Lightbringer

Eliana’s skin prickled. The royal gardens behind Baingarde.

She retrieved Katell’s sheathed sword and hooked it to her weapons belt, then drew the sword out for inspection. It was more elegant than she had guessed it would be, the golden hilt carved to resemble rays of sunlight, the blade polished to a high shine. Though it looked enormous, it felt light and nimble in her hands. She stood, marveling at how easily it moved through the air. Her castings sang against the hilt, their brilliant light kissing the metal.

Horrifying screams ricocheted through the halls outside. Someone whose voice she did not know begged for mercy.

A dark pressure rippled against her mind and brought with it a faint whisper:

Eliana.

Heart pounding, she returned Katell’s sword to its sheath. Pangs seized her, terrible longings for her room at home, for dear brave Zahra, for the warm embrace of Navi’s arms. Watching the threads, she held the knot in her throat so it could rise no further. She rolled her shoulders, shifted from foot to foot, shook out her hands and fingers. Her castings threw light across the ceiling.

Beside her, Simon’s arms trembled in the air as if holding up an unthinkable weight. She reached for him, then thought better of it. If only she could wrap him in her arms, bury her face once more in the hot space between his shoulders.

Instead, she faced the spinning ring of light, its sparks spitting across the room, and prepared herself to run. Her muscles tensed, Katell’s sword an unfamiliar slight weight against her leg. Beside her, Remy held a dagger in his right hand. At his hip gleamed another. His face, turned haggard by his time in Elysium, could have been carved from stone, perched atop one of the temples in Orline as a tribute to the fierce saints of old.

The moment Corien arrived, Eliana felt it like the fall of night across her skin. The air pulsed, suddenly so thick and close that Eliana gasped for breath. A roar of fury punched the walls. Metal hit metal. Did Corien also have a sword? What did it look like, two angels locked in combat of both blade and mind?

She kept her eyes on the threads, felt Remy start to turn, and grabbed him, swung him back around.

“Don’t look at him,” she muttered. “Look at Simon. Look at the light.”

She could feel Corien’s fingers scrabbling at the edges of her thoughts, digging for her. Her calm splintered like wood.

Eliana. His whispers tumbled like falling rocks. A rush of furious sound. Eliana.

“Go.”

Simon’s hoarse voice rang out like a shot. Eliana eyed the spinning threads as if they surrounded a chasm, cold and bottomless. A wave of fear swept across her skin, sharp as needles.

She resisted the urge to touch Simon and instead moved as close to him as she dared.

“Now?” she whispered.

Tears stood bright in his eyes. His mouth twisted. “Now. Go, Eliana.”

From behind them came a sharp cry. Some blazing instinct compelled Eliana to turn. Corien’s white shirt, half-torn from him, shone wet with red and blue blood. Veins of black drew a dark map across the winter of his skin. He drew wheezing breaths, and each step was unsteady, but whatever the cruciata blood had done to him, whatever lingering pain the blightblade had left in him, he was fighting it. A lesser angel, so drenched, might have died at once.

But Corien bared his teeth and raised his sword high. Ludivine stumbled. One of her hands flew to her temple. With a scream of fury, Corien swung at her. The blade sliced clean through Ludivine’s neck. Blood spurted like red rain. Her head dropped to the floor and rolled. Her body crumpled, and her sword clattered to the ground.

A whine of panic erupted in Eliana’s skull. She spun back to the threads and launched herself at them. She grabbed Remy’s hand, pulled him with her through the ring of light.

A gunshot cracked the air.

Behind her, Simon cried out.

Eliana turned back to reach for him, but something yanked him away, out of her reach. She saw a flash of his face, bright with pain, and then he was gone. His threads shifted sharply, veered, then righted themselves, as if a cloud had passed over them and then the sun had returned. The darker threads, those hissing tendrils of time, split and reformed. They grabbed Eliana and Remy, flung them forward. Her mind screamed with fear. Something gripped her throat, stole her voice.

Then she set foot on solid ground. The threads snapped closed behind her, singeing her heels.

She took a breath, desperate for a cool, quiet world of green. The royal gardens behind the castle Baingarde. It was a peaceful evening.

But then a bolt of fire zipped over her head. Breathless, she ducked, pulling Remy down with her. They hit the ground hard. Mud sucked at their feet and hands. The twin black smells of blood and smoke sent her head reeling. Something barreled past them, some great beast with a mottled furred head and a long serpentine tail. With each of its thundering steps, the earth quaked. Something glinted around its ankles as Eliana watched them streak by. Flat strips of metal embedded in swollen skin, each piece glowing with a familiar light.

Horror swept through her. This creature was not quite a cruciata, at least not like any she had seen, but it was close enough, and it wore castings. On its back sat a gray-eyed child with wrists that snapped fire. Eliana’s blood turned cold. An elemental child, controlled as the adatrox were.

She pushed herself up. Remy scrambled to his feet beside her. The world was an uproar of sunlight and fire, darkness that moved and howled. Something was burning nearby. They ran, choking on smoke, and found a rocky ridge to hide behind. They wedged themselves into a crevice slick with mud and blood. Beside them lay a man in armor, his glassy eyes open wide and one of his legs torn away.

Eliana hid the light of her castings against her chest and stared over the rock at the chaos beyond.

It was a battlefield, so vast it could have been the entire world. Soldiers in armor swung their swords, flung their spears. A horse with no rider raced by, its reins trailing. Eliana flinched as a shadow-hawk flew shrieking past them. It dove at an armored soldier, talons first, and expanded. A cocoon of darkness wrapped quickly around him, smothered him, and slammed him to the ground.

Night had fallen, and yet bursts and beams of light illuminated the fight in erratic flashes. Eliana saw a pale woman with short black hair swing a black staff topped with a glowing blue orb. The orb drew shadows from the ground, and soon a pack of dark wolves bounded away from her and into the battle, their jaws open wide. A man struck the ground with a glowing shield, cracking the earth open. Five soldiers stumbled clumsily into it, and Eliana saw one of their eyes as they fell—gray and cloudy, expressionless.

Her blood chilled. Adatrox.

“Look.” Remy, crouching beside her, pointed to her left, where the silhouette of an enormous mountain loomed in the distance. A thousand tiny lights spilled across its foothills. Fires marked an enormous stone wall. It was a city built on the hills that rose up toward the mountain, and at its apex stood a faint gray castle with towers reaching for the sky.