Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,119

The world buzzed with heat, as did her skin, and she felt herself lifting up off the ground to follow the air’s new current.

Then she lost her grip and sank back to the dirt, exhausted and cold. Castings dark, head aching.

You’re doing so well, little one, said the Prophet, and Eliana clung to the warmth of those words.

They returned to the garden again and again, and each time Eliana crept on her hands and knees into her quiet, dark thicket, she felt a tiny piece of her old strength return to her. It was slow progress, for Corien’s punishments continued, even more vicious than before. He could sense the change in her but couldn’t discover its source, and he threw his fury at her with his fists and his mind. After these torments, body and mind battered, Eliana moved slowly, and her thoughts were sometimes too scattered to focus properly.

Some nights, she could not move from her bed at all, and the Prophet simply comforted her, whispering words Eliana’s sluggish mind couldn’t understand, sending the illusion of soft hands on her back.

Once, Corien spent twenty hours straight in her mind, searching through its every crevice for the answer to what was happening, somehow, right beneath his nose. And Eliana lost all sense of pride and self as those jagged spikes of pain split open her skull. She sobbed on the floor, twisting and jerking in Corien’s grip, and mired in that black agony, the only word she could summon was Simon.

She screamed it over and over, reaching for the door as if he stood just beyond it. If she screamed loudly enough, he would come for her. If she begged him, he would save her.

And then the door did open, and Simon strode toward her, picked her up from the floor, brushed his lips against her forehead. She knew he was not there. Corien’s wicked glee carved down her back like an ax’s blade. And yet Simon felt so real, so familiar, that she pressed her face against his chest and clung to him.

He brought her to the little bed at Willow, underneath the slanted ceiling. The glowing brazier in the corner, the rain pattering against the windows. Safe in his arms, warm in their bed, she allowed herself a moment to enjoy the lie.

Then she wrenched herself away, kicked him when he reached for her, scooped hot coals from the brazier and flung them at his face.

Blackness, then, and Corien’s voice mocking her as she fell.

For days, she tossed in the grip of cackling dreams, and when she next woke, her rooms were hushed.

She sat up, donned one of her nightgowns, walked unsteadily toward the door.

I’m so sorry, little one, the Prophet said, their voice thick with anguish. If I could take all of this from you, I would.

I don’t need your apologies, Eliana said sharply. I need you to hide me.

And in the garden, wrapped in the Prophet’s fierce cloak, Eliana cracked open the earth and pulled roots from it with only her power. She reached for the air, used it to push a path clear through the ferns, deeper into the garden. Delving down into the soil, she coaxed up water until it pooled around her in cool gurgling puddles.

Her castings glowed faintly, washing the thicket in pale gold.

He tries to break you, the Prophet said, voice warm with pride, and he fails utterly. Well done.

Simon’s echo whispered through her hair. Eliana shook it free, set her jaw.

I’d like to try something new, she thought. Ribbons of pale light streamed unbroken through her veins. Her power mirrored the new strength of her mind. They were connected, her mind and her body, and they in turn were connected to the water at her toes, and the roots she tucked back down into the earth so the tree could drink.

She heard the roots guzzle, ripples of the empirium betraying their primal, unthinking appetite, and she understood the feeling.

Her power was ready and coated in steel. It was hungry. And she ached to feed it.

The Prophet was wary. What will you do? Tell me.

It’s like I said before, Eliana replied. The world is so thin here. The air feels fragile.

Her fingers buzzing and hot, her castings like little stars relearning their light, she thrust her hands forward, then pushed them apart, palms out. A wave of energy detonated, but she stopped it, absorbing it with her own flesh and blood so it would not shake the palace.

The Prophet marveled. Oh,