• • •

In the temple stable, the young queen was waiting for them, Marzana’s shield at her feet.

“Queen Obritsa?” Audric dismounted. “This is a surprise.”

Obritsa stared at Rielle. “What happened?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Rielle replied, her vision swimming as she slid to the ground, “but I think the villagers of Polestal might require some aid from the crown and a visit from your magisters.”

The queen’s mouth thinned. “You are covered in what must be the blood of one of my citizens, if not more than one. Humor, however black, is not appropriate at this moment.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Rielle said, and then turned away to press her face against the cold hide of her pony. She had caught a whiff of her own clothes and felt close to losing what remained of her supper.

Audric touched the small of her back, the warmth of his hand a balm. “Obritsa, if you’ll permit me to explain—”

“No time for that,” she said briskly. “I have my instructions from Ludivine, and I must obey them. I’ll have your things sent to your capital, though it will take a few weeks for them to arrive. The other guards in your escort have been sent ahead and will meet you when you arrive.”

“When we arrive where?” Audric asked.

“A small forest, some thirty miles from here. I’m afraid that’s the limit of my abilities. Come. I’ve already prepared it.”

“Has Lu explained any of this to you?” Audric muttered, as they followed Obritsa into the back rooms of the stable. “Evyline, please carry the shield.”

Rielle shook her head, unable to speak—at first because of her raging stomach, and then, when they entered a spacious tack room lined with feed and hay, because she suddenly understood what it was that Obritsa had prepared.

A thread hovered, glowing, in the center of the room. Several threads, in fact, bundled and bound into a shifting, wavering oval. One of the threads stretched longer than the rest, falling across the floor and dimming to nothingness. But as Obritsa approached, the thread brightened, thickening, until it visibly connected her to the circle of light illuminating the room.

Rielle had never seen this sort of magic before, not in person. But as a child, she had been fascinated by the stories and had pored over every grisly, fantastical tale she could find.

Behind them, Evyline swore quietly.

“You’re a marque,” Audric murmured. “Do your magisters know?”

“My instructions were to send you to safety,” Obritsa replied, “not to tell you the story of my life. The threads will deposit you in the Arsenza forest. I suggest you leave for Celdaria as soon as you’ve rested. Once word gets out of whatever you did in Polestal, you may no longer be as welcome in this country. There are supplies in that bag, enough to last you until Nazastal, where you can purchase horses. I’ve left a map in the bag as well.”

“What about Lu?” Rielle croaked.

“When she arrives, I’ll send her after you. I won’t leave until she’s safely away.” Obritsa opened her mouth, then snapped it shut, frowning. She gestured impatiently at the threads.

“I’ll go first,” Audric said to the Sun Guard, “and then Lady Rielle after me. Evyline, send the others through before you, and follow last of all.”

“Yes, my lord prince,” Evyline replied.

Audric stepped through the threads’ passage without hesitation. The shifting space within the circle swallowed him completely, as if he had plunged beneath the surface of a glittering pool.

“I don’t like this, my lady,” Evyline muttered.

Rielle hesitated before the humming lights. She looked back at Obritsa, too numb for questions she knew she would later have. “Thank you for this.”

“Don’t thank me,” said Obritsa, her jaw small and sharp. “Instead, save us.”

Rielle turned away—from Obritsa, from the memory of the villager’s body collapsing at her touch—and stepped through the shimmering threads into a pine forest, where the air was quiet and still.

Audric was waiting there, and she went to him at once. As her guard arrived behind them, one by one stepping softly into the thick carpet of snow, Rielle pressed her ear to Audric’s chest, against the drum of his heart, and matched her breathing to his own.

30

   Eliana

“She will remake that which has been unmade. She will deal death to those who have dealt death, and she will show no mercy to those who have been merciless. She is a creature of light and a creature of death, as are all of us. But in her heart these extremes are greater, more dangerous, more violent, because she is chained to the empirium, and those bonds scorch her. And so it was for the Blood Queen, and so I now say to you: look upon your Queens with reverence and awe, with fear and with patience, and with pity most of all.”

—The Word of the Prophet

Simon.

Eliana’s heart jumped into her throat as she searched through the trees.

A fifth shot sounded, and then a shadow passed over them—a raptor, not dead, but wounded and furious. It crashed onto the stone wall, flailed on its back until it righted itself, then grabbed Patrik’s rifle with its cracked black beak, and flung both gun and man over its shoulder into the trees.

Patrik’s body slammed into the trunk of a nearby pine and slid to the ground.

The raptor jumped off the wall and clambered falteringly toward where Patrik lay.

Eliana pushed herself over the wall, ignoring Harkan’s cry of protest, and threw herself onto the raptor’s slippery feathered back. It writhed beneath her in the mud, trying to buck her off, but she grabbed a fistful of its feathers, and the clammy reptilian hide underneath, and then thrust her knife into the tender bend under its jaw.

Blood gushed out over her hand, hot and bright blue. As the raptor fell, she jumped off it and then crawled through the mud toward Patrik.

“Patrik?” She wiped the mud from his cheeks. “Please, say something. Are you alive?”

His eyes fluttered open. He squinted up at her through the rain. “Oddly enough,” he croaked, “I think that I am.”

She laughed a little, prepared to help him rise.

But then she heard a cry, a familiar voice: “El, watch out!”

She looked up just as a viper, crouched on a low branch, leapt toward her with its black mouth wide open.

A sharp rap of gunfire. The creature fell with a shriek. Patrik, panting, rolled out of the way just in time.

Then two more shots. That same voice, now shouting in pain.