Three short, sharp blasts, followed by one longer blast. The urgent rhythm repeated, loud enough that Eliana felt it in her chest.

A horn of some kind?

Navi froze, her expression stricken.

“What is that?” When Navi didn’t respond, Eliana rushed out onto the terrace, searching the skies. “It’s coming from the northwest, I think.”

And then, her castings flared to life against her bandages, hot and urgent. She gasped, still unused to the feeling and her palms still tender beneath their bandages.

“Navi?” She backed away from the terrace railing, the stone beneath her vibrating with each thunderous blast. “What does it mean? What’s that sound?”

Navi reached for Eliana’s hand, her eyes lighting up with the same grim fire they’d shown the first night in Lord Arkelion’s maidensfold, when she’d strangled Eliana’s adatrox attacker with her necklace.

“It’s the Horn of Veersa,” Navi said, her voice thin and hard. “It means enemies have been sighted on the Kaavalan Passage. It means invasion.”

18

   Rielle

“Well, it’s done. I’m a king, and I’ve never felt more ill-fitting in my own skin. Crowns are for warriors, like Ingrid, or charming diplomats, like Runa, or for great men who, most irritatingly, seem to do everything well. Like you, my maddening friend. Crowns are not for me. I’m a scholar, not a ruler. And yet here I stand, pretending smiles for my advisers, while Ingrid runs off to the Grenmark to investigate the most recent attacks there. At one of our outposts, Castle Vahjata—thirty-one soldiers dead. Two left alive. Oddly, that seems to be the pattern. Whenever an outpost is attacked, two are left alive to share the same story of shadows that attack unseen in the night. Soldiers left twisted and bone-white in the snow. Villagers left defenseless and terrified. And this is the land of which I am now king. Audric…I am frightened. What is it that’s coming for us all?”

—A letter written by King Ilmaire Lysleva to Prince Audric Courverie, dated December 5, Year 998 of the Second Age

Every morning, while on the road to Kirvaya, Rielle scanned the skies for Atheria’s silhouette and saw nothing but clouds.

When they bedded down in the evenings, sore and sweaty after a hard day’s riding, their wingless horses wearily snuffling through the grasses nearby, Rielle held herself together until safely ensconced in the tent she shared with Audric, their escort of three dozen guards standing watch outside the canvas.

There, miserably, she wept, feeling like a child whose puppy had gone missing, and when she first confessed as much to Audric, he simply kissed her brow, her cheeks, her salty mouth. Smelling of horse and sweat and the bright summer tang of warm stone, he held her until she quieted. He murmured reassurances into her hair and patiently combed out every snarl with his fingers.

One night, after he had soothed her tears, she lay beside him in their nest of furs and watched him quietly. The night air had grown cold so far north, but Audric’s bare chest was warm, and she gratefully clung to the solid heat of him.

“Why do you love me?” she murmured after a time.

He smiled, his eyes closed. “Because your kisses bring me to my knees. Because you excel at rubbing the knots out of my shoulders.”

“I’m quite serious,” she replied, only realizing at that moment how desperately she needed to know the answer.

Audric turned to face her. He touched her cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Because we are well-matched,” he said. “Like the sun and the moon. Like day and night. I am the shore and you are the sea, my darling. The wild, wild sea—ever-changing and mighty. I need your passion, and you need something steady to come home to. An anchor, warm and sunlit.”

He paused, an embarrassed smile tugging at his lips, his gaze half-lidded and bleary. “When I’m tired, I become rather poetic, it seems.”

“And I love you for it.” Rielle kissed the skin beneath his eyes, shadowed from lack of sleep and reddened from the bitter wind of the western Kirvayan plains. She held his weary head to her breast until sleep turned him heavy in her arms.

Then she sent a thought to Ludivine’s tent, which stood a few paces from her own. Since leaving home, I haven’t slept through a single night without seeing him.

I know, came Ludivine’s reply, thin with fatigue. The scar’s growth had slowed, but its presence still seemed to sap much of Ludivine’s strength.

Does Audric know?

No, Ludivine said after a pause. But he wonders. And he worries.

Rielle tightened her arms around Audric and pressed her lips to his curls. He was as warm as her dreams of Corien were cold. Ice-bitten, black-edged, and frosted with snow, every night they became clearer.

A mountain path. A dark château on white cliffs. A tall, hooded figure in furs, arms open wide as if to welcome her home.

Already the dream was coming, edging into her mind along with the first reaches of sleep.

Rielle squeezed her eyes shut and waited for its arrival—so she could gather clues, she told herself. Each dream brought with it a clearer image of whatever wintry mountain Corien was leading her to. It was only logical to welcome the knowledge brought by her dreams. It was, in fact, what Audric wanted. As Sun Queen, it was her duty to investigate.

Be careful, Rielle, came Ludivine’s faint whisper.

But Rielle was already stepping into the dream snow, her ears ringing with the howl of an eager wind that carried the ghost of her name inside it.

• • •

After three weeks of hard traveling, they arrived in the Kirvayan capital of Genzhar to find it turned gold and glittering in their honor.

It was a city dressed for children of the sun. Amber and ivory silks decorated every shop front. Banners bearing the shimmering sigil of the House of Light hung from burnished towers. White petals and gold-hemmed scarves littered the streets.

The broad central avenue teemed with cheering crowds far larger than any Rielle had ever seen in Âme de la Terre, even at the height of her trials. Amid the raucous din, she picked out her own name, Audric’s name, Saint Katell’s name. She heard cries of Sun Queen! in Celdarian, in Kirvayan, in the common tongue—all amid a clamor of temple bells, the reedy trill of Kirvayan fiddles, the small tin drums of children.

At the avenue’s apex, near the base of a long, low building of scarlet stone etched with elaborate carvings of flames, a narrow iron gate stood open to a vast stone yard, beyond which stood Zheminask, the palace of the Kirvayan queen. Several times larger than Baingarde, it was crowned with dozens of elegant white towers, their domes gleaming like fresh coins.

Before the gate stood an entourage, splendid and imposing in fine, embroidered robes that made Rielle feel shabby by comparison, her own clothes rumpled and travel-worn. She lifted her chin as they approached. Once she’d had the chance to bathe and change into one of her gowns, it was these people who would feel shabby in her presence.