Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  But Corien held him fast.

  “I see it now, in your face,” he whispered. His black gaze raked across Simon’s every scar. “You are the man I saw when Rielle’s daughter came to her that day, on the mountain…” A single soft laugh. Something cleared in his face, and Simon did not understand what it meant, nor did he comprehend anything Corien was saying.

  “You are Simon Randell,” said Corien. He touched his temple, his slender fingers trembling. “Of course you are. And now you are here.” He kissed Simon’s brow, and at the touch of his cold lips, a warmth bloomed in Simon’s body, steadying him.

  “And now,” Corien whispered, “you are mine.”

  “Perhaps I can reawaken my magic, my lord,” Simon blurted eagerly. Something had happened between them, though Simon did not know what. All he knew with certainty was that he would never be alone again. “I’ve tried, but alone I’ve failed. Maybe with you…”

  He stopped, flushing under Corien’s keen black gaze. What did Corien see when he looked at him? For the first time, Simon felt the humiliation of his ruined skin.

  But Corien only held out his hand, and with the other, he gently lifted Simon’s chin. Simon squirmed in his grip.

  “Yes, Simon.” Corien smiled. His fingers closed around Simon’s own. “Maybe with me.”

  Then Corien’s mind claimed him.

  The pain came without warning. Simon was staring up at Corien, and then Simon was screaming, but no sound escaped his lips, for Corien would not permit it to. Something—some awful, insistent presence—was splitting Simon’s skull apart, tearing at each thought he had ever known, each memory living inside him. Searching for truth. Hunting for lies. It was unlike anything he had ever felt. Before, Corien had barely swept his mind.

  Now, he was unmaking it.

  “I am sorry, Simon.” Corien smiled down at him, watching him writhe in his arms. “The world is a strange place, and there is no stranger part of it than the twists and turns of time. I must know for certain that you are mine and mine alone. I must know I can trust you.”

  Then he pressed his cheek to Simon’s brow and whispered, “We have much work to do, you and I.”

  It was the last sound Simon heard before his mind shattered.

  1

  Rielle

  “‘But how did it happen?’ many have asked. ‘How was one zealot able to convince all of angelic kind to turn on their human brothers and sisters? We all share the world. Why was he not deemed a lunatic and punished for his bloodlust?’ The answer is simple: Kalmaroth was an irresistible force never before seen in our world—and I pray he will never be seen again.”

  —The writings of Zedna Tanakret, Grand Magister of the Baths in Morsia, capital of Meridian, Year 287 of the Second Age

  Rielle kept her face hidden in Corien’s cloak.

  She pressed her nose to the fine dark cloth and inhaled his scent, holding her breath as long as she could. His smell soothed her; she devoured it.

  She peered out from under the cloak’s hood as Corien killed each person in the merchant’s party. It was swift, efficient work, and she watched it through a glaze of calm that, distantly, disturbed her.

  But when she thought about that too hard, it hurt her head, so she decided to stop thinking about it and instead watched Corien kill.

  There were four men, all of them wearing heavy coats and boots to ward off the November chill, and they never raised a weapon against him. Why would they? He was a vision, approaching them with his wide smile and his cheekbones that seemed cut from pale glass, his black hair clinging to his forehead and his slender white frame shivering in the snow. A piteous figure, and lovely too. It was no wonder that the merchants had drawn their carriage to a halt when they spotted him on the roadside, waving his sputtering squat torch like a beggar. He could have forced them to stop, but he delighted in being able to manipulate them even without using his angelic power.

  She waited until all the men were dead, their frames bent in the dirt and their frozen faces contorted with horror, before lowering her hood. One man lay near the carriage, arms outstretched as if he had been trying in his last moments to scramble inside.

  Rielle stepped over his wide, staring eyes, gray and glassy, and climbed inside the carriage with a tiny satisfied smile. It felt like an odd sort of smile, affixed to her face rather than summoned by her own will. But it was warm inside the shabby carriage, and she did hate feeling cold.

  She pitied the man though. She pitied all of them. At least she thought she did. She couldn’t think much about anything without her thoughts veering off into a calm gray sea draped with fog. She didn’t understand where the fog had come from, but she liked when it enveloped her. It was warm and still, like an old quilt.

  Touching her temple, blinking hard, she recalled, with monumental effort, the pain that had drummed against her skull as Corien and Ludivine warred inside her thoughts these recent weeks. If either of them had turned the full force of their angelic might upon her with an aim to kill her from the inside out, they could have done so easily. The pain of dying in such a way would be extraordinary.

  No, Rielle did not envy these men.

  But she was safe now, far from Ludivine, and she hadn’t heard her loathsome voice in some days now, and of course Corien would never hurt her. Even thinking of him mollified her, like the embrace of sleep after a long day.

  Rielle peered out through the frosted window and into the forest, an impenetrable black on a storming, moonless night.

  It was foolish to worry that anyone else had seen them. Corien had told her this, and she repeated his words to herself. This stretch of the eastern Celdarian border was remote, he had reminded her, the unkind terrain dense with forests, mountains, and cliffs. Roads were few and ill kept. And the coming storm was rumbling closer, spitting snow and lightning. Any traveler of sound mind would stay home, safe and warm.

  And yet, Rielle realized, her thoughts moving sluggishly as she tried to order them, the dead merchants had braved the night, eager for coin. If anyone else came upon them, if they caught a glimpse of her face and knew who she was, they would interfere. They would send word back to the capital. They would try to capture her in hopes of a reward from the crown, and she would have to dispose of them, ruin their trail of whispers and messages, and that could become…untidy.

  I would let no one escape us. Corien’s thoughts slid inside her mind like the glide of a palm across her skin. If anyone saw you, I would kill them, or you would, and I would glory in the sight of you.

  She blinked up at him. Would I?

  You would, and I would kiss you after, he said, and then came the thought of him kissing her brow and her cheeks, and if her heart was still in uproar, she could not feel it and didn’t care to.

  She was content, wrapped in Corien’s cloak. She wished to live forever inside it.

  Across from Rielle, the little Kirvayan queen Obritsa climbed into her own seat, her face pinched, strips of her pale-brown skin visible above her ragged collar, under her fall of white hair. Corien insisted upon saving Obritsa’s strength for at least another week and traveling by foot instead. The girl was exhausted, having threaded herself, Artem, and Corien across the continent to Celdaria in time for the royal wedding.

  A marque, secretly pretending true humanity as part of a revolution brewing in Kirvaya.

  Rielle barely noticed the girl. She smiled a little to be polite, which was more than the staring little brat deserved. Then she shifted sleepily within the voluminous folds of Corien’s cloak and reached out to him. He was outside the carriage giving orders to Artem, Obritsa’s devoted guard, who would drive the restless team of snow-dusted horses onward and east.

  Hurry and come back to me, she pleaded. Please, Corien.

  His voice teased. So easily can your loneliness best you. Patience, my lovely one.

  And all at once, her ca
lm vanished.

  Suddenly, the comforting fog was gone, and Rielle was alone, trapped with her own thoughts somewhere deep in her own dark mind. She tightened her grip on Corien’s cloak, panic crawling up her arms. Her body felt swollen and heavy, and she didn’t understand why. She stared at Obritsa, who watched her, frowning, and then Rielle looked away and shut her eyes, for she could not quite remember where she was, and this frightened her. She wondered if she was locked away, caged in a high tower, or if she was in a carriage in eastern Celdaria, or perhaps out on a soft gray sea with no one and nothing for thousands of miles.

  In this empty space, a sudden roar of memories swelled, and Rielle’s eyes filled with tears.

  It was not so long ago—only six days past—that she had stood in the gardens behind Baingarde. She remembered this now. She saw it plainly. Amid the mounting haze of this fear she could not explain, figures manifested. Audric. Her king. Her husband, now. Her dearest love. Only six days ago, he had turned away from her, his face twisted with loathing. He had commanded her not to touch him.

  You’re the monster Aryava foretold, he had said. A traitor and a liar.

  And what home was there in the world for a traitor? What heart would spare love for a liar?

  She touched her temples. Her mind whirled with bewildering images, each fighting to rise faster than the last, and she could not find her breath. Corien? Where are you?

  Rielle, I’m sorry, I was gone for too long, came his voice, and then he was climbing inside the carriage to greet her.

  She reached for him, feeling pathetic and small, and yet she could not stop herself. The memory of Audric’s scorn, his disdain and hatred, was too close, too fresh. She had shed her wedding gown some miles back in the woods and now wore an ill-fitting woolen dress Corien had stolen from some farmer’s daughter he had found coming home alone from the market. The wool was scratchy and far too hot. She raked her fingers across her skin. She remembered the chaos of the capital as she had fled from it, thousands of people reeling from the revelations in the vision Corien had shown them.

  No, not a vision—a truth.

  Their new queen had killed the father of Ludivine and Merovec. She had killed her own father, and her mother too. She had killed their late beloved king, Audric’s father.

  And she had lied about it. She had lied, and had nevertheless been crowned by the Archon’s own holy hands.

  Rielle shut her eyes, her lips pressed together in a tight line. Perspiration beaded at her hairline. A din of screaming voices circled back to her—those belonging to the people she had sworn to protect, first as Sun Queen and then as the newly crowned queen of Celdaria. She had sworn this, and then she had abandoned her people. Their voices calling out her name were cruel black birds of memory winging in tight spirals on the winds of her mind:

  Kingsbane!

  Kingsbane!

  Kingsbane!

  She twisted Corien’s cloak hard. She was not ashamed of who she was, of what she was, and yet fear and guilt flooded her like twin rivers set afire, and she did not understand where she was now, or who this girl was who stared so closely at her, or where her own sweet gray fog had gone, so calm and quiet.

  “Listen to me.” Cool hands cupped her face, and when she opened her eyes, Corien was there, dipping his head to kiss her. He gathered her into his lap and held her close until her trembling ceased.

  “I hate them,” she whispered against his neck. “And yet I ache to think of leaving them all, of running away in the night like a villain.”

  Corien’s laughter was soft. “You are a villain. At least in their simple eyes, you are. Let them think that. Let them hate you. They are nothing, and you know it.”

  “Yes, but…”

  She stopped before the words could form, but of course Corien had already heard them.

  “You miss him?” he asked quietly.

  Rielle felt the girl’s sharp eyes upon them. Obritsa was her name, she remembered, her mind roaring back to itself with Corien there beside her. Rielle pressed her palms against the solid broad reach of Corien’s chest and resisted the urge to fling out her hands, scorch Obritsa’s impertinent, keen-eyed face, and teach her a lesson. The thought cheered her; she’d forgotten, in her fear, that she could scorch. She could maim and pulverize. She could unmake.

  Hush, now. Corien’s voice stroked her silent. The hot ripples of anger rising beneath her skin flattened and stilled. We need her, he reminded her. Gentle, Rielle. Do not overtax yourself. Hear me. Hush, my love.

  Rielle’s thoughts smoothed out. Contented, heavy-lidded, she heard the distant crash of gray waves and felt faint with relief. Fog crept over her eyes, and she welcomed its softness. It was unnecessary, even silly, to get angry right now and call upon her power, or to be afraid, for of course she would always be safe with Corien. She understood that now. She remembered it.

  She mumbled in mind-speak that Obritsa would have to learn not to stare and would also have to learn to transform her constant haughty expression into something less imperious, something more fitting of a servant. The moment they arrived in the north, Rielle would order Obritsa elsewhere, out of her sight, until she was needed again.

  Of course, Corien said mildly. But now is not the time. I asked you a question, my love. Don’t you remember?

  Did you? She leaned her heavy head against his shoulder.

  Do you miss him? Answer me, he said lightly. Answer me now.

  Rielle had trouble scraping together her thoughts, but this troubled her only briefly, for the fog was creeping fast through her mind, sweeping away all worries. I have known him all my life, she said at last.

  And you love him still, and that fire cannot simply be snuffed out overnight. Corien stroked her hair, which fell wild and uncombed down her back. He sighed, sounding tired. I understand that. But you see now, don’t you? You see the truth of him.

  For a long moment, she did not speak. It was so difficult to think.

  “He hates me,” she whispered at last against the curve of Corien’s ear. “He does not understand me.”

  Corien kissed the bridge of her nose. “He is too small to understand you. All of them are. They see a monster. I see a god in the shape of a girl.” His hand slid down her arm to rest on her hip. “They see a beast to be tamed. I see a divine creature aching to be set free.”

  Rielle’s eyes drifted shut as he kissed her brow. Through her mind’s fog came images—secret visions of Corien’s ardor, and how he longed to demonstrate it, and how passionately he wished they were alone.

  But she could not fall with him into the haven of their shared thoughts. Not yet. She had one question, and she fought the fog pulling her under long enough to ask it.

  “Tell me this: Is he safe?” Rielle’s words tumbled out clumsily. “Is he well?”

  A tiny ripple passed from Corien to her, along the sweet cord of their linked minds, as if a small pebble had been thrown into still water.

  “He is safe.” Corien said nothing else aloud, but Rielle heard him clearly inside her mind.

  Someday, he told her, and soon, I hope you will understand what must be done.

  “I wish I didn’t love him,” she replied, her voice the thinnest of threads. A strange sleep she did not particularly want was pulling her under. “I wish to worry for him no longer. Someone who hates me as he does deserves no piece of my heart.”

  I can help you with that. If you’ll allow it.

  Her exhausted body screamed in protest as she pulled back from Corien to study his face. Her mind was a confusion of hurt and weariness. She burned to no longer be walking or riding in a rattling carriage. A carriage—how strange. Why a carriage? She tried to ask and found she could not speak. She wanted to rest. She wanted to kiss him.

  A small cord tugged insistently at her from a distant corner of her mind—the darkest, smallest corner that existed beh
ind a locked door to which she no longer had the key. Which was troubling. Wasn’t it? Shouldn’t she possess the keys to her own mind?

  But when her gaze met Corien’s, her discomfiture disappeared, and there was a spray of clean gray sea foam against her face, and the fog of clouds drifting above it kissed her knees, her belly, the back of her neck. Her shoulders slumped. Her frown slipped. The empirium, forever simmering just beneath her skin, lapped steadily at her edges, and the thought occurred to her, in a quiet bloom of happiness, that she never again had to keep that powerful tide from rising. Not here. Not with Corien.

  I can help you with that, he had told her. If you’ll allow it.

  He would help her forget her old life. He would help her learn to unlove Audric.

  I see a divine creature aching to be set free.

  “I’ll allow it,” she said at last, and then slipped so swiftly into sleep that her last thought before the dimness took her was one of alarm, quickly forgotten.

  2

  Eliana

  “Tameryn, Tameryn, Tameryn. I say her name every night before sleep, in hopes that the word, like a prayer, will bring forth some goodness from the empirium, some kind force that will cushion the blow of my endless nightmares. Savrasara, Tameryn, wherever you are. Come back to me. We need you. I need you. You carry my heart, and without you I am lost. What have we done, Tam? My God, what have we done?”

  —From the journals of Saint Nerida the Radiant, written during the Angelic Wars, stolen from the First Great Library of Quelbani

  Onboard Admiral Ravikant’s prized warship, in a small holding cell in the vessel’s bowels, Eliana rubbed her wrists raw.

  Once—only weeks before—those wrists had worn slender golden chains and flat, round castings she had fashioned herself at the Forge of Vintervok.

  Now, they wore chains of a different sort. For the first few days aboard the ship, which she largely spent heaving up her guts onto the wooden floor of her cell, Eliana had ignored the new weight on her arms, the metal links rendering her helpless and inert. She had lain in her own sick, refusing to eat the food the admiral’s soldiers brought her, until at last she had been hauled upright and brought to a cargo hold, where they had stood her atop a grate and dumped bucket after bucket of icy-cold seawater over her until she stood clean and shivering, her teeth chattering. They had unbound the chains then—three silent adatrox, as two black-eyed angelic soldiers stood smugly at the door—and they had stripped her of her sodden clothes and dressed her in fresh ones. A large linen shirt, woolen trousers.