“Rielle!”
Tal’s distant shout shook her. She took two halting steps forward, gazing up at the burning house.
“I can’t,” she whispered, a sharp, ill heat flaring throughout her body. “No, no, no.”
Then, with a groan, the front face of the house began to collapse.
A choked scream rang out—her own name, quickly silenced.
Rielle ran around the house, searching through the smoke for the back door. It was there, just as she remembered it. She kicked the blackened wood; it gave way easily. She raced over the threshold into a world of black smoke and leaping orange flames. How strange it was to see the rooms just as they should have been—but empty now. No furniture, no art on the walls. Only flames and a noxious smell that coated her every breath with darkness.
She hid her face. “Tal? Where are you?”
“Here!” His voice was faint. “In the parlor!”
She stumbled down the main hallway and to the door of her mother’s parlor. The wall was buckling; overhead, the rafters creaked and groaned.
She shoved her weight against the door. It didn’t budge. She slammed into it again and again, her throat tightening, her vision a luster of tears.
Outside, three monstrous crashes hit the ground. The house rattled, windows shattering. More fire from the acolytes?
She cried out in frustration, then heard a loud snap and scrambled out of the way right before the ceiling above her collapsed.
The door, wedged loose, fell out of its frame.
“Tal?” She crawled to the door, the floor blazing hot under her palms. Dragged a hand across her face to clear the grit from her eyes, looked inside the parlor past billowing waves of heat.
Tal.
He was there, wrists and ankles bound, trapped in the far corner by a shattered window. Glass sparkled across the floor. Rafters and chunks of plaster from the collapsed ceiling separated them, as did a roaring ribbon of fire.
“Tal!” She clung to the doorframe. “Answer me! Come on, get up! We have to leave!”
“I can’t move,” he called out to her. His voice was ravaged, wheezing. “The ceiling fell on my legs!”
She sagged to the floor.
“Douse the flames, Rielle!” He coughed violently. “Just as we practiced!”
As if it were that simple. Just a prayer, just a lesson.
The sound of the flames roaring between them was turning her stomach inside out. She couldn’t think past them to remember her prayers, much less find the empirium.
Rielle, save her!
Rielle, please! Do it, now! Oh, God…
She fell to her hands and knees, stomach heaving.
Papa, I’m sorry! I can’t stop it! Mama! Mama, run!
“I can’t,” she gasped. “I can’t stop it.”
“You can do this, Rielle,” Tal was calling to her. “Listen to my voice! I trust you!”
From elsewhere in the house came a massive groan. The floor shook. Rielle looked back, down the smoke-filled hallway to see the second floor collapse. Her bedroom, her father’s study, her mother’s music room. New flames roared up the walls. A great gaping hole in the roof revealed a smoke-stained sky.
“Rielle, listen—” Tal’s voice disappeared into a fit of coughing.
“Tal?”
He didn’t respond.
“Tal!” She rose on shaking legs, searched through the inferno for a path through, and found one—small and shrinking.
She ran for it, diving through the flames and slamming to the floor on the other side. A few feet away, Tal lay under a ceiling beam, his face sallow and slick with sweat.
She crawled to him, head ringing from her wild leap. The fire’s heat pressed down on her back like a hand determined to bury her.
“Tal, I’m here. Tal?” She helped him sit, slapped his cheeks until his bloodshot eyes fluttered open.
He smiled up at her. “There you are.” His hand fumbled for hers. “I knew you’d find me.”
“We’re trapped, I can’t… I can’t carry you. Please get up.”
He gasped for air, shaking his head. “You can put the fire out.”
“Tal, I…” Her tears dropped onto his neck. Papa, I can’t make it stop! “If I try, I’ll just make it worse. You know I will.”
“What I know is that you were only a child. And that now…” He touched her cheek. “Now, you are a queen.”
His eyes began to flutter shut.
“Tal? No! Tal!” She looked helplessly at the encroaching flames, tried reaching for the empirium with a weak thrust of her hand. “Move! Leave us alone, please!”
Another rafter collapsed, not five feet from them. Rielle ducked her head over Tal’s body, breathless.
Then she heard Tal’s voice, faint at her ear: “Burn steady and burn true. Burn clean and burn bright.”
The Fire Rite. She closed her eyes.
“Burn steady and burn true,” she repeated, her voice cracking. “Burn clean…”
His hand tightened around hers. “…and burn bright. Again, Rielle.”
“Burn steady and burn true.”
“Think,” he whispered, “of the ones you love.”
“Burn clean and burn bright.”
The ones I love.
Ludivine. Tal.
Audric.
Fresh warmth touched her fingers, her toes.
From overhead came Atheria’s piercing cry—part horse, part hawk. A distracted part of Rielle’s mind recalled the discarded firebird cloak. Her vision flooded with a thousand shades of summer.
“Burn steady,” she whispered.
“And burn true,” Tal finished, his voice a mere thread.
“Burn clean.” She opened her eyes to a room of soft gold. Gold fire, gold ashes, golden shimmering Tal. “And burn bright.”
She blinked. She inhaled.
The gold shifted, gathering in twisting knots that hovered, waiting.
Rielle breathed out. Hot points of energy surged away from her fingertips, like needles stabbing their way out of her skin. The gold flooding the room careened away in spinning whorls of light.
All at once, the heat crowding her vanished.
She blinked, gulped down a breath as if surfacing from water.
The world returned to her, dull and ordinary.
Except for the thousands of feathers floating down from the rafters, gusting along the walls, coating the ruined floor. Everywhere that flames had been, now there danced among the diminishing curls of smoke long needlepoint feathers of tangerine and gold, violet and vermilion. Firebird colors.
“Rielle…” Tal swept his arm across the floor. Feathers flew up at his touch before drifting back down to rest lightly among the piles of simmering embers.
He looked up at her, wonder turning his face soft. “How did you do this?”
She retrieved a feather of a particularly brilliant red and watched with a thrill of delight as the fine downy barbs flickered at her touch.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, caught between exhaustion and the most perfect joy she had ever felt. “I think—”
But the words died on her lips. For at that moment, a familiar touch scraped down her spine.
Corien? She looked through the house, her grip tightening on Tal. Are you there?
Silence was his answer. But she was not fooled. She sensed his nearness like a familiar shape in the dark.
Distant horns blasted—staccato, frantic. Warnings. With the flames gone, Rielle could hear the crowd’s terrified screams.
Oh, God.
“What is it?” Tal searched her face. “Rielle, say something.”
And thus, Corien murmured, we begin.
Rielle touched her mouth, chasing the sensation of lips brushing against her own.
With a small smile, she whispered, “He’s here.”
46
Eliana
“Dearest brothers and sisters, please do not grieve my absence. Know that I was of sound mind when I left for Ventera. As the youngest of five, I have often felt dim in the shadow of your brilliant light. Now, it is my turn to shine. In the belly of the beast, I will serve Red Crown’s cause of justice and freedom and strive to earn your admiration. May the Queen’s light guide us all home.”
—Letter from Princess Navana Amaruk of Astavar to her siblings
December 13, Year 1014 of the Third Age
They moved through the cold forest for hours—all through the night and into the next day.
The ground became rockier the farther north they went, soft earth giving way to pale sand. The trees were strange here, short and spindly, with brittle leaves that hissed spitefully in the wind. Long, misshapen barrows crowned with crumbling stones snaked through the forest like veins.
“These trees reek of death,” Hob whispered as they crouched near one such mound. “I’ll be glad to leave them behind.”
Eliana agreed—but where to go after this? Simon’s contact, their path across the Narrow Sea, was now lost to them.
They stopped at last to rest, huddling beneath a moss-draped overhang on the side of a slight hill. Navi had lost much of her color, her skin slick with sweat. They settled her on the ground, piled leaves atop her shivering body.
She raised one feeble hand. “Eliana?”
Eliana took it, settled beside her. “I’m here. You’re all right. We’re going to be fine now.”
Navi smiled weakly. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Fine. We’re quite likely all doomed.”
“That’s better.”
Remy wedged himself against Eliana’s other side, his arms crossed over his chest. He had spoken not a word since leaving Simon behind.
Eliana glanced at Hob. “Do you know who Simon could have been talking to? The contact he went to meet.”
Hob pulled a few wrapped pieces of food from his pockets—dried meat, hard rolls, all he’d managed to grab before fleeing the fire—and passed them around. “No. According to Simon, I am not high-ranked enough an ally to be privy to such information.”
“There must be smugglers that cross the Narrow Sea.”
“A few. But we haven’t the money for that.” Hob yanked a berry off a nearby bush, chewed it, spat it out. “Rotberries. This forest is useless.”
“Can we go back to Rinthos? Ask Camille for help?”
“I don’t think Navi would survive the trip. If we can get to the port of Skoszia without someone seeing us and killing us on the spot, I can send a message to Camille from a place there, but it will take time.”
“That’s time we don’t have.”
“We left him.” Remy shifted to look up at Eliana. “We left him to die with Rahzavel.”
“Yes, we did,” said Eliana, refusing to meet his eyes. “He would have wanted us to.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“Hey, you know what?” She slid her arm around Remy’s shoulders. “I have something to tell you. I wish I could show you, but I can’t. You too, Hob.”
Hob raised an eyebrow. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”
“I met a friend,” Eliana said, “in the laboratories where they held me and Navi. Her name is Zahra, and…she’s here with us. Right now.”
Some of the sadness left Remy’s face. “Really? How? Where?”
Hob was staring at her. “Have you lost your mind?”
“This is no joke, Hob,” said Zahra.
Hob’s arm shot out to shield both Eliana and Remy. “Who’s there? Who said that?”
“Who are you?” Remy looked around wonderingly. “Can you show me what you look like?”
“My name is Zahra, little one.” Zahra swooped down to Remy’s eye level, her chin in her hands. “What a darling thing you are. Your mind is as wide open as the sky.”
Remy cautiously waved his hand around. “You’re very close, aren’t you?”
“Indeed.”
“Eliana,” Hob muttered, “what is this?”
Remy hugged his knees to his chest. “Are you a wraith?”
Zahra blinked in surprise. “What is this child, who knows so much of the world?” Her expression turned tender. “Oh, sweet one. You are a dreamer, a teller of tales. I see that now. You ache for magic and for all those golden giants of the past.”
Remy flushed with pleasure. “Before the invasion,” he said eagerly, “people stole books from the temples, so they wouldn’t be destroyed. I buy them whenever I can and read them all.”
“Hang on.” Eliana pulled back to frown at him. “You mean you used to sneak around Orline buying books in the underground market?”
“Do you think I learned everything I know just from rolling dough at the bakery?”
“Well, I—” She shook her head, astonished.
“Oh, I do like you.” Zahra draped an arm across Remy’s shoulders with a smile. “A curious mind and a pure heart both in one.”
Hob flung his gloves to the ground. “Can someone tell me what a wraith is?”
“Don’t move,” a male voice warned from the shadows before them. “Or I’ll tell my archers to let their arrows fly.”
Eliana froze as shapes shifted in the undergrowth—five soldiers, ten, gathering close with bows raised and arrows nocked.
Zahra shot up to her full height, dark eyes flashing. “Eliana, forgive me. I was distracted; I didn’t hear them!”
One of the archers jerked their arrow to the side, seeking Zahra—and of course finding nothing.
“You’ve a fifth in your party?” asked the first man. He approached Eliana, no bow in his hand but a long curved sword at his hip. His hood hid his face from view.
“Do you see five people here?” Eliana glared up at him. “Your eyes fail you, I’m afraid.”
“But my ears do not.” The man stopped, considering Navi’s shorn head. “You escaped from Fidelia.”
Eliana tensed. “Perhaps.”
“Malik?” Navi moaned, struggling to push herself up. “Is that you?”
“Navi?” The man flung off his hood and fell to his knees at her feet. “Sweet saints.” He gathered Navi against his chest before Eliana could stop him, pressed a tender kiss to her head. “Simon said you were alive, but I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t let myself.”
Navi clung to him, her gaunt face free of pain for the first time since they’d escaped the laboratories. “Eliana,” she murmured, “please don’t be afraid. We’re safe now.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Eliana moved in front of Remy and reached under her singed jacket for Arabeth. “Who are you?”
Malik turned, his brown cheeks wet with tears, his eyes large and dark, his jaw strong. The resemblance, now that Eliana knew to look for it, was obvious.
“I am Malik Amaruk,” he said, wiping his face. “I am Navi’s brother—and a prince of Astavar.”
• • •
Later that afternoon, after Malik and his scouts had shared a proper meal with them, Eliana stood with Malik on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Narrow Sea. Across the black channel lay a line of white cliffs: Astavar—and freedom.
Eliana made herself look at it and imagine the fresh green country beyond the border, even though doing so opened old wounds in her heart.
Harkan, she thought, you should be here.
“So there are monsters on those boats,” Malik murmured. On the far horizon, black specks moved steadily west against the darkening sky. The Empire fleet.
“They’re called crawlers,” Eliana told him.
Down the coast, a small flotilla of Empire warships waited at the port of Skoszia. The faint shapes of adatrox bustled b
ack and forth along the docks, moving supplies and weapons. Hanging high on the warships’ masts, the Emperor’s colors of black, red, and gold snapped in the wind.
The Emperor. Corien, Zahra had called him.
Eliana’s mouth thinned. That was not something she would allow herself to think about just yet. “So we have to make it across the sea without anyone on those ships seeing us.”
“Yes.” Malik pointed behind them, farther west along the coast. “There’s a small smuggler’s ship two miles away, in a small cove abandoned by the Empire. The ship crosses at nightfall, and its crew will take us with them. Simon and I arranged it before…” Again Malik glanced at her. “Well.”
“Before I abandoned him to save my own ass?”
“I wasn’t going to say it quite like that.”
“No need to hold your tongue around me, prince.” Eliana stared out at the water, trying not to remember Simon’s cries of pain. “I know what I’ve done.”
“I would’ve done the same, you know.”
“No need to comfort me either.”
Malik inclined his head. “Once we’re across, you’ll be taken to the capital. There are tunnels below the palace. My fathers will hide all of you there, and I’ll join the army at the beach.”
“To fight?” Eliana couldn’t hide the scorn in her voice.
Malik said mildly, “You think we can’t win.”
“I know you can’t.”
“And what should we do? Sit on the shores of our country and let the Empire slaughter us without raising a single sword?”
“Your people excel at sitting and not raising a single sword.”
Malik regarded Eliana calmly. “All of Astavar grieved with you the day Ventera fell.”
“Your grief means nothing to me.”
“We saved our own asses. Isn’t that how you said it? How are we so different, then?”
“Simon is a murderer. A soldier. He knew what he was getting into when he joined Red Crown. A country, though, is full of innocents.” Eliana glared at the sea. “Don’t try to compare yourself to me or your country to mine. You’ll come up short.”
“My lord!” A scout hurried up the cliffside path to whisper something in Malik’s ear.
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