Kingsbane

“At last, she awakens,” he murmured.

Obritsa stared at him, her body tensing. Her eyes traveled to her guard, lying inert on the floor, and then back up. “It’s you,” she whispered. “I heard you in my mind. You’re an angel.”

He knelt before her. “My name is Corien. And you are Obritsa Nevemskaya. Chosen queen of Kirvaya. The human revolutionaries in your country call you Korozhka. The Destroyer. It’s a delight to meet you, truly. Your mind is sharp and still growing. I appreciate a good mind, especially one with such potential. And you’re a marque.” He smiled. “That I find most delightful of all.”

She lifted her chin, examining his face. Her eyes were pale and bright. “By abducting me, you have committed an act of war against the nation of Kirvaya. If you release us now and allow us to leave this place unharmed, I will take that into consideration when I tell my magisters what you have done.”

“Your magisters. Oh, child.” Corien cupped her cheek. She did not flinch away from him, met his eyes without blinking. “So much is happening in this world that you do not understand. Your ignorance is charming.”

He rose, dusting his hands free of the grime she’d collected on her face. “I have something I need you to do for me. And you’ll do it, one way or another. If I have to force you, I can and I will. But I’d rather not. Your half-breed power is unpredictable, and if I take control of your mind, it might affect the purity of your threads. And then where would we be? Smashed into the side of a mountain somewhere. Flung to the bottom of the sea, or forward in time.”

The words left his lips before he could think of their significance.

Forward in time.

The image of the girl on the mountain returned to him—Rielle’s daughter, she had claimed. Her name was Eliana.

And the things he had glimpsed when he touched her mind…

But that was for later. There was to be an order to things, and Obritsa must come first.

The little queen’s mind worked quickly. He admired its deftness, how nimbly it moved.

“I’m not taking you anywhere,” she declared. “I’ve seen what you’re doing here. You are a fiend who should be put on trial for your crimes. The atrocities you have committed in these mountains will not be tolerated.”

He tilted his head, considering her. “And here I thought you were supposed to hate elementals. What do you care if I steal and torture their children?”

The girl had nothing to say to that. He savored the texture of her conflict—years of conditioned hatred for elementals warring against the sheer horror she’d felt after discovering his great work.

“I understand your contempt,” he told her, “but you’re utterly wrong in it and in everything you just said. You will take me to Celdaria, and you will take Bazrifel as well, and you will take your guard Artem, because I don’t trust you not to try something stupid, and if Artem is there, maybe you’ll think twice before trying to outsmart me.”

Obritsa managed an expression of cool disdain. “Bazrifel. Another angel?”

“Indeed.” Corien gestured at her guard, Artem, lying on the floor between them. “He’s inside your friend at the moment and having a grand time of it.”

Then he told Bazrifel, Begin.

Artem’s screams began immediately, his body convulsing where it lay, and Obritsa watched him, at first implacable, and then with increasing panic, until her calm broke at last, and she let out a soft, sharp cry. She hurried to the man and sank to her knees beside him. Corien watched them, the two of them huddled on the floor—Artem shuddering, his lips wet with drool; Obritsa holding his head in her lap, smoothing the wet hair back from his forehead.

“Artem, can you hear me?” she whispered to him. “I’m here, Artem, my dear. It’s going to be all right.”

Artem’s eyes opened. He gathered her hands in his, then pressed them to his chest.

“Whatever he wants of you,” Artem croaked, “don’t do it, Obritsa. Not for me.”

Unseen by both of them, Corien rolled his eyes.

“You don’t give me orders, Artem,” Obritsa replied.

“He cannot be allowed to go to Celdaria. He is after Lady Rielle. He will bring ruin down upon us all.”

“Rielle will stop him,” Obritsa said. Corien could so clearly see her uncertainty that he nearly laughed. “Audric will gather his armies against him.”

“Obritsa.” Artem struggled to rise. “Let him kill me. Resist him with everything you have.”

“I will not stand by while they kill you right in front of my eyes. Don’t ask me to do that. You cannot order me to do that. Artem.” The tears she had been fighting spilled over at last. “You’re the only family I have.”

Corien stood quietly for a moment, letting the feeling of Obritsa’s love for this man, and his for her, wash over him. A father and a daughter, if not in blood then in heart. Dear friends, singular in the world, who understood each other like no one else did. The loneliness of that—the hopeless fragility of it—struck a raw chord inside Corien’s own mind.

He crouched beside them.

“You understand, then,” he said quietly. “I can see it in your mind. You’ve already decided you’ll do as I ask, even though part of you feels that is the worst thing you can do, that complying means you lose and I win. Which is true. And you’ve decided this illogical thing because of love.” He smiled a little. “We really are not so different, Queen Obritsa. What I do is also for love. For the love of my people, who have lived for too long in pain. And for the great love of my very long life.”

Then he rose. “Will you do as I command?”

Artem kept whispering protests, but Obritsa avoided his gaze, and Corien’s too.

“I am not strong enough to send us more than thirty miles at a time,” she said quietly.

“In fact, you’re stronger than you think,” Corien replied, which was the truth. He could clearly see the raw force of her talent, stifled by those who had raised her—feeble-minded humans frightened by things they could neither understand nor possess. “I’ve seen it myself. You’ve allowed weaker, less talented people to dictate your limits for you. A tragedy with which I’m intimately familiar.”

Obritsa was quiet for a long time. He sensed her praying, which she wasn’t good at, because she hated God.

He sympathized.

Her prayers quickly unraveled, and when she looked up at him again, her gaze was hard and full of tears.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she whispered, “I will begin.”