She was suddenly, savagely, glad for his nearness.

It took her a moment to find her voice and remember why she had summoned him—to convince him of her loyalty so it would be easier to leave with Zahra for the Nest.

“I need your help,” she said at last. “That’s why I sent for you. I haven’t wanted to attempt using my power again because I’ve been afraid of what might happen.”

“Another storm,” he guessed.

“Or worse. But if I had some physical assurance that that wouldn’t happen—at least not as easily as it did on the beach—it might be easier for me to open my mind to this entire idea.” She took a deep breath and met his gaze. “I want to forge a casting for myself, and I need your help to do it.”

He nodded slowly. “I’m not well-versed in metalwork.”

“But you’re well-versed in the Old World. You can come with me to the Forge, help me speak to the acolytes. I want someone I trust by my side when I do this.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Would you rather not have Harkan by your side, then?”

“This is not Harkan’s world,” she said. “It’s yours. And I want to shelter him and Remy from as much of it as I can.”

Simon searched her face for a long time, his expression impassive.

She glared at him. “Have you quite finished staring at me?”

“I’m understandably suspicious of this change of heart,” he replied. “Two days ago, you were ignoring the books I gave you and barely acknowledging your power’s existence. Now you want to forge a casting so you can try using that power again.”

“Two days ago, my brother was speaking to me.”

“Give him time,” Simon said quietly.

“He won’t ever forgive me.”

“Perhaps not.”

“And yet part of me is glad he overheard me. Now he can live under no illusions of what I am.”

“He has long known what you are, and yet he never stopped loving you.”

“Until now.”

Simon inclined his head. “I suppose that’s possible.”

Eliana gripped the back of her chair, hard, and shot him a sardonic smile. “You know, I must thank you.”

“For what?”

“For your cruelty. One word from you, and I feel furious enough to forget the rest of my troubles.”

Simon smiled tightly, looking as though he were about to respond. Instead, he gestured at the books.

“As I’m sure you’ve read by now,” he said, “when an elemental forged their casting, they usually melted down an artifact of personal significance to add to the mixture.”

Eliana nodded. “The stronger the personal attachment to one’s casting, the greater ease with which an elemental could use it to manipulate their magic. Luckily I have just the thing.” She removed her necklace and tossed it onto the table. The scratched surface of the Lightbringer caught the flickering lamplight and gave the horse’s wings the illusion of movement.

“You’re not her, Eliana.” Shadows cloaked the long lines of Simon’s body, shrouding all but his eyes in darkness. “You’re not your mother.”

“No, but I’m her daughter. Or so you say. What makes you think I’ll be any different from her?”

“Because I knew her. And I know you.”

Eliana scoffed. “You hardly know me.”

“I know enough,” came his low reply. “No one can decide what you become except you. Not me, and not your parents. You have a choice ahead of you, just as she did, and I have faith that you will make it wisely.”

He rose, straightening his jacket. “Shall we visit the Forge tonight, then? Or wait until tomorrow?”

His words left her feeling shaken more thoroughly than she had felt even in her Fidelia cell with Zahra’s proclamation ringing in her ears: You are the Sun Queen, and I’ve come to bring you home.

But she would not allow him the satisfaction of seeing her rattled. She kept her voice cool and retrieved the necklace from the table as if it were a mere trifle, easily discarded.

“No,” she replied. “We begin tonight.”

9

   Rielle

“Together, in the war-ravaged plains of the land that would someday become the nation of Celdaria, the saints began carving a door out of this world and into the next. What they found, however, was not a new world, for not even they were powerful enough for so far a reach. What they found was the Deep—a void, eternal and narrow, a sea of hollow space just beyond the curtain of our world. And it was then that they began to understand what they must do, and how they would at last bring the angels to ruin.”

—The Last Days of the Saints, a study of the Gate and its construction, by Kristo Niskala, Borsvall historian

The archer who had shot Ludivine was named Jodoc, and as he led their party through the woodlands of Iastra, the largest island of the Sunderlands, Rielle glared at the back of his head, wondering if she could crack it open without even touching him.

Part of her very much wanted to try.

Ludivine walked beside her, making a valiant effort to keep up with the group’s pace, but new, thin lines of pain framed her mouth and eyes, as if she had aged in the terrible minute between the blightblade piercing her and Rielle shattering it.

Rielle glanced at Ludivine’s hastily mended dress. Tendrils of darkness—midnight-blue, indigo, the scaly brown-black of rotting flesh—snaked out from beneath her furred collar, following the delicate lines of Ludivine’s upper arm.

Rielle quickly looked away, her throat tightening. She returned her gaze to the back of Jodoc’s head and recited to herself that she mustn’t kill him, reminded herself dozens of times over that she mustn’t kill him, until her fists unclenched and she could breathe without feeling made of fire.

Over the past few hours, the bruise from the blightblade had spread down Ludivine’s left arm, encasing it in a dark lattice of uneven lines that shimmered in the light as if tiny jewels had been embedded in her skin. Rielle would have thought it beautiful, were it not for the memory of Ludivine’s muted screams as it bloomed. In the healer’s rooms, she had clung to Rielle, muffling her pained cries in Rielle’s cloak.

Thankfully, the bruise appeared to have stopped growing, the gown covered most of it, and Ludivine bore whatever discomfort remained without complaint. But Rielle was not fooled by her silence. Ludivine’s pain was a faint presence in the back of her mind, like the remnants of an unsettling dream she couldn’t shake loose.