
Eliana kicked desperately, her teeth chattering, then threw herself at the ship’s hull and grabbed a black line hanging down from the deck. At her grip, it came loose from its knot, sliding fast, and she plunged back into the sea. But she held tight and pulled herself along the rope’s length until she reached the ship once more. Muscles burning from her frantic swim, she climbed.
“I insist upon hiding you now,” Zahra whispered, floating nervously around her.
Eliana glanced up at the deck. “Not yet.”
An adatrox leaned over the steel deck railing, peering down at the taut, swinging line. Before he could raise his weapon, Eliana launched herself over the railing, grabbed Nox from her boot, and plunged it into his stomach. She clamped her hand over his mouth, then staggered with him to the railing and shoved him over the side.
From down the deck came footsteps, approaching fast.
“Now?” Zahra asked.
Eliana hated to waste the precious few minutes Zahra would give her, but capture was not an option. “Now.”
“Follow me closely.” Zahra sped along the port-side deck, the world shifting in her wake. As long as Eliana stayed safe in that distorted space, no one could see her—though someone would see the trail of seawater she left behind soon enough. They passed adatrox staring blankly outside closed doors, patrolling side by side along the deck rails.
Zahra beckoned at a door ahead on their right. An adatrox stood beside it, revolver in hand.
Eliana flattened herself against the wall, hoping the shadows would hide her. Zahra moved away, then disappeared. Two seconds later, the adatrox stiffened, his already vacant eyes turning even glassier.
Eliana hurried over, glancing behind her as she ran. With Zahra occupied, she felt horribly exposed.
“The fat silver one,” Zahra whispered, through the adatrox’s mouth—the voice part wraith, part man.
Eliana grabbed the fat silver key from the ring at his belt, unlocked the door, and let herself inside. She waited just beyond the door for Zahra to drift through the wall and join her.
Zahra shuddered. “Never enter an adatrox’s mind if you can help it, Eliana. Nasty place.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” A vacant hallway stretched to either side. Moonlight pouring through the round portholes in the wall was the only illumination. “Where do we go?”
With one long arm, Zahra pointed down the narrow, dark stairwell in front of them. “He has him below.”
Rahzavel. Eliana hurried down the stairs.
At the bottom, Zahra buckled over with a gasp.
Eliana hid against the wall, looked quickly up and down the stairs. “What is it?”
“Simon’s in great pain,” Zahra muttered. “Hurry.”
Heart pounding, following Zahra’s whispered instructions, Eliana raced through a maze of corridors, staying in the wraith’s wake to avoid the adatrox bustling from cabin to cabin. It was unbearably dark and close belowdecks, even with flickering gas lamps screwed into the walls.
At last Zahra brought her to a solid metal door cloaked in shadows.
“In here,” Zahra whispered.
Eliana stared at the door’s handle, fear pounding hard against her breastbone. Arabeth in one hand, she held her breath and turned the handle.
The door opened easily.
“That seems ominous,” Zahra whispered.
Eliana stepped inside and closed the door behind them. It was a small room, dark and choked with hissing pipes.
And in the center of it, lit by a single hanging gas lamp, was Simon.
Eliana faltered at the sight of him. He had been bound with black rope to a pole that spanned from floor to ceiling, his arms wrenched cruelly behind him. His torso was bare and blood-spattered, the scarred flesh torn to pieces from new wounds. Carvings.
“Simon,” she whispered, moving slowly to stand before him. His head hung low, his eyes closed. The thought that he might already be dead brought a terrible sadness crashing down upon her, so unexpected that the shock of it made her throat ache. “Please be alive.”
His head jerked up at the sound of her voice. “Eliana?”
She saw his eyes and recoiled. They were bloodshot and yellowed, the brilliant blue irises turned dull and cloudy. She smoothed her thumb across one of the few patches of skin not covered with blood.
“You’re going to owe me so much after this.” Her voice came out shaky. “Do you know how cold that water is?”
“No. No!” Simon struggled against the ropes. “Get out of here, run!”
Beside Eliana, Zahra shifted in surprise. “Look out!”
&nbs
p; Eliana whirled to see Rahzavel emerge from the shadows, a thin sword in each hand. “Hello, Eliana,” he crooned. “Welcome to the end of your story.”
“Why didn’t I sense him?” Zahra whispered, her voice tight with anger under the hissing of the pipes. Then her form stiffened. “The Emperor’s touch is heavy upon him. We must leave, my queen, before Corien finds you.”
“Eliana, leave me!” Simon howled, yanking hard at his bindings.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Eliana watched Rahzavel approach, noticed the red sprays across his face and how his dark uniform glistened with blood—Simon’s blood, she assumed.
“How right you are,” said Rahzavel. “You know, don’t you, that if you try to kill me, you’ll fail, and if you make even one move at me—one fucking move!—then I’ll kill you first and make him watch.” He pointed his sword at Simon and grinned. “Either way, your little rescue mission will be for nothing.”
“Eliana, please, run!” Simon cried.
Rahzavel batted his eyelashes, whimpering. “Leave me! Oh, my darling, darling Eliana, save yourself!”
“Eliana,” whispered Zahra, floating tensely beside her.
“Shut up,” Eliana snapped, eyes trained on Rahzavel’s lithe form, watching how he moved, gauging the weight of his swords and the size of the room.
“No, I don’t think I will shut up, thank you.” Rahzavel sauntered around Simon. “In fact, I think I’d like to tell you a story. It’s about a bounty hunter who thought she was invincible, but really she was just a fool bitch who got lucky one too many times.”
“God, I’m sick of listening to you,” Eliana ground out, her body itching to move.
Then, a thought came to her. She looked to Zahra, raised an eyebrow.
“My queen,” Zahra murmured, “if I do this, I may not have the strength for anything else.”
“Do it, now.”
The wraith shot toward Rahzavel and dove straight into his smiling mouth.
Rahzavel staggered back, choking. He dropped his swords and clutched his face, stumbled back against a knot of piping.
“What is this?” His warped voice shook with the weight of Zahra’s anger. He clawed at his clothes, at his hair. “What is it, Dread? What have you done? What’s inside me? A wraith?”
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