Lightbringer

Eliana scrambled to her feet, looked quickly around her rooms. Her adatrox attendants stood blank-eyed in their white robes. Jessamyn was not there, no doubt sleeping at the Lyceum. Ostia’s light painted the windows, casting long shadows across the floor. She had buried her pride deep and felt nothing when she glanced out the window at the enormous dark stain of angry light fixed in the night sky.

A shadow flickered at the corner of her eye. She turned to find the open door to her rooms—and a familiar silhouette.

She had not seen Simon in too many days to count. She was not prepared for it. Her chest flared white-hot, and she flew at him, her anger clean and sharp, her fist raised to strike. She would not unwittingly summon her power, not this night. Her fury burned within an unbreakable cage. He could not get to her, but she would get to him.

Simon blocked her with his forearm, and then something grabbed her own, wrenched her away from him, and flung her to the floor.

She fell hard, head knocking against the tile, then looked up at the tilting world to see Corien’s ferocious expression. The white knives of his cheekbones, his black eyes reflecting none of Ostia’s light. He had not dressed to his usual standards. His thin white shirt hung loose around his pale torso. His hair was rumpled, and his lips wore a burgundy stain.

“Get dressed,” he snapped.

A gown awaited her on the bed, glittering like a discarded skin of jewels. She had seen it hanging in her wardrobe but had never touched it. A high-collared bodice in red, dark as a pool of blood and heavy with beadwork. A thick sash of black silk around the waist, fastened with a clasp of golden feathers. Black lace trimmed a narrow, plunging neckline, and the skirt was a layered sea of crimson silk.

It was a gown fit for the Blood Queen.

She hesitated, irrationally afraid of it.

Quick footsteps crossed the room, and then Corien shoved her against the bed, tore at the sleeve of her nightgown. She wrenched herself away from him and then, unthinking, whirled around and slapped him.

He grinned, the thin red line where her casting had cut his cheek fading quickly, then grabbed and turned her, shoving her face down into the gown’s glittering fabric.

“I’m waiting,” he hissed against her ear, his breath hot and foul. He had been drinking, perhaps feasting in one of his dining halls with whatever lucky citizens had been selected to attend that night’s entertainment.

Then he yanked her up and pushed her hard toward the center of the room, the gown clutched in her hands. In Ostia’s light, she dressed without shame. She found Simon’s silhouette, the faint gleam of his eyes. She locked on to him, held his gaze as she fumbled with the hooks of her bodice. Let them both look at her. Let them see her every scar, her every curve. All shame at her own nakedness had been beaten from her long ago. But her fingers shook as she tied the sash, and she felt worse with the gown’s folds around her, this gown that reminded her of the paintings in Corien’s gallery. She would have preferred to wear nothing.

“At last.” Corien grabbed her arm, pulled her with him as he strode toward the door. He did not give her time to find shoes. “We have an appointment. You’ve nearly made us late for it.”

They swept out of her rooms and into the corridor. The palace buzzed with noise. Servants and revelers bustled past them in plain tunics and neatly pressed coats. Faces drawn, desperate smiles thrown Corien’s way.

Simon followed them as they descended one of the palace’s grand staircases. An entrance hall gleamed, brightly lit ballrooms circling it like gemstones on a crown. A cold fear was rising inside Eliana, so acute and swift that she felt the absurd urge to laugh.

Corien tugged her down the steps, across the hall, through a set of doors, and outside into the night. His grip on her wrist was punishing, his pace relentless. She stumbled after him, breathless—and then, in the maze of courtyards and gardens encircling the palace, Simon did an extraordinary thing.

He seized Corien’s arm, bringing them all to a halt.

“My lord,” he said, leaning close, “I believe this to be a grave error. If she is killed—”

Corien backhanded him so hard that he staggered, then caught himself on the thin trunk of a neat square topiary.

“She won’t be killed,” Corien called out, resuming his furious pace with Eliana in tow. “I don’t want to kill you. Do I, darling? No. I simply think you ought to have a good view of this. I think you ought to feel it in your bones. I think that when they come for you, you won’t be able to help fighting them. You’ll have to, or they’ll tear you apart with their teeth. And then what? You’ll burst, you wicked child. You’ll bleed power down every street.”

“When who come for me?” Eliana asked. She tried to look over her shoulder for Simon, but then they were exiting the courtyards, and an escort of angelic guards in imperial armor fell into formation on either side of them, blocking her sight of all but the streets before her.

Crowded with tents and makeshift candlelit altars, every thoroughfare and alleyway, every garden tucked between buildings, was lit as if for a celebration.

There were strings of crackling galvanized lights, torches flaring merrily in their brackets, doors and windows thrown open to let in the cool air. A group of citizens, led by an orator wearing paper wings strapped around his torso, knelt at a fountain. Eliana watched in fascination as they raised their arms to the eerie bright sky in supplication to this thing they did not understand—a second moon, broad and close and menacing. They had heard the name the angels had given it. Whispers at parties, rumors passed from palace to markets, from soldier to servant. Ostia. Another Gate, perhaps. A second coming of angels—or of beasts.

Corien passed through the crowds like a ship gliding through the sea, waves crashing apart in its wake. The people of Elysium abandoned their tents, their parties, and hurried after him. They called for the Emperor, begged him for blessings, for invitations to the palace. They even, Eliana was appalled to realize, began to call her name. They knew it: Eliana. Eliana.

Sun Queen, they called her. The Furyborn Child!

The din of their voices crashed against her ears. Her palms were slick within the cages of her castings. She wished desperately that she could reach for the Prophet and ask what Corien had planned, but she didn’t dare with him so close.

Then, the air exploded with wailing sound.

Eliana’s blood was ice in her veins. The horns of Vaera Bashta. The mournful notes crawled up her arms on thin needle-feet. The Prophet had told her of the prison’s cullings and assured her that Remy was still alive.

But every time Eliana heard the horns, she remembered Remy whispering about a room underground and imagined him dead at a prisoner’s hand—throat torn open, head bashed against stone. The stomach she had healed reopened by some crude knife fashioned in the dark.

Simon’s cruel words glinted in her mind: I shot him right in the gut.