“And I think,” she said quietly, “that if we mean to help her before it’s too late, we must hurry.”

10

   Rielle

“Dearest sister, you may have heard that I am dead, and while it’s true that Merovec Sauvillier nearly beat the life out of me, he didn’t finish the job, though I wish he had. Two friends rescued me. No, I can’t tell you their names, though you would like them both. I’m no longer Merovec’s prisoner. I wanted to tell you that, at least. But I cannot come home. I’ve heard what happened in Âme de la Terre. I know Audric and Rielle are gone. I could not warn them in time. I failed them, just as I failed to save Father. I never wanted his crown. That was always your secret wish. You’ll be better for our people than I could ever hope to be. Find Audric. Help him as you can. They will call me the Craven King, for abandoning you. They’ll call me the Abdicator. Well, let them. Lying near death, I realized home had never felt like home to me. Now I choose to live, and find a place where I actually fit, for however long we’ve all got left in this darkening world. I’ll miss you, but I’m not sorry to be gone.”

—Encoded letter from King Ilmaire Lysleva to his sister, Ingrid, dated November, Year 999 of the Second Age

Corien found Obritsa almost at once, pinning her and her guard in place with his mind. But in the brief moments after her escape, she had traveled more than a hundred miles.

They would have to retrieve her on foot.

For three days, Corien raged in silence as they traveled the scrubby, mountainous landscape of Vindica, its cliffs and canyons, its plains cut by thin rivers. His pace was ruthless. He hardly spoke to Rielle; when he did, it was in clipped commands.

Come here.

Walk faster.

Kiss me.

He kept his promise; he no longer cloaked her thoughts. When he pulled her against his body in the dark, Rielle grabbed his collar and met his mouth with hers.

When she obeyed him, it was because she wanted to obey.

Then, on the fourth day, they found Obritsa.

Rielle knew it as soon as she opened her eyes from a restless two-hour sleep. They had stopped racing through the night only when Rielle, exhausted, had stumbled over a crack in the ground and nearly tumbled off a cliff-side path. Now, curled up on the floor of a shallow mountain cave, she opened her eyes just as Corien stopped pacing.

“Get up.” He was wild, his hair hanging in greasy strands. He yanked Rielle to her feet. “They’re close.”

“Unhand me.” She ripped her arm from his grip. “I can walk on my own.”

“Then keep up. And watch where you step.” His pale eyes glittered in the moonlight, and he wore a hard smile. “I have her. She can’t move. I have both of them.”

Rielle struggled to match his stride, her side cramping. He was hiding his intentions from her, and the expression on his face alarmed her.

They found Artem first in a cluster of wind-twisted trees. On his stomach, limbs askew. Alive, Rielle assumed, but certainly not moving. The pack holding the castings had fallen and split. Marzana’s shield glinted silver; Grimvald’s hammer hummed quietly in the dirt.

Past him was Obritsa. Corien had hold of her with his mind, and yet she was still crawling away slowly, as if moving through tar. Tears streamed down her face from the effort. Her face was gaunt, her lips cracked. Rielle realized, startled, that the girl must have been trapped in this clearing for days, crawling and desperate, trying to escape Corien’s hold.

He stalked toward Obritsa, grabbed her tangled white hair, yanked her to her feet. She did not cry out. Instead, she kneed him in the groin, twisted out of his grip. That startled him; Rielle could feel his surprise. She watched in astonishment as the girl whipped a crude knife out of her boot—a jagged piece of stone sharpened into a blade. Obritsa swiped at Corien as he lunged. Her knife sliced across his chest. He roared in fury, backhanded her. She crashed to the ground. Her knife flew into the trees, and she scrambled for it.

Corien found her first.

She collapsed with a scream. Her small body twisted in the dirt like a beached fish.

“You thought you could run from me,” Corien said, crouching over her. “You thought you could beat me.”

“I did,” Obritsa gasped out. “For three days I beat you.”

Corien’s face twisted with fury. “I don’t need to touch you to hurt you, but it does intensify the feeling.” He lowered his hand to her face, pressing her cheek into the dirt. “Don’t you agree?”

Obritsa’s shrieks were animal, unintelligible. A low moan sounded from Rielle’s left—Artem, still immobile on the ground, a soft groan of distress the only thing he could manage as Obritsa writhed.

The sound was so pathetic that it embarrassed Rielle. And if Corien kept going, he would kill the girl. They would be stranded here—wherever here was—and would have to covertly secure transportation through coercion, manipulation, and murder. Doable, but messy.

Rielle was too tired for messy, and the sight of Obritsa’s legs kicking, her fingernails scraping the ground as she tried to push away from Corien, turned Rielle’s stomach. A desperate feeling touched her—a sense of being pinned down, of being caged—and she realized Obritsa’s fear was spilling out of Corien’s thoughts and into her own.

The Kirvayan queen was a tiresome brat, but this was not the way to punish her.

Rielle stepped forward. “Release her.”

“Oh, but she ran away,” Corien said sweetly. “She must be punished.”

“You’ll punish the life out of her, and then we won’t have a marque to help us. Release her, now.”

“Like a naughty dog, she ran off and made us chase after her.” Corien clucked his tongue. Obritsa’s back arched, her scream cracking with sobs.

“And it’s your fault she was able to run away,” Rielle pointed out.

Obritsa’s screams subsided to awful choked whimpers.

“Release her,” Rielle commanded.

Corien growled an angelic curse but did not relent.

“Fine,” she said sharply. “You idiot.”

A flick of her wrist, and Corien flew back through the trees. He hit one spine-first, then dropped into a bed of tangled undergrowth.

Lightheaded, Rielle stood over Obritsa as the girl was sick in the dirt. Artem, his breathing labored, pushed himself onto his hands and knees.

“Korozhka,” he wheezed, then spoke to the girl in Kirvayan as he crawled toward her. Rielle knew enough of the language to translate: My queen, my dearest heart, I’m here. If you live, then I live. If you die, then I am no longer.