Tal watched her, unmoved. “If it meant you were safe and that others were safe as well? Yes, I would.”
“Kept under lock and key like some criminal.” A familiar, frustrated feeling rose within her; she pushed it back down with a vengeance. She would not lose control, not today of all days.
“Do you know,” she said, her voice falsely bright, “that when it storms, Father takes me down to the servants’ quarters and gives me dumbwort? It puts me to sleep, and he locks me up and leaves me there.”
After a pause, Tal answered, “Yes.”
“I used to fight him. He would hold me down and slap me, pinch my nose shut until I couldn’t breathe and had to open my mouth. Then he would shove the vial between my lips and make me drink, and I would spit it up, but he would keep forcing me to drink, whispering to me everything I’d ever done wrong, and right in the middle of yelling how much I hated him, I would fall asleep. And when I would wake up, the storm would be over.”
A longer pause. “Yes,” Tal answered softly. “I know.”
“He thinks storms are too provocative for me. They give me ideas, he says.”
Tal cleared his throat. “That was my fault.”
“I know.”
“But the medicine, that was his suggestion.”
She gave him a withering look. “And did you try to talk him out of it?”
He did not answer, and the patience on his face left her seething.
“I don’t fight him anymore,” she said. “I hear a crack of thunder and go below without him even asking me to. How pathetic I’ve become.”
“Rielle…” Tal sighed, shook his head. “Everything I could say to you, I’ve said before.”
She approached him, letting the loneliness she typically hid from him—from everyone—soften her face. Come, good Magister Belounnon. Pity your sweet Rielle. He broke first, looking away from her. Something like sorrow shifted across his face, and his jaw tightened.
Good.
“He’d let me sleep through life if he could,” she said.
“He loves you, Rielle. He worries for you.”
Heat snapped at Rielle’s fingertips, growing along with her anger. With a stubborn stab of fury, she let it come. She knew she shouldn’t, that an outburst would only make it more difficult to sneak away, but suddenly she could not bring herself to care.
He loves you, Rielle.
A father who loved his daughter would not make her his prisoner.
She seized one of the candles from Tal’s desk and watched with grim satisfaction as the wick burst into a spitting, unruly flame. As she stared at it, she imagined her fury as a flooding river, steadily spilling over its banks and feeding the flame in her hands.
The flame grew—the size of a pen, a dagger, a sword. Then every candle followed suit, a forest of fiery blades.
Tal rose from his desk and picked up the handsome polished shield from its stand in the corner of the room. Every elemental who had ever lived—every waterworker and windsinger, every shadowcaster and every firebrand like Tal—had to use a casting, a physical object uniquely forged by their own hands, to access their power. Their singular power, the one element they could control.
But not Rielle.
She needed no casting, and fire was not the only element that obeyed her.
All of them did.
Tal stood behind her, one hand holding his shield, the other hand resting gently on her own. As a child, back when she had still thought she loved Tal, such touches had thrilled her.
Now she seriously considered punching him.
“In the name of Saint Marzana the Brilliant,” Tal murmured, “we offer this prayer to the flames, that the empirium might hear our plea and grant us strength: Fleet-footed fire, blaze not with fury or abandon. Burn steady and true, burn clean and burn bright.”
Rielle bit down on harsh words. How she hated praying. Every familiar word felt like a new bar being added to the cage her father and Tal had crafted for her.
The room began to shake—the inkwell on Tal’s desk, the panes of glass in the open window, Tal’s half-finished cup of tea.
“Rielle?” Tal prompted, shifting his shield. In his body behind her, she felt a rising hot tension as he prepared to douse her fire with his own power. Despite her best efforts, the concern in his voice caused her a twinge of remorse. He meant well, she knew. He wanted, desperately, for her to be happy.
Unlike her father.
So Rielle bowed her head and swallowed her anger. After all, what she was about to do might turn Tal against her forever. She could allow him this small victory.
“Blaze not with fury or abandon,” she repeated, closing her eyes. She imagined setting aside every scrap of emotion, every sound, every thought, until her mind was a vast field of darkness—except for the tiny spot of light that was the flame in her hands.
Then she allowed the darkness to seep across the flame as well and was left alone in the cool, still void of her mind.
The room calmed.
Tal’s hand fell away.
Rielle listened as he returned his shield to its stand. The prayer had scraped her clean, and in the wake of her anger she felt…nothing. A hollow heart and an empty head.
When she opened her eyes, they were dry and tired. She wondered bitterly what it would be like to live without a constant refrain of prayers in her thoughts, warning her against her own feelings.
The temple bells chimed eleven times; Rielle’s pulse jumped. Any moment now, she would hear Ludivine’s signal.
She turned toward the window. No more prayers, no more reading. Every muscle in her body surged with energy. She wanted to ride.
“I’d rather be dead than live as my father’s prisoner,” she said at last, unable to resist that last petulant stab.
“Dead like your mother?”
Rielle froze. When she faced Tal, he did not look away. She had not expected that cruelty. From her father, yes, but never from Tal.
The memory of long-ago flames blazed across her vision.
“Did Father instruct you to bring that up if I got out of hand?” she asked, keeping her voice flat and cool. “What with the Chase and all.”
“Yes,” Tal answered, unflinching.
“Well, I’m happy to tell you I’ve only killed the one time. You needn’t worry yourself.”
After a moment, Tal turned to straighten the books on his desk. “This is as much for your safety as it is for everyone else’s. If the king discovered we’d been hiding the truth of your power all these years…You know what could happen. Especially to your father. And yet he does it because he loves you more than you’ll ever understand.”
Rielle laughed sharply. “That isn’t reason enough to treat me like this. I’ll never forgive him for it. Someday, I’ll stop forgiving you too.”
“I know,” Tal said, and at the sadness in his voice, Rielle nearly took pity on him.
Nearly.
But then a great crash sounded from downstairs, and an unmistakable cry of alarm.
Ludivine.
Tal gave Rielle that familiar look he so often had—when she had, at seven, overflowed their pool at the Baths; when he had found her, at fifteen, the first time she snuck out to Odo’s tavern. That look of What did I do to deserve such trials?
Rielle gazed innocently back at him.
“Stay here,” he ordered. “I mean it, Rielle. I appreciate your frustration—truly, I do—but this is about more than the injustice of you feeling bored.”
Rielle returned to the window seat, hoping her expression appeared suitably abashed.
“I love you, Tal,” she said, and the truth of that was enough to make her hate herself a little.
“I know,” he replied. Then he threw on his magisterial robe and swept out the door.
“Magister, it’s Lady
Ludivine,” came a panicked voice from the hallway—one of Tal’s young acolytes. “She’d only just arrived in the chapel, my lord, when she turned pale and collapsed. I don’t know what happened!”
“Summon my healer,” Tal instructed, “and send a message to the queen. She’ll be in her box at the starting line. Tell her that her niece has taken ill and will not be joining her there.”
Once they had gone, Rielle smiled and yanked on her boots.
Stay here?
Not a chance.
She hurried through the sitting room outside Tal’s office and into the temple’s red-veined marble hallways, where embroidered flourishes of shimmering flames lined the plush carpets. The temple entryway, its parquet floor polished to a sheen of gold, was a flurry of activity as worshippers, acolytes, and servants hurried across to the peaked chapel doors.
“It’s Lady Ludivine,” a young acolyte whispered to her companion as Rielle passed. “Apparently she’s taken ill.”
Rielle grinned, imagining everyone fussing over poor Ludivine, tragically lovely and faint on the temple floor. Ludivine would enjoy the attention—and the reminder that she had the entire capital held like a puppet on its master’s strings.
Even so, Rielle would owe her a tremendous favor after this.
Whatever it was, it would be more than worth it.
Ludivine’s horse stood next to her own just outside the temple, held by a young stable hand who seemed on the verge of panic. He recognized Rielle and sagged with relief.
“Pardon me, Lady Rielle, but is Lady Ludivine all right?” he asked.
“Haven’t the faintest,” Rielle replied, swinging up into the saddle. Then she snapped the reins, and her mare bolted down the main road that led from the Pyre into the heart of the city, hooves clattering against the cobblestones. A tumbled array of apartments and temple buildings rose around them—gray stone walls engraved with scenes of the capital city’s creation, rounded roofs of burnished copper, slender columns wrapped in flowering ivy, white fountains crowned with likenesses of the seven saints in prayer. So many visitors had come from all over the world to me de la Terre for the Chase that the cool spring air now pressed thick and close. The city smelled of sweat and spices, hot horse and hot coin.
As Rielle tore down the road, the crowd parted in alarm on either side of her, shouting angry curses until they realized who she was and fell silent. She guided her mare through the twisting streets and made for the main city gates, her body pulled tight with nerves.
But she would not give in to her power today.
She would compete in the Boon Chase, as any citizen was free to do, and prove to her father that she could control herself, even when her life was in danger and the eyes of the entire city were upon her.
She would prove to him, and to Tal, that she deserved to live a normal life.
2
Eliana
“Eliana says that on the day the Empire took our city, you couldn’t breathe without choking on the taste of blood. She said I should be glad I was only a baby, but I wish I could remember it. Maybe then I would be stronger. I would be a warrior. Like her.”
—Journal of Remy Ferracora, citizen of Orline
February 3, Year 1018 of the Third Age
1,020 YEARS LATER
Eliana was on the hunt when she heard the first scream.
Screams weren’t so unusual in the city of Orline, especially in the Barrens, where slums sprawled across the river docks in a dark plain of misery.
This one, though, was high, piercing—a young girl’s scream—and fell silent so abruptly Eliana thought she might have been imagining things.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered to Harkan, who stood beside her with his back against the wall.
Harkan tensed. “Hear what?”
“That scream. A girl.”
“I heard no scream.”
Eliana glanced at the nearby darkened window, adjusted her new velvet mask, admired the lean lines of her body. “Well, we all know your hearing’s shit.”
“My hearing is not shit,” Harkan muttered.
“It’s not as good as mine.”
“We can’t all be as marvelous as the Dread of Orline.”
Eliana sighed. “Sad, but true.”
“I think even I, with my shit ears, would hear a scream. Maybe you imagined it.”
But Eliana didn’t think so.
In the city of Orline, girls and women had been disappearing of late—not shipped off to an Empire work camp nor taken to the Lord of Orline’s palace to be trained in the maidensfold. Those things left behind gossip, trails of evidence.
These recent girls were simply being taken. One moment they were there; the next they were gone.
At first, Eliana hadn’t let herself care. No one in her neighborhood had been taken, and she didn’t think the Empire would start abducting its own favored citizens. Her family was safe. It therefore wasn’t her problem.
But the more girls disappeared, the more stories she heard of vanished women, the harder it became for her to ignore the situation. So many sisters gone, and so many mothers—snatched from their loved ones, taken as they slept. Not criminals, not Red Crown rebels.
And then there were the rumors that persisted in some circles, despite their absurdity, of a hole in the sky on the other side of the world. Possibly in Celdaria. Possibly in the Sunderlands. Every rumor told a different tale. Some thought everything was connected—the hole in the sky, the vanished girls.
Eliana was not one of them. Hole in the sky? More like fear run amok. People were becoming hysterical enough to look to archaic legends for comfort and truth.
Eliana refused to join them.
Then she heard it again: a second scream. Closer.
A sour feeling drifted through her body, raking violent chills across her skin. The world tilted, froze, then righted itself. The sweet odor of the white gemma tree flowers overhead turned rancid.
Beside her, Harkan shifted. “Are you all right?”
“Don’t you feel that?”
“Feel what? What’s going on with you tonight?”
“I feel…” The edges of her vision shimmered like a heat mirage. “I don’t know what I feel. Like an adatrox is nearby, but worse.”
At the mention of the Empire soldiers, Harkan tensed. “I don’t see any adatrox. Are you sure?”
A third scream—more desperate this time and quickly stifled.
“Whoever it is,” Eliana muttered, her voice tight and angry, “they’re close.”
“What? Who?”
“Arabeth’s next meal.” Eliana flashed Harkan a grin, then unsheathed Arabeth—the long, jagged-bladed dagger she kept at her hip. “Time to play.”
With one last peek at her reflection, she darted out from the shadows and into the cramped, grime-slicked alleyways of lower Orline. Harkan called after her; she ignored him. If he wanted to stop her, he could try, but she’d have him flat on his back in two seconds.
She smirked. The last time she’d pinned him like that, it had been to his bed.
She honestly couldn’t decide which context she preferred.
All the same, she didn’t want to start a fight just yet. Not when she had a girl-snatcher to hunt.
She entered the Barrens, slipping between patched tents and sagging wooden shacks dotted with dying fires. Beyond the Barrens crawled the wide Bruvian river, its banks clogged with piles of festering white moss.
Her first time in these slums, aged ten, she had nearly gagged from the smell. That had earned her a hard glare from her mother.
Now, eight years later, the stench hardly registered.
She scanned the night: A beggar picking the pockets of an unconscious drunkard. A gaunt young man, coifed and powdered, coaxing a woman through a painted door.
Another scream. F
ainter. They were heading for the river.
The feeling crawling up her spine magnified. It felt—she knew no other way to describe it—as though it had a will.
She placed her hands on her knees, squeezed her eyes shut. Spots of color danced behind her eyelids. On the battered wooden support beam beside her, someone had scrawled a childish drawing of a masked woman in black, leaping through the air with a knife in each hand.
Despite the ill feeling blotting her vision, Eliana couldn’t help but grin.
“El, for the love of the saints, what are you doing?” Harkan came up beside her, put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“Me? Hurt?” She swallowed hard against the sick feeling tightening her throat. “Dearest Harkan.” She gestured grandly at the drawing of herself. “How could you think such a thing of the Dread of Orline?”
She sprinted away and jumped off the top level of the docks onto another level about one hundred feet below. The impact jolted her with only a slight pain. She was up and running again in an instant. Such a fall would break Harkan’s legs; he’d have to take the long way down.
If Remy were there, he would tell her not to be so obvious.
“People have started to notice,” he had told her just the other day. “I hear talk at the bakery.”
Eliana, stretching on the floor of her bedroom, had asked innocently, “What kind of talk?”
“When a girl falls three stories and then jumps right back to her feet in the middle of the Garden Square, people tend to notice. Especially when she’s wearing a cape.”
Eliana had smiled at the thought of their gaping, awestruck faces. “And what if I want them to notice?”
Remy had been quiet for a long moment. Then: “Do you want Invictus to come and take you away from me?”
That had silenced her. She’d looked up at her little brother’s pale, pinched face and felt her stomach turn over.
“I’m sorry,” she’d told him quietly. “I’m such an ass.”
“I don’t care if you’re an ass,” he’d replied. “Just don’t be a show-off.”
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