The magic that lived in the veins of shadowcasters gave them the power to imbue darkness with physicality, with heft and a cunning, voracious will. The shadows rushing at Rielle across the plain carved new roads in the ground. The shadows took the shapes of horned black leopards and winged wolves, bears with spiked spines and great hawks that breathed dark fire. With each running step, they sucked the air out of the Flats until Rielle was forced to stagger, gasping, to her knees.
A hawk reached her first, swooping low over her head. Cold ruffled the ends of her hair, frosted her scalp. She sucked in gasp after greedy gasp, but the air was growing thin, brittle. The hawk latched to her neck, squeezing with hard, thin feathers that sliced lines into her skin. The spike-spined bear skidded to a stop at her feet. A massive scaled paw struck her across the face and knocked her to the ground.
And she did nothing.
Head reeling, she let them come.
Sweet saints, she thought frantically, I hope this works.
The winged wolf pounced, baying, onto her chest. Once it touched her, the wolf morphed into a shapeless veil that wrapped around her head and mouth, until she had to claw at her own face in order to breathe. Her nails pierced her skin, drawing blood. Shreds of shadow fell away at her touch, misshapen and muttering, before dissolving into the ground and re-forming into a buzzing flock of arrows. Cold fear slammed into her chest. The metal trial. Some shadowcaster’s joke, she supposed.
The falling shower of arrows pierced her like needles, scalp to ankle. They rose up, vibrating with angry intent, then fell on her again. And again. And again.
She squeezed her eyes shut, dripping with sweat and rivulets of her own blood, and let the shadow-beasts swarm upon her, let them pinch and grasp and choke. A chittering black rat forced its way inside her mouth. She gagged on the freezing wriggle of its body, fought the urge to vomit when the rat dissolved and spread through her blood in a surge of cold.
Tears leaked out of her eyes. Her body vibrated with the need to fight.
But she stayed sprawled across the ground, inert and helpless. Distantly she heard the crowd yell for her, their cries growing hysterical with fear.
You have something planned, Corien remarked, curious. Do tell.
Can’t you tell? she managed, though even her thoughts came ragged and breathless.
I could, yes. But I feel like being surprised.
You’ll see soon enough.
He beamed at her. She saw a flicker of a pale, handsome face before her closed eyelids. You’re happy to see me.
She let out a small, tearful laugh. I thought you’d left me for good.
Never, Rielle. Soft lips brushed against her brow; a hand cupped her face, guiding her up. Never.
She turned her face to him, safe in the haven of her thoughts. The tearing shadows, the screaming crowd, the plan she’d engineered—they all fell away. There was only Corien and her own body and the power writhing for release inside her.
His mouth brushed against hers, slow and chaste. His hand trailed the length of her spine, drawing her up from the cold ground.
Now, he said, his voice tight and hoarse. Get up. Make him sorry.
Him. The Archon.
You cheated, she thought, smiling. I thought you wanted to be surprised.
I cannot resist you, he replied. Not you or your phenomenal mind.
Rielle’s eyes flew open. She drew as deep a breath as she could. Then she reached her hands across the muddy ground, cracked her eyes open to look at the columns of sunlight breaking through the dome above.
“With the dawn I rise,” she prayed. Then, curling her fingers into the dirt, “With the day, I blaze.”
In one brilliant instant, every ray of sun in sight dropped from the sky and raced across the ground like bolts of lightning to her fingers.
She gathered the light between her hands, ravenous for its burn, delighted at how it sizzled against her skin. Her eyes saw and did not see, glazed over with a hunger that made her chest hum with need. She blinked; the world was gilded through with countless waves of shimmering gold.
Her breath caught in her throat. The empirium.
She blinked again. The world darkened.
She pressed her palms together, then slammed them down against the earth.
A blinding blast rocketed out from where she knelt in the dirt, tearing through the shadowcasters’ monsters. The shadowcasters themselves toppled from their platforms. The dome overhead vanished. Sizzling, black shreds of shadow cascaded to the ground.
When the darkness cleared, Rielle stood alone, her skin bloodied, her beautiful gown torn to shreds, but her back straight and her head held high.
And she shone.
A wave of shock tore through the crowd. The ground beneath Rielle’s feet vibrated from the sheer weight of their cries, their stamping feet, their pounding fists.
Rielle! they cried. Rielle! Rielle!
And then, another roar, dwarfing the first: Sun Queen! Sun Queen!
Ludivine’s tailors had spent hours sewing tiny mirrors into Rielle’s gown, into the layers of her skirt, along the ribbons tied in her hair and through the lace lying limp against her sweat-soaked skin.
And now, Rielle had not only summoned sunlight to destroy her enemies and shatter the darkness.
She had drawn it up her body, trapped it glittering in her mirrors. Hundreds of shifting sunbursts lined her arms and legs and hair, shimmering between her breasts and along the ripped hems of her gown.
It was a look inspired by the armor of the Lightbringer himself.
And she was the Sun Queen: radiant and unstoppable.
She spun in a circle, her torn skirts flying, and called every dead scrap of shadow to her. Her power slithered across the ground like seeking tongues. She spun her hands through the air, crafting a shape from the shadows as a sculptor would from his clay, then turned sharply on her heel and sent her creation flying straight at the Archon.
It was a dragon—half the height of the Archon’s tower in the High Temple. Its sharp-tipped wings spanned one hundred feet. Inside its jaws wriggled a nest of black snakes. And its hide shimmered not with scales but with the wailing forms of all the conquered beasts the shadowcasters had sent flying at Rielle.
They served the dragon. And now the dragon served her.
Screams of terror and delight exploded from the crowd.
The shadowcasters staggered to their feet, fumbling to find their castings, shouting for help.
The Archon rose to stand at the edge of his box, empty-handed and defenseless.
Rielle ripped her hands back through the air.
The dragon froze, its teeth snapping before the Archon’s face. Its heavy wings flapped with loud, low booms like distant drums.
Rielle cocked her head. Flicked her fingers.
The dragon opened its jaws wide. Seven hooded snakes, shifting with each gust of wind, rose out of its mouth to taste the Archon’s papery skin with their tongues.
I could kill him, thought Rielle. Right now. I could do it.
You could, Corien agreed. But will you?
The ground shifted. The dragon’s weight pulled at her fingertips. The earth underfoot and the air above and the light glossing her skin waited, tense.
What would she ask of them?
Whatever the demand, they would obey.
It would obey.
The empirium. Rielle shuddered. Pleasure spilled down her front in tingling waves, raising every fine hair on her body. It waits for me.
Grasp it. Corien’s voice came urgent and hot at her ear. Take it for your own. No one else can do this but you. Do you know what you could accomplish, Rielle? The answers you could find, the worlds you could build—
Then, a flash of golden color, followed by green: Ludivine’s hair. Audric’s cloak. They were rushing down the set of stairs from the royal box. Rielle thought, in fact, that she heard them calling for her, even across the Flats and through the noise of the crowd.
She blinked, stepped back, lowered her arm. The dragon, waiting above, shifted.
Don’t listen to them, Corien hissed. They won’t be your friends for much longer. Don’t you see? They don’t understand, and they never will. Kill him. Make them understand.
Not like this, she thought at last with a regretful pang—and a swell of relief. Not now.
She lowered her aching arm and clenched her fist. With a gust of cold wind and a low, tired groan, the dragon snuffed out.
Rielle sank to her knees, braced herself against the ground with shaking hands.
A vision flashed across her sight, watery and unclear: