Eliana knew this was right, and yet she turned from the seam with tears of frustration in her eyes. Is he coming?

Soon, I think. And you must be entirely yourself before he sees you.

Her heart heavy in her chest, Eliana exited the house and hurried back the way she had come—through the city’s center to its outer streets. She saw the narrow door leading back to Avitas, distant greenery framed in angry bruised light.

It is real, she told herself, moving as quickly as she dared toward her exit. It is real, it is solid. She made herself slow, forcing herself to feel each footfall against the road. Then she was at the seam and slipping through, its light buzzing against her skin. On the ground beyond, safe in her charred thicket, she turned and drew the seam closed with shaking fingers. Soon, only a faint imprint remained, a trick of the light one could easily dismiss. She watched it fade, the image of that one paltry hole in the Deep lingering in her mind. It sickened her to think of how much work was left to do and what she would endure in the meantime.

There you are, the Prophet said, their voice a soft tremor of relief. Thank God. Eliana, I think this was too much, too bold. You should not go back again. There are other ways to fight him. The hole you carved may widen by itself in time. The cruciata will sniff it out.

“But how long will that take?” Eliana whispered. She was too tired to return the mind-speak; she reveled quietly in the ragged sound of her own voice. “I cannot wait for that to happen. I must do it on my own before fighting him takes what is left of me.”

The Prophet did not reply to that, but Eliana felt the steady cloak of their thoughts as she fled back through the palace to her rooms. A foul taste flooded her mouth when she caught sight of her doors, flanked by two gray-eyed guards.

It will not be forever, Eliana, came the Prophet’s voice, thick with sorrow. I am working tirelessly to help you in ways you do not even know yet, but the timing must be precise, or else we will lose our opportunity. I will return to you as soon as it is safe. We will go back together.

Eliana did not answer. Instead, she pushed open the doors to her rooms and shut them behind her in silence.

26

   Simon

“Don’t look too close at the woods, my dear,

Don’t speak too loud in the night

Stay in the glow of our bed, my dear,

Keep our candle always in sight.”

—Traditional Astavari folk song

Corien had filled his city with abducted beauty—faces with remarkable symmetry, minds crackling with talent. Poets and musicians, artists and carpenters. Each building was flawless, designed by angelic minds and crafted by artisans stolen from their beds the world over—promised safety for themselves and their families if only they would live in Elysium and do as His Majesty the Emperor of the Undying commanded.

As Simon made his way through the city to the Lyceum, he found every citizen Corien had collected staring up at the sky—some in wonder, others in fear.

Simon, stalking past them, kept his eyes on the road ahead, refusing to gape like the rest of them, but the light from this thing that had appeared in the air could not be ignored. It washed over everything, illuminating the city with strange colors. White and blue, indigo and plum. It was night, and yet the city hummed with light bright as day.

Only once, at the doors to the Lyceum, did Simon glance up.

Above the city, directly over its heart, gleamed a bright unblinking light, trapped behind clouds. It had appeared some weeks past, and every few days it grew larger and brighter, like the head of a brewing fierce storm. Some described it as a tear in the clouds or a bruise. It was a great eye, insisted others. Simon had heard them whispering during his patrols; the entire city teemed with the mystery of it.

The angels had given the phenomenon a name: Ostia.

Across the bridges and the rocky plains beyond, refugees clamoring for entrance to the city had begun carrying out elaborate sacrifices to curry favor with the angelic guards posted at the city’s perimeter. The light in the air, they believed, meant that the time was nigh for some great act of either mercy or bloodshed from the Emperor. If they impressed him, their lives would be spared.

If only they knew that the angelic guards watching them did so with nothing but cruel amusement, and that their violent acts would go unrewarded.

Simon threw one last cold look at the sky. He knew exactly what Ostia was, as did the angels and many who lived in the Lyceum. It was a tear in the empirium, clumsy but growing, and beyond it lay the Deep. Soon there would be not just one Gate they would have to guard against, but two. The question was, who had made this one?

The answer seemed obvious to Simon, but Corien had spent weeks tormenting Eliana and had found no evidence tying her to it. Her screams echoed through that wing of the palace day and night with little silence between them.

Simon entered the Lyceum and did not look back.

• • •

In the Lyceum, in the receiving hall known as the Rose Room, Simon sat listening to the governing body of Invictus known as the Council of Five, wondering how long it would take them to realize they were being spied upon.

He glanced at the glossy cherrywood doors, beyond which Jessamyn crouched, eavesdropping. Her movements had been too clumsy to go entirely unnoticed; Simon had heard her foot scuff the floor. Like the rest of them, she was no doubt on edge due to the constant eerie light teeming in the sky. There were no true nights anymore; even the darkest hours were painted silver.

Simon looked back at the Five, but they were ignorant to her presence, which faintly disgusted him. They were meant to be assassins of the highest order, and yet they could not hear one of their own students shuffling outside their door.

One of the Five, a pale, sinewy woman named Vezdal, leaned over the council table with a glare.

“So you see, Simon, we cannot delay any longer,” she said urgently. “Each moment that creeps by could be our last. You’ve seen the sky. I refuse to watch angels die and the Empire collapse because we did not act.”

“‘He has chosen me to guard His works,’” said one of the other Five, Mirzet, a brown-skinned woman lined with age and yet still supposedly a viper with a sword. “‘He has chosen me to receive His glory.’ So says the Invictus oath. He has chosen. Not they. Our loyalty must remain to the Emperor.”

“And yet the oath also says, ‘I am the guardian of His story,’” said another of the Five, his voice smooth and even. His name was Kalan, a tall, bull-shouldered man. “One could argue that His story is the story of the angels—the Empire, the entire race, not only one angel—and that we are not properly guarding it if we let it end, whether or not that means betraying the Emperor.”

Mirzet scoffed, pushed her chair roughly back from the table, and stalked away to one of the windows. It was the only one open in the room, admitting a spear of Ostia’s eerie blue light.