“They can go if they wish. I won’t have a mutinous army fighting at my back. But they’ll be safer here than they will be elsewhere, and I’ll remind them of that. Every elemental from here to Borsvall will be gathering in Âme de la Terre. If they leave, they will have to face the angels on their own. I think the majority of them will stay and fight and keep their dislike to themselves.”

“They don’t dislike you, Audric,” said Genoveve delicately. “They dislike her.”

“In fact, they do dislike me, and some of them even hate me, and perhaps wish Merovec had cut me in half, because I was foolish enough to love her. And I would rather not talk about Rielle, Mother.”

A long moment of silence. “Sloane told me about the weeks following your arrival in Mazabat. She told me about the weight you’ve been carrying. The change in you.”

Something flared in Audric’s chest, a hot spark of anger. He was grateful for it. When he was angry, he couldn’t think about everything else.

“I’m still the same person I always was,” he said tightly. “I can still lead fighters. I can still discipline traitorous soldiers.” Illumenor, sliding quick through Merovec’s body. The memory liked him, showed itself to him a dozen times a day. “I can still kill.”

“I see the sadness in your eyes, Audric.”

At last he glared at her. “And I see the sadness in yours. What good can come of this conversation?”

Genoveve watched him steadily. “For years, you urged your father to study the prophecy. You begged him to read the books you brought him, to educate himself on the writings of the great elemental scholars. And he never did. Do you know why?”

It was a turn in the conversation that Audric had not expected. He blinked. “No.”

“Because he was frightened.” Genoveve gazed at the seeing pools, the catacombs a distant gray ghost beyond them. “Katell’s line had been without true sunspinners for generations. And then you were born and started playing with sunlight while still in your cradle, even before the forging of your casting. Your father knew what that meant, and so did I. Whenever he looked at you, he saw the portent of a war he had long ago convinced himself would never come in his lifetime. The world was at peace. The Gate stood strong. And then you were born. The Lightbringer. More powerful than he ever was, and braver too. You were always willing to consider the worst and face it head-on. The fact of your power, the idea of a war—these things never frightened you, nor did Aryava’s words of doom.”

Audric shook his head. She had lost him with that one. “I’m always frightened.”

“And yet the people who fight for you don’t know it. In their eyes, you are Katell born again. And now you draw to you the crowns of Mazabat and Borsvall. Our allies, descendants of the saints, just as you are. Borsvall nearly became our enemy, but you forged a new friendship with them.” She paused. “Was it an angel who assassinated poor Princess Runa two years ago?”

“That is my guess,” Audric said grimly. “Hoping to spark the fires of war between Celdaria and Borsvall.”

“And yet you did not allow that to happen. You dared friendship, and now Borsvall may come to fight alongside us. You build watchtowers and order our metalmasters to forge thousands of new swords. You walk the streets of your city and talk to your people not as if you are a king and they your subjects, but rather as if you are a Celdarian and they are too. They are frightened, but you are not. That is what they see.

“And, Audric,” Genoveve added quietly, her fingers gently pressing his, “I worry that if you don’t talk about her—at least to me, or Sloane, or Miren, or Princess Kamayin—then everything you’re feeling will rise up and crack you open. Our people can’t see that. If they’re to face their deaths at the ends of angelic swords, they must never look at you and see how deeply you’ve been hurt. They must look at you and see an icon. Not a man, but a symbol. Not Audric, but the Lightbringer. It isn’t fair, but neither is the crown, and only if you wear it do we have any hope of surviving what’s to come. Of that I am certain.”

She sighed, and silence followed. They watched Atheria playing among the distant pines, trilling happily as she chased bright jays from their nests.

“Maybe if I had been a mother to her,” Genoveve said, “if I had welcomed her into our family with graciousness and warmth, we would not be where we are now.”

Audric took a moment to breathe. He hadn’t been lying—he did not want to talk about Rielle. But his mother was beside him, and she would not always be.

“It’s not as simple as that,” he told her flatly. “Maybe if the Archon hadn’t forced her to endure the trials. Maybe if Lord Dervin hadn’t caught us kissing in the gardens. Maybe if I hadn’t pushed her away on our wedding night.”

He blinked back his tears. “Or maybe none of that mattered, and regardless of what we did, we would have ended up right where we are. Maybe Aryava’s prophecy means exactly what it says: there is a queen of light and a queen of darkness. And maybe Rielle was always the latter, and nothing we said to her could have changed that.”

Genoveve made a soft sound, considering. “Have you wondered where the other queen is? If Rielle truly is the Blood Queen, then—”

“She is with child.” It was the first time Audric had said it aloud. The words ripped something from him; in their absence, a hollow place opened inside him.

“My child,” he added quietly. “Our child. Ludivine told me before she left.”

Genoveve put her fingers to her mouth. A little choked sound shook her shoulders. A dove made its mournful cry high in the sorrow tree’s blooms.

“Ludivine told me the child is a girl,” he went on. “So maybe she is our Sun Queen, our unborn salvation.”

Genoveve pressed his knuckles to her lips and closed her eyes. A long moment passed before she released him and wiped her face.

“I wish Ludivine were here to help you,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth about her,” Audric said, though he didn’t feel sorry. He only felt tired. He imagined his bed, how enormous and lonely it was, how small he felt inside it.

“I understand why you didn’t. You needed her—both of you did—and if I had known the truth, I would have had her exiled, or at least tried to. I would have tried many different ways to be rid of her and failed, and then I would have been regarded with even more pity and disgust than I already am.”

His mother spoke with no hint of self-loathing, no bitterness. Now Audric was the one to watch her carefully—the thin straight line of her nose, the painful sharpness of her jaw, how she held herself with such stillness. Was it because she was afraid of breaking? Or because she had been broken so many times that the idea no longer frightened her?