Then he bent to kiss her. The soft warmth of his lips, his tongue opening her mouth. Rielle’s blood leapt savagely at his touch. She tightened her arms around his neck, heat pouring down her thighs. Their army parted around them and thundered past. Their generals shouted out a call in Azradil; the infantry responded in kind, a chorus of war cries in the most lilting, most achingly lovely of the angelic tongues.

Rielle sent Corien a blazing image. There was a copse of oaks on a nearby hill. He would lie in the grass beneath her, hold her hips as she moved. She would have him there in the shadows, and when she rose to face Âme de la Terre, it would be with the memory of his passionate cries ringing in her ears.

He choked out her name against her throat, stumbled after her through the marching troops and into the trees, and when they had finished, he lay trembling in the dirt. With shining eyes, he watched her rise.

She hardly noticed him, lightly kicking him away when he reached for her. Already, she was forgetting how it had felt to have his hands upon her. She stood beneath the trees that had sheltered their lovemaking, her skin ablaze with heat. Her vision pulsed with drumbeats of gold. These days, she knew few other colors. Gold gilded her nightmares, swam sparkling on her tongue. Through an amber sheen, she watched the flood of their army rush swiftly toward the city she had once thought to be her home.

Little fires bloomed in the night—a path of flames snaking through the mountains. A thin wail of horns sounded, quickly drowned out by the chanting army.

Rielle smiled, eyes closed, and tilted her face to the sky. As if it would help them to have a warning. As if watchtowers and horns could be anything but an embarrassment.

Corien joined her, silent and dark at her elbow. She could smell him on her skin.

“Are you ready?” he murmured.

She opened her eyes, and he drew in an astonished sharp breath. She could understand that. The empirium was a vast golden mirror before her, and in it she could see her reflection. Her dark hair, wild to her waist; her silken gown hugging her body; her feet bare and black. Each vein painted with a golden pen, two blazing coins of light for eyes.

“I am infinite,” she replied, taking up the words he was so fond of saying. She tried not to think about that too closely. That he could consider himself infinite in any way made him seem silly.

She stepped away from him to join her army as it marched relentlessly forward. She could see past them, past the mountains, past the Celdarian and Mazabatian armies assembled and waiting. She could see past all of it to a castle dark and tense, its halls rustling with urgent whispers, and a courtyard near the armories, where a king mounted a winged godsbeast and prepared to ride into battle.

37

   Eliana

“You don’t think I long for her coming as desperately as you do? Friends, not a day, not a moment, goes by that I do not imagine the Sun Queen appearing to us at last, battered and bloody and blazing with light, ready to give herself to our enemy so that we may live again. She is with me in dreams and in waking. She roars in my blood like a passion unmatched. And so must she live in yours, so you will be ready to fight alongside her on the day of reckoning we know awaits us all.”

—The Word of the Prophet

The seven acolytes who served Ludivine moved quietly as cats. They brought a hot stew of beef and vegetables, cups of fresh water, a second chair, a small table.

Eliana had been given a soft tunic and trousers to replace her ruined gown. She sat very still as the acolytes came and went from the circular stone chamber. She watched Ludivine replace the three candles, which had nearly burnt out. In the dim light, shadows flickered across Ludivine’s pale face. Her golden hair, bound in a tidy knot, glinted softly. Her gown whispered at her ankles; she made hardly a sound as she moved. She was mighty in her stillness, a quiet river with floods waiting inside it.

Clammy with nerves, Eliana recalled the Prophet’s voice and tried to match it to the woman gliding across the room. Never step out of that little river. Keep your feet cool and grounded, even as your hands begin to blaze.

Ludivine settled in her chair, quietly ate a few spoonfuls of stew, then placed the bowl on the table between them.

“There was no other way to get you safely across the Great Ocean to me,” said Ludivine, as if they had been talking for hours, “and no other way for you to become what you are now. I needed you to break, and then I needed you to rebuild yourself into something stronger than you were before. Into a version of yourself capable of facing your mother at the height of her power. What you were before was not enough. What you are now will be, I hope.”

Ludivine’s face shifted slightly, as if gathering itself. “I cannot express how sorry I am for what you have endured. But I’m not sorry for what I have done. Regret is poison. It would kill me.”

Her black eyes flicked to Eliana’s untouched bowl of stew. “I don’t want to force you to eat, but I will if I must. You need strength for what lies ahead.”

A jolt of anger flashed hot through Eliana. “Is my brother being fed?”

“Of course. My acolytes will also tend to his injuries. All of them are skilled physicians. And no, I will not allow him to hurt any of them, nor will I allow him to hurt Simon, nor will I allow him to escape. He is comfortable. His mind is resting.”

“Your mind is forcing his to rest, you mean. Keeping him docile.”

Ludivine inclined her head. “Eat.”

Eliana imagined picking up her bowl and throwing it at Ludivine’s face. Maybe the stew was hot enough to scorch her. She thought through every beat of the image so that Ludivine would see it. But Ludivine said nothing, only watched her mildly. Eliana’s fingers trembled around her spoon.

“You have questions.” Ludivine folded her hands in her lap. “Ask them.”

Her first few bites had awoken in Eliana a ferocious hunger. At first, she said nothing, shoveling food into her mouth. After a few minutes, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve, let her spoon drop into the empty bowl. Then she fixed her eyes on Ludivine’s.

“You say it was the only way to bring me here safely,” Eliana said. Unspoken words hovered between them, vibrating and tense. Images battered Eliana’s mind: Simon standing on the pier’s edge and shooting down their friends; Remy on the deck of the admiral’s ship, being dragged away from her; their father falling to his death.

She placed her feet flat on the floor, seeking calm. “Why couldn’t you have come to me? You’re clearly powerful enough to evade Corien’s detection. Why hide here and wait for me? Something could have happened. A storm could have sunk the admiral’s ship. I could have managed to kill myself.”

“A storm was unlikely. The passage you took is well traveled for a reason. And I have demonstrated that I wouldn’t have allowed you to kill yourself,” said Ludivine. “As I told you, I needed you to break and then be reborn as your truest self. If I had come to you, none of this would have happened. You would still be small and human, frightened of the power in your blood.” Ludivine tilted her head. “You are familiar with the legend of the Kirvayan firebird? To rise, first one must burn.”