The archer’s expression tightened. “Oh, yes. Her angelic nature will ensure that this body is restored. Blightblades do, however, leave a scar that is, apparently, quite painful even for an angel to bear.” His hard mouth quirked in a tiny smile. “And no amount of angelic might can cure it.”
“So she’ll be in pain forever?” asked Audric.
The archer inclined his head.
“She won’t,” Rielle declared. “I’ll mend her scar and take away her pain. I’ll make her whole again.”
“Is that truly possible?” Ilmaire asked. “Can you heal wounds as well?”
Rielle stalked back to Ludivine and, ignoring Audric’s protests, yanked the arrow from Ludivine’s body. Her body jerked, inanimate, and Rielle’s throat soured with revulsion.
“Blightblades are very difficult to shatter,” offered the archer.
Rielle smirked. Her vision burned gold. “Not for me.”
Then she flung the arrow to the ground and flicked her wrist, tugging sharply on the air.
Hot jolts of power surged down her arm and out her fingers, making the air quiver with heat. The blade shattered into dozens of tiny shards; the bright copper metal turned dull.
A shifting dark shape, fainter than a shadow, long and patchy, rose swiftly from the arrow’s ruins and surged across the white sand toward Ludivine’s body, like a parched creature desperate for water. From within it, an alien voice cried out mournfully, uttering words Rielle could not comprehend. They held Ludivine’s voice and also another—deeper, older, and heavy with sadness.
A canvas of shadows shifted across Ludivine’s body, like a woman-shaped mask hugging its mate, and then, in an instant, the shape disappeared. Ludivine’s eyes flew open. She gasped for air in Audric’s arms.
“I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” she sobbed at once, her eyes wide and frantic. She clutched Audric’s arms as if struggling not to drown, and her cries of despair tore at Rielle’s heart.
“Careful now.” Audric wiped his face with his sleeve, then ripped the sash from his coat and used it to clean the blood from her neck and shoulder. “Gently, Lu. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Oh, God help me, I’m so sorry.” Ludivine turned into his chest, shivering. “Don’t let them… Not again, not ever again. Rielle? Where are you, my darling?” Blindly, she reached back for her, and Rielle moved past her shock to kneel at her side. Ludivine grabbed her arm and pulled both her and Audric close. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Please don’t let them take me from you. Not again, not again. I can’t go back, I can’t be that again…”
Rielle held her awkwardly, unable to speak. Perhaps she should have been repulsed, or concerned about what the Borsvall contingent would think of these revelations. But she cared only about this—her, Ludivine, Audric. Together and safe. She pressed her lips to Ludivine’s golden head, trying to ignore the horrific shimmering bruise she could see blooming on Ludivine’s shoulder beneath the torn fabric of her gown.
Audric looked back at the archer. “You have healers here, I assume?”
The archer was watching them thoughtfully. “We do.”
“Then take us to them at once.”
“They won’t be able to eliminate her pain,” the archer replied, sounding pleased. “She will carry that with her for all her endless, stolen days.”
“They will do what they can until…” Audric glanced at Rielle.
“Until I can do it instead,” she finished for him. “Which I will, with time. I’ll do it. I’ll learn. I know I can do it.” She glanced up at the others—Ilmaire, watching in fascination; Ingrid, suspicious and horrified; the archer, wholly unimpressed. Rielle set her jaw. “You doubt me.”
“No, Lady Rielle,” the archer replied. “I fear you.”
He stepped aside, gesturing toward the dark tree line. “Follow me. And fear not. My archers won’t shoot again.”
As they moved away from the water, Corien’s appreciation brushed against Rielle like a caress of cool fingers. Every time he touched her, every time he spoke, his presence felt stronger in her mind, as if he were slowly regaining his footing.
I almost wish they would shoot, he murmured. Just to see what you’d do.
Rielle, imagining it, smiled to herself, and avoided Ludivine’s curious, bleary gaze. So do I.
8
Eliana
“The first human to manifest elemental powers was a girl, a sunspinner only nine years of age, and though her name has been lost to the passage of time, you will find her spoken of often in ancient texts from the First Age. In those pages she is known only as the Child of the Dawn.”
—A Concise History of the First Age, Volume I: The Early Days of Humanity by Alistra Zarovna and Veseris Savelya of the First Guild of Scholars
For a moment, Eliana could neither speak nor move. The impossibility of seeing Harkan sitting there in Navi’s palace, looking so very much himself—the same golden-brown skin she had grown up seeing every day, the same black hair and large dark eyes—left her feeling as if she had stepped out of her skin to hover somewhere above the ground. As she had existed in the Deep of Zahra’s memory—stripped of her body, but this time without pain and without fear.
“El?” Harkan’s voice was hoarse, and familiar and beloved, and when he smiled, the new shadows under his eyes diminished. “El, you’re staring.”
With a small cry, she hurried forward, crashed to her knees at his side, and wrapped him in her arms so fiercely that he hissed in pain. “El, that’s a bit tight.”
Beneath the stench of travel and sweat was the familiar warm smell of Harkan’s skin, and suddenly, with her eyes squeezed shut, Eliana was back home in Orline, in the candlelit haven of his bedroom. Knots buried in her chest and shoulders loosened, pulling tears from her eyes.
“I don’t care,” she said, her voice muffled in his collar. “And I’m never letting go, either.”
“So I’m to exist for the rest of my life with you hanging off my neck?” He cupped the back of her head with one hand, found her fingers with the other. With her cheek pressed against his throat, she felt his voice, thick with emotion, rumbling in her bones. “I think I can live with that.”
Faintly, she heard King Tavik urging everyone out of the room, and looked up just as Simon turned to follow them. Remy bounced at his side, tugging on his arm.
“Did he tell you how he escaped Orline?” Remy’s eyes shone. “Did you see that revolver? He stole it from an adatrox lieutenant.”
Simon seemed not at all perturbed to have Remy dancing around him like an overexcited puppy. “Is that so?”
“Did you know Harkan used to write stories with me? Did you know Saint Tokazi is his favorite saint?”
“No, I hadn’t heard that.” Simon placed a hand on Remy’s shoulder to direct him gently out of the room.
Just before he stepped into the corridor, Simon glanced back at Eliana. For a beat, their eyes met over Harkan’s shoulder, and she felt a dull twist in her chest that she would have named guilt or embarrassment or some combination of the two—if such a reaction weren’t completely absurd. There was nothing untoward about embracing an old friend, and even if she and Harkan had started kissing right there in front of everyone, as they would have been well within their rights to do after so long apart, there would have been no reason to hide.
And yet, shame climbed hot up her throat, as if she had been caught doing something illicit. This was not a betrayal; there was nothing to betray.
But Simon’s declaration from that first night in Dyrefal circled through her mind, unwelcome and unasked for: I care about nothing else but you.
She tightened her arms around Harkan, refusing to be the first to look away.
Simon, with that strange, unreadable expression still on his face, was the one to do it. He turned his back on them, Remy still chattering away at his
elbow, and shut the door quietly behind him.
• • •
Later that night, her room lit by a dozen candles, the windows on the far wall cracked open to allow in a slight chill breeze, Eliana lay in bed beside Harkan, tensely curled against his side as she waited for him to respond.
Her whispered words hovered in the air like dead leaves taking an eternity to fall from their branches, and now that she had uttered them, she found herself wishing she had kept her mouth shut.
Instead she could have simply lain beside him, fallen in and out of sleep until the morning, fetched him fresh poppy tea if he needed it for his leg. She could have left him sleeping peacefully and returned to the stacks of books sitting on her desk. She could have pushed past the discomfort humming quietly below her skin, which left her feeling awkward in his presence, in a way she had never felt back home, and kissed him. She could have kissed him until it became something more, even though he was tired and in pain, even though she didn’t particularly want to kiss him—which was a startling realization that had come upon her earlier in the evening, when she had first joined him in her bed.
But instead she had told him the truth, about everything: She was, according to Simon and Zahra, the foretold Sun Queen, the daughter of the Kingsbane and the Lightbringer. The Furyborn Child. She had many names, it seemed, and she had chosen none of them for herself. She had destroyed the invading Empire fleet by calling down a storm from the sky.
She had killed Rozen with a dagger to the throat.
She waited, her cheek against Harkan’s chest, until his arms around her began to feel like a cage. Then, with a slow breath in and out, he resumed smoothing circles across her upper arm.
Eliana directed her muscles to unclench. He hadn’t shoved her away or extracted himself from her embrace. That was something.
“Have you told Remy?” he asked.
“No.” She glared at the nearest flickering candle until her eyes stopped stinging. “He thinks Red Crown is out there right now, searching for her.”
“And you believe Simon and Zahra?”
“About my parentage and my power? I don’t want to.”
“But you do anyway.”
“You weren’t there that day.” She shut her eyes against the memory of the battle in Karajak Bay, but that made the images even more vivid. “The things I saw—the things I did—shouldn’t have been possible. And yet they happened all the same.”
Harkan made a thoughtful sound. “Couldn’t it have been an ordinary storm? And, perhaps, since you had endured so much, you were susceptible to Simon’s suggestion? He offered an interpretation of what was happening, and you accepted it in the moment because the stress was so immense.”
“You’re asking if I was simply hysterical?” Eliana interrupted sharply.
Harkan’s reply was as gentle as his circling thumb. “I’m trying to find an explanation that makes sense.”
“I’ve tried that already. While it was happening, there on that beach, I felt something moving inside me. A force. Every lightning strike, every gust of wind, tore through my body like blows of pain. Like…” She paused, considering how to describe this impossible thing to him. “Like when you awaken the morning after a hard job, and your muscles ache—except a hundred times more painful, and it was as though I could feel every ounce of my blood, every inch of every muscle, and it was all erupting, all scorching. I could feel the ache being made. I thought it would tear me apart.”
She realized she was clutching Harkan’s tunic and released it at once.
“Could it have been someone else doing that?” he suggested. “Maybe someone else nearby, conducting magic, and you were simply feeling the effects? Maybe Simon—”
“No. It was me.”
“But how can you be sure, if you’d never experienced anything like that before?”
Eliana sat up, resisting the urge to shove his arms away. Her body itched to move. She pressed her palms hard against the bed.
“If you were standing in a crowded room, where everyone was talking,” she said, “and the layers of sound were so immense that you could hardly hear yourself think—if, in such a place, you heard me calling for you, you would recognize my voice, wouldn’t you? And you would follow it until you found me.”
“Yes. I would follow you anywhere.” He found one of her hands, kissed her rigid knuckles. “I did follow you.”
That voice, that tender touch, would have once melted her. Now, she bristled at it. His gentle presence inexplicably grated against her nerves.
“Well, it felt like that for me, on that beach,” she said sharply. “I knew that power belonged to me, even though it felt unfamiliar, even though it frightened me, just as I would know your voice anywhere and know the rhythm of my own breathing.”
That made her think of something, and she did soften then, and could hardly look at him, remembering the years of his quiet loyalty. “We never talked about it, and I thank you for not ever pressing the matter, but surely you noticed that any injuries I sustained while on a job didn’t last. You heard the rumors, just as everyone else did. The indestructible Dread of Orline.”
Harkan’s gaze was steady. “I did.”
She pulled away from him, wishing their conversation would rattle him. Only moments ago she had been steeling herself against the possibility of him pushing her away, of his disgust and judgment. Now, with him gazing up at her, acceptance plain and soft on his face, Eliana found herself craving a fight. How could he still look at her that way, just as he’d always used to, when everything had so utterly changed?
It would be easier if he recoiled, if he accused her of keeping secrets. If he lashed out at her, distrusting this new creature who looked like his oldest, dearest friend but had become something else entirely.
But instead he watched her, waiting for her to speak, and in the unbearable silence, Eliana wished suddenly for Simon to come storming in and say something nasty or scornful, so she would have an excuse to jump out of bed and hit something.
She rose and began to pace. “Remy thinks the reason for that indestructibility was my power. For years it lay dormant inside me, and its presence protected me from harm. It repaired me when I needed it, gave me incredible strength and resilience.”
“And now that your power is no longer dormant?” Harkan asked.
She stopped to look out the windows, the mountains rising dark beyond the glass. She touched the tiny lump on her skull, still tender from Navi’s attack, and was mortified to feel tears gathering in her eyes once more.
“God, what’s wrong with me?” she muttered. “I’ve cried more in the past two weeks than I have for the whole rest of my life. I’ve been reduced to some kind of weepy child.”
“What can I do, El?”
She wiped savagely at her face. “Now that my power is no longer dormant, it appears I’m no longer as invincible as I once was.”
“You mean, now you can get hurt?”
She moved her hair aside to reveal the still-healing cut. “I’m fragile. I’m vulnerable.” She spat out the word. “I could forget myself in a fight and get badly hurt, leaving Remy unprotected. And…”
But then came a thought she couldn’t bear to voice. That the pain she had craved for years, had relished, had sought out with every job, every fight and kill—the pain that had reminded her she was alive, that she was untouchable, that she could not and would not break—was now something she must guard against.
Harkan came to her, reaching for her face, but she jerked away from him.
Immediately, he withdrew. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.” She resumed pacing. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
“Simon and Zahra told me that my mother—the woman who gave birth to me—is the Blood Queen. Queen Rielle Courverie of Celdaria, of more than a thou
sand years ago. The Kingsbane. The Lady of Death.”
“I know who Queen Rielle is.” Harkan smiled softly. “Remy has told me many stories about her.”
Eliana closed her eyes at the mention of Remy. Harkan touched her hand, and she once again flinched from him.
This time, he could not hide his hurt. “I’m sorry, El, I just thought—”
“That we would fall into bed together,” Eliana said harshly, “just like we used to?”
“I wasn’t trying to take you to bed, El. You’re shaking, and I wanted to hold your hand.”
“The hand of a monster.”
“What?” He laughed, incredulous. “You’re no monster.”
“Were you there on the beach? Did you see what I did?” She flung an arm at the windows. “My storm left the bay in ruins. It destroyed dozens of ships, both Empire and Astavari. They’re still cleaning up the beach. It’s littered with the corpses of crawlers, adatrox, Astavari soldiers. People I killed, and I didn’t even know what I was doing as I killed them!”
“Simon told me many more would have died, were it not for you,” Harkan pointed out. “Astavar would have fallen.”
“Don’t you understand? Her blood is inside me. I didn’t ask for it, and yet here it is.” She gestured at herself and laughed bitterly. “I’ve been reading about her, you know. Simon retrieved books for me from the royal archives—not that there are many left from those days. She made sure of that, didn’t she, when she died and took so much with her? She had years of training before she had to perform magic in anything other than a temple classroom. She had a whole city’s worth of magisters helping her. She had the support of the crown. She lived in a world where magic actually existed, and people knew what it was about. And still she fell. She ruined everything. She destroyed everything.”
“She didn’t destroy everything,” Harkan pointed out.
“She destroyed enough.”
Harkan ducked down to meet her eyes. “You are not her. You are Eliana Ferracora, not Eliana Courverie. You are my friend. You are Remy’s sister.”
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