He crashed to his knees; his shield flew away, the flames extinguished. He fell forward on his hands, and when he looked up, the world tilted, and he saw her for only a moment.

She wore a long, dark cloak so large it swallowed her. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks.

Their eyes locked, and even as his vision darkened, his skull screaming as if it were tearing itself in two, he recognized that look in her eyes. He had taught her for years; he had practically raised her.

She was frightened.

He reached for her, his arm shaking. “Rielle, darling, it’s all right, I’m here—”

But then he could no longer hold himself up, and as he watched from the mud, immobile and dazed, a white-haired girl with pale brown skin carved a ring of light from the air at Rielle’s feet. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. Was the girl a marque?

There was a sweep of darkness, swift movement, a snap in the air. A tall man, the wind whipping his coat.

Then the light was gone. And so was Rielle.

All that remained was a voice that did not belong to her. It was soft and refined and highly amused.

It said, Too late, Tal.

And then it kicked him hard into oblivion.

5

   Rielle

“For millennia, the angels lived only in the skies. After the first angel ascended from the dust of old, the rest of her kind were born—from clouds and comets, from high astral winds. Luminous and ageless, they studied the stars and the empirium beyond. It was not until the angels at last noticed humans living in the world below that they descended, too fascinated to resist what were to them repulsive, remarkable creatures with fleeting lives and enviable powers. To the humans, the Great Descent was a rain of fire upon the world, beyond the work of any elemental. Chaos ruled. Countries were unmade and borders erased. Humans scattered far and wide, leaving the nations we now know as Patria and Vindica free for the angels to claim as their own.”

—And Fire Fell From the Skies: The Great Angelic Descent and How It Changed the World, a collection of scholarly writings compiled by Lyzet Taval, of the First Guild of Scholars

Rielle had not yet mastered the art of traveling through Obritsa’s threads with any sort of grace.

The third time she stepped through the humming ring of light she had come to despise, she managed to keep her balance for only a moment before her knees buckled.

The ground came at her fast, a flat, hard stretch of red dirt scattered with sharp pebbles that pierced her tender palms.

She looked up, swallowing against the faint urge to be sick that always seemed to accompany traveling by thread, and discovered she was at the bottom of a narrow canyon of towering red stone. There was a roaring river nearby, carving its way through the rock with white foam and a black current. The sky was bright with sunset, casting an eerie crimson light across the flat canyon walls, into which intricate designs had been carved. Rielle picked out familiar shapes: Winged angels soaring through cities crowned with high towers. Great sleek warships pushing toward a distant shore. Stars and moons dotting the canvas of red rock in various configurations, like some sprawling map left behind by a mammoth traveler.

“It’s beautiful,” she said softly.

“Of course it is. Angels made it.” Corien approached her with his left hand outstretched. “This is Samandira, the entrance to Eridel. One of the greatest cities in Vindica, long ago. A place of study and enlightened thinking. Universities where angelic scholars worked to unravel the mysteries of creation. Libraries containing thousands of works examining the nature of the empirium. Before humans destroyed it,” he added lightly. “The war did much damage. And then, after our imprisonment, thousands of humans journeyed here to demolish what remained. For years they have done this—undoing everything we accomplished. Pillaging the ruins.”

Rielle knew the lightness in his voice was false. After he helped her to her feet, she laced her fingers through his. His black cloak and trousers, once immaculate, had grown filthy from their relentless traveling. Looking up at his face, so fine and smooth in the wash of red light, she felt a surge of fondness—and of pity.

She touched his cheek. Her dirty fingers smudged his pale skin. No words she could say would be of any comfort, and she was still uncertain if comfort was something she wished to give.

But she could not stop herself from touching him.

Her life had become a series of frantic episodes—dashing east, from one city to the next, either on foot or on horseback or in whatever carriage Corien stole from people on the road, none of whom could resist his coaxing voice, his tear-bright pale eyes, his promises of a wild rut in the trees, if only they would grant use of their horse and cart.

He enjoyed toying with them, these hapless humans who were at first content to let him slip inside their minds while gazing upon his exquisite face—until they realized too late what was happening and began to scream in fear.

At first, Rielle had looked away whenever this happened. The sight of them was awful—their faces convulsing and contorting—and then, when they dropped to the ground, the heavy, hard thud. All the color gone from their faces, their expressions those of absolute terror. She knew Corien was capable of violence, but these had seemed such unnecessary, cruel instances of it that she refused to watch.

At first.

Now, she found herself peeking more and more often. It wasn’t that she enjoyed their pain, exactly. It was that she enjoyed the display of his power, and he knew she enjoyed it, could feel her tired delight pressing up against his thoughts right before he killed them, and knowing he was delighted brought her some comfort. She was desperate for comfort. Her head would not stop hurting, and she hated her stolen dress.

She hated, too, how strange her body felt some days, how inexplicable sickness came over her without warning until she was forced, mortified, to heave miserably while Corien held back her hair with a tenderness that nearly made up for the indignity of being sick in the dirt.

So, she watched him kill, craving his delight and approval with vaguely troubling desperation. But every time a jolt of alarm rattled her, it disappeared as quickly as it had come.

You’re like me, she had told him five days past. He had just stepped away from a gray-haired man, wizened but strong, and let him fall to the ground. The man had been a shepherd, a fact that made Corien laugh for reasons he hid from Rielle when she tried touching his mind.

I’ve been telling you how alike we are for months, he replied, amused, as he stepped over the corpse to approach her. Why say this today?

You don’t enjoy hurting them. That’s not what makes you do it. Her heart pounded at his nearness. Each hungry pulse buoyed her chest higher and higher until she felt ready to float off the ground. She was so tired—she was always tired in a muddy sort of way, as if she were perpetually slogging through a gummy swamp—and the exhaustion only lifted when he was near.