“You won’t win, Merovec,” Audric told him. “Surrender, and you will live. Resist, and I will destroy you. I don’t want this for you or for me. We are family. We are children of Celdaria.”

Merovec thrust the weight of his body up against Audric’s sword, unlocking the grip of their blades. He swung wide for Audric’s neck, unable to aim in the glare of Illumenor.

Audric spat a curse. There would be enough death in days to come, but Merovec was leaving him no choice.

He focused his mind, sent bolts of power streaking down his arms. Illumenor scorched white-hot, its power extending past the metal until the blade became as solid and thick as a spear.

With the dawn I rise, Audric prayed, raising Illumenor. With the day I blaze.

He brought Illumenor down across Merovec’s torso, slicing clean through his armor, bone, and muscle. The two halves of his body dropped to the floor, the wounds steaming and clean, bloodless. Audric stared at the carnage in Illumenor’s unforgiving light. He would never be able to burn from his mind the image of those glassy blue eyes, frozen in shock.

The room plunged into silence. What soldiers of House Sauvillier still stood let their weapons fall.

Audric knelt at his mother’s side, making sure no one else could see his face. He didn’t trust it not to show his horror, how he loathed the destructive potential of his power and the fact that he had been forced to use it in such a way.

He inspected Genoveve’s wounds. The cuts on her throat were shallow, but she breathed carefully, her face white. Broken ribs, he guessed, and hopefully nothing worse. He held her head, and she turned her face into his palm and let out a single fractured sob.

“I thought I would never see you again,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have stopped him. I shouldn’t have let him…”

She gasped, her voice lost in pain. Audric pressed his brow to hers. On the floor beside them, Illumenor trembled in a bed of glass.

“I don’t need your apologies,” he said. “What I need is for you to live and help us through these dark days. My brave mother. I love you. I’ve missed you.”

“I hate what I’ve become since your father died,” Genoveve choked out.

Audric shook his head, kissed her cheek. “I don’t.”

Then he rose. Everyone in the room was watching him—his people, the surrendered soldiers on their knees. All their eyes upon him were a terrible weight, even those of his friends. What were they to do next? They waited for him to tell them. Someone would always be waiting for him to declare war or peace, or dispense judgment, or grant mercy.

He had never imagined having to do all of that alone.

“Evyline,” he began, “send two of your guards for Garver Randell, and tell him King Audric requests his presence at the castle. Kamayin, you and your elementals will guard the captured soldiers, hold them here in the hall. Sloane, help me bandage Atheria’s wounds, and then we’ll need to find a sack or fashion a sling in which to carry this.”

He knelt by Merovec’s torso, made himself stare at the horror of it.

“I must ride out to the Flats,” he said quietly, “and show the brave soldiers of House Sauvillier that the man they fight for is no more.”

Then he closed Merovec’s eyes and retrieved Illumenor. The heat had burned away any trace of blood. The blade gleamed silver and clean, as if it had never in its life known the taste of death.

32

   Eliana

“Kalmaroth and I were boys together. Once, I even loved him. We brought back to our houses injured birds and nursed them to health before releasing them into the wild. We played in our mothers’ gardens, read books and practiced mathematics in his father’s study. Our houses crawled with happy, fat cats; Kal never met a stray he didn’t want to bring home and spoil. But whoever that boy was is gone. In his place is a man who burns with dissatisfaction, with unanswerable questions, with disdain for anyone whose mind cannot match his. His jealousy of humans and their power is consuming him. I no longer recognize him. I see in his eyes a cold gleam that freezes my blood. He must be stopped.”

—Writings of the angel Aryava, archived in the First Great Library of Quelbani

In a narrow alleyway near Elysium’s factory district, where massive buildings churned out smoke day and night, Eliana found her way back into the Deep.

Inside the factory walls, mechanized creations designed by angels and operated by human prisoners clanked and whirred, producing armor and weapons. The streets were slick with soot and oil, and still every stained cornice was exquisite.

Eliana knelt near one of the refuse pits, where those humans whose beauty the angels had tired of sorted through scraps and shoveled waste. The hot, acrid air stung her eyes. She tasted metal on her tongue. Behind her, violent cries rose throughout the white city. Vaera Bashta’s prisoners were sweeping through the streets on tides of blood, and Ostia—the great eye in the sky, rimmed in blue-white—shone its light upon all.

In this place of rot and ruin, Eliana raised her trembling, tired arms into the air and drew it apart. Her mind held fast to the image of the fissure she had already opened in the sky above Elysium. There. She sent the thought through the veins of her power, guiding it. She needed not only a door into the Deep, but a door that would lead her there, to the fissure waiting and widening and the air stretching thin within it. Her castings were fire in her palms; in her chest, the empirium turned in searing blades. It had guided her to this alleyway full of smoke, and she clung to it. A rope in a blizzard of ash, taut and tough.

Or perhaps it was you who guided the empirium, the Prophet had told her. You who told it what you needed and where to take you.

Eliana shivered, her skin soaked with sweat. Her ruined gown clung to her, its jewels winking cruelly.

Somewhere, Corien brooded, nearing the end of his amusement.

The Prophet’s voice was thin with strain. Hurry, Eliana. The world spins ever faster.

The moment the seam she had opened was wide enough, Eliana held her breath and stepped through it—and walked into a world at war.

She faltered at the sight before her, then set her jaw and moved through it. This world the Deep was showing her, this echo of a place that existed elsewhere, was different from the one she had seen before. Lavish sculptures of bronze and gold ornamented rooftops and shop fronts. Squat towers blanketed in ivy flanked a wide gray road down which armored soldiers marched in gleaming lines.

They held long spears with wicked points, swords polished to brilliance. The people they marched upon fled in screaming chaos, dragging their children and animals behind them. Some knelt with guns on their shoulders and fired, but when they hit their targets and the soldiers fell, only moments passed before they rose unsteadily to their feet again, their wounds closed, and resumed their inexorable forward march.