Ludivine’s eyes shone with tears. “I did what I thought was best.”
“You’re a fool,” he said harshly. “Selfish and prideful. If not for you, she might still be with us.”
Atheria knelt at his approach. He mounted her without saying another word and waited for Ludivine to climb up behind him. She settled herself between the godsbeast’s massive black-tipped wings and took a shuddering breath.
“I won’t apologize,” Ludivine whispered once they were in the air. The wind nearly swallowed her words.
“Nor should you ever again try to convince me that you did it all for love,” Audric said. “If I hear that once more, I’ll be through with you. I’m nearly there already.”
Atheria took them swiftly across the sky. Each feathered pulse of her wings was a low, soft drumbeat that shook Audric’s chest.
He did not speak to Ludivine again.
• • •
The coast of Mazabat appeared first as a white sliver on the horizon, an unsteady smile capping the glittering winter sea.
As they approached, Audric saw the grim truth of what Mazabat had endured since Rielle’s visit months before: an endless barrage of storms, all of them rippling out from the weakening Gate. Eroded beaches strewn with debris stretched from horizon to horizon. Beyond the coast, miles of forest had been leveled by wind, and the city of Quelbani looked half-made with many of its towers toppled and even the larger temples stripped of their roofs and windows.
Examining the ruined landscape, his heart sinking, Audric didn’t notice the people lining the outermost crest of beach until the sky exploded into flame.
Atheria swerved, her wings pounding the air sharply to redirect their course, and let out a fierce scream of anger.
Audric wound his hands into her mane and squinted through the brilliance. A field of fiery starbursts hovered along the shore as far as he could see in either direction. There were so many, and they were so close together, shifting restlessly like trapped fireflies, that they formed a net, effectively blocking Atheria’s approach.
Only a single narrow aisle of empty air was left untouched—a corridor guiding them to shore.
“I don’t blame them,” he replied, and stroked the arch of Atheria’s neck. “Go on.”
She snorted, her long ears flattening back against her skull. He could feel her muscles trembling with the effort of hovering there, as if treading water.
Closing his eyes, Audric concentrated on the sunlight caressing his scalp, the back of his neck, his fingers clutching Atheria’s mane. He leaned down, pressed his cheek against the chavaile’s velvet neck.
“I trust you, Atheria,” he told her quietly. He held his palms flat against her coat, imagining that he could send all the channels of power weaving through his body—even those he could not sense—into Atheria’s own. He was no angel, nor was he Rielle, who seemed to converse with Atheria as easily as she would with any person.
But then, Atheria was no horse. She was a godsbeast, superior to them all, closer to the empirium than anyone or anything except, perhaps, for Rielle. He hoped she could somehow understand him, feel reassured by his trust in her.
“If danger awaits us on the shore,” he continued, “then you may certainly turn away at once and carry us to safety.” Feeling foolish, he added, “Do you understand?”
Atheria’s ears swiveled, forward and back, as if listening to a world of sound his own ears could not detect, and then, after another moment of hesitation, she plunged down toward the sea, following the path the Mazabatians’ fire had made for them.
For the first time since his wedding night, Audric felt something other than despair—a small spark of joy, weak and flickering, quickly snuffed out.
• • •
They waited on the beach—an orderly arrangement of royal soldiers some two hundred strong. Fifty were firebrands, their arms trembling with exertion as together they held fast the net of fire stretching along the coastline.
As soon as Atheria’s hooves touched the sand, the firebrands lowered their castings and staggered. Some collapsed. Audric was not surprised; such a display of unwavering power was not easily managed even by the most skilled elementals—not anymore, in this quiet age. Healers in white robes rushed forward to tend to the firebrands, and as Audric watched them, he thought of Rielle, of the brilliant web of power she had created to stop the tidal wave from destroying the Borsvallic capital of Styrdalleen.
Hers had been a shield even more massive and dazzling than this display created by