Harkan came around to block her view. “El, you can’t defend yourself against whatever awaits us if you can hardly stand.”

She blinked, glared, stepped away from him only a little unsteadily. “I can do much more than stand.”

Zahra reappeared. “The way is clear. Are you prepared to swim?”

Harkan stared furiously at Eliana for a moment longer, as if that would somehow dissuade her.

She placed a hand on his arm. At the touch of her casting, he flinched—barely, but enough.

Once, she would not have had to ask him to trust her.

Times had changed.

“Trust me,” she said—a command, not a request.

Then she walked into the lake, not stopping until it rippled black at her shoulders. She held her breath, heard Harkan do the same, and pushed out beneath the water.

13

   Corien

“He began in the far north, all those years ago, when the one they called Kingsbane was still alive. He carved an army out of the ice and black mountains. He taught himself how to build monsters. This was the beginning of his Empire. The dawn of our great enemy.”

—The Word of the Prophet

On a flat stretch of frozen land, crowded by mountains and overlooking an icy black sea, the angel who had named himself Corien sat in the bones of an evolving fortress, drinking himself into a stupor.

Or at least, as much as he could drink himself into a stupor, given the fact that even as powerful as he was, he still did not quite fit into his stolen body, and he never would.

He gulped down the rest of his drink, examined the empty crystal goblet, and then hurled it against the far stone wall, hoping the sound of it shattering apart would satisfy him, bring him some momentary relief from his raging dark thoughts.

It did not.

He stood up, only a little bit woozy, even after seven glasses of wine. To amuse himself, he exaggerated the unbalanced sway of his body, as if he were ready to topple over.

“I’m drunk,” he announced to the empty room, which was a lie. Everything about him was a lie—his drunkenness, his outward calm, even his name.

Corien. After finally battering his way through the Gate and escaping the Deep, he had, in a fit of pique, shucked off the mantle of his angelic name. That name belonged to his previous life, the one tainted with exile. He had not spoken the abandoned name since. Some days, if he searched his memory for it, he returned empty-handed.

It was just as well. That angel had been a prisoner. A victim and a failure.

This angel, reborn, was a visionary.

• • •

In those first giddy days after escaping the Gate, nameless and liberated, he had begun his search for a body to possess.

He had hunted for years, determined to be particular. If he was going to inhabit a human body, then he would settle for nothing less than the most beautiful one he could find—which he did, at last, on a tussocked hilltop in Celdaria. Some pathetic, lonesome shepherd who neither understood his own beauty nor recognized how it drove every living soul in the nearby village mad with desire.

Corien didn’t even remember the man’s name. He paused only long enough to note the fine lines of his cheekbones, the full curve of his mouth, the lean strength of his body, forged over many years of herding sheep in the mountains.

Herding sheep. Even now, Corien often felt a twinge of shame and wounded pride, imagining the humble beginnings of his assumed form.

But, then, it was a rather marvelous joke, wasn’t it? Once a human shepherd, now the angelic emperor of the new world. There was something immensely satisfying in that dichotomy. When his pride bristled, Corien thought of that delicious contradiction and was soothed.

He approached the windows on the far wall, which allowed him a breathtaking view of the arctic vista outside. Or it would have been breathtaking, perhaps, if he had true breath to take.

He leaned his forehead against the cold pane. His exhalations painted the glass with tiny infant clouds. He wiped them away with the end of his sleeve. Lies. Falsehoods. A manufactured pretend.

Bitterly, he looked down upon the network of industry sprawling across the ice: His kin, inhabiting human bodies of their own, swathed in furs, directed hundreds of human slaves to haul rocks, clear snow, forge weapons, add rooms of stone and iron to the fortress. Other angels worked deeper in the mountains, some distance away, in underground laboratories. Still others, in cavernous chambers that offered some respite from the merciless wind, ran new adatrox through training drills. They taught the dull-eyed brutes how to move and fight once more, now that their minds were no longer their own.

Corien rubbed his aching temples. His generals and a few trusted lieutenants took on a generous portion of the mental burden—directing the adatrox, managing the recruiting efforts in Kirvaya, overseeing the logistics of the laboratories.

But this was his enterprise, his great work. His nascent empire. He could only stomach relinquishing tiny pieces of control. He considered it crucial to demonstrate his power to the angelic ranks. Show them that he was worthy of their loyalty and of his self-styled title. Keep them fighting and devoted, even as the days turned relentlessly on. Even as the Gate remained standing, separating them from the millions of angels still stranded in the Deep.

More importantly, Corien reminded himself, he was indeed powerful enough to maintain control over this frozen base he had named the Northern Reach, as well as the efforts in Kirvaya, and in Borsvall, and…

He closed his eyes, reaching out with one tentative overture, like the stretch of a fledgling wing: Rielle? Are you there?

She did not answer.

Instead, a sharp rap sounded on the door to his rooms.

He turned his thoughts away from Celdaria, tucking them safely into the deepest layers of his mind, before snapping over his shoulder, “Yes? What is it?”

His favorite servant entered with a low bow—Alantiah, a young angel with great potential. She inhabited the body of a sharp-eyed young woman with pale skin and rich, auburn hair.

“The angel Bazrifel has returned from Borsvall,” Alantiah announced, “and seeks an audience with Your Majesty to deliver his report.”

Corien examined his reflection in the glass. His mouth was chapped and discolored from too much drink. His hair fell over his forehead in unkempt, greasy strands. He needed to bathe. He needed a distraction, and to feel like himself again.

He needed to not think about Rielle for a few hours.

He certainly did not need to talk to the fool Bazrifel. He already knew, from a cursory sweep of Bazrifel’s thoughts, everything he needed to know: King Hallvard Lysleva was dead at last. His son and heir, Ilmaire, a milquetoast sop of a man, would soon take the throne and was losing his mind with panic at the prospect. The general sentiment in Borsvall was one of fear. Lack of faith in the royal family—in Ilmaire, specifically. Worry about the mysterious sickness that had bedridden their king. A lingering grief over the mysterious death of their beloved princess, Runa.