He approached her slowly. “They will use every memory you share with them—every sweet feeling, every kind moment—to wring out all the power they can from that miraculous body of yours. And they won’t stop, or even consider sparing you, because they will be too afraid of what faces them. If you hesitate, they will remind you of their supposed love for you and chain you with it until you back down and do as you’re told.”
He now stood so close she could smell the clean coldness of his skin, a spice of scent on his clothes. He cupped her cheek in one gloved hand. Heat blazed through her body, her power firing so completely alive at his touch that she felt fevered.
Helplessly she turned into his palm.
“Yes,” Corien lowered his head to whisper against her ear, “even him.”
Audric.
“You’re wrong.” She desperately hoped it was true. “He loves me, and he always will.”
Corien’s pity caressed her mind. “Who told you that? The rat?”
And as he said the words, an image came to her, shoved violently across the plane of her thoughts:
Audric, crying out in pain on Atheria’s back. The chavaile landed on a grassy plateau seconds before Audric hit the ground. He dropped Illumenor, clutched his head in his hands. His eyes flickered from a brilliant, stormy gray to brown and back to gray.
The image vanished, and though Rielle couldn’t know if it was real or imagined, it was enough. Rage erupted in her heart. “You will not touch him,” she growled.
Corien stepped back from her. “Rielle, wait—”
She rounded on him, thrust out her palm, screamed, “Get away from me!” and let her power fly.
• • •
Not the wind, not the earth or the shadows lining the room.
This power was more than that and all of it and none of it.
Simply, it was this:
The empirium, raw and blinding.
At Rielle’s feet, the unseen fabric of the world split open and detonated. A wave of light, a savage shudder.
Not far, but far enough.
• • •
When the aftershock dimmed, Rielle was on the floor. Her head spun. She looked down at her palms; they were covered in blood.
Her own?
She blinked.
Yes. The pain surfaced in sharp, jagged waves.
And Corien?
She looked around, dizzy, heard a horrible, keening sound, and found him crawling away from her, his clothes burned to ashes, and his body…
The blast had burned him.
He was an unmade creature, red and ravaged and glistening. He howled in pain, dragging himself across the cave floor toward an opening that led back to the hills.
“Don’t look at me!” he screamed at her, his words slurring. “Not like this! Not like this…”
She could see not a single recognizable feature on his face. But his agony, his shame—his anger—vibrated through her mind.
When she looked up again, he was gone.
Then a low cry sounded from across the cave—her father, struggling to breathe. And beyond him, King Bastien, Lord Dervin…
Still, still, both of them still. Not burnt, as Corien had been, but rigid. The light gone from their glassy eyes, their faces frozen in shock.
Rielle tried to rise, crashed back to her knees. “Papa?” She crawled to him, turned his face to her.
He gulped down air, his eyes dim.
“I’m here.” She touched his face; his cheeks were wet with tears. “It’s all right. He’s gone, and I’m here. We just need… Oh, God.” She turned to the cave passage down which she’d come, screamed her voice raw. “I need a healer! Someone, please, help us! Garver!”
“I…remember.”
“Papa? What is it?” She held his hands against her cheek. “You remember what?”
“‘By the…moon…’” He gulped emptily at the air. “‘By…the…’”
“Mama’s lullaby?”
He gave her a shaky smile. “‘By…’”
“‘By the moon,’” she finished, singing unsteadily, “‘by the moon, that’s where you’ll find me.’”
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.