Audric breathed until his grief loosened its black hold. A question came to him, even as his heart still ached.

Ludivine smiled softly, reading his question. “Yes. Yes, Audric. They all saw you do it. They watched Atheria fly. It was like nothing they had ever seen. They stood on the beach, and the elementals felt it the moment your power erupted. The shock of it sang through their bodies and sent their own power blazing. They told the soldiers, and the soldiers told the people, and now the city speaks of you and the saints in the same breath.” She touched his face, and he was so tired that he forgot to be angry with her and pressed his cheek into her palm.

Ludivine trembled as she kissed his brow. “Now, come. They’re waiting for you.”

“Who?”

“Everyone.”

A small hope sparked inside him, drawing him to his feet. He allowed Ludivine to help him dress. All the while, he gazed at his hands, then sent her a silent inquiry.

“They will heal,” she replied gently. “The queen’s personal physicians treated you. They are enormously skilled, and say the empirium seems to be aiding their own treatment. They say that within a week you will be able to take off the bandages. Within two, you will hold Illumenor once more.”

He nodded, wobbly and cotton-mouthed. He leaned hard against Ludivine as they proceeded downstairs, Evyline and the Sun Guard just behind them. When they reached the Senate hall, Audric pulled gently away from Ludivine, ready to walk on his own.

But then the doors opened, and Audric stared, his pulse rising fast, for not only had the entire Senate gathered—all two hundred members, robed in the colors of their districts—but so had their aides, their advisers, the Magisterial Council. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians. As he passed General Rakallo, she placed her hand on her chest and bowed low. They were all bowing. They sank to their knees, touched their lips, chests, and foreheads in prayer.

On the room’s central dais, the queens rose from their seats. Princess Kamayin, beaming, came forward and pinned to Audric’s lapel a blue iris—one of the most prized flowers in Mazabat and the symbol of the crown.

The high speaker of the Senate stepped forward with a scroll in her hands, and Audric listened in weary shock as her voice rang through the hall.

“On the matter of the petition of King Audric Courverie of the nation of Celdaria,” said the speaker, “who has requested military aid to invade that country’s capital and oust the usurper, Merovec Sauvillier, with the far-reaching objective of establishing a base of defense against potential angelic invaders, the Senate has decided to reconsider our previous decision. We have taken into consideration the counsel of our queens, the holy magisters, and the Mazabatian people, whose voices have bestowed upon us our seats of power.”

The high speaker glanced up at Audric, her face unreadable. “We have also considered recent events, including the hurricane that nearly destroyed our capital and the actions of the Celdarian king in that moment of crisis—actions that could have cost him his life.”

She paused. “Our final vote is unanimous. We hereby move that the Celdarian petition be revisited and accepted and that the crown approve the king’s request for military aid—first for the purpose of reclaiming the Celdarian throne, but more importantly, to provide assistance in the war against the angel Corien and any conflicts that may follow thereafter.”

Then the high speaker presented her scroll to the queens, rolling it out flat on a stand of polished wood, and at last gave Audric a small smile.

“If you concur with this motion to approve the Celdarian petition, my queens,” said the speaker, “your signatures will confirm our vote.”

Queen Bazati stepped forward, her head held high, and signed the paper with a flourish. Then Queen Fozeyah added her own name with a broad smile.

Kamayin rushed to Audric and threw her arms around him, and he watched over her shoulder, his head roaring with disbelief, as everyone in the hall rose to their feet and erupted into thunderous applause.

21

   Jessamyn

“To the white towers of Elysium—to these I pledge my every bone. To the glory that once was and the glory that will be—to this I offer my every sinew. To Him, the Light Undying, I devote every inch of my flesh.”

—From the initiation rites of novitiates to the order of Invictus

Jessamyn ducked Nevia’s fighting staff as it cut through the air, then shot back up and met the staff with her own.

Fighting was good. Fighting helped her forget the horrible thing she had done.

For nearly an hour straight, she had been fighting with Nevia in one of the Lyceum’s sparring yards. She refused to stop, not even to wipe her face, which was lucky, because Nevia had a reputation for ruthlessness and would not have agreed to rest.

That ruthlessness was why Jessamyn had left Remy in her room in the middle of his lesson, marched into the barracks, and tossed a staff to Nevia, which had made the older woman grin in her wolfish way.

Now they fought, the yard’s doors and windows lined with onlookers. Recruits with their own staffs at the ready, eager to jump in should Jessamyn relent. But Jessamyn could not possibly relent.

With each strike, with each blow she delivered and received, she felt some of the wild fear within her diminish, though her mind still spun with the memory of what had happened in Eliana’s rooms the day before.

How was it possible that this gaunt, mute, joke of a girl—who had once been a formidable assassin, supposedly, though Jessamyn couldn’t imagine that—could have bested her? Jessamyn, student of one of the greatest assassins Invictus had ever employed? Jessamyn, virashta of Varos? She had told herself it was lingering grief over his death that had distracted her. But this was no comfort, for it indicated a softness to which she had long thought herself impervious. A human softness Varos had tried to beat out of her.

Nevia’s staff grazed her arm, making Jessamyn grunt and stumble. She regrouped, spun on the thin, flexible sole of her sandal, and smacked Nevia hard on the shoulder, then again on the hip.

And still she could not stop thinking about what would have happened if Eliana had succeeded in killing herself, what the Emperor’s punishment would have been.

What his punishment might yet be.

Thinking about it made her sloppy. Nevia spun fast, whacked Jessamyn on the head with her staff, then used it to strike Jessamyn’s feet out from under her. She fell hard, knocking her chin against the ground. Stars burst across her vision, and she tasted blood, but the shame was far worse.

Nevia circled her. “I never did understand what Varos saw in you,” she said. There was no malice in her voice, simply a bewildered curiosity.

Then a set of doors to Jessamyn’s right flew open, and everyone but her—Nevia, the watching trainees—fell simultaneously to the ground.