She should have gone from her mother’s empty bed straight to Lord Arkelion’s door and demanded he help bring her home.

I will not be consumed.

She’d been a loyal servant of the Empire for years, hadn’t she?

I will not be consumed.

Maybe that would be enough for them to accept her back.

That, and the map of Crown’s Hollow now living in her brain.

“It seems the Dread has a heart after all,” said Simon, appearing around the corner so silently that she startled.

She managed a tiny laugh, thinking fast. He could not suspect, or he’d shoot her on the spot. “Is it such a shocking thing to imagine?”

Simon lightly touched the crook of her arm, and there was a fragility to the movement that surprised her. The fire-warmed heat of his body suffused her own.

“Come,” he murmured. “I’ll walk you to your room.”

It was a quiet walk, and by the time they reached her door, Eliana had coaxed the proper fall of tears from her eyes. She turned her face up to Simon, gave him a good view.

Her mother had told her that her beauty would make working for the Empire both easier and harder.

This time it made things easier. She saw the shift on his face as he looked at her—tiny but obvious. A softening and a craving.

A thread of triumph unspooled in her belly.

Farewell, Wolf. May death find you at your greatest moment of joy.

“Remy always says there’s hope for me yet, even after everything I’ve done,” she said quietly. Forlorn was the word. “I’m not sure he’s right.” She laughed, her eyes full.

Simon shifted, hesitated, then cupped her face in one large, callused hand. His touch was so delicate it sent a chill down Eliana’s front, despite her new resolve to end him.

“People like us don’t fight for our own hope,” he said quietly. “We fight for everyone else’s.”

Then he opened her door a crack and stepped aside. “Good night, Eliana,” he said, then swiftly moved past her and was gone.

Eliana entered the room and shut the door behind her. Once inside, her face hardened to stone, and her heart along with it.

She wiped her cheeks dry and gave Remy a gentle shake. “Remy, wake up.”

He turned, grunting. “El? What is it?”

“Stay quiet. Get out of bed and put on your boots.”

“Why?”

“We’re leaving.” In the dark, her smile was vicious, but she kept her voice kind. “Simon needs our help on a very important mission.”

19

   Rielle

“O seas and rivers! O rain and snow!

Quench us our thirst, cleanse us our evil

Grow us the fruit of our fields

Drown us the cries of our enemies!”

—The Water Rite

As first uttered by Saint Nerida the Radiant, patron saint of Meridian and waterworkers

The trial’s rules were simple:

Hidden in the bay were three items. When assembled, they would form a trident—a replica of Saint Nerida’s casting. Rielle was to retrieve and assemble the trident and present it for all to see before the ocean ate her alive.

Simple.

Except the water was damned cold.

And Grand Magister Rosier and his acolytes were making it angry.

Rielle kicked up to the surface to gain her bearings and was promptly pulled back under by a black wave twenty feet tall. Swimming hard, she pushed herself up and gasped for air before another wave knocked her back into the water.

This would get her nowhere.

She remembered Tal’s words: Don’t be afraid to fight.

In fact, though, she was afraid.

When Rielle was a child, and Tal had held her under the water in the Baths, she’d at first fought him. She’d known at once that he was testing her, but with her lungs burning, her panic so desperate she thought she might die from it, she had been ready to do anything for the chance to breathe again.

Looking up through the clear, soft water, she’d seen Tal’s blurry figure hunched over her. She had imagined his voice, guiding her through her lessons:

The empirium is in all living things. Think of it like tiny crystals, forming the basis of everything that is.

The goal, then, is to reach with your power beyond the visible, beyond the surface of things.

To take hold of the empirium itself—the grains of life, finer than sand—and change it.

Lungs burning just as they had that day years ago, Rielle closed her eyes in the swirling dark sea and recited the Water Rite. Her body cried out for air, and she ignored it.

“I’m sorry, Rielle,” Tal had sobbed after releasing her. He’d held her small, choking body, breathed into her mouth to help her recover her air, tucked her soaked head under his chin. “Forgive me. Please, forgive me.”

“I did well, didn’t I?” She’d smiled up at him, coughing up water. “Tal, I didn’t lose control! I saw the water! The bits of water, they were small and pretty, and I saw them, and I wasn’t afraid!”

Tossed about beneath the waves, her body burning and her vision fading, Rielle remembered Tal’s stricken, confused face. After, in his office, as she sat sipping a cup of tea beneath a blanket, he’d combed her hair smooth, then held her until she finally stopped shivering.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” he’d whispered, awestruck.

Cozy in his arms, she’d mumbled sleepily, “Saw what?”

“The empirium.”

She’d wrinkled her nose and looked up at him. “Didn’t you see it too?”

But, no. He hadn’t, and he wouldn’t. Seeing the empirium with one’s own eyes was not a thing others enjoyed. Rielle had seen the truth of that in Tal’s marveling gaze, felt it in how reverently he helped her back home and into her own bed.

In the water, remembering that day, Rielle’s mind cleared and settled. You saw it, didn’t you?

Yes. She had.

Her power itched to surface, and she let it rise.

I must breathe in this water.

So I will.

Rielle opened her eyes and saw the water of the bay strewn through with countless flecks of golden light, so tiny that when she focused on them, they melded into a solid, brilliant sheen.

The empirium.

She blinked. The gold faded.