Kamayin’s wail of furious grief pierced the air. Audric heard Miren struggling against her bindings. Every piece of metal on the terrace quaked with anger.

“And these are my friends?” Rielle whispered. “These are the people who will welcome me home?” Her blazing eyes fixed on Audric. A terrible sadness passed over her face, so swiftly that he realized he had probably imagined it. Some delirious hope, as he lay crushed beneath her, that she would regret this when it was over.

She exhaled, a trembling hot breath. “You don’t know what it’s like to live like this,” she said, and he could not read her voice, could not tell if she meant it as a boast or a plea.

He gasped for breath. Her power would smother him. “Tell me, then! Stop this and tell me, tell everyone. Ask us for help. Let us help you!”

“It’s too late, Audric. It was too late years ago, the moment I was born with this in my blood. It was too late when Aryava uttered his last words.” Her eyes shone, but her words were cold as stones at the bottom of the sea. “We were fools not to see it.”

Where before her face had been soft, now a door closed over it, and Audric knew as he stared up at her that it would never open again.

She shoved hard, slamming him into the floor. Illumenor went skidding across the terrace. Somewhere in the sea of endless light, Corien was laughing.

Rielle no longer held a sword. It was her arm itself that burned, a brilliant red spear of light, and as it plunged for his heart, Audric held her beloved face in his gaze and whispered, “Rielle, I love you.”

45

   Eliana

“I hear Aryava’s voice in my dreams—not the voice I knew and loved, but the voice from his last moments, when he sounded unlike himself, his words hoarse and distorted. ‘The world will fall,’ he proclaimed. ‘Two Queens will rise.’ And something cold and ancient looked out at me from his fading gaze—something that did not belong to him. In that moment, I was seen for what I had done, what we all had done. What we had to do, and would do again.”

—From the journals of Saint Katell, written in the years after the Angelic Wars, stolen from the First Great Library of Quelbani

Baingarde was full of light, thick pulsing veins of it that tangled like the roots of a gigantic tree. They drifted after Eliana as she raced up the castle’s sweeping grand stairs. They reached for her legs, her castings, the blade of Katell’s sword.

It was torment to run past them. They pulled at her like a song, promising her glory and infinite kindness if only she would stop and touch them. As they climbed, only Remy, swift and silent beside her, kept her moving forward. Pangs of longing bloomed in her chest even as her stomach lurched with fear.

At last, they reached a set of stained glass doors through which poured dazzling rivers of sizzling light. One of the doors had been left open.

Eliana stood a few paces away, staring at it. Her heart thudded in her ears. Her hands were slick with sweat. She heard voices raised in argument, the crackle of magic, and someone laughing. A familiar laugh that sent cold spilling down her body.

Remy, beside her, stared at the doors. Beyond them blazed an unthinkable brilliance, and in that glow, he seemed smaller than he ever had, his stolen sword a child’s toy.

“Is that him laughing?” Remy glanced at her, his face pale under its coat of ash. “Is it Corien?”

She was too terrified to nod. Weights slammed against stone—four, in quick succession. A woman cried out in wild grief, and then a man, shouting words she could not understand. Something about the man’s voice was familiar, though she had never before heard it, and suddenly the empirium was booming inside her, wordless and urgent, pushing her toward the doors.

She could have defied it. She could have run, gone back to Odo’s basement and hidden in the dark until the angels came for her.

Instead, she slowly approached the doors and looked out onto a terrace of stone and fire. Cords of light held four people to the castle wall and the terrace floor, their limbs askew like the wings of pinned insects. Eyes wide, voices hoarse from screaming, they watched a pale woman with wild dark hair, her skin painted gold with light, a sword of snapping red flames in her hands. A man fought her—brown skin, dark wet curls plastered to his forehead. His sword shone with the light of the sun, but it was nothing compared to the woman herself. She was glorious, incandescent, and his arms shook as she pressed him flat against the floor.

Eliana stared at the awful bright world beyond the doors, watching them fight as if through the haze of a dream. Names came to her, for of course it was them: Rielle, the Kingsbane, and Audric, the Lightbringer. She heard the grief in Rielle’s voice, the fury and fear. Audric’s desperation as the sparks of Rielle’s sword singed his face and arms. His body dripped with blood, sweat, and soot, and beneath Rielle’s gown of flowing crimson was a belly swollen with child.

Eliana touched her own stomach, as if that would somehow diminish the strangeness of watching these people who had made her.

But then Rielle’s sword changed, joining with her body until her right arm was a ribbon of red fire. She reared back to strike, aiming for Audric’s heart, and Eliana watched him close his eyes, saw his lips move around words she could not hear.

Panic burst open inside her. She raced onto the terrace, and the sea of golden branches crowding the floor parted to make way for her. Rielle’s arm flashed, but before it could fall, Eliana threw herself in front of Audric, summoned all her strength, and flung up Katell’s sword.

Rielle’s arm crashed against Eliana’s blade, and the two spears of light locked together. One red and blazing, the other pulsing gold as bright morning. Each blade crackled, throwing off showers of sparks.

Over the spear of her arm, Rielle’s eyes widened in shock. The pressure on Eliana’s sword lifted slightly, and her relief was so immense that she felt dizzy. She began at once to speak.

“Mother,” she said in the common tongue, trusting that Remy was nearby, “I have suffered much to find you. Please listen.”

She waited, hardly breathing, and then, over the roar of their weapons and the hot hum of light spilling over the terrace railing, Remy’s voice rang out, translating her words.

Rielle’s expression darkened. She looked to Remy, then back to Eliana, and spat something vicious, something Remy didn’t have time to translate. She shoved hard at Eliana’s sword. Power rushed up Rielle’s body in streams of light, gilding her red gown, and for a moment, Eliana feared her own knees would buckle.

But then she thought of Remy behind her, braving the end of the world at her side, and Simon, back in the future, and Navi and Patrik and Hob, and Ysabet, and Malik, and everyone else lying dead because they had chosen to fight for her.

She planted her feet firmly on the stone and drew power from it, from the air blazing hot against her skin, from the night sky burning with magic. Katell’s sword became a spear of pure light and power snapping within her palms. White and gold, like the burn of stars. Her castings blazed in her palms, feeding the new sword she had made. Her muscles burned, and her eyes watered from the fire’s heat, but she stood tall, holding fast against the might of her mother’s power.