Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,124

or angel. A new kind of life of her own creation.

Rielle moved over every inch of the skull, and beyond her fingers, her power searched and explored. She felt the cool, supple texture of Sarakael’s presence, waiting breathlessly. The empirium shone brilliantly in the minds of angels, and Sarakael, young and weak as he was, unable to take true hold of a human body without assistance, was no exception.

Once, it might have hurt her eyes to look at him. Now, she stared right into the blazing inferno.

She worked her power like a seamstress with her needle and stitched the angel to its new body. Incandescent light to fading, dull light. Inch by inch, speck of gold by speck of gold. Millions of stitches, each miniscule and infinite.

Sweat poured down her back and arms. She felt a distant coolness—Corien placing a wet rag against her neck and brow. She had warned him not to interfere with her mind, as it could disrupt her concentration, the flow of power from fingers to angel to body.

But as she worked, she began to long for his familiar touch. Resurrection was an immensity for which she was not truly prepared. With each stitch, she lost a bit of herself and then regained it. Her muscles were torn and rebuilt a thousand times over. Her breath came fast and sharp.

“My love, should you stop?” Corien’s voice was tight with concern. “Is it too soon after the Gate?”

“Leave me be,” Rielle commanded. She formed the words through a dreamlike fog. “I am both the Maker and the Unmaker. The thing that destroys and the thing that creates.”

Her vision blurred and expanded until she could see everything in the vast underground chambers at once, and then everything in the Northern Reach, shrunken to the size of an artist’s canvas. Or was it she who had grown, surpassing the constraints of her own body? She saw the mountains encircling them, the vast frozen sea, the White Wastes. She saw the stars in the sky and the worlds that turned beyond them—and that was too much, too confusing. Frightened, full of wonder, she reined in her wandering vision, returned her focus to her furiously knitting hands.

At last, she finished.

Her vision was still consumed by the empirium, and she watched, elated and exhausted, as the body before her, this new creature with his ancient powerful mind and his supple human limbs, rose before her. He tried out his legs, stretched his arms to the high ceiling, and crowed in triumph.

He coruscated, glinting. He experimented with running, jumped and darted. He was faster than Tamarkin had ever been, beautifully limber, breathlessly strong. He gripped a torch bracket affixed to a nearby pillar and swung himself up into the stone rafters. Naked and glorious, he shone faintly, as if he had been dipped in gold.

Rielle watched him from her spot on the floor, holding her body still. She felt Corien standing tensely behind her but could not possibly turn to look at him; she would crumple with exhaustion, and she refused to do that where they could see—this swarm of angels, all chasing after Sarakael. Their jubilant howls were a clamor in her mind.

Sarakael jumped to the ground, then hurried to Rielle and prostrated himself before her. He kissed her fingers, the hem of her gown.

“Thank you, my queen,” Sarakael murmured at her feet. “My glorious queen. I do not know how to express my gratitude. To move again, to run and jump. To feel the cold of this stone and the damp of the air, the weight of the mountain above me and the soft glide of my perfect skin. My queen,” he choked out, “you cannot know what this means to us all.”

“That’s enough, Sarakael,” Corien ordered, his voice shifting to that of a practiced commander. Rielle could easily imagine him as the angel Kalmaroth, ordering regiments of angels to war. “The rest of you, make yourselves useful. My generals, who are stronger than any of you—strong enough to escape the Gate long ago and to possess bodies of their own accord so they could help me begin to build our new home—these generals have tasks each of you can perform. Until you are summoned for resurrection, you will obey their every command.”

Rielle listened to him speak as if from a great distance, her spinning head a whirlpool on the verge of collapse. Distantly, she comprehended that Corien was helping her to her feet, that he was supporting her weight with