How did you see your own hand moving and know it was attached to your arm and your shoulder and your blood and your bones? Like that.
“I knew because it looked and sounded and felt like me,” she explained. “It felt the same as my anger had felt. The same scent, the same flavor. I felt connected to it.” She hesitated. “Grand Magister Belounnon has since helped me understand that what I sensed in that moment was the empirium. The connection between myself and the fire was the power that connects all things, and I had accessed it.”
Rielle dared to look at the Archon, sitting beside the Magisterial Council. He stared back at her, his small bright eyes unblinking. The torchlight made his pale skin and smooth head gleam.
“And was your mother able to escape?” the king continued.
Rielle’s throat tightened, and for a moment she could not speak. “No. She was trapped inside. Father ran in to get her and brought her out. She was alive, but then…”
Say it, child. The voice returned, compassionate. Tell them. They cannot hurt you.
With the stone saints staring down at her, their unfeeling eyes cold and grave, the strange voice should not have been a comfort. But hearing it nevertheless settled her churning stomach.
“I was afraid,” she continued, “when I saw my mother. I had never seen burns before. She was screaming, and I yelled at her to stop, but she wouldn’t, and then…all I could think was how I needed her to stop screaming.” She hurried through the story, as if trying to outrace the memory of those climbing flames. “Then she stopped. Father laid her on the ground, begged her to wake up. But she was dead.”
The room shifted, murmuring.
“And you have hidden this murder from us for thirteen years,” King Bastien declared.
“It was not a murder,” Rielle said, wishing desperately to sit. Her body still felt bruised from the fight in the mountains. “I did not mean to kill my mother. I was a child, and it was an accident.”
“We are concerned with facts here, not intentions. The facts of the matter are that you killed Marise Dardenne, and you have—with the help of your father and Grand Magister Belounnon—lied about it for thirteen years.”
“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.”