Kingsbane

“Once you’ve recovered. Yes, I suppose it’s possible that your power could shatter whatever this is. If, that is, you stop tormenting yourself to force some half-formed version of said power. And yes,” he added before she could interrupt, “I understood exactly what you were attempting to do with all that nonsense. Not eating, not sleeping. Battering yourself. But everyone was advising me to let you be, including you, so I did, and now that’s gotten us here.”

She stiffened, drawing back from him. “You are the most discouraging person I’ve ever met. You declare loyalty to me, you pledge support of me, and yet you criticize everything I do.”

“I’ve tried to advise you kindly, and you ignore my counsel.”

She laughed. “Your version of kindness is an interesting one. If you had your way, you’d tell me when and where I can go and not go. You’d direct every moment of my every day.”

“That sums it up nicely, yes.”

“And this is kindness, to you?”

“Would you rather I sit back and stare at the wall while you dash about risking your life whenever you feel like it?”

“Your gall is astonishing. You are not my keeper, Simon. In fact, it is I who should be determining where you go, and what you know, as—according to you—I am your queen, and you are my subject. In that sense, I’ve done nothing wrong. If you were not keen on obeying me, on operating on a plane inferior to my own, then perhaps you should have kept the knowledge of my heritage a secret from me.”

Simon’s mouth quirked. “Being a queen doesn’t mean you can do what you want without consequence.”

“It certainly means I can risk my life to save a friend if I choose to.”

“You’re wrong.”

Eliana blew out an exasperated breath. “Who are you to decide such things?”

Simon leaned forward, elbows on his knees. A resting pose, belied by the intensity of his gaze. “Eliana, do you understand the scope of what’s happening? This war between humans and angels has been raging for millennia. If we don’t stop it, it could keep spreading. Like an inferno, it could consume every world that exists.”

Eliana was determined to keep all emotion from her voice. Nevertheless, Simon’s casual mention of other worlds shook her. “Zahra mentioned this concept to me. Just how many worlds are there?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Some theorize the number could be infinite.”

“And by sending the angels to the Deep,” she said, “we brought them closer to those other worlds.”

“Again, in theory. Your point?”

“We created a lie to lure the angels into the Deep, and it was there that they confirmed the idea of other worlds. Zahra said the Emperor won’t stop at conquering this world and avenging his people. She said he seeks answers, whatever that means. She didn’t tell me before we left. So, if there are other worlds out there now endangered by the Emperor’s insatiable desire for conquest, it’s our fault. It’s the fault of the saints, of humanity.”

“Irrelevant,” Simon snapped. “What matters is what’s happening now, and how we can stop it from getting worse. The only human ever born with enough power to stem the tide of angelic violence was your mother.”

Eliana began to protest. “My mother—”

“Yes, I know, your adoptive mother was Rozen Ferracora,” Simon said, his voice rising to match hers, “but the mother who birthed you, whose blood you share, was Rielle Courverie, the Blood Queen, the Kingsbane, and the sooner you accept that and embrace the power your ancestry has granted you, the sooner we can end this war. We can end the suffering that millions of innocents have endured over too many years to count and put the world right again. I’m not sure how many different ways I can express this to you. By endangering yourself, you’re risking not only your life, but the future of the world.”

He rose from his seat and stalked away from her, angrily dragging a hand through his hair. The long lines of his body brimmed with an intoxicating gravity. Eliana couldn’t look away from him.

Quietly, at the windows, facing the bright midday world beyond the glass, Simon spoke. “If you had died, Eliana, where would we all be? Navi would still be ill, and the rest of us would be more irreversibly fucked than we already are.”

His voice was harsh, strained under the weight of some great emotion that Eliana could not define. The sound of it quieted her. She felt cooler, smoothed out. She rose to join him, then stood a few inches to his right. She gazed out the window at the velvet blue canvas of mountains.

“I suppose some children dreamed of being queens,” she said quietly, “or doers of mighty heroics. I never did.” She gingerly clenched her fists, wincing. But there was a strange kind of solace in the pinch of her castings. “I didn’t ask for this. I’ve said it before, I know, but it remains true, and something I can’t put out of mind.”

Simon replied at once. “And I didn’t ask to be flung away from my home and into the far-off future, all to save a girl who would grow up to wear out my every last nerve.”

Eliana’s smile came sharply. “Are you saying you were worried about me while I was gone? The hard, fearsome Wolf, fretting in his room like an anxious mother?”

A new silence fell, thick and significant. Eliana kept her gaze fixed on the mountains for as long as she could bear, heat climbing up her neck. Then she glanced at Simon.

He stood utterly still, except for his hands. Clasped at his back, they flexed and clenched once.

“I was worried,” he said at last. His voice caught on its own edges. “I haven’t felt like that since Fidelia took you from Sanctuary. Only this time, it was worse. At least then I had some idea of where they’d taken you and was confident I could get you out. But this time, I had no idea where you’d gone, and by the time I realized it, with the help of the kings, I had barely enough time to summon a contingent of guards and gather supplies before you returned.”

Eliana felt a stab of guilt, of disgusting, delighted pleasure. “You were going to come after me?”

“Of course. Luckily, there was no need.” He drew in a slow breath. “Luckily, you came back to us alive and whole. Remy was inconsolable, once he found out you’d left. He blamed himself for it.”

Remy. His name was an arrow to her heart.

“Did he say as much to you?” she asked. “That he blamed himself?”

“He didn’t have to.”

Eliana gazed at the mountains, heat gathering behind her eyes. “I was foolish.”

“Yes.”

“But you see, if it weren’t for me, Navi wouldn’t have been out in Sanctuary that night. She wouldn’t have been abducted along with me. They wouldn’t have…” She swallowed, struggling to find her voice. “They wouldn’t have hurt her. I had to try to save her.” She looked up at him, imploring. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself otherwise.”