Lightbringer

“I didn’t—”

“Perhaps you could even have stopped the assassins themselves in their tracks.” He realized it for the first time, baffled that it had never occurred to him before. Had she prevented him from deducing the truth? “But you didn’t stop them, because you wanted Rielle’s power to erupt. You wanted her to start exploring it. Why?”

Helplessly, Ludivine opened her mouth and shut it again, her pale, slender hands clenched on her thighs. “It’s not as simple as that, Audric—”

“And if you had told me the truth about my father’s death,” he interrupted, “I could have helped her. I could have helped you. We could have been a united front, you and I. All her fears, all the guilt she carried after what happened at the fire trial. Those last minutes with her father. The nightmares that no doubt plagued her—her own, and Corien’s too. I could have helped her bear every one of those burdens. But you denied me that choice. And you denied her the comfort I would have given her, the peace I could have helped her find.”

Ludivine’s eyes shone with tears. “I did what I thought was best.”

“You’re a fool,” he said harshly. “Selfish and prideful. If not for you, she might still be with us.”

Atheria knelt at his approach. He mounted her without saying another word and waited for Ludivine to climb up behind him. She settled herself between the godsbeast’s massive black-tipped wings and took a shuddering breath.

“I won’t apologize,” Ludivine whispered once they were in the air. The wind nearly swallowed her words.

“Nor should you ever again try to convince me that you did it all for love,” Audric said. “If I hear that once more, I’ll be through with you. I’m nearly there already.”

Atheria took them swiftly across the sky. Each feathered pulse of her wings was a low, soft drumbeat that shook Audric’s chest.

He did not speak to Ludivine again.

• • •

The coast of Mazabat appeared first as a white sliver on the horizon, an unsteady smile capping the glittering winter sea.

As they approached, Audric saw the grim truth of what Mazabat had endured since Rielle’s visit months before: an endless barrage of storms, all of them rippling out from the weakening Gate. Eroded beaches strewn with debris stretched from horizon to horizon. Beyond the coast, miles of forest had been leveled by wind, and the city of Quelbani looked half-made with many of its towers toppled and even the larger temples stripped of their roofs and windows.

Examining the ruined landscape, his heart sinking, Audric didn’t notice the people lining the outermost crest of beach until the sky exploded into flame.

Atheria swerved, her wings pounding the air sharply to redirect their course, and let out a fierce scream of anger.

Audric wound his hands into her mane and squinted through the brilliance. A field of fiery starbursts hovered along the shore as far as he could see in either direction. There were so many, and they were so close together, shifting restlessly like trapped fireflies, that they formed a net, effectively blocking Atheria’s approach.

Only a single narrow aisle of empty air was left untouched—a corridor guiding them to shore.

“They’re controlling our descent,” observed Ludivine.

“I don’t blame them,” he replied, and stroked the arch of Atheria’s neck. “Go on.”

She snorted, her long ears flattening back against her skull. He could feel her muscles trembling with the effort of hovering there, as if treading water.

Closing his eyes, Audric concentrated on the sunlight caressing his scalp, the back of his neck, his fingers clutching Atheria’s mane. He leaned down, pressed his cheek against the chavaile’s velvet neck.

“I trust you, Atheria,” he told her quietly. He held his palms flat against her coat, imagining that he could send all the channels of power weaving through his body—even those he could not sense—into Atheria’s own. He was no angel, nor was he Rielle, who seemed to converse with Atheria as easily as she would with any person.

But then, Atheria was no horse. She was a godsbeast, superior to them all, closer to the empirium than anyone or anything except, perhaps, for Rielle. He hoped she could somehow understand him, feel reassured by his trust in her.

“If danger awaits us on the shore,” he continued, “then you may certainly turn away at once and carry us to safety.” Feeling foolish, he added, “Do you understand?”

Atheria’s ears swiveled, forward and back, as if listening to a world of sound his own ears could not detect, and then, after another moment of hesitation, she plunged down toward the sea, following the path the Mazabatians’ fire had made for them.

For the first time since his wedding night, Audric felt something other than despair—a small spark of joy, weak and flickering, quickly snuffed out.

• • •

They waited on the beach—an orderly arrangement of royal soldiers some two hundred strong. Fifty were firebrands, their arms trembling with exertion as together they held fast the net of fire stretching along the coastline.

As soon as Atheria’s hooves touched the sand, the firebrands lowered their castings and staggered. Some collapsed. Audric was not surprised; such a display of unwavering power was not easily managed even by the most skilled elementals—not anymore, in this quiet age. Healers in white robes rushed forward to tend to the firebrands, and as Audric watched them, he thought of Rielle, of the brilliant web of power she had created to stop the tidal wave from destroying the Borsvallic capital of Styrdalleen.

Hers had been a shield even more massive and dazzling than this display created by fifty firebrands combined—and after, she had not collapsed. She had been tired, yes, but she had stood strong and tall, and her eyes had glittered, and she had moved toward him with a supple, languid grace as the people of Styrdalleen cried out in adulation.

Audric tried to push these thoughts of Rielle aside and failed. She would forever be a refrain cycling under the surface of his every thought, his every word. He could see her so clearly—smell her, feel her—that for a moment he could not move, the colossal weight of his anguish pulling at him like a dark tide.

Atheria shifted, whickering softly.

Audric forced himself to dismount and held up his hands. Hundreds of eyes followed him; raised bows and nocked arrows and brandished castings tracked his every movement. The air shimmered with contained elemental power, as if the beach were a heat mirage.

“Will your firebrands be well?” Audric called out.

A nearby soldier, her lapel decorated with an array of jewel-colored medals, her dark curly hair clipped short and neat, stepped out of the ranks. Audric guessed she was a commander.