Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  And then he woke with Eliana curled tightly against him, her face knotted with anger even in sleep. He hardly breathed as he watched her. The tangle of dark hair falling over her cheek, her chapped lips, her bruised and tender skin—not from his own hands, though it might as well have been.

  He would never forget her face that night. As they danced in the glittering Festival ballroom, she had clung to him. Afraid, but loath to show it. Only the tight, sweaty clamp of her hand around his as they waltzed betrayed her true terror. And then, on the admiral’s ship, he had stepped forward in his imperial uniform and had watched without feeling as all the light left her eyes.

  Without feeling. Yes, just as Ludivine had taught him, and right from the beginning, he had been an excellent student.

  And yet, there had been moments when he had nearly thrown it all to ruin.

  He carefully moved away from Eliana to swing his bare legs out of bed. He dragged his hands through his hair, then held his head and stared at the floor.

  He could not banish from his mind the image of her writhing as Corien crouched over her, mocking her screams with his own. The gallery of shattered glass around them, and Eliana reaching across the floor for him.

  She had screamed for him, wept his name, and he had only stood and stared, a pillar of faultless stone, awaiting his orders. In his mind, Ludivine had said nothing, but he had heard her all the same.

  Break, and doom us all.

  Simon’s heart began to race, his breathing to quicken. He raised his trembling arms into the air and nearly laughed aloud, because even with these memories battering his tired mind, his power sprang to life at once. Threads spun easily from the air and clung to his fingers like burrs drawn to the rub of linen. Energy pricked at him; the air hummed with distant song.

  He imagined the smooth stone corridor just outside his room. Low ceiling, iron brackets for torches. He would try that first, only a small jump from room to hallway.

  The empirium lies within every living thing, and every living thing is of the empirium, he recited, heat rising fast in his throat.

  Its power connects not only flesh to bone, root to earth, stars to sky, but also road to road, city to city.

  Moment to moment.

  But as Simon tried to focus his mind, it jerked and slipped away from him. The threads at his fingers flickered.

  He set his jaw, his body stiff with tension, his hands alight with power gone uncomfortably hot. He was not used to working magic, and he could not quite fix his thoughts on the hallway outside this room. His room. Many nights he had lain awake as a boy, cold with dread, wondering if Ludivine would come to him for the next morning’s lesson silently, in his mind, or instead come padding quietly down the hallway outside his room. A tray of breakfast in her hands, and her steady black eyes holding inside them some new terror meant to unravel him.

  He blinked sweat from his eyes. He didn’t even blame Ludivine for everything she had done. He blamed none of them—except for the angel licking his wounds up above and the monstrous queen he had so loved.

  Simon nearly laughed to think of her. The Kingsbane, they had called her. How he had once adored her. Even near the end, when nasty rumors flitted up and down the streets of me de la Terre and music halls rang with the sound of foul songs written to insult her, even then Simon had believed their Sun Queen would come back to them.

  But now his mind wouldn’t fix on the Kingsbane’s memory. He could barely recall her true name. He tried to force it, and his body twitched with pain.

  Ludivine had taught him all too well not to think of her. And Corien…Corien liked no one to think of her but him.

  Simon frowned at his rigid hands. They shook in the air as if straining against an unseen door. The threads brightened once, then faded.

  He wedged his fingers in his hair and bent over his knees, a scream of frustration lodged in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut against the tumult of his mind. Too many images, too many voices. Too many cuts, too many scars.

  Then something stirred behind him—a small sound, a question—and he held himself still, tense with wanting and hot with fear. When Eliana touched him, her soft hands tender on his arm, he let out a harsh sob. He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. But he could not look at her. Even should they have a lifetime of years to share between them, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to convince himself that he deserved to look at her.

  “I was trying to remember something,” Eliana said quietly after a time, “but I’m having trouble. I wonder if you could help me.”

  Simon closed his eyes. He could have listened to her speak for the rest of whatever life was left to him. Her voice held shadows, but it was still hers. How he had missed it. How he had agonized in his quiet room at the palace, trying to ignore the distant echo of her screams.

  “Of course I’ll help you,” he rasped.

  “Well, it’s a bit of a funny thing. When we first met, you and I, in my house in Orline. We fought. You wore your mask.”

  Simon reached for the memory. It was ragged, as were all the rest. Flashes of chaotic color trapped behind churning darkness. Ludivine shut up in her room, Corien shut up in his palace, each of them fighting the other—the ripples of their war battered him even now, protected in the deep heart of Ludivine’s home as he was.

  “I remember,” he said at last. “We fought. You were very good.”

  “I was,” Eliana agreed, “but here’s the thing I can’t quite recall.” She paused. “How many times did I punch you in the face? Three? Five?”

  Harsh laughter burst out of him. He was not used to laughing. It sat strangely in his throat, left him dizzy.

  “I pulled a gun on you,” he remembered. “You called me a cheater.”

  “You were,” she said lightly. “I would have beaten you otherwise.”

  “Unlikely.”

  There was a pause. Then Eliana moved closer to him, her leg touching his. “I’ve tried to remember other things.”

  He knew what she was doing. He felt the steady heat of her power reaching for him, as if she were indeed the sun come down to warm him. Already he could feel his power rising to meet hers. The air around him began to clear, and his thoughts along with it.

  He blew out a long breath and raised his arms once more.

  “What other things?” he asked. Light bloomed softly at his fingertips. A good burn.

  “What your father’s name was. You told me once.”

  “Garver,” he replied. The name dropped awkwardly from his tongue. His father’s face was but a faint smear of memory. “Garver Randell.”

  “He was a healer.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a marque, like you.”

  Simon nodded.

  “Tell me, Simon,” Eliana said gently.

  “Yes,” he replied. “A marque, like me.” He licked his dry lips. “What else do you want to remember?”

  “The names of our friends you shot at Festival,” she said without judgment.

  Still he struggled to speak. “Darby. Oraia. Ester. Dani, and her son, Evon.”

  “And many others.”

  “Yes.”

  “All in service of me.”

  “Always, Eliana.” His voice caught on thorns. Always. A cruel word, a lying word.

  He held his breath, waiting for her to speak again. Beyond his hands spun a dazzling circle of light. Threads, waiting to be traveled.

  “I’m also trying to remember what it felt like, that first night we were together,” she whispered at last.

  “It was everything,” Simon answered. He heard the brittle sound of his voice as if he no longer belonged to his own body and was listening from somewhere distant, somewhere golden and warm within the light of their rising power. “You were everything that night. You were the entire world, and I was safe inside you. For once
, I felt safe.”

  Eliana slowly wrapped her arms around his torso, then pressed her cheek between his shoulder blades and held him.

  “So did I,” she whispered.

  Simon let himself live there for a moment, then stood and drew on his trousers. He took the feeling of her quiet embrace with him through the threads and emerged in the room’s far corner with her name on his lips. The threads’ light snapped closed at his heels, throwing off a slight bitter tinge of smoke.

  He turned to find Eliana watching him. The sight of her nearly felled him. Bare in the rumpled blankets, echoes of violence marking her skin, she held her head high and looked at him steadily. The air around her glimmered with power. A queen in his bed, lighting the world awake.

  It took everything in him to turn away from her, and try again, farther and more easily each time, until he had traveled to the far end of Ludivine’s compound and back to his room in the space of a breath.

  He sank to the cold floor, shaking with things he could not name. He heard Eliana rise from the bed, tug on his discarded tunic, and come to him. She knelt and touched his face. So careful, the fall of her fingers on his skin, as if afraid he would fly away from her. That she would wake, and it would be another dream sent by the enemy.

  Simon glared hard at the floor. What lay ahead terrified him. Only twice in his life had he attempted to travel through time, and both instances had ended in disaster.

  “When I was younger,” he said thickly, “I didn’t need this kind of help to work magic.”

  “There isn’t anything wrong with needing help.”

  “No, there isn’t. I had just forgotten what it felt like to receive it.”

  He sensed a change, then, a shift in the battle that seethed at the perimeter of his mind. He knew what it meant and raged against it. He drew Eliana to him roughly, and she grabbed him just as hard and held him close. Her breath was hot in his hair, her body too thin under his hands.

  “We are more than our anger,” she said, her voice low. They were the words she had said in Willow, the gardens soft with rain around them, her hands warm on his scarred chest. The memory drifted sweetly, the last leaf falling before winter.

  “We are more than what has been done to us,” he said in reply, and felt her smile against his neck.

  The door opened. One of Ludivine’s nameless acolytes, unabashed, crisply efficient. Eliana whirled to glare at the man over her shoulder.

  “Yes?” she snapped, and the sharp sound of her anger made Simon ache with love.

  “She says it is time,” the acolyte said, looking each of them in the eye. “He has found us.”

  41

  Eliana

  “It isn’t the concept itself of threading through time that so frightens those who decry the practice. Rather, their fear stems from the potential repercussions, the unpredictability. Time is not a clock that can be calibrated, no matter how skilled the traveler. Time is endless, brutal, and as untameable—and changeable—as the sea.”

  —Meditations on Time by Basara Oboro, renowned Mazabatian scholar

  Eliana hurried into Ludivine’s favored chamber, Simon close behind her. They both wore fresh clothes provided by the acolytes. Eliana’s coat buttoned at her shoulder and fell to her knees, flexible enough for her to move but thick enough to offer some protection. She wore a hefty weapons belt, laden with daggers, and felt a pang for her own lost knives.

  She glanced at Simon only once. Moments ago he had been holding her, his face open and soft. Now, he was armored for battle. A long coat like Eliana’s, and beneath it a vest of mail. Revolver at his hip, knives in his boots and in sheaths strapped to his forearms.

  Inside the room, Ludivine sat with Remy as she had with Eliana—in two chairs facing each other within a wide triangle of three flickering candles.

  Ludivine glanced up, her skin pale as bone. Eliana startled to see how much she had changed in only a few hours’ time. Shadows darkened the hollows of her face, and sweat dotted her upper lip.

  But her voice was still as cool water. “Is everything working as it should?”

  Eliana could have happily struck her again for that. Such coldness in her voice, as if she didn’t know exactly what had happened, as if she could not feel the state of their hearts.

  “All is as it should be,” Simon replied, his gaze bright as lit steel.

  Ludivine didn’t flinch, but Eliana heard her voice, soft and sad in her mind. I’m sorry, little one. I was not always as I am now. I wish you could have known me when my heart was still whole.

  Eliana sent her nothing in reply. No pity, no kindness. She had no room for it. Her body was taut and trembling; she pushed hard against herself as if fighting a rising flood. She heard soft footsteps at the room’s entrance and glanced behind her to see Navi and Ysabet, Patrik and Hob, Malik, and several others just behind them.

  Navi reached for her. Eliana gratefully took her hand, then faced Ludivine once more. She didn’t look directly at the back of Remy’s dark head, too frightened to think about what he and Ludivine might have been discussing.

  “Your acolyte said Corien has found us.” She bit off each word, teeth hard and tongue sharp. “Now what would you have us do? Where is he?”

  Ludivine stood. Serene, she breathed in and out, then tilted her head slightly, as if listening for a distant sound.

  Eliana tensed. A thick moment passed, and then she heard it: a rumbling vibration, a distant high shriek. Faint but unmissable. The air tightened, grew still. It was the moment before a storm broke open.

  Behind Eliana, the others shifted nervously.

  Ysabet marched forward, hands on hips, eyes narrowed. “She’s done something. Can you feel that? The stone is vibrating under our feet.” She jerked her head. “What have you done, angel?”

  Beside Eliana, Simon shifted. She glanced at him. He would not look at her, but she sensed it was now for a different reason.

  Ludivine gestured at the two acolytes flanking the door. At once, they began emptying the room—the chairs, the carpet, the pedestals on which the candles burned. Only the candles themselves remained, and Katell’s sheathed sword.

  Remy silently came to Eliana’s side, found her free hand. The ache that now lived in her throat blossomed ruthlessly. If they did this, none of it would matter. Not Vaera Bashta, not Invictus, not the hard new glint of Remy’s eyes. He would be born to Ioseph and Rozen Ferracora and live a happy life in the city of Orline, writing stories and baking cakes. She refused to acknowledge any other possibility.

  “This chamber lies at the heart of a labyrinth,” said Ludivine, very still as her acolytes bustled around her. “There are dozens of chambers, hundreds of passages. Some lead to rooms. Others lead nowhere. This will buy us some time. The cruciata are intelligent, but their bloodlust dulls their wits.”

  Navi drew a sharp breath.

  Just behind Eliana, Simon stood quietly, hands fisted at his sides.

  Tentatively, Eliana reached for Ludivine’s mind. At once, Ludivine showed her the truth, her black eyes unblinking and unashamed.

  “You’ve brought the cruciata underground,” Eliana whispered. Shrill, rasping cries, still distant, followed her words, as if the beasts had heard their name.

  Someone behind her—Hob, she thought—muttered a sharp curse.

  “Why?” Navi whispered harshly. “How?”

  The chamber thrummed with rising vibrations. Something was approaching them, some ruthless marching weight. The beasts? Or worse?

  Eliana’s stomach dropped. Clarity swept through her, heat chased by cold.

  “Because the angels are coming for us,” she said, “and the cruciata will protect us.”

  “Protect us?” Patrik scoffed, glaring at Ludivine. “They have no love for us, and now two enemies will soon be upon us, thanks to you.”

  It had been so long
since Eliana had seen Patrik that the sight of his furious pale face rested strangely on the surface of her mind, like oil topping water. He was familiar and yet not, flesh and blood and yet a memory. He glared at Ludivine, his ruined eye hidden behind a frayed black patch. And there was Hob, tall and frowning at his side, fresh scars on his dark-brown skin. Navi, her eyes bright with tears, her mouth thin with anger. Ysabet behind her, looking ready to tear out Ludivine’s throat with her teeth. Malik at the door, his face so like Navi’s—lovely straight nose, warm dark eyes. And crowding in the hallway, everyone Navi had brought with her across the ocean. Dozens of refugees and sailors and hardened fighters, all now trapped underground.

  Looking at them, a slow tingle of horror spreading across her skin, Eliana understood why Ludivine had waited to guide her here. She had been waiting for Navi’s little army to arrive—a disposable infantry. Help is coming, the Prophet had told her. Help is close.

  Ludivine smiled faintly at everyone gathered. “It’s time. Hurry. She needs you.”

  One by one, their faces changed. A ripple of feeling passed through them like a shimmering wave of heat. Fear hardened into anger. Tears dried and mouths set. Patrik was the first to turn away and draw his sword, pushing past the others to hurry down the hallway. Hob followed shortly after him, then Malik, then Ysabet, with a ferocious growl.

  Navi choked out a sob, pulled Eliana hard into her arms. A moment later, she was gone, the last of them to leave the chamber. Eliana stood frozen, the sounds of their war cries muffled by the blood pounding in her ears. Another breath, and her dread lifted. Sound came crashing back to her. She called Navi’s name, tried to run after them. Hands pulled her back against a strong chest. Too enraged to scream, she shoved Simon away with a burst of power from her castings. She didn’t realize she had tackled Ludivine to the ground and started punching her until Remy and Simon yanked her away.

  “Every moment you helped me, every day you worked with me to strengthen my power,” she spat, “you knew what you would do. You saw Navi and the others coming to Elysium and guided them down here. You knew you would send them to fight the cruciata, sacrifice them without a thought if it bought us some time. You knew, and you never said anything to me.”