Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,127

dark. The fall of her feet on the illusory road beneath her—that, she lied to herself, was real and true.

You understand, now, how they did it. The Prophet’s voice was grave. The Deep touches all things. The joints between worlds here are thin and pliable, the empirium capable of being molded by those with the power to do so. Like your saints of old, who used their elemental talents to doom an entire race.

Zahra told me it was a peace treaty, Eliana thought evenly, matching her words to her measured pace forward. The angels would enter another world, one that was uninhabited, and make it their own. The humans would remain in Avitas, and the Angelic Wars would end.

Zahra told the truth, the Prophet replied. It was a terrible deceit.

The saints did not enter the Deep, though, or else they would have died. Isn’t that right?

They worked their magic from Avitas, yes. A pause. More or less.

How was this accomplished?

Silence from the Prophet.

Eliana fought a swell of impatience. How do you know all of this?

I am a keeper of many stories, was the cryptic reply.

Holding her many questions on her tongue, Eliana watched a boy run past. White braids fell to his waist, and freckles dotted his pale skin. She looked for too long at him; his shape blurred and faded, then flattened, as a shadow would fall across the ground, and was gone. The cobblestones were slick with rain, and Eliana thought she saw drops falling, but when she looked harder to confirm it, pain spiked behind her eyes.

She turned away, her head aching. Not knowing what was real and what was not left her stomach in queasy knots.

None of it is real, the Prophet replied, and yet all of it is real. I believe what you are seeing is another world, very distant from this one and yet so near that if you put out your hand here in Elysium, you would be touching it and not know it. Many worlds, the Prophet repeated, their voice soft with fascination, all connected by the Deep.

A movement above her, faint at the edge of her vision, urged Eliana to look up, but she refused, afraid of what she would see. She remembered Remy convulsing at her feet, Corien watching coldly from above.

Did it hurt? she thought, knowing the answer. When you lost your body?

Another beat of silence. Seldom did they speak of the Prophet’s identity. Eliana often feared that delving too deeply into such questions would ruin everything between them.

But Eliana had known the truth from the first time they had spoken: the Prophet was an angel, whether they chose to talk about it or not.

Once again, the movement above flickered. Eliana looked up. Overhead was a night sky with stars more numerous than those she knew in Avitas. Ripples passed through the stars as if they were froth on black water, and in that water swam creatures unseen. Eliana squinted and saw faint dark shapes.

Her blood turned cold. The cruciata?

Yes, the Prophet replied.

Do they see me?

It is possible.

Driven by a wild, throat-clenching instinct, Eliana reached an iron gate and hurried past it into a small park, where the trees were heavy with rain. She ducked behind one and clung to its trunk, hidden beneath the sopping leaves.

But then, through her fear, she remembered: None of this was real. She could hide beneath a tree, inside a house, deep in a cave, and none of it would matter, for in reality it would still be only her, Eliana, huddling behind nothing, seen by whatever lurked in the Deep. She couldn’t hide—she was alone and vulnerable in an endless abyss, and this tree was not a tree, and the ground she stood on was not ground at all. She existed in nothingness, and nothingness surrounded her.

Abruptly, her fingers passed through the tree, and she stumbled through it and fell. A stubborn part of her brain expected to hit the ground, but instead she kept falling, past the ground that wasn’t truly there and into a spinning maelstrom of darkness.

Lights flashed, as if she had passed into a storm. She tried to shut her eyes against them—they were too bright, they were hurting her—but she couldn’t. They were everywhere, scorchingly brilliant, as if all the stars she had seen were now erupting in sprays of color. The hot white of lightning and a roiling plum, the punched black-blue of a fresh bruise. She tried to scream, but the air stole her voice.