“Or what, Audric? You’ll kill me? You’ll run away with her and abandon your birthright? Go live a free life in the forests, fucking like peasants?”
The shock of such crude words falling from Genoveve’s lips made Rielle want to burst out laughing.
Beside her, Audric’s body snapped with tension. “Mother, how could you speak like this?”
“How could I? How could I?” The queen’s mouth trembled. “How could you embarrass me and shame me as completely as you have done? And so soon after your father’s death. Abandoning your cousin, abandoning me, and all for this girl who lied to us for years, whose power we cannot understand or trust?” She gestured at Rielle. “She said herself that she is rash and unthinking. This is the creature into whose hands you want to thrust the fate of our world?”
“She is not a creature,” Audric snapped. “She is a human being. And she has demonstrated through the trials that—”
“The trials.” Genoveve scoffed. “Trials most likely designed in her favor, thanks to the influence of Lord Belounnon and his weak-willed sister, and that lover of his, who would most likely do anything to keep him happy and in her bed—and not in Rielle’s.”
Rielle could keep quiet no longer, her cheeks burning. “How dare you. Those are Grand Magisters you’re talking about. Tal, Sloane, and Miren have nothing to do with me, nor with Audric or Ludivine. They have served your country loyally for many years, and they do not deserve your disrespect.”
The queen stood in silence for a moment, then moved toward Rielle and took her chin in one cool hand, appraising her.
Audric stood rigid nearby. The air around him popped like the snap of burning wood, painting dust motes gold as embers.
“To think that I pitied you,” the queen whispered. “To think that I sat and prayed with you the night before the metal trial. That I was desperate for your safety.”
She released Rielle, her mouth pulled thin and her eyes bright. She returned to her tea with unsteady hands. “I promise you this, Rielle. You’ll find Katell’s casting only when I have been laid cold and lifeless in my waiting tomb—or when my husband rises from his.”
15
Eliana
“The Nest is a continuing problem, but one I’m not sure we will ever rid ourselves of—or that we should. Its presence brings smugglers, murderers, gamblers, and even angelic wraiths into our country, but the advantage of that lies in their private soldiers, their networks of villains and thieves that reinforce our own military efforts. These scoundrels and killers will protect our country as fiercely as we do, if only because their beloved Annerkilak lies within its borders.”
—A report from Commander Lianti Haakoratto Kings Eri and Tavik Amaruk of Astavar
When Zahra had told her that the Nest was an underground market, Eliana had thought she meant in the figurative sense—illegal dealings, illicit substances, violence and depravity.
But the Nest was, in fact, truly underground, a subterranean city that existed in a series of caverns beneath the mountains on Vintervok’s northern border.
Eliana and Harkan stood in the shadows behind a damp stone outcropping furred with lichens. Below them stretched an elaborate spread of contradictions—craggy rock formations above and below, flanking the city of Annerkilak like rows of misshapen brown teeth. Walking paths paved with polished jade tiles. Four-story apartment buildings boasted manicured roof gardens that crawled with shadows Eliana couldn’t define. Ornate roof spires stretched feebly toward the high cavern ceilings that disappeared into darkness. Tiny galvanized lights hung on wires that had been strung across the cramped tiled roads, from shop front to shop front. The softer light of gas lamps pooled in courtyards and behind windowpanes, and a low roar of sound punctuated the tableau—cheers and shouts, clashing strains of music played on strings and horns, the bray of a donkey, an infant’s furious wail.
Throughout the city, massive columns of stone stretched from the ground up into darkness, displaying elaborate carvings of both humans and angels. The saints, brandishing their castings. Angels, wings spread wide. Godsbeasts, claws and fangs bared.
“Angelic and human art?” Eliana asked, rubbing heat back into her trembling arms. They had swum through nearly two miles of narrow flooded passages to find the Nest, climbed through cramped caves only wide enough to admit one person at a time—Harkan first, Eliana behind him. Now, the cold cave air cut through her drenched clothes like knives.
“The battle lines so starkly drawn above don’t matter as much down here,” Zahra said, “not when the partnership between human gangsters and angelic wraiths has proven so fruitful for both.”
“So a city of thieves and criminals has figured out how to live together peacefully down here while the rest of us on the surface tear each other to pieces,” Harkan observed wryly. “Perhaps we ought to take notes. Bring back suggestions to the kings.”
“Collaborative art notwithstanding, this is not a city at peace,” Zahra warned. “Do not let down your guard.”
Harkan touched Eliana’s arm. “Are you all right?”
Eliana snapped open her eyes. She hadn’t realized she had closed them while they spoke, that she was leaning heavily on the boulder to her left.
“You need food.” Harkan rummaged through the small oilskin bag he’d strapped to his torso and withdrew a slightly damp strip of dried pork. “Here. Eat this, and sit down.”
Eliana waved him away. “Stop pestering me. I’m fine.”
“You can’t do anything if you can’t walk. Don’t be foolish.”
“Don’t speak to me like that.”
Harkan blew out a sharp breath. “You barely controlled that fire in your room. Do you think you’ll be able to do so again, if you end up having to use your power while you can hardly hold yourself up?”
Eliana grabbed the meat from him and tore off a furious chunk. “There. Happy?”
“Honestly, El. Are you eight years old? I’m trying to help you—and by doing so, help Navi. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
To that, she had no reply. He wasn’t wrong, and she hated that, how he’d made her feel as small and guilty as a misbehaving child.
Almost as much as she hated the power that had forced her into this half-alive, half-wild state. Hungry and tired, frayed at the edges.
She didn’t tell him what she was truly thinking, for she was afraid that if she did, both he and Zahra would turn her around and force her back through the caves to the palace.
She didn’t tell him that she was afraid to eat even a few bites, for what if that quenched too much of her hunger? What if that left her softened and incapable of summoning her power when they needed it most?