Another island in the Northern Sea. At her right, Celdaria’s coast stretched like a distant dark ribbon. Seeing it, she felt nothing.
The next ring of light brought her to Iastra, the largest island of the Sunderlands, and the huge square plinth of stone upon which stood the Gate.
Obritsa fell to her knees, her face pinched with pain. Corien had released her. She huddled on the ground and heaved.
Rielle stepped over her and walked unhurriedly to the Gate. Arrows flew at her; shouts rose up from the perimeter. The Obex, standing guard, had suspected she was coming. There was the call of a horn and running footsteps across stone.
She raised her arm, silencing them all. It did not amuse her that they would try to stop her. It was simply pitiful. Their bodies dropped behind her, all forty at once.
The Gate towered, a monument of shifting light bordered by stone. Rielle floated toward it, her feet barely touching the ground. The empirium pushed her on, and her own glittering muscles carried her, and it astonished her that months ago she had stood in this very spot. She had looked up at the Gate, the dozens of cracks floating across the surface of its strange light, black and violet and white-blue like flames. That girl had thought herself strong enough to mend this thing the saints had made.
What a fool she had been in so many ways. Thinking of it, Rielle blazed with an anger cold and pure as starfire.
The empirium filled her ears, roaring for her.
I am yours
That she had thought she needed a few humans’ flimsy castings—or anything but her bare hands—to make or unmake what she desired seemed ludicrous now. She laughed, giddy with astonishment.
you are mine
Rielle stepped onto the ancient dais and plunged her hands into the Gate.
Power coursed through her, an ageless current that turned her blood blazing hot and shook her bones. She gripped the fabric of the empirium, marveling at how thick it was here at the Gate, how tightly bound, how desperate for release. It rippled like the flank of some great beast. She pushed away from her body, and with each gained inch, lightning burst from the Gate, striking her again and again—her brow, her chest, her hips. Her belly, where her child grew.
Unexpected, the desperate fear that lashed her heart.
Do not let her die, she told the empirium as the Gate burned her, and she thought she felt within its thunderous hunger a reassurance, sent from nowhere and everywhere:
she will rise
A girl, then, as she had guessed. Rielle smiled as she opened the Gate wide, rending asunder all that the saints had spilled so much blood to achieve. She pushed and tore until she stood in the Gate’s mouth, her rigid arms outstretched and her head flung back to the skies. Furious tides of power ripped through her every seam and remade them with stitches of gold.
A howl rose above her, as if all the winds had gathered in celebration.
Rielle barely managed to open her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. But even blurred, the escaping angels were glorious—a swift cascade of shadow, the echoes of jointed black wings.
They poured from the Gate’s light, a river unleashed. Some touched her as they flew, with their minds and their supple cool nothingness. A barrage of frenzied gratitude, of triumphant rage, and Rielle shook as they coursed past her. Images pelted her: The flutter of glossy wings, flares of light joining them to bodies sleek and gleaming as seals. Hair that flowed like silver streams. Towering cities capped with spiraling turrets.
How long she stood there, Rielle could not measure. When at last she fell to her hands and knees, she lay weeping, smiling through her tears. Her body vibrated with a thousand bruises; her skin hissed with fire. And yet she was alive, and her hands were bare, and there was the proof of what she was: to do this monstrous thing, she had needed only her own self.
Corien was frantic when he came for her. Though she felt his pride in her, his dazzling joy at the sight of his freed people, she heard that little hitch in his heart, the fear that betrayed him.
My love, my beauty, he crooned, sending comfort to her. His thoughts cooled her, a false poultice for her burns. He sent her an image: his flesh-and-blood self, his beautiful stolen body, blazing toward her across the Northern Sea on a black ship. He was