He rose from his bed with a sense of tranquility that disturbed him, like a sea ominously still before a gale. He stood silently in the center of his bedroom, barefoot and bare-chested, and recognized that he existed on a knife’s edge. On one side was the third war council meeting, which would begin downstairs in an hour. He could dress and wash himself, trim the beard that had grown a bit wild. He could attend the meeting and by doing so face the impossible, inevitable heartbreak on the horizon.

On the other side was an ending. He could take his own life and let the rest of them sort everything out on their own.

He considered the idea, examining it as a healer might inspect a wound that needed stitching. For several long minutes, he wavered. Atheria watched him keenly from the terrace, mid-breakfast, her kill maimed at her feet.

Then, Audric took a long, slow breath and walked to the bathing room. He splashed water on his face and inspected his hair, rubbed his bristly cheeks.

I love how easily you can grow a beard, Rielle had told him on many occasions, gazing dreamily up at him. She loved to nuzzle her smooth cheek against his rough one. My brilliant, beautiful, noble, scruffy bear-king, she had said on one particular occasion, drunk on wine and on him, and he had burst out laughing and then kissed her until they were both trembling and ready.

In the mirror, his reflection smiled faintly.

Forty-five minutes later, dressed in borrowed clothes that were looser on his frame than they had been a month ago, feeling like a fawn on new legs, Audric opened the door to Queen Bazati’s council chambers, found Evyline—square-jawed, gray-haired, her face open with sudden hope—and nodded at her. His grief and sorrow still lived inside him and always would, and he imagined there would yet be days when getting out of bed was an indescribable torment.

But today, he was standing.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Evyline and to all of them, staunchly ignoring Ludivine’s pale profile to his left. “I needed time. I’m ready now.”

8

   Eliana

“As an elemental, you must learn a certain control that other humans, who cannot touch the empirium, will never know. Your body—every muscle, every thought, every feeling—is inexorably connected to the deepest fabric of the world. Unchecked, your anger could lash out and shatter a window, send a kitchen blade flying. Your despair could crack the earth beneath your mother’s feet.”

—The Path to the Empirium: A Meditation on Elemental Practice by Velia Arrosara, Grand Magister of the Firmament in Orline, capital of Ventera, Years 313–331 of the Second Age

When Eliana awoke, she was in the white room from her dreams.

Rafters of ivory and pearl gathered at nine points across the ceiling like clusters of bleached stems. The bed was enormous, draped in white. Pale gauzy curtains hung from each post. The floor was smooth white stone. Thick white rugs surrounded the bed and abutted the empty hearth. Beside the nearby window, two delicate armchairs faced each other, awaiting conversation.

Bouquets of crimson flowers sat in vases at her bedside, near the windows, on the tiny dining table, their curling red petals providing the room’s only color.

As she inspected it all, Eliana smiled. What a lovely room the Emperor had given her. How thoughtfully decorated it was, and how thoughtful to have left her so many attendants, should she require help with something.

There were ten, all women, silent and glassy-eyed as they stood against the pale walls. Their hair was cropped short and white robes covered them from neck to toes.

“Good morning,” Eliana called out cheerfully. She stretched and yawned, then swung her legs out of bed and into the cool air. Someone had bathed her, dressed her in a thin white nightgown. Such a generous host, the Emperor. She wondered distractedly if all angels were so kind.

She discovered that beyond the bedroom, there was a sitting room, a receiving room, a bathing room, and a dressing room, all in shades of white—cream and eggshell and vanilla, cloud and snow and sand. The drapes had all been pulled wide open; sunlight drenched the rooms. The red flowers emitted a sharp, sweet perfume so powerful it made her tongue tingle.

She buried her face in their petals and breathed deep.

Then she went to the bathing room to look for a mirror. If she were to see Corien today, she ought to make herself presentable. But she could not find a mirror, or a comb, or jewelry, or pins for her hair.

“Strange,” she said aloud, then shrugged and forgot she had ever thought such a thing.

Double doors marked the exit to her rooms—two huge pieces of white stone engraved with perfectly symmetrical diamond patterns.

She tried the doors, and they opened without a sound.

The corridor outside was broad and pale. Windows lined each side, their lace curtains fluttering in the breeze. Beyond the windows bloomed a profusion of flowers and greenery. Birdsong trilled from a cloudless blue sky.

Merrily, she continued on her way, wandering down empty white corridors. The sun was warm on her bare toes. She caught glimmering dust motes with her fingers.

At last, she came to a single door standing ajar in a wall of gleaming pale wood.

Her heart lifted at the sight, though she could not have said why, and when she pushed open the door, she let out a cry, for there was Simon, sitting at a desk with his feet up on a windowsill. He turned to her and smiled broadly. He stood and came toward her with three long strides, and she met him in a pool of sunlight at the room’s heart. When she threw her arms around his neck, he lifted her off her feet and buried his face in her hair.

“There you are,” he said, and she squirmed happily in his arms, pulled back to gaze upon his face.

And froze.

It was wrong. It was all wrong.

That face, so smooth and smiling, was not Simon’s. She remembered now—there ought to have been scars. He was scarred all over; he had been burned and cut. But this man holding her was healed and happy. No shadows turned in the bright blue of his eyes. His smile was open and easy.

“No,” she whispered, and pushed back from him.

He released her, brow furrowed. “What is it, love?”

She whirled around to face the door and screamed, “No!”

She woke in her white room, drenched in sweat. The sunlight was gone. It was the deep of night.

Across the room, sitting in a chair by the window, was Corien, washed silver with moonlight.

“That wasn’t real,” she said, staring at him, her heart racing high in her throat. Even now that she understood her dream had been a lie of his creation, she wished she had never woken from it, and she hated herself for that.

She could still feel Simon’s arms around her, and the feeling of lightness in her heart as she had wandered those halls bright with sunshine.