“So, then.” A soft wave of relief butted against her. “What I did was an accident, and I did it while trying to save you.”

But Audric remained unmoved. “And then you lied about it. Both of you did.”

“Only because—”

“To protect me? Because you thought I couldn’t understand what had happened? Because you didn’t trust me to help you handle the situation?”

“Because I was afraid,” Rielle whispered. “I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.”

“And the dead Obex? The villager in Polestal?” His face was closed to her, and that was the thing that was breaking her, the needle sinking slowly into her heart. “The nights you spend with Corien? Is that all because you’re afraid of losing me?”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

“And your mother too,” Audric pressed on. “You’d lost control, you said. And I believed you. You were only five years old. But a child of that age knows what anger is. You could have stopped yourself, but you didn’t want to.”

“That’s unfair,” Ludivine said, her voice low and dangerous. “She had had no training, no teacher to help her. She could not have been expected to contain her power the first time it erupted.”

“Unfair, yes, you’re right about that. This is all terribly unfair. That you spend your nights chasing another man’s love. That you carry in your body the power to destroy us all, and that I’ve believed this whole time that I could trust you. That I should love you, even now.”

Rielle went to him, a sob bursting out of her. “Audric, please, you have to believe me! It was an accident!”

“And how many accidents am I expected to forgive?” He shoved her arms away. “Don’t touch me!”

She stumbled, and Ludivine caught her. She felt Ludivine reaching for Audric’s mind, swift and angry, ready to subdue him, and whirled on her.

“Haven’t you done enough?” she cried. “For God’s sake, Lu, leave him alone!”

Ludivine stepped back, her eyes twin coins of steel.

“Eager to spin more lies, are you?” Audric said, his own eyes glittering with tears. “You can’t resist interfering at every opportunity. You’re a snake, and a coward. From the moment I learned you were an angel, I should have resolved to fight you with everything I have in me.”

Ludivine regarded him with an eerie calm. “I love you with all my heart, Audric. But if you try to hurt her, I will kill you.”

“And the moment I feel you try,” Rielle told her, “I’ll turn you to ashes.”

Audric watched them both, a bitter smile on his face. “My detractors say I’ve been entrapped by you. That I’m some spineless fool whose mind is soft, easily swayed. I suppose they’re right.”

“You’re neither spineless nor soft,” Rielle protested.

He looked away, his jaw clenching. His gaze fell on the seeing pools, and Rielle wondered if he was remembering the same thing she was—their childhood, every beautiful, innocent, ignorant year of it.

He is, Ludivine said. It softens him. Talk to him, now.

“Audric,” Rielle said, moving toward him, hating herself for leaping to obey Ludivine’s instructions. But she was desperate; she could feel things moving too quickly in the wrong direction. “Please, look at me. I’m still me. We’re still us.”

“Our love has been built on lies,” he said, his voice choked.

She touched his arm, and he moved away from her. “I told you not to touch me.”

She looked helplessly after him. “What can I do? Tell me how to mend this.”

And then he let out an awful, exhausted laugh. “You haven’t even apologized yet. All of this,” he said, sweeping his arm toward her and Ludivine, “and neither of you has apologized. And you ask me how to mend it. No more secrets, no more lies. That’s what we said the day they put my father in his tomb. You promised me.”

His voice turned ugly. “What a fool I was, to think a promise meant anything.”

He began walking away from her, and she ran after him, unthinking and frantic. She grabbed his arm, and he turned and caught her wrist, his grip hard. She refused to be frightened by him; she put up her chin and met his eyes.

“Release her,” said Ludivine, storming toward them.

“I defended you,” Audric said again, his voice a mere whisper. “Anyone who thought you might be the Blood Queen, the doom we’ve feared for centuries, I was the first to tell them they were wrong. That you could control your power, that we could trust you, that you would keep us safe. And now you’ve proven them all right. You’re the monster Aryava foretold. A traitor and a liar.”

And swiftly, all at once, like the strike of a storm illuminating a dark field, Rielle realized he was right.

Ludivine was saying something, both in Rielle’s mind and outside of it. But she was a faint hum of sound, and then Audric was releasing her, dropping her arm as if he were disgusted by it, turning away from her.

In that moment, held numb in a net of despair, she heard Corien speak.

You’re not a monster, child, he told her, his voice tender with compassion. You are simply yourself.

She let out a shaky breath, a half-formed sob, and stepped back from Audric, from Ludivine, from the seeing pools of her childhood. Ludivine tried to stop her. With a blink, a swift flick of her wrist, Rielle sent her flying back into the trees, and Audric too, and Evyline, who’d only seconds before come rushing out of the trees, unable to stay away any longer.

Alone, the gardens ringing from the force of her desolate anger, she felt Corien embracing her mind, shielding her from Ludivine.

Don’t listen to him! Ludivine cried, and then was silenced.

Rielle slipped into the warmth of Corien’s words, reaching desperately for comfort. She turned back once, found Audric lying on his back in the trees. Illumenor blazed to life at his side.

Come to me, Corien urged her. Rielle, hurry. The city won’t be safe for much longer.

She didn’t understand what that meant, but she didn’t ask. It didn’t matter. The city was no longer her concern.

She ran through the gardens, following the thread of his voice. The familiar trees swallowed her; she was blind with sadness, tears tightening her throat until she could hardly breathe. But the patient thrum of Corien’s presence illuminated a path, guiding her out.

And as she ran, her despair began slowly, inexorably, turning the corner to anger.

52

   Eliana