“I have much to tell you as we walk,” she said, and stumbled toward the stairs before Evyline could catch her. “Listen carefully, for what I do tonight will touch everyone who lives.”
She had to stop speaking, then, until they had descended the endless stairs and left the castle behind. Evyline took her to a door near the kitchens, and they emerged into the gardens. Rielle glanced only once toward the dark seeing pools, and when she searched the gloom, the empirium showed her a faint memory, etched in gold—herself running fast across the slippery stones, Ludivine following steadily behind, Audric watching nervously from the grass.
She wept then, even as her blood roared for her to walk faster. She was almost there; she was nearing the end. Soon, she would feel no pain, and there would be no reason to cling to what was left of her fraying body. Her jaw ached so brutally that it was difficult to speak. Some nights, she had thought she would awaken to find she had ground her teeth to dust in her sleep.
Only once they were in the city did she retrieve her voice.
“Tonight I will die,” she said, “and when I do, I will send the empirium here in Avitas into something like sleep. It will lie dormant for years. People will be frightened when they wake and find their power has been silenced. I’m sorry for that, but it must be done.”
“Why?” Evyline whispered, the word thin with horror.
“To close the Gate,” Zahra said quietly. “And to stop more war before it begins.”
Evyline stared. “More war? But we have fought a war, and we have won it.”
“But revolution blazes in Kirvaya between those with elemental magic and those without, and if left unchecked, it will spread.” Zahra’s words came swift and soft. “Marques will hear of the Eliana who traveled to us from the future, and they will experiment with corners of magic they ought not to touch. The princess will be in danger. Many angels still live, and their grief for Kalmaroth is vicious. They will come for you again and again. They will find a way to call others from the Deep, unless the Gate is sealed.”
Evyline paled. “I see.”
Rielle forced her eyes open even as the blinding world urged them closed. Each building they passed burned with a thousand white fires. Her every step sent waves of power rippling across the ground.
“No new angels will be able to possess human bodies,” she managed, struggling to form words—teeth against tongue, tongue against throat. “Those without bodies will remain so, and any survivors I resurrected will find the power of their minds diminished. Elemental castings will go dark. Marques…” She hesitated, thinking of little Simon. How sober and quiet he had been, standing at the ready while his father brought Eliana into the world. “Marques will no longer be able to thread. I will leave only three things untouched: the godsbeasts, the wraiths loyal to the crown, and Eliana.”
It was painful to say Eliana’s name, as if each syllable were a bludgeon to her ribs. Her heart lurched back toward Baingarde, toward the quiet rooms that held the two surviving pieces of her heart.
“The princess will retain all her power?” Evyline asked.
Rielle nodded. “Someday, the empirium will return. Something will happen to awaken it. Another conflict, perhaps a new enemy. I can see glimmers of this, but the empirium has shown me nothing more. The Gate is a doorway to the Deep, and the Deep is a doorway to every world there is. Something will come. And when this happens and the empirium returns, the world will look to Eliana for guidance.”
Her tears crested savagely. “I wish I did not have to ask this of her. I wish I were not leaving Audric to face a world grieving the loss of its magic. But I know no other way of protecting them in the coming hard years, and soon I will no longer be here to do it myself.”
“And what of the temples, my queen?” Evyline asked thickly. “What will we worship, if magic is gone?”
“Nothing will stop you from praying to sun and shadows. And if the old prayers become ill-fitting, you will write new ones.”
Fresh agony sent her crashing to the ground. Cracks raced across the cobbled road, splintering hundreds of precisely cut stones. She trembled, gasping, and when she looked up, she saw not a road, not a city, but a vast shallow sea. At its horizon, a girl in white.
Evyline tried to help her rise but could only manage to bring her to her knees. The earth pulled at Rielle’s neck, its tendrils stubborn and hungry. Fighting it was like fighting the hard press of the ocean. If she was to reach the mountains in time, they would need help. Another body to help her stand and walk, someone she could trust.
Zahra’s voice came to her, distant and faint. “My queen, we are near the house of Garver Randell.”
“Bring him to me,” she croaked, and every word tasted of lightning. “Tell him to hurry.”
He came at once, stood quietly for a moment, then knelt at her side. Rielle squinted at him through a white wall of pain. His lined face, his bright sharp eyes.
“You do seem to insist upon the theatrical,” he observed wryly, and with Evyline’s help, both of them straining, he managed to lift Rielle back to her feet. She felt the gentle press of a worn hand against her forehead.
“Wherever you go, child,” he said softly, “I hope you find peace there.”
Peace. She laughed, baffled at the thought. Would she be allowed such a thing, even in death?
not death
The empirium scolded her, a bewildered correction. Why would she think anything was as simple as a single human death?
Then what? she asked, gasping for air.
It replied with a feeling, the thin bones of a single word: more
They reached the great wall standing battered and charred around the city. Zahra hid them from the guards as they hurried through the freshly built gate. Once, Âme de la Terre had not needed such a wall. Once, none of them had thought any of this could happen, no matter the prayers they muttered by their beds.
And then they were across the lake bridge and in the Flats, stumbling across the ruined ground. Furrows from beastly claws, craters still steaming from elemental magic. The temple acolytes hadn’t yet made the necessary repairs to the battlefield, focusing instead on retrieving bodies, cleaning the city, offering counsel to the bereaved. And now, whenever the people of Âme de la Terre looked out their windows, they would see the remnants of war. They would think of the Blood Queen and how she stole their magic from them. Some of them would be grateful for it, find comfort in the new quiet of the air. Some would be wild with grief, but without magic to aid their fury, and with the castle guarded by an army of wraiths, Audric and Eliana would be safe, at least for a few years.
Thunder rolled across the Flats, drawn by the stumbling fall of Rielle’s feet. As they neared the pass, the air crackled gold. Evyline looked up, her expression caught between awe and fear.