“I’ve hoped for that,” she said, her voice cracking with exhaustion. None of her sleep felt true anymore. “That there was a reason for it all besides deceit.”
“I know,” said Corien, his voice a croon of sympathy. He touched her cheek, rearranged her mussed hair.
Fresh tears turned her white room shapeless and bright. “What a fool I am,” she whispered. “What I fool I have always been.”
“I can make this stop,” came his tender voice, wheedling and kind. “You know I can. All I ask for in exchange is—”
“I’ll die before I help you.” She glared at him through her tears, trembling with a sudden spike of rage. “You can send me a thousand sweet lies, a thousand nights of promises, a thousand dreams of everything I wish for and everyone I have ever loved, and my answer will be the same.”
His silence then was utter, terrifying in its stillness.
She waited, tense, trying to decipher the black expanse of his gaze, and when the burning of her eyes became unbearable and she blinked at last, he was gone.
• • •
When Eliana awoke, she was in the white room from her dreams.
“Good morning,” she called out cheerfully to her attendants. She stretched and yawned, then swung her legs out of bed and into the cool air. In her nightgown, she wandered the broad sunlit hallways of her home and wondered, as she always did, at her own wild fortune. She heard birdsong and hummed along. She plucked a red flower from a vase and inhaled its sweet perfume.
At last, she came to twin narrow doors of dark polished wood, their bronze handles fashioned into flaring wings.
Corien stood at the threshold, wearing a brocade coat of ebony and midnight blue. The embroidered pattern glinted iridescent, like a blackbird’s feathers.
Eliana’s joy died. A lie. It was a lie. This was not her home. It was Corien’s.
“No,” she said, and stepped back from him. Soon she would awaken. She knew the pattern by now. She would come to in her room and see him watching her, listen to him comfort and coax her.
Guards arrived at her elbows, forcing her forward into the shadowed receiving hall where they had first met.
“Another dream?” She laughed, grasping wildly for bravado. “I didn’t realize you would be so tiresome.”
Corien said nothing, gliding past her.
“I have a gift for you, Eliana,” he said smoothly, and as Eliana followed him, stumbling between her relentless angelic guards, two figures in the shadows came into view.
Simon, his eyes flat and cold, his body all tidy sharp lines in the black imperial uniform. Square shoulders, gold buttons, red sash.
And Remy, standing beside him, thin and pale and dressed in a plain tunic and trousers, the fabric torn and stained. Eyes wide, hands in chains, lip bloodied.
Eliana’s stomach lurched, but she stayed where she was. She clenched her fists and kept her voice calm. “I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen a hundred Remys, and some of them looked just like this.”
“Remy Ferracora,” said Corien, circling the room. “A famed storyteller, I’ve heard.”
“El?” Remy’s voice was hoarse. His eyes darted wildly from Eliana to Corien to the doors. “What’s happening? Where have they been keeping you?”
Eliana did not reply. She would not participate in this. Not again. Not ever. For too many nights, she had believed what she saw. She had attempted escape. She had been home in Orline with her father, with Harkan. She had been on a white shore with Simon, in a gray cottage that was all their own.
Never again. She swallowed hard. She said nothing.
Remy glanced fearfully at Corien. “Can I go to her?”
“Of course.” Corien gestured magnanimously. “Cherish this.”
Remy flew into her arms, but Eliana’s dreams had felt real before. She looked away, doing nothing, saying nothing. Corien was watching as he circled them, hands behind his back. There was a slight smile on his lips.
She would give him nothing.
“Where have you been?” Remy pressed his face against her arm. His thin body trembled. “I called for you, and you never came.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied distantly. “I’ve been busy.”
Remy pulled back to frown at her. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you care where I’ve been?”
Eliana refused to look at him. If she looked into the eyes of one more creation of Corien’s mind, he would win.
“Tell me,” she said, indifferent.
Remy paused, uncertain, and then said quickly, “It’s a place of many rooms. I don’t know how many. I can’t count them. It’s underground, dark and cold. I hear them all around me. Thousands of voices, screaming and crying and laughing.” He hesitated, glanced at Simon. “He brought me there, the first day he arrived. He put me in my room.”
Ah, and now Corien would bring Simon into the lie, try to draw her in that way. “I see. What room?”
“The place where I’m kept.” Remy stepped back from her, and now his voice turned fearful. “Why aren’t you looking at me?”
“Sad, isn’t it?” Corien approached, his face alight with glee. “To see her so changed? I suppose she doesn’t care about you anymore.”
Remy moved away from them both. “What have you done to her?”
“The question you should be asking,” said Corien, “is what will I do to you?”
Suddenly, Remy’s body seized where he stood. He jerked left, then right with choked cries, then fell, his jaw smacking hard against the floor, and began to scream.
For a moment, Eliana stared at him, frozen with horror as his screams tore at her and her blood roared.
Then she turned her back on him, looking instead at the closed doors.
“I won’t be your plaything anymore,” she said tightly.
Corien came around to stare at her, his expression one of mocking surprise. “And instead you will allow your own brother to be? I thought I knew you well.”
She stepped away from him. Behind her, Remy’s screams rent the air asunder. Her arms erupted in chills. She made for the doors. Any moment now, she would awaken in her bed, rested and triumphant, and Corien would be the fool, not her.
“The daughter of the noble Lightbringer,” he mused, keeping pace at her side. “Who would have thought you could be so cold?”
She reached the doors. When she spoke, her voice shook with anger.
“End this. Wake me.”
Corien leaned against the wall beside the doors. “Oh, Eliana. You don’t understand. Here, I’ll help you just a little. Every passing minute I remain in your brother’s mind is a year gone from his life. Maybe more. Every mind is different.” He shrugged. “Leave, if you wish.”
Eliana stared at the door, at her hand upon the bronze wing, and a slow, sinking dread came over her. A high whine sounded in her ears; she heard the sound of Remy’s skull hitting the floor. He was convulsing.
Corien’s face was full of pity she could not trust. He removed piles of gold from his pockets. “Here,” he said gently, and began to fasten the familiar thin chains around her wrists. The twin discs of her castings settled in her palms, smooth and cold.
Corien smiled. “There, you see? When the mood strikes, I can be most generous.”
She stared at him in horror, knowing this was just what he wanted, then turned back to Remy. Her castings were unblinking cold eyes against her sweating hands.
She crashed to her knees at Remy’s side, fumbled to lift him, held his head in her lap. His eyes were glazed; spit foamed at his lips. She held on to him, desperate to soothe his shaking, but he did not see her. He stared at the ceiling, clawing the air, and then he began clawing at himself, his fingernails tearing at his arms, his cheeks.
Eliana caught his arms, held him tight against her body.
“Release him,” she cri
ed. “What are you doing to him?”
“I’m forcing him to relive the moment my body was torn from me,” Corien said calmly. He was close now, watching them from above. “When I was driven into the Deep by your ancestors and stripped of all physicality. My skin flayed, my bones crushed, my veins sucked dry by the universe itself. The empirium dismantling me in an abyss where nothing is allowed to exist save for its own raw power.” He drew in a slow breath, exhaled. “As you might guess, it was an agony I cannot possibly describe. No one who hasn’t felt it can know.”
He crouched for a better look, his black gaze fixed on Remy’s thrashing body. Eliana sensed a great focus within him, a terrible concentration that connected everything he was to everything Remy was, small and helpless in her arms.
A faint smile played over Corien’s face. “After this, perhaps Remy can help me describe it to you. Our little wordsmith.”
Sitting on the ground with Remy dying in her arms, she realized with a sick jolt of fear that this was a horrible parallel to that moment in Karlaine: Remy’s abdomen torn and bloody, her own vision a field of empirium gold, her hands submerged in his wound, knitting him whole once more.
And Simon behind her, holding on to her, an anchor in that savage moment of awakening. Against her cheek, he had whispered, I’m not letting go.
“You know how to end this, Eliana,” Corien said quietly. “You know what you must do.”
She sucked in harsh breaths, fighting with all her might to still Remy’s body, but it was impossible. She could not fight Corien alone, not without using her power, and if she managed to summon it, Simon might manage to summon his.
“I will die before I help you,” she said through her tears.
Abruptly, Remy’s thrashing subsided.
He was limp in her arms, drenched with sweat. Trembling, he stared at the ceiling, his lips moving soundlessly.
“Remy, can you hear me?” She held his cheeks, pressed her forehead to his. Against the cold chains of her castings, his skin was blazing hot.
“Talk to me. Please, say something.”
He did, in a whisper so faint she had to ask him to repeat it. “Kill me.”
Eliana’s blood froze. “What did you say?”
His bleary gaze locked with hers. “Kill me, El. Then he can’t use me against you like this.”
From the shadows, Corien stretched, his joints popping. “God, it really can be hard work to dig and dig like this, to implant. To focus so singularly on one mind while also controlling thousands of others. Quite painful, really, if that’s a consolation of any kind?”
“He’s done nothing to you.” Eliana swiped at her eyes with shaking hands. “He’s an innocent.”
“So were many angelic children who suffered the same fate Remy just lived through,” Corien returned calmly. “And they didn’t wake up in their own bodies afterward, alive and whole. Isn’t he lucky?”
Then Simon spoke. “If you care about him, you’ll do as you’re commanded and spare him the pain.” The quiet whip of his voice shocked Eliana, jolting her. How could she ever have thought him warm, passionate, selfless? His mouth quirked cruelly, as if he knew her thoughts. “Or perhaps you don’t care about him,” he added. “Maybe you’re as good a liar as I am.”
“Why is he here?” she asked Corien, choking on her own voice. “I won’t beg him for help. I won’t beg either of you.”
Remy’s hand tightened around hers. A small smile touched his mouth.
Corien glanced Simon’s way. “I have to make sure he’s still mine, don’t I? I can understand how the two of you—his pretty little charge and her sweet pup of a brother—might melt the very coldest of hearts. So I’d like him to see every moment of this. I’d like to test him. He likes it when I test him.”
A private smile passed between the two of them. Eliana searched for the telltale adatrox gray in Simon’s eyes but saw only the familiar bright blue.
He was not under Corien’s control. He was, at last, utterly himself, and as Eliana sat with Remy limp in her arms, the truth of how alone she was in this place, how she had only herself to turn to for strength, settled against her tired bones like silt in dark water.
She turned to face Corien, a desperate plea on her lips.
He was there at once, kneeling at her side. “You can have everything I’ve shown you. Every happiness, every peace. I’ll end this, Eliana—this life of yours, all its violence, all its sacrifice. Your brother will be safe. He’ll be so happy, and so will you. Alive, healthy. Safe. Safe, can you imagine? For once in your life.”
He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I can end your fight, if you only do this final thing for me. Let your power rise, as it once did. Share it with Simon, as you once did.”
Even with Simon watching from the shadows, compliance hovered on Eliana’s lips. She could taste the words. Yes, she longed to say. You’ve won. Both of you have won.
But something stopped her, some last shred of defiance, and with a sharp sound of frustration, Corien gripped her head and shook her.
“I must go back to her, Eliana,” he whispered, tears in his eyes. “I must find her. Open up. Give us your power. Send me back.”
• • •
When Eliana awoke, she was in the white room from her dreams.
Corien sat beside her on the bed, and Simon stood behind him, waiting, and her dull-eyed adatrox guards surrounded the room, white-robed and silent.
Her castings, intact around her hands, were warming.
And Remy…Remy was nowhere. Remy was gone. What had he said? It’s a place of many rooms. It’s underground, dark and cold.
Imagining Remy trapped in such a place, years and years of his life torn from him, Eliana’s grief and anger became physical, an exhausted explosion of heat that swept through her body. She could not stop it from coming, nor did she want to. She wanted it to rise and consume her, the rooms in which she now lived, the palace that had become her entire world, and spit out the ashes like poison.
She pushed away from Corien, stumbled out of her bed, and fell hard to the floor. Her hands slammed against the white stone, and at the impact her castings bloomed with light. They were twin nets of fire around her hands, and she could sense, in that moment of white-hot clarity, countless cords of energy bursting furiously to life at her desperate, unknowing command.
The world shuddered—an earthquake, an explosion. The windows of her bedroom shook in their frames. Her guards stumbled.
In the silence that followed, Eliana huddled on the ground, her vision sparking with light, her fingers splayed across the stone floor. She panted, dizzy and heaving, every muscle trembling.
And in her palms, her castings buzzed—alive, now, and waiting.
At the sight of them, horror punched her in the gut, and her vision cleared as terrible understanding set in.
She immediately grasped for control. Anger coursed through her still, and a terrible sadness clutched painfully at her throat, but she could not allow that to beat her. Corien could weave a thousand beautiful lies for her every day for the rest of her life. It would not matter. She could not allow this to happen, not ever again. She imagined shoving against her castings, turning them cold and dark once more. She imagined her power returning to the deepest corners of herself, hidden and untouchable, like shadows retreating fast at midday.
But it was too late.
Beside a humming, pale ring of light, Simon stood with raised arms, both of them shaking with obvious effort. But when he stepped through the light and disappeared, he emerged the next moment at the far side of the room. He took a single staggering step before falling to his knees, gasping for breath, and when he looked up at Corien, it was with a tired triumph.
Such a little thing, a mere skip across a single room, and he had not touched the threads of time.
But the threads of space
he had found were brighter than those he had summoned upon her arrival in Elysium. Stronger, more reliable. It was a start, and Eliana had allowed it to happen. She had made it happen. She had lost her grip on her power, let it rise as she had when Remy lay bleeding in her arms, and again on the beach in Festival, and again—awfully, guttingly—in the gardens of Willow with Simon’s heart beating under her hands. That one small moment had been enough.
Her stomach plunged fast, a swift fall of ice.
Corien smiled, wide and slow.
“Excellent,” he said quietly. “Now we can begin.”
9
Navi
“The last queen of the Vespers? Oh, we all loved her. Her consort died at sea many years ago, left her a young widow, but she kept building her ships, and she raised seven children to be the sweetest little crownlings you could ever hope to meet. Then the Empire came to the capital, killed her and six of her babies on the steps of the Ivory Palace. But her seventh child, little Brizeya, was never found. Some think she was swept out to sea, where the waves laid her to rest beside her father. Others think she still lives, planning her revenge. I think of that poor child every night. If she does still live, I hope she never learns her true name. There’s nothing left for her here. There’s nothing left for any of us.”
—Collection of stories written by citizens of the occupied Vespers, curated by Hob Cavaserra
They had been traveling through the Kavalian Bog for six days and two hours, and Navi was convinced they would never find their way out.
Glaring ahead through the strange yellow-tinged fog that choked the air, Navi gripped her oar hard and rowed.
Ruusa, the head of her personal guard, did not like that Navi was rowing. She was one of only four of Navi’s personal guard who had managed to escape the Empire’s invasion of Astavar and flee to safety with Navi, her brother Malik, and their friend Hob.
It had been weeks since they had left Astavar, weeks since Navi’s healers had administered the crawler antidote Eliana and Harkan had stolen from Annerkilak. Ruusa, however, was still not used to the idea of Navi being well. She scolded Navi for working so hard at the oars. Navi would wear herself out. Navi must guard against exhaustion in case some dormant scrap of crawler serum remained in her blood.
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