He nodded, closed his eyes. Tears slipped down his cheeks and into his neatly trimmed beard. A ghost of a smile touched his mouth.
“‘We’ll pray to the stars,’” she continued, a mere whisper, “‘and ask them to set us free. By the moon…’”
He shuddered once, his hands falling slack in hers.
She closed her eyes, pressed her face against his fingers. If she finished the lullaby, if she didn’t look, then it wasn’t really happening.
“‘By the moon,’” she whispered, “‘by the moon, that’s where you’ll find me. We’ll hold hands, just you and me…’”
She could no longer speak. She curled up beside him, pressed her face into his side, and lay there shivering and alone.
? ? ?
A familiar cry pierced the air outside the chamber, shaking Rielle from her grief.
A gust of wind followed by stamping hooves announced Atheria’s arrival, just beyond the door through which Corien had crawled.
She sat up, her heart pounding. Audric. What would she tell him?
He rushed through the door an instant later, windblown and frantic. “Rielle?”
“Here,” she croaked. She tried to go to him, but her legs wouldn’t work. She instead watched with mounting dread as Audric hurried to her, then faltered with a sharp cry—and then stared in horror at his father’s frozen face.
Rielle at last found the strength to rise.
“I tried to stop him,” she whispered, approaching him slowly. “I’m sorry, I…I burned him. He’s terribly wounded, but…” She gestured at the floor, where the smears of Corien’s bloody body marked his exit. “It wasn’t enough. Audric, I’m so sorry.”
“Who? Who did you burn?”
“His name is Corien,” she managed. “He’s an angel, Audric. He turned the Sauvillier men against us… And Ludivine…”
Despair crushed her, left her choked with tears, and that was good, that was true and real, for when Audric turned to her, saw the blood dripping down her fingers and the mark of her father’s hand across her cheek, his shocked expression shattered, and he gathered her tightly in his arms.
“Thank God you’re all right,” he whispered into her hair, his voice thick. “Rielle, I thought I’d lost you.”
She wrapped her arms around him, shook her head against his chest. “Never. Never.”
You lie, Corien’s voice whispered, thin with pain. Even now, you lie to him.
She felt Audric’s shoulders shake under her hands and helped him sink to the floor.
“It’s all right,” she whispered as he wept against her neck. She took comfort from knowing that at least this one small fact was not a lie, and the truest thing she knew in this place of death: “I’m here, Audric, and I love you.”
48
Eliana
“In these dark times, not even the light of the Sun Queen is as powerful as the light waiting inside our deepest hearts, if we only have the courage to look for it.”
—The Word of the Prophet
“Hurry up,” Eliana whispered, crouching behind a stack of crates marked with the Empire’s winged emblem. The dock was slick beneath her feet, the frigid air sour and salty. “They’re disembarking.”
Zahra sighed irritably. “I’m trying. There’s a lot going on here, you know. Wait…”
Eliana tensed. “Did you find him?”
“Perhaps. Stay here.” Zahra disappeared into the night.
Eliana watched two uniformed adatrox patrol the deck of the ship to her right. A distant boom sounded from far across the water. She peered around the crates, down the narrow pier, and out to sea. Another boom snapped like an approaching thunderclap, and then another, each accompanied by distant flares of light against the starlit sky.
The main fleet, steadily moving toward Astavar, had begun to fire its guns.
“Come on, come on,” Eliana muttered.
“The far ship,” Zahra said, appearing so suddenly that Eliana jumped. “The sleek black one. Smaller than the others, with a thick hull. That’s where they are.”
Eliana let out a slow breath. “That might be a general’s boat. Ready?”
Zahra put a shifting dark hand on Eliana’s wrist. “Remember what I told you about my limited power since the Fall. I will only be able to mask your presence for a few minutes, at the most, before needing to rest again.”
Uneasy, Eliana nodded. “Save it for when we’re actually on the ship. I can get there unseen on my own.”
She closed her eyes, said a quick prayer to Saint Tameryn that she would hide Remy and the others on the smuggler’s boat—and that they would reach Astavar before the fleet did.
“May the Queen’s light guide them home,” Zahra murmured.
Eliana shot her a look.
Zahra shook back her hair. “What, I can’t pray to you now that we’re friends?”
Eliana rolled her eyes, then darted out from behind the crates and followed the docks to the farthest pier, keeping to the shadows.
Suddenly Zahra moaned, “Oh no.”
“What?” Eliana crouched beside a railing draped with netting and wiped her brow. “Wait, where’s the ship?”
“Out there.” Zahra pointed at a black ship slicing out across the water.
“Oh, sweet saints,” Eliana hissed, “can nothing in this world be easy?”
She made sure her knives were secure, then dove into the freezing water.
? ? ?
“Hurry,” Zahra cried above the choppy waves. “They’re speeding up!”
Eliana kicked desperately, her teeth chattering, then threw herself at the ship’s hull and grabbed a black line hanging down from the deck. At her grip, it came loose from its knot, sliding fast, and she plunged back into the sea. But she held tight and pulled herself along the rope’s length until she reached the ship once more. Muscles burning from her frantic swim, she climbed.
“I insist upon hiding you now,” Zahra whispered, floating nervously around her.
Eliana glanced up at the deck. “Not yet.”
An adatrox leaned over the steel deck railing, peering down at the taut, swinging line. Before he could raise his weapon, Eliana launched herself over the railing, grabbed Nox from her boot, and plunged it into his stomach. She clamped her hand over his mouth, then staggered with him to the railing and shoved him over the side.
From down the deck came footsteps, approaching fast.
“Now?” Zahra asked.
Eliana hated to waste the precious few minutes Zahra would give her, but capture was not an option. “Now.”
“Follow me closely.” Zahra sped along the port-side deck, the world shifting in her wake. As long as Eliana stayed safe in that distorted space, no one could see her—though someone would see the trail of seawater she left behind soon enough. They passed adatrox staring blankly outside closed doors, patrolling side by side along the deck rails.
Zahra beckoned at a door ahead on their right. An adatrox stood beside it, revolver in hand.
Eliana flattened herself against the wall, hoping the shadows would hide her. Zahra moved away, then disappeared. Two seconds later, the adatrox stiffened, his already vacant eyes turning even glassier.
Eliana hurried over, glancing behind her as she ran. With Zahra occupied, she felt horribly exposed.
“The fat silver one,” Zahra whispered, through the adatrox’s mouth—the voice part wraith, part man.
Eliana grabbed the fat silver key from the ring at his belt, unlocked the door, and let herself inside. She waited just beyond the door for Zahra to drift through the wall and join her.
Zahra shuddered. “Never enter an adatrox’s mind if you can help it, Eliana. Nasty place.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” A vacant hallway stretched to either side. Moonlight pouring through the round portholes in the wall was the only illumination. “Where do we go?”
With one long arm, Zahra pointed down the narrow, dark stairwell in front of them. “He has him below.”
Rahzavel. Eliana hurried down the stairs.
At the bottom, Zahra buckled over with a gasp.
Eliana hid against the wall, looked quickly up and down the stairs. “What is it?”