With a sigh, Audric returned to the bed, roughing his curls with one hand.

For a moment, the room was silent. Then, once she had gathered herself, Rielle said venomously, “Are you happy, Lu, now that you’ve engineered this lovely little scene?”

“No, I’m not happy,” Ludivine replied. “I’m furious with you, and I’m terrified of how easily Corien can slip between us, how he can disguise your movements from me and deceive your guard. If you had any sense in your head, you would be terrified too.”

Rielle threw up her hands. “And yet here I stand, neither seduced nor slaughtered. Yes, it’s difficult to resist him. Yes, he is relentless. But I, too, am relentless. My will surpasses his own. And the fact that neither of you trust me in this, after everything we’ve endured together, is outrageous.”

You’re treading on dangerously thin ice, Rielle, said Ludivine. The image of you throwing yourself into Corien’s arms is fresh in my mind, and my willingness to lie for you goes only so far.

You mean so far as it suits your whims and needs. Rielle viciously shoved her reply at Ludivine. When it becomes useful for Audric to know how his father died, will you tell him, regardless of what happens to me?

Ludivine’s horror was a quiet, wounded hollowness. You know I would never do that.

Rielle turned from the feeling, shutting away the part of her mind in which Ludivine lived.

“You wanted me to do this,” she said, approaching Audric once more. “You wanted me to be an operative. To allow him to speak to me, to let him move freely in me and talk to him and try to find out information. His intentions, his movements.” She knelt before Audric, gathered his hands in her own. “Isn’t that right?”

He regarded her thoughtfully. “And did you discover any such information? Do you know more than you did before you left me for him?”

She bristled, rising. “I have the casting,” she said shortly. “That’s more important than anything right now, for if the Gate falls, all else is pointless. And I didn’t leave you for him. I left you here to carry out my duty. A duty you placed upon my shoulders. You instructed me to put myself into harm’s way, to make myself vulnerable to a creature who is ravenous for me, because it would help Celdaria. And I was only too happy to do it, because I love you, and I love my home. But you can’t have it both ways, Audric. Either I am to be the Sun Queen and do whatever is necessary to protect us all, even if that means risking my life—or I am to sit at home, safe and cosseted, under lock and key. Useless and ornamental.”

Audric looked up at her in silence, but the weariness in those great, dark eyes of his told her the truth. He was sorry, and he loved her, and he felt as conflicted as she did.

Before he could manage to say anything that would make her feel worse, anything that would remind her of the awful unkindness she had dealt him in that snow-frosted cave, Rielle rose, her throat aching. “I’ll take my breakfast downstairs. Lu, keep watch over that damned shield until I return.”

Then she turned away from them both and fled for the solace of the temple’s strange, perfumed shadows, her guard at her heels and a knot of shame turning slowly, sharply, gleefully in the pit of her gut.

26

   Eliana

“Meridian was the first land of the western continent to fall to the Empire. Once a lush, verdant country, scattered silver with lakes and brilliant rivers, each constructed by Saint Nerida’s own two blessed hands, Meridian is now a wasteland of razed forests and murky waters. More battered than Ventera, more dangerous than the innumerable, nigh unnavigable islands of the occupied Vespers, Meridian is a husk of its former radiant self. Saint Nerida would weep to see it, and her tears of rage would drown the world.”

—The Sorrow of Saint Nerida, as written in the journal of Remy Ferracora, November 13, Year 1018 of the Third Age

They made port in a small cove off the northwestern coast of Meridian. An abandoned village awaited them, ravaged by long-ago invasion forces and left a ruin of memory. Its skinny, patchwork docks swayed atop the water, as if a few more stubborn gusts of salty wind might send them drifting off to sea.

The crew of the Streganna rowed them to shore in dinghies—Eliana, Harkan, Patrik, Jessamyn, the boy Gerren, and twelve other Red Crown soldiers, in addition to thirty-one refugees.

Once everyone in their party had disembarked, Eliana stood on the shore and watched the dinghies leave, until she could no longer pick out their shapes in the black. It was the middle of a moonless night. The Streganna sat dark and quiet, nearly invisible, out on the water. If Eliana hadn’t known where to look, her eyes would have passed over it entirely.

Patrik came up beside her, adjusting the weapons belt slung around his hips. “Hello there, Eliana. What horrors are you thinking about?”

His cheerful voice nettled her. “If I told you, you might never recover.”

“Fair enough. Let them stay in your black heart where they belong.”

They stood in silence, insults and barbs circling through Eliana’s head until she felt so laden with them that she had to sit down in the damp, gray sand and brace her tender hands against the ground.

“I wish my heart was black,” she said after a moment. “I wish it was hard as polished stone. Impenetrable, incapable of shattering.”

Patrik joined her. “If you’re trying to make me pity you, I must warn you, it’s an impossible task.”

“I’m not trying to do anything. I’m pitying myself.”

“Your friend Harkan is a good man,” Patrik said, glancing over his shoulder. “He’s helping the orphans find shelter, distributing rations.” He clucked his tongue. “If I were a younger man, and if my heart didn’t already belong to another, I might just have to declare my adoration for him. Loudly and passionately. Perhaps on bended knee.”

“You’d be disappointed,” Eliana said quietly. “He favors women. One in particular.”

Patrik placed a mocking hand over his heart. “Please don’t tell me it’s you. The world would not be so cruel as to pair such a man with such a monster.”

This time, when the memory of Remy manifested in her mind—No, he had said, backing away from her, you’re the monster—this time, the pain that followed felt dull, blunted.

Well done, black heart of mine.

“The world not cruel?” She laughed, a mere breath of sound. “That’s a fine joke, Patrik. And here I thought you had no sense of humor.”

For a time, they were quiet. Tireless waves lapped against the shore. Eliana listened to the refugees settling in what remained of the dock houses, the rebels taking stock of their weapons and supplies. Harkan laughed, joined by another. Foreign sounds, even illicit, in such a place.