Another guard, looking rather aghast, cleared his throat. “Black eyes, sir…like the Empire generals?”
“Black like angels.” Simon glanced at Eliana’s burned hands, his mouth twisting. “Come with me before you pass out.”
His voice was thin and precise, a needle poised to pierce.
Eliana followed him, wishing she had the energy to argue.
• • •
Simon sat in a low chair by the hearth while the healers changed Eliana’s bandages.
Long hours had passed since they returned from the Nest, during which the healers had declared Eliana’s burns quite minor and begun their treatment. They reapplied an acrid ointment to the red lines left behind by the castings’ blazing chains, then wrapped clean cloth bandages over the wounds and carefully refastened the castings around her wrists.
One of the healers, a small, stout woman with pale skin, glanced up as she clasped the last of the casting hooks. As Eliana’s eyes met hers, a silent current of understanding passed between them.
Eliana carefully pressed the woman’s hand between hers. “Thank you, Ilsi. He won’t hurt me.”
The woman relaxed slightly, but she nevertheless glared at Simon on her way out.
Once alone with Simon, Eliana arranged herself more comfortably on the sofa, allowing the silence to stretch on. She smoothed the folds of the clean tunic the healers had brought; she examined her nails.
At last, Simon spoke. “Did she really think I was going to hurt you?”
“So it would seem,” Eliana said coolly.
“She said nothing of the sort. Can you read minds now as well?”
She fixed him with a hard stare. “A woman doesn’t need to read minds in order to speak to another woman. We have a language, especially when danger is near.”
“I’m no danger to you, Eliana.”
“Tell that to Ilsi.”
“I would, were she still here.”
“You frightened her away with that unattractive glower of yours.”
“I would have no need to glower,” he said tightly, “had you not run away.”
Eliana sat straight and still. “I had no choice. Navi was ill. No one had been able to help her. If I’d asked you for permission, you wouldn’t have allowed me to go. So, here we are. And soon she will be healed.”
Simon scrubbed both hands over his face. “Yes, and Zahra is now incapacitated and useless to us. Having a loyal wraith around to help when we need it would have been my preference, if that matters at all to you.”
“It doesn’t. And I’ll free her from that box soon enough, so worry not. Soon she’ll be useful to you again.”
He watched her, implacable. “I don’t suppose you managed to find out what it is, during this mission of yours? I’ve never seen metal like that before.”
Eliana glanced at the little box, sitting innocently on her bedside table. In the midmorning light, its copper metal shone iridescent—violet and indigo ripples, so deep they looked like furrows, and yet the box’s surface felt smooth to the touch.
“No, but I don’t care what it is. Once I’ve recovered, I’ll find a way to break it open. She’ll be freed, and then you can stop scowling.” Eliana paused. “Oh. Wait. That’s impossible for you, isn’t it?”
“Once you’ve recovered. Yes, I suppose it’s possible that your power could shatter whatever this is. If, that is, you stop tormenting yourself to force some half-formed version of said power. And yes,” he added before she could interrupt, “I understood exactly what you were attempting to do with all that nonsense. Not eating, not sleeping. Battering yourself. But everyone was advising me to let you be, including you, so I did, and now that’s gotten us here.”
She stiffened, drawing back from him. “You are the most discouraging person I’ve ever met. You declare loyalty to me, you pledge support of me, and yet you criticize everything I do.”
“I’ve tried to advise you kindly, and you ignore my counsel.”
She laughed. “Your version of kindness is an interesting one. If you had your way, you’d tell me when and where I can go and not go. You’d direct every moment of my every day.”
“That sums it up nicely, yes.”
“And this is kindness, to you?”
“Would you rather I sit back and stare at the wall while you dash about risking your life whenever you feel like it?”
“Your gall is astonishing. You are not my keeper, Simon. In fact, it is I who should be determining where you go, and what you know, as—according to you—I am your queen, and you are my subject. In that sense, I’ve done nothing wrong. If you were not keen on obeying me, on operating on a plane inferior to my own, then perhaps you should have kept the knowledge of my heritage a secret from me.”
Simon’s mouth quirked. “Being a queen doesn’t mean you can do what you want without consequence.”
“It certainly means I can risk my life to save a friend if I choose to.”
“You’re wrong.”
Eliana blew out an exasperated breath. “Who are you to decide such things?”
Simon leaned forward, elbows on his knees. A resting pose, belied by the intensity of his gaze. “Eliana, do you understand the scope of what’s happening? This war between humans and angels has been raging for millennia. If we don’t stop it, it could keep spreading. Like an inferno, it could consume every world that exists.”
Eliana was determined to keep all emotion from her voice. Nevertheless, Simon’s casual mention of other worlds shook her. “Zahra mentioned this concept to me. Just how many worlds are there?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. Some theorize the number could be infinite.”
“And by sending the angels to the Deep,” she said, “we brought them closer to those other worlds.”
“Again, in theory. Your point?”
“We created a lie to lure the angels into the Deep, and it was there that they confirmed the idea of other worlds. Zahra said the Emperor won’t stop at conquering this world and avenging his people. She said he seeks answers, whatever that means. She didn’t tell me before we left. So, if there are other worlds out there now endangered by the Emperor’s insatiable desire for conquest, it’s our fault. It’s the fault of the saints, of humanity.”
“Irrelevant,” Simon snapped. “What matters is what’s happening now, and how we can stop it from getting worse. The only human ever born with enough power to stem the tide of angelic violence was your mother.”
Eliana began to protest. “My mother—”
“Yes, I know, your adoptive mother was Rozen Ferracora,” Simon said, his voice rising to match hers, “but the mother who birthed you, whose blood you share, was Rielle Courverie, the Blood Queen, the Kingsbane, and the sooner you accept that and embrace the power your ancestry has granted you, the sooner we can end this war. We can end the suffering that millions of innocents have endured over too many years to count and put the world right again. I’m not sure how many different ways I can express this to you. By endangering yourself, you’re risking not only your life, but the future of the world.”
He rose from his seat and stalked away from her, angrily dragging a hand through his hair. The long lines of his body brimmed with an intoxicating gravity. Eliana couldn’t look away from him.
Quietly, at the windows, facing the bright midday world beyond the glass, Simon spoke. “If you had died, Eliana, where would we all be? Navi would still be ill, and the rest of us would be more irreversibly fucked than we already are.”
His voice was harsh, strained under the weight of some great emotion that Eliana could not define. The sound of it quieted her. She felt cooler, smoothed out. She rose to join him, then stood a few inches to his right. She gazed out the window at the velvet blue canvas of mountains.
“I suppose some children dreamed of being queens,” she said quietly, �
�or doers of mighty heroics. I never did.” She gingerly clenched her fists, wincing. But there was a strange kind of solace in the pinch of her castings. “I didn’t ask for this. I’ve said it before, I know, but it remains true, and something I can’t put out of mind.”
Simon replied at once. “And I didn’t ask to be flung away from my home and into the far-off future, all to save a girl who would grow up to wear out my every last nerve.”
Eliana’s smile came sharply. “Are you saying you were worried about me while I was gone? The hard, fearsome Wolf, fretting in his room like an anxious mother?”
A new silence fell, thick and significant. Eliana kept her gaze fixed on the mountains for as long as she could bear, heat climbing up her neck. Then she glanced at Simon.
He stood utterly still, except for his hands. Clasped at his back, they flexed and clenched once.
“I was worried,” he said at last. His voice caught on its own edges. “I haven’t felt like that since Fidelia took you from Sanctuary. Only this time, it was worse. At least then I had some idea of where they’d taken you and was confident I could get you out. But this time, I had no idea where you’d gone, and by the time I realized it, with the help of the kings, I had barely enough time to summon a contingent of guards and gather supplies before you returned.”
Eliana felt a stab of guilt, of disgusting, delighted pleasure. “You were going to come after me?”
“Of course. Luckily, there was no need.” He drew in a slow breath. “Luckily, you came back to us alive and whole. Remy was inconsolable, once he found out you’d left. He blamed himself for it.”
Remy. His name was an arrow to her heart.
“Did he say as much to you?” she asked. “That he blamed himself?”
“He didn’t have to.”
Eliana gazed at the mountains, heat gathering behind her eyes. “I was foolish.”
“Yes.”
“But you see, if it weren’t for me, Navi wouldn’t have been out in Sanctuary that night. She wouldn’t have been abducted along with me. They wouldn’t have…” She swallowed, struggling to find her voice. “They wouldn’t have hurt her. I had to try to save her.” She looked up at him, imploring. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself otherwise.”
“I understand, and I sympathize.” He turned to her, and though he hadn’t touched her, once his urgent gaze met hers, Eliana felt his nearness as keenly as if he had cupped her face in his hands. “But you can’t do it again. Please, don’t do it again. Don’t leave, don’t run. The world needs you.” Hesitant, he reached for her arm, and then stopped and set his jaw. “I need you, Eliana. Without you, I’m the only true child of Celdaria still living. My life since leaving home that night has been a lonely one. Now that I’ve known a life with you by my side, I’m not sure I could bear that kind of loneliness again.”
His words held her rapt, motionless with surprise. Her mind hardly knew what to make of him like this. She hadn’t thought him capable of such softness.
She tried to reorder her thoughts, gestured helplessly with her bandaged hands. “I don’t know how to be like her. I’ve told you as much. That hasn’t changed.”
“You made it safely in and out of the Nest,” Simon pointed out. “You defended yourself and Harkan with your power.”
“But what I had to do to get to that point! I barely ate, I barely slept. I can’t fight a war like that, and you can’t base a military strategy on a girl who has to starve herself to be of any use, and whose power then erupts uncontrollably.”
“We’ll work on it, together. I promised you that before, and I’ll keep promising you until you trust me.”
She shook her head. “You believe in someone who doesn’t exist, Simon. Whatever you’ve been waiting for all these years, whatever savior you’ve created in your mind, I’m not her.”
“No,” he agreed. “In fact, you’re better than what I had imagined.”
She laughed, turning away from him. She was so tired that even thinking was painful, and he was bewildering her. “You flatter me.”
He moved closer. “Do I strike you as the sort of man who flatters people?”
“If it gets you what you want, yes.”
“And what is it,” Simon murmured, “that you think I want?”
The sound of his voice pulled her back to him. When she met his eyes, a sharpness came over her, a sweeping stillness. Suddenly she was scorchingly aware of his closeness, the size of his body compared to hers, the bright focus of his gaze.
“I don’t think I know what you want,” she replied softly. “I know it.”
And then, her heartbeat coursing fast up her throat, she touched his cheek with the backs of her bandaged fingers. His scars entranced her, silvered etchings across his unshaven cheeks. One crowned his left eye; another bisected his right temple. Once she started touching him, she could not stop. She traced every scar she could find, following the lines of his face that had long been imprinted in her mind.
He closed his eyes, brow furrowed. His left hand gently cupped hers, and when her thumb touched his lips, he opened his mouth slightly, pressed his tongue against it.
“Eliana,” he mumbled against her fingers.
The hoarse quality of his voice left her dizzy, impatient. “Yes?”
He opened his eyes, and the frustrating fondness she felt for his stern visage, his battered cheeks, snatched all the air from her lungs. She swayed a little, leaning into him.
At once, his hands dropped to cup her waist. His fingers curled gently in her tunic and his eyes held a question.
She answered by moving closer to him. His body towered over hers, all sinew and heat and murderous grace. He bowed his head to nuzzle his cheek against her jaw, and then moved lower to her neck. His lips brushed her collarbone; his tongue marked the hollow of her throat.
She closed her eyes, tilting her head back. Ignoring the tender state of her hands, she threaded her fingers through his hair. It was finer than she’d expected. She hummed with pleasure.
He mumbled a question against her neck.
Dazed, she found it difficult to answer.
Simon touched his forehead to hers. His hands remained steady at her hips.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked roughly.
Eliana shook her head. “No. I want you to keep going, but faster.” She felt drunk on his nearness, on the impossible reality of this moment. Simon was kissing her—Simon—his fingers drawing tender circles on the small of her back. Something raw and vulnerable threatened to split open inside her. The feeling frightened her, but she could not turn away from it. “I want you to kiss me until I forget how angry I am with you.”
He smiled, but his gaze was grave and earnest in a way that embarrassed her. He lowered his mouth once more to her neck. “Yes, my queen,” he murmured against her skin. “Anything to please you.”
A knock on the door, sharp and efficient, made Eliana jump.
Simon cursed robustly under his breath. “I will kill whoever is standing on the other side of that door.”
She laughed a little, shaky, blood roaring in her ears. She placed her hands against his chest, steadying herself.
“Yes, what is it?” she called out, her voice only somewhat shrill.
“Begging your pardon, my lady,” came the voice of her guard, Meli, “but I’ve come with a message from Princess Navana’s healers. They request your presence in her rooms at once.”
Eliana glanced at Simon, uncertain how to leave him. Her body ached for more of him—and yet, now that they were separated, she started to feel foolish for allowing him to kiss her. The press of his mouth on her skin had pushed her into a land that was strange to her, dangerous and wild.
A quick smile passed over his face. “Go.”
She hesitated for only a moment longer, then hurried out of the room.
• • •
As she sped through the halls of Dyrefal, Eliana’s mind filled with worries. It hadn’t been long enough for the antidote to take effect. The message was only a summons and had carried no news. They would have told her if Navi were well and awake. They were waiting to break her heart until she was there in person, standing beside Navi’s empty bed.
By the time she reached Navi’s rooms, Eliana’s body was a flurry of panic. She pushed open the door and flew inside.
“Navi?” She hurried through the anteroom—plush blue carpets, cheerful paintings of stars and gilded night-clouds. “Are you all right? Is she all right?”
She emerged into the bedroom and saw Navi sitting up in bed, propped against a pale mountain of pillows and being spoon-fed broth by a beaming nurse.
One of the healers hurried over and dropped to his knees before Eliana. He kissed her hands and then, pink from his collar to his hairline, stumbled back to his feet. Another healer stood by the window, hands clasped at her neck, grinning tearfully.
“Begging your pardon, Lady Eliana,” said the first healer, clumsy and bowing. “But the medicine you brought us… I don’t know where you found it, or how, and I don’t care. It was bizarre, my lady. A clear tube, a silver needle—the strangest mechanism! Angelic, I assume? But, no matter. My lady, it has worked. It has worked.”
He gestured at the bed, but Eliana was already there, barely restraining herself from flying into Navi’s arms.
“Navi, are you…” Her voice fissured. “Is it really…” She shrugged, laughing. Joy held her immobile. “Navi, can I—”
“I am myself again. Weak, hungry, and myself.” Navi smiled tiredly up at her. Dark tendrils still faintly framed her face, foreign and cruel under her fuzzy cap of black hair, but her eyes were clear and sharp and her own. Some of the rich golden-brown color had returned to her previously wan skin. She gently dismissed the nurse fussing at her side.
“If you don’t come here at once,” Navi said, holding out her arms, “I will banish you to the Kaavalan Passage, and you’ll have to hunt seals and penguins and sew a cloak out of bear pelts, and your teeth will rot and fall out, one by one.”
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