A vastness of black, filled with screams too alien to belong to either human or animal. There was a light on the horizon and a figure standing beside it. Eliana cried out, crushed by the lonely weight of this place, and ran toward the light—
She was back on the firelit plain, watching a woman kneel beside a dismembered, blood-soaked corpse. The woman’s back was to Eliana. She wore a suit of black armor and a crimson cloak. The woman moved pale hands over the corpse, knitting across skull and collarbone, down chest and across severed hips. The air around the corpse shimmered, shifting, and then the woman sat back, calm, and the corpse jerked, gasped, and staggered to his feet. He was no longer a corpse. His skin was whole and new, his limbs intact. He took a few unsteady steps before falling to his knees. He looked down at his body and then threw out his arms and shouted to the skies—with joy, with relief, with fury.
The woman rose, smooth and silent, to her feet.
“You’re working faster now,” said the man beside her, whom Eliana had not noticed before. “Well done.” He drew the woman into an embrace, and Eliana stood frozen in horror as their faces came into view.
The woman was dark-haired and unspeakably beautiful, with a face so pale and faultless it could have been carved from porcelain—save for the shadows stretching dark beneath her green eyes and the small, hungry smile curling her mouth.
Eliana brought shaking fingers to her own lips.
My mouth, she thought and then touched the brittle ends of her own tangled dark hair. My hair.
And the man standing beside this woman—blue-eyed instead of black but with the same lovely pale face and untroubled poise that graced the painted portraits in Lord Arkelion’s palace. Black hair, mud-caked cloak, a bloodstained sword at his belt. He guided the woman’s mouth to his, and she clung to him as if their kiss was the only reason she remained standing.
The Emperor.
Eliana frantically backed away, tripped over another corpse, fell to the ground hard.
The world shifted, darkened.
She blinked.
She had returned to her cell, and Zahra hovered quietly in front of her—a mere distortion of the air once more, ephemeral and wingless.
“Please breathe, Eliana,” Zahra urged gently. “I know it is a great deal to understand.”
Eliana gasped for breath, tears streaming down her face. Her skull felt too heavy for her body. Her skin still felt flushed from the battlefield’s flames.
“That was him,” she croaked. “That was the Emperor. But…”
“That was the Emperor before he called himself the Emperor. When his name was simply Corien. He was the first of us to escape. And I am sorry that he was.”
Remy was right. The thought kept circling through Eliana’s mind. They’re angels. The Emperor, his generals, Lord Arkelion, Lord Morbrae. Remy was right.
“And the woman,” she whispered. “I know her face.”
“I would imagine so.” Zahra touched Eliana’s hands, and Eliana felt nothing. “For it is your own, is it not?”
“Partly. More beautiful. More…”
“More unkind.” Zahra offered a small smile. “You have a kind face, Eliana, though you try to make it not so.”
Eliana crossed her arms and shut her eyes. “That’s why he recognized me. The Emperor. Corien.”
Zahra was silent.
“What were they doing?” Eliana asked. “That body.”
“What he failed to accomplish with your mother before her Fall ruined all their work,” Zahra said, “and what he hopes to finish with you. Resurrection. Our return—and our revenge.”
“Our. The angels?”
“Yes, Eliana.”
When Eliana opened her eyes once more, her body felt caught on a high, hot wind—floating, untethered.
“I hope you are lying to me,” she said at last. “Please tell me you’re a hallucination. I won’t be angry, I swear it.”
Zahra bowed her head. “I wish I could.”
“I am the daughter of the Blood Queen.” Her voice came out hollow, heavy. “Daughter of the Kingsbane.”
“You are.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That is understandable. It does not, however, change the truth.”
Eliana stared at the floor through a furious fog of tears. “How did I get here, then? If I was born back then, to her, and now I’m here… How?”
“That, I’m afraid, is not my story to tell.”
Eliana laughed wearily. “Of course.”
“Eliana, I’m not being coy—”
Eliana waved Zahra silent. She waited until her tears had dried, until she felt she could stand, until she could almost believe the story she told herself—that this was indeed a hallucination, some horrible dream brought on by whatever Fidelia had used to knock her unconscious.
Zahra said quietly at the door, “It’s time to leave.”
Eliana rose to her feet, wiped her face on her sleeve, and said to Zahra, “Then get me out of here. I have things to do.”
39
Rielle
“I worry about Tal. I’ve always worried about him for reasons I couldn’t name, and now I understand why: because he has lived a lie for years, for the sake of this girl, and now is suffering for it. I would never say this to him, but I write it here or else it will burst from my tongue: I hate her for doing this to him. Yes, she was only a child when it all began. But after that, as she grew and learned? What then? What stayed her tongue? Fear? Or malice?”
—Journal of Miren Ballastier, Grand Magister of the Forge
June 8, Year 998 of the Second Age
When the doors to the Council Hall opened, Rielle rose from her chair and steeled herself.
She did not expect her father to enter and hurry straight toward her, his face pale.
Rielle’s guards formed a tight circle around her.
“Sorry, Lord Commander,” said Evyline, her hands hovering above the hilt of her sword. “I can’t let you past.”
“Let him past,” ordered King Bastien, the Archon and the Magisterial Council filing in behind him.
As soon as the guards stepped aside, Rielle’s father hurried over and gathered her close.
“Oh, my darling girl,” he whispered against the top of her head.
Rielle’s shock was so great that tears sprang to her eyes before she could draw a full breath. “Papa?”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Rielle’s thoughts had scattered at the touch of her father’s hands. How long had it been since he had held her like this? Years.
She clutched his jacket, burying her face in the scratchy, stiff fabric. All at once, she was four years old again, and her mother was still alive, and nothing had happened except a few unexplained odd incidents: candles extinguishing themselves, an overflowing sink, a crack appearing in the kitchen floor beneath Rielle’s small, tantrum-throwing body.
All at once, she was four years old again, and her father still loved her.
“Papa,” she whispered, “I was so frightened.”
“I know.” He wiped her tears with callused fingers. The implacable Lord Commander of the Celdarian army was gone, and in his place was a mere aging father. “He won’t hurt you again.”
King Bastien, standing before the council table, cleared his throat. “Lady Rielle.”
She turned to face the king, but her father remained at her side, and despite everything, a part of Rielle’s heart she had thought long dead swelled with joy.
“Yes, my king.” She curtsied. “I must apologize for my treatment of Lord Dervin.”
“No, indeed you must not.” The king’s face was grave. “Lord Dervin has been found guilty of attempted assassination and is being sent home to Belbrion, under house arrest for the remainder of his days. He and his accomplices will never again set foot in this castle.”
Rielle immediately looked past the king to Queen Genoveve, rigid in her chair, and then to Ludivine, who sat in the corner with her hands held tightly in her lap. Audric stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder.
When Ludivine’s red-rimmed eyes met her own, Rielle had to look away.
“I…I don’t know what to say, my king,” she said quietly. “I cannot be glad for it, and yet I must thank you.”
But you are glad for it, Corien murmured. In fact, you wish you’d kept going, don’t you? You wish you’d squeezed your fist closed, popped his head right off.
I don’t.
His voice was low and angry: Don’t lie to me, Rielle.