“If someone had asked me if I had killed my mother, and I had denied it,” Rielle replied, looking straight up at the king, “then that would be a lie, Your Majesty. Keeping a secret is not lying.”
“Lady Rielle, I am not interested in semantics. You concealed the damage you were capable of doing while you ate at my table, while you were schooled with my son and niece, and thereby placed them and all those around you in danger. Some might consider such a deception treasonous.”
Treason. Rielle kept her eyes on King Bastien and her hands flat against her thighs. If he had meant to frighten her, he had succeeded.
“And on the day of the race,” said the king, “not only did you start a fire when you attacked those men—”
Anger bloomed inside her. If she was to be found guilty of treason, then she might as well earn her punishment. “When I saved Prince Audric’s life, you mean.”
A louder murmuring rose from the gallery, but King Bastien simply inclined his head. Rielle knew it was the only thanks she might receive, but it was enough to give her a bit of courage.
“When you attacked those men,” the king continued, “you not only started a fire. You ripped open the earth. You carved sheets of rock from the mountains. One of the surviving racers has described you gathering sunlight from the air using only your hands. Another claims you threw the assassins from their horses by no visible means she could detect. Even though the assassins themselves were elementals, you easily overpowered them.” The king looked up from his notes. “Does that align with your own recollection?”
Then they did know what she had done, that she was no mere elemental. Her jaw ached from clenching it. “It does, Your Majesty.”
“So then, you are not only a firebrand but an earthshaker, a sunspinner, and also, perhaps, other things. I think you will understand our alarm as we contemplate what this means. No human who has ever lived has been able to control more than one element. Not even the saints.”
A tiny spark of pride lit inside Rielle.
“Lady Rielle,” he went on, “if you had been near a body of water during this race, would you have caused it to flood?”
“It is impossible to say if I would have or not, Your Majesty.”
“Could you have, then?”
A flood. Years of lessons with Tal had shown her only hints of such power, and though she’d never been as strong with water as she’d been with fire—
You know you could do it, the voice murmured. You could flood the world. That kind of power hums beneath your skin. Doesn’t it?
A cautious delight unfurled within her. Who are you? she asked the voice.
It did not answer.
She lifted her chin. “Yes, I believe I could have.”
A new voice spoke up: “Did you like it?”
It was such a perfectly astute, perfectly terrible question that Rielle did not immediately answer. She found the speaker—severely handsome, fair-haired, an elegant jawline. Lord Dervin Sauvillier. The queen’s brother and Ludivine’s father.
Beside him, Ludivine sat poised and clear-eyed in her gown of luminous rose, lace spilling out her sleeves.
“Lord Sauvillier,” said the king sternly, “while I appreciate your interest in these events, I have not given you leave to speak.”
Queen Genoveve—auburn-haired, pale as her niece Ludivine—touched her husband’s arm. “However, it is a reasonable question if we are to determine how best to proceed.”
Rielle looked to the queen and was rewarded with a small smile that reminded Rielle of Ludivine—a Ludivine who had grown up not alongside Audric in the airy, sunlit rooms of Baingarde, but rather in the cold mountain halls of Belbrion, the seat of House Sauvillier.
Queen Genoveve’s gaze slid over Rielle and moved away.
“I am not certain,” Rielle replied, “that I entirely understand Lord Sauvillier’s question.”
Ludivine’s father raised a deferent eyebrow to the king, who nodded once.
“Well, Lady Rielle, if you’ll forgive me my bluntness,” said Dervin Sauvillier, “I wonder if you enjoyed what you did on the racecourse. If you enjoyed hurting the assassins.” He paused. “If you enjoyed hurting your mother.”
“If I enjoyed it?” Rielle repeated, stalling.
For of course she had enjoyed it. Not the pain she had caused and not her poor mother’s death.
But the relief of it… That, she craved. The rush of release through every muscle in her body. Those forbidden, blazing moments—practicing with Tal, running the Chase—when she had known nothing but her power and what it could do. The shining clarity of understanding that this was her true, entire self.
Sometimes she couldn’t sleep for wanting to feel that way again.
“Your hesitation is alarming, Lady Rielle,” said Lord Sauvillier.
“I…did not enjoy the pain I caused others,” Rielle answered slowly. “For that, I feel nothing but shame and remorse. In fact, I am appalled that anyone might think I could enjoy doing such things to any living person, let alone my own mother. But…do the teachings of our saints not tell us that we should take pleasure in the use of the power that has been granted to us by God?”
Out of the corner of her eyes, Rielle saw the Archon shift at last, leaning forward slightly.
It was as if Audric had been waiting for a signal from her, and he did not disappoint. “My lord, may I answer her question?” he asked his father.
King Bastien did not look happy, but he nodded.
“The saints’ teachings do indeed tell us that, my lady,” said Audric, looking straight at her as if they were the only two in the room, “and they also tell us that power is not something elementals should deny or ignore. Even when that power is dangerous, and perhaps even especially then. I of all people know the truth of that.”
Rielle said nothing, though she felt weightless with relief. With those words, Audric had shown her that he understood. He forgave her. The steady belief shining in his eyes warmed her down to her toes.
“With all respect, Your Majesty,” Lord Sauvillier said, and now he simply sounded exasperated, “we cannot possibly compare this woman and her careless destruction of her surroundings with your son, who has consistently demonstrated unimpeachable discipline and has not once let his power get the better of him.”
A swift rage crested in Rielle. “Perhaps the challenge facing me is greater, as it seems I am more powerful than our prince.”
The silence that followed was so complete it felt alive. Lord Sauvillier recoiled in disgust, his mouth thin and angry. The king might have been carved from stone, like one of the watching saints.
Rielle waited, heart thundering. She wanted to look to Audric but resisted.
Finally, King Bastien spoke. “Lady Rielle, you are familiar with the prophecy, as spoken by the angel Aryava and translated by Queen Katell.”
Of course she was. Everyone was.
“I am, Your Majesty,” Rielle answered.
“The Gate will fall,” the king recited. “The angels will return and bring ruin to the world. You will know this time by the rise of two human Queens—one of blood, and one of light. One with the power to save the world. One with the power to destroy it. Two Queens will rise. They will carry the power of the Seven. They will carry your fate in their hands. Two Queens will rise.”
The king paused. In the wake of the prophecy’s words, the hall felt chilled.
“The most popular interpretation being, of course,” King Bastien continued, “that the coming of the two Queens will portend the fall of the Gate and the angels’ vengeance. And that those two Queens will be able to control not only one element, but all of them.”
Yes, of course, and everyone knew that too. Not that most people gave much thought to the different interpretations in modern times—if they gave the prophecy any thought at all.
Rielle was one of the exceptions. Often, she had found herself reading the prophecy’s words over and over, running her fingers across the scripted letters in Tal’s books.
A Queen made of blood and a Queen made of light. The Blood Queen and the Sun Queen they had come to be called over the centuries.
And now, after so many years, they hardly felt real. The Gate stood strong in the Sunderlands, far in the northern sea, guarded and quiet, with the angels locked safely away on the other side. Queens from a prophecy might as well have been characters in a tale. Children chose sides, assembled play armies, staged wars in the streets.
The bad queen against the good queen. Blood warring with light.
Am I one of them? Rielle had wondered, though she had never found the courage to ask Tal or her father outright. And…which one?
“You see, Lady Rielle,” said the king, “my charge is not to decide whether what you have done is a crime and whether—or how—you should be punished. It is that you seem to be neither firebrand nor sunspinner nor earthshaker, but all of those things, and more, which is unprecedented. You performed magic more powerful than there has been in half an age, even after spending thirteen years being taught to suppress your abilities in the hope that they would disappear. And you did so without the aid of a casting, which is something not even the saints could manage at the height of their glory.
“My sacred duty,” said the king, his face grave, “is to determine what, exactly, you are. I must decide if you are one of these Queens—and if so, which one.”
Rielle heard the unsaid words plainly: And what that will mean for you.
She clenched her fists in her skirts and curtsied before the king, the shadow of Saint Katell falling like a sword across her neck.
10
Eliana
“When darkest is the night
When lost is the fight
When blood is all in sight
Look to the rising dawn”
—Venteran folk song
Whenever Eliana dressed for one of Lord Arkelion’s parties, she thought about her father.
Ioseph Ferracora had spent most of her childhood fighting on the eastern front as the Empire wore down the last of Ventera’s resistance.
“Every night he’s gone, we’ll leave lights in the windows for him,” her mother had decided. In those golden days before the invasion, before Remy, the distant war had felt no more real to Eliana than a ghost story.
“But what will the lights do?” Eliana asked.
“They belong to the Sun Queen,” Rozen explained, “and will help bring your father safely back to us.”
So every night before bed, Eliana had lit the candle in her window and whispered the Sun Queen’s prayer: “May the Queen’s light guide him home.”
As she grew older, she came to dread her father’s visits, for they became shorter, and they would always end. But she never stopped looking forward to the summer solstice, when Ioseph would return for the annual festival—and most importantly, for the Sun Queen pageant.
Before the Fall, before the Blood Queen Rielle died and left everything in ruins, the world was full of magic. So said the stories, and as a child, Eliana had believed in them with all her heart. They said people of the Old World used shields and swords to summon wind and fire. They worshipped mighty saints who had banished the race of angels into oblivion, and they believed that a queen would someday save the world from evil. She was called the Sun Queen, for she would bring light into darkness.
Even long after the age of the Old World had ended, and it was understood that angels and magic did not exist, had never existed—that the legends of the Old World were simply that—many people still visited temples to pray to the saints, and the myth of the Sun Queen remained.
And every summer, Ioseph Ferracora returned home to his daughter, bringing with him some new ornament for her costume—a gilded hairpiece from Rinthos, a white mink pelt smuggled in from Astavar.
Together, Eliana and her parents would join the parades crowding the city. Children with gold-dusted cheeks climbed up the crumbling statues of Saint Katell the sunspinner to leave garlands of gemma flowers around her neck. Musicians beat their drums and plucked their harps. White-robed storytellers performed tales of the Sun Queen’s long-awaited coming.
The parade ended at the high turn of the river, in the easternmost hills, where the statue of Audric the Lightbringer stood. He sat on his winged horse, sword in hand and somber eyes fixed on the eastern horizon. It was Eliana’s favorite statue in the city, for the doomed king’s face looked both brave and tired. Looking at him made her heart twist with pity.
“I’m sorry, Lightbringer,” she whispered to him, that last year. She kissed his weathered stone boot, clutched her necklace bearing his ruined likeness in the other. As always, she searched for his face in the necklace’s layers of wear, but while the winged horse was clear, the person riding it had been buried beneath the darkness of time, no matter how diligently Eliana tried to clean it.
“Watch the horizon,” Rozen had whispered to her daughter, an infant Remy asleep in her arms. “Do you see her? Do you see the Sun Queen?”
“Will she come this year, Papa?” seven-year-old Eliana had asked, elated even after the long night.
“Keep looking, sweet girl,” Ioseph had answered, his arms trembling around her. “Keep watching for the light.”
He had left again for war the next day, and he had never returned.
• • •
Ten years later, Eliana sat before the mirror in her bedroom as Remy finished twisting her wavy brown hair into a low knot. Her cheeks—not so pale as Remy’s, closer to the warm olive tones of her mother—shimmered with silver powder. Dark kohl rimmed her eyes; diamonds glinted in each ear.
She finished applying a rich red dye to her lips and smiled at her reflection.
“I look good,” she declared.
Remy rolled his eyes. “You always look good.”
“Yes, but tonight it’s really something, isn’t it?”
“I’m just going to keep rolling my eyes until you stop talking.”
She grinned at him in the mirror. “So. Tell me once more.”
Remy sulked on her bed. “I’m supposed to stay with Harkan, no matter what, and do exactly as he tells me, no matter what, and not even think of asking you again about what you’ll be doing tonight. No matter what.”
Eliana stood, the wine-colored gown Lord Arkelion sent her falling in sparkling folds about her legs. “And if something happens to Harkan?”
“I wait for you at the east bridge, by the Admiral’s statue.”
“But nothing will happen to Harkan,” said the man himself, entering from the hallway. He wore tall brown boots, dark trousers, a long coat that hugged his trim torso, and a hooded cloak. He set down a small bag of supplies and ruffled Remy’s hair. “Harkan’s altogether too impressive for that.”
Normally Remy would have rolled his eyes and told Harkan that the only impressive thing he could do was belch like a drunk old grandfather.
But Remy sat silent and pale, his lips chapped from biting them. Since their mother’s disappearance, he had not let anyone see him cry, had even bravely tried to match Eliana’s jokes, but she knew better.
If something went wrong, if anything happened to him or Harkan because of the deal she had made with Simon…
She tucked her necklace into her dress, the pendant rough against her skin, and smoothed her features into a glittering mask.
“Remy,” Harkan said, “why don’t you go collect your things?”
“I’m not stupid,” Remy muttered. “Just tell me to leave so you can talk.”
“Fine. Leave so we can talk.”
When Remy had gone, Harkan took Eliana’s hand.
“Tell me you’re not making a terrible mistake, trusting this man,” he sai
d quietly.
A thrill of nervousness rippled through her at the grave expression on his face. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Good. Because then I’d know you were lying.”
Despite herself, she smiled, and when Harkan finally grinned back at her, she cupped his face in her hands and brought him down gently for a kiss. With his hands warm against her bare back, Eliana could almost believe this was just another night—going to a party with Harkan, dancing and flirting and coming home with a job.
“We will find her, El.” Harkan kissed her temple and let her go, his eyes soft on her face. “But first—”
“First,” she said, trying on a smile, “I have a party to attend.”
• • •
In the Evening Ballroom of Lord Arkelion’s palace, only a handful of small candles dotted the room, and the shivering floor spun with dancers. Large windows opened into the night, letting in the river breeze.
Eliana pretended to sip her wine and scanned the room, counting the motionless figures around the perimeter—adatrox. Twenty of them.
Her mouth thinned. On a normal night, upward of five hundred adatrox patrolled the enormous palace and its sprawling grounds. But tonight there would be close to a thousand.
She continued counting. Thirty. Thirty-five. Mostly men, a few women. Dark and pale. Black cloaks and gray surcoats and blank-eyed stares that could turn murderous in an instant.
An idol to the Emperor towered in a corner of the ballroom. Eliana, glaring at it, sent a quick prayer to Saint Tameryn of the Old World, the legendary shadowcaster and the patron saint of Astavar. The Empire could raze their temples to the ground and tear down their statues, but they could not police the prayers inside her head.
Hide me, Tameryn, she prayed, lady of swiftness and illicit deeds.
If, that is, you ever actually existed.
Chiming tones floated in from the city’s central plaza—the clock tower, striking midnight.
Eliana waited five minutes before drifting across the ballroom, smiling and making excuses whenever someone asked her for a dance. She made her way through the maze of candlelit sitting rooms surrounding the ballroom, keeping one eye on the adatrox patrolling the hallways. Then she slipped into a narrow servants’ passage and followed the winding stone stairs to the palace’s lower levels—the infirmary, the servants’ quarters, the kitchens.
Furyborn Page 10