Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,1

skin. For a year, he had spoken only to himself and to the beasts.

His furious tears spilled over. “You know my name, don’t you?” he whispered fiercely. “Can’t you see?”

Corien was quiet for such a long time that Simon felt a cold drip of fear down his back and prepared himself to run. Always, he was preparing himself to run.

“I do know you,” Corien said softly, but he seemed puzzled. “I know you, and yet I don’t.”

A swift, seeking presence entered Simon’s thoughts, as if sly fingers were pulling aside the folds of his mind to see what lay beneath. He knew what was happening even though he had never felt it before. Dark stories had rippled through Celdaria in the months before and after King Audric’s death. Terrible stories about humans driven mad, humans left pale and broken in the ruins of sacked villages.

This was what it was like to be invaded by an angel.

Simon held still, hardly breathing, quaking in the snow, as Corien moved through his mind. A voice slid against Simon’s ears, kissed his neck, traced the lines of his scars. The voice hissed words Simon did not understand, and they spiraled louder and faster until his mind was an unbearable din. He felt as if he were being shaken, held above an abyss and flung to and fro as whatever ravenous thing lived in the abyss howled.

Simon cried out and tried to run, but Corien grabbed his arm and his chin and pushed him against the ground with his cold gloved hands. A pressure filled Simon, from his skull to his toes, until he feared his body would burst open. Words rose inside him, pulled by a great force. Soon they would spill out and scatter like insects, hissing Simon, Simon, Simon, and they would devour the world.

Then, at last, there was quiet.

Simon gasped in the dirt. Above him, Corien’s face was tight and hard with an emotion Simon could not read. It had been so long since he had seen a face.

“I do know you,” Corien said quietly. His words fell like rain against metal; Simon felt each one in the back of his teeth. “Somehow, I know you. I see that your name is Simon Randell. You are nine years old. You are a marque. Or, rather, you were a marque, which I knew. This is why I came to you. I sensed an unusual presence in these mountains and followed the long trail of it here to find you. Marques do not exist now. Did you know that, Simon? Very little that is remarkable still lives, except for me.”

His black gaze roamed over Simon’s body, the thick tapestry of scars on his face and hands. Simon felt his mind shift, accommodating Corien’s intrusion. Simon’s jaw clenched. He sat stiffly. He would not be afraid. He held his breath.

“I begin to see more,” Corien whispered, unblinking. “Your journey forward in time scarred you horribly and almost killed you. You weren’t always this ugly.” He smiled, and yet the rest of his face, beautiful and pale, did not move. “But you aren’t ugly, are you, Simon? Beneath that map of scars, you are quite a fine creature.”

Simon struggled to sit up, and when Corien helped him, his gloved hand at Simon’s back, Simon flushed. He straightened his posture and lifted his chin, trying to remember how to be a boy. His mind tilted and spun. So, he was far in the future now. He had suspected as much from some terrible instinct gone dormant in his blood. He had whispered it to himself many a night. But now he knew it was true.

Frantic questions crowded him. When, exactly, was this future? How much time had passed between then and now? What was this world? Corien’s eyes were black, and Simon could not travel, and he wondered: Could these strange things be connected?

What had happened to the empirium?

And why was Corien looking at him so oddly, as if seeing something in Simon’s face of which Simon himself was ignorant?

Corien’s gaze was cold and impenetrable. “She died beside me. I bled for decades, and even when I was whole again, my mind was not. Is that why, when I look inside you, I can see only elusive shadows and hear little else but your own endless, thudding fear? Is it that my mind has been battered by the years, Simon? Simon Randell. I know your face, but I don’t know why. Who are you? Who do

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