The high speaker paused. “With a final count of one hundred and ninety-two to eight, we hereby move that the Celdarian petition be rejected and that the crown deny their request for military aid.”

Audric sat heavily in his chair, watching numbly as the high speaker presented her packet to the queens.

“If you concur with this motion for denial, Your Majesties,” the woman continued, “your signatures will confirm the vote. If not, you may appeal the vote in a special session.”

Audric held his breath, not daring to speak, and then watched as if through the slow mire of a dream while the queens signed the document that doomed his country and would soon doom them all. He only vaguely noticed the others’ reactions: Kamayin rushing at her mothers, passionately protesting; the Grand Magister of the Baths touching her throat in solemn prayer.

Queen Bazati was watching him, her expression compassionate but resolute. Queen Fozeyah led a shouting Kamayin into one of the private studies circling the room.

And the worst thing, the most horrible thing, was that Audric understood their decision.

Why should they trust him? Why should they send thousands of their troops to fight a futile war that had begun centuries before any of them were born?

If he was going to take back his country and rally the people of Avitas to fight for their Sun Queen and their future, he would have to do it alone.

13

   Rielle

“From our observations in the Deep, we have divided the cruciata into five distinct groupings based on their closest similarity to creatures known in Avitas: vipers (reptilian), raptors (avian), catamounts (feline), bulls (a strange combination of bovine and ursine characteristics), and nibblers (insectivorous and arachnid, though far larger than is typical in Avitas). Notably, while the nibblers are smaller than the others—and their grouping the least populous, perhaps indicating a lack of strength that makes it difficult for them to navigate the Deep—they are also by far the most ravenous.”

—A report written by the angel Kasdeia, surgeon of the Northern Reach, dated August 17, Year 994 of the Second Age

For days, Rielle existed in a black-gold ocean. There, in the most exquisite and fathomless depths of her body, the empirium roared and roiled.

Fleeting moments of awareness illuminated the truth: They were traveling north. She and Corien. The girl, Obritsa; her guard, Artem. They were traveling quickly. Rings of light flashed open, then closed, a faint scent of smoke with each illumination.

The castings Artem carried, now four in number, emitted a new, stronger power that hummed against Rielle’s skin like the air before a storm, ready to snap open.

And Corien was close. Rielle felt his mouth against her cheek, the nest of his arms around her. Sometimes she recognized his nearness and met his lips with her own. Sometimes she was lost at sea and cried out for him, but even he could not find her there in the dark shimmering depths.

There, she was utterly alone with the empirium. Its tireless voice was an unending chorus of words too strange and terrible for her to decipher, and she could not plug her ears, nor did she want to. Wrapped up in its waves, she floated and dove and sank and drowned, and she welcomed each lung-crushing moment of pain. She opened her mouth and swallowed black water. She opened her eyes and saw skies scattered with gold stars. She reached out, fingers grasping, and was pulled down into darkness, and she welcomed the fall, because somewhere in the darkness was the answer.

Somewhere in this endless world of the empirium was more—more power, more understanding.

Why have you chosen me? She asked this many times. What do you want with me?

The empirium answered in incomprehensible words that rattled her bones and cracked her spine, but where she should have felt pain, she felt only warm waves of pleasure. She turned into the tide, let it sweep her down through ecstatic black water. It broke around her, a cold curtain of needles.

you are, rumbled a voice that was not singular but rather all voices, an eternal chorus.

Yes? She held her breath, listening.

Nothing answered her but the constant beat of her heart, the churning pulse of black waves.

Then the empirium spoke again—a boom of noiseless noise that exploded between Rielle’s ears:

I will wake

Her eyes snapped open.

• • •

She was surrounded by white, and she was in Corien’s arms. He held her against his chest, his black hair peppered with snow.

“There you are,” he whispered, relief plain on his face. “You’ve come back to me.”

Air burst into her lungs. She coughed, expelling water that wasn’t there, and pushed against Corien’s chest. “Put me down!”

He obeyed, looking flummoxed, and then Rielle was on the ground near a sweeping flight of black steps. The air repulsed her, as did the rock stretching for miles beneath her and the countless infinitesimal grains of moisture she could sense floating around her. She turned inward, away from the elements that called to her, away from the empirium that lived inside them all. In her head, she heard the crash of black waves, and when she fought them, they thundered ever louder.

“I am just a girl,” she whispered, praying it. A lie, and yet it comforted her.

Once she had remembered how to breathe, she looked around and saw that she huddled between two massive doors, each flung open wide. To her left, a sprawling landscape of mountains and ice. To her right, a dark entrance hall lit by torches in iron brackets.

She pressed her forehead to the cool floor—polished tiles of black marble veined with white. She pounded her fists against it once.

Corien knelt silently beside her. “What is it? What happened?”

“I was almost there,” she said, hardly able to speak. “I almost understood. I could see it. I could feel it. I was swimming toward it, and then suddenly I was here, with you.” She glared at him through her tears. “Did you wake me?”

“No,” Corien said calmly. “You woke on your own. I was worried…” He hesitated, his jaw working. “I was worried you might never wake again.”

Rielle closed her eyes, pressed her brow hard against the tile. It was cold as ice and settled her frenzied mind. “There was an ocean. A great black ocean lit up with gold. I was inside it. It was taking me…”

“Where was it taking you?”

“No, you don’t understand. It was taking me. It wanted to breathe. It wanted to walk, to see through my eyes.” She struggled to sit up, glad he did not try to help. She felt clumsy after days of inactivity, her body strange and heavy. Distracted, she placed a hand on her stomach. The girl on the mountain flitted through her mind, a memory she refused to follow.

“The empirium was claiming me for its own,” Rielle murmured, “and I wanted it to have me.”