Lightbringer (Empirium 3)

Eliana did not look at Corien, but she used the image of him in her mind as a whetstone for her anger.

“You are free right now,” she said fiercely. “A choice lies before you, and only you can make it.”

She did not elaborate further. She did not need to. As Remy translated, Rielle listened carefully, and her face softened. Weary lines marked her mouth and eyes.

“For too long,” Eliana said, “we have been tools of those who love us and those who hate us. Those who think they know our minds, our hearts, our strength. The power that feeds us.”

She clasped Rielle’s hand, then leaned against her, brow to brow. Blood and sweat slicked their palms.

“Rise with me now,” Eliana whispered, “and help me show them how strong we truly are.”

Rielle’s eyes flickered gold, twin godly flames. “May the Queen’s light guide us,” she said hoarsely, with a tiny wry smile.

Eliana returned it. “We are the light. And our fire will wake up the world.”

“And then what?” Rielle’s gaze turned distant. She gestured vaguely at the battlefield, at the people she had pinned to the floor. She swallowed hard. “After all this, then what?”

“A life here,” Eliana said firmly. “A life alone, if you wish, exploring the empirium. A life without someone else’s desires whispering in your mind, robbing you of the ability to see clearly. The chance to find peace with yourself, with your power, with the world.”

“I have done things,” Rielle said, her voice low and thick, “that cannot be forgotten. Wherever I walk, anger will follow. And if I had the choice of whether or not to do them again…” Her eyes gazed at something far away. “I do not know what I would choose.”

Eliana could not argue with that. “You’re right. You will always be remembered for those things. But you can be remembered for others too, if you choose to be.”

Eliana squeezed Rielle’s hands and dared to kiss her cheek, skin hot as fire and smooth as polished steel.

Rielle’s tired gaze hardened, and she lifted her chin, as if daring exhaustion to try and best her.

Despite the heat of war around them, Eliana gazed upon her mother’s ash-stained face and shivered, understanding that she knelt in the presence of every star that had ever burned—and that the same unthinkable power had built her own bones.

She met Rielle’s eyes. Their gazes locked. And then, as one, with the world’s ageless heartbeat drumming in their blood, Eliana and Rielle rose with blazing palms and turned to meet the fate they had chosen.

Rielle

“Suppose something had happened differently that night, when the Lightbringer fought the Blood Queen above a battlefield of elementals and angels. A word or gesture, slightly altered, or a step right instead of left. The fate of the world, held inside a single, fragile moment.”

—The Night That Felled the World: What We Know of the Battle of Âme de la Terre by Axel of the Silver Shore, radical Astavari scholar, printed in Year 941 of the Third Age

Rielle’s eyes flew at once to Corien. He was a still black shape in her crackling forest of light, and before she could think of what to do with him, what to say to him, he was upon her.

Pain exploded behind her eyes. His fingers were black arrows, diving into her deepest thoughts. They struck true, and from them spread horrible ripples of pain. He wouldn’t kill her, but he would remind her that he could.

On her hands and knees on the terrace floor, she gulped down air. Her vision was full of stars. She was a brick of soft clay, and Corien was slicing her in two, in four, in eight, a knife unyielding. He could cut forever and never grow dull.

Rielle crumpled to the floor, slammed her hands against her skull. She would fly apart. He would send her spinning.

The light painting the terrace, drifting and golden, flickered, then dimmed. It was only for a moment, a stutter like a skipped heartbeat, but Kamayin, Miren, Sloane, and Evyline tore free of their bindings, scrambling free. The boy, Eliana’s companion, ran to join them.

Then every light Rielle had crafted, including the wings glowing overhead, erupted into flames.

“Get out of my head!” she screamed. The fresh fire roared high.

Corien watched her coldly. There was a new anger in his face that she had never seen before. “No. I’ve tried that. I’ve allowed it. Never again.”

Wild with pain, Rielle pushed herself up and grasped blindly for her power. She shoved her palms into the air. Snapping streaks of gold flew across the terrace, then shot off into the night. Her aim was terrible, her thoughts scattered. She couldn’t see, blinded by tears and the pulsing white waves of Corien’s fury. All she could feel was the cold fire of his anger.

And still, unblinking, he watched her.

She tried again, flung her power toward him in desperation. Energy pulsed across the terrace, hot and rippling, as if something huge had fallen from the sky. Corien hissed. His head snapped to the right. When he looked back at Rielle, tiny red pricks of blood spotted his face. A moment later, they were gone.

“Rielle, I’m right here!” Audric crawled toward her. His wounds did not vanish, and his face was raw with terror, and yet still he fought to reach her. “I’m right here. Talk to me. Look at me, please!”

The world was liquid. Rielle was underwater, paddling frantically for the surface. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t find the ground.

Tears streaming down her face, she searched for Eliana.

The girl hadn’t moved. She stood rigid, her expression hard with anger. Light blazed in her palms, ready to be thrown. Ripe with heat, the air trembled around her. But if she struck Corien, would it hurt Rielle? Would he turn on her next and entrap them both?

The glass doors burst open. Their painted suns shattered. A dozen angelic soldiers spilled onto the broad terrace, followed by three beasts, five, eight. One dropped down from the rooftop, skittered forward on the shiny black hooks of its wings. Another, reptilian and clever-eyed, an elemental child on its back, threw lashes of wind from its ash-blackened castings.

“Protect the king!” Evyline roared, drawing her sword. Her arms and neck wore strips of burned flesh. The others hurried to join her—Miren, her army of knives darting like bolts of lightning through the air; Sloane, pulling shadows from every crack and crevice. Silver spirals of churning water flew from Kamayin’s glowing wrists, and Evyline charged, wild-eyed, every blow of her sword like the fall of thunder.

But then Eliana whirled around and launched into the fight. Beside her, the others were nothing, clumsy and unremarkable. Even dizzy with pain, Rielle could not tear her eyes from her daughter. She was lovely in battle, her arms and legs quick as a dancer’s. Her coat whipped around her legs. She was filthy with blood and dust, and yet the hum of her power painted her resplendent, as if she had been born from the strokes of an artist’s gleaming brush. Her hands glowed brightest of all, encased in her castings—two pendants held snug to her palms by slender chains. a did not look at Corien, but she used the image of him in her mind as a whetstone for her anger.