Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,165

move much, but she could see he had cleared a space around where she lay, a circle of destruction.

At last, he spoke.

“This is it, Eliana,” he said, his voice vibrating with something she couldn’t name. Appetite, or fury, or maybe exhaustion. “This is the end of our game.”

She strained to look at him. If she saw his face, would she know what he felt? She could sense nothing of him in her mind. He was keeping himself away from her.

Then his wide grin appeared. He was not alone.

Simon stood rigid at his side, Corien’s hand tight around his wrist. Simon’s lip was swollen and bloody from Corien’s backhand hours earlier. For a fleeting moment, Simon’s eyes locked with hers. Blue of ice, blue of fire. The look shook her, unraveling what was left of her fraying calm.

“Simon?” she whispered.

“Yes, Simon’s here too,” said Corien. “I assume you remember what he can do? He’s going to do it for me, here, now. I’m going to tear your goddamned power out of your veins once and for all. I’m going to batter open your mind and dig until I can twist everything you are around my fingers.”

She stared at Corien, her mouth dry, her heart beating so fast it left her buzzing. There was a twitchiness to him that she had never seen before, his face pulsing at the temple, at the corner of his upper lip.

She dared to look hard at his black eyes and wondered how many minds they held inside them—and how close they were to slipping from his grasp.

“I’ll die,” she told him. “Then you’ll have nothing.”

He crouched to stroke her cheek. “What do I care, once Simon has sent me back to her? I’ll have your mother. I can be rid of you at last.”

Frantic, she tried to rise. “You don’t want to see her. You failed her once—you lost her once. You’ll do it again.”

Corien stood, looking down upon her coldly. A madness lit his eyes. “No, Eliana. I see now the mistakes I made. I won’t make them this time.”

Then he plunged inside her. An inferno flaying open every fold of her mind, scorching clean every corner she had worked so desperately to hide. Everything he had done in her months at the palace was nothing compared to this. The pain sucked her breath from her, left her writhing soundlessly. She clawed at the slick floor, her gasps choked and hoarse. She tried to say a single word, to focus on a single image. Blue eyes, locked with her own. Instead of No, her prayer shifted.

Simon. Her mind screamed it, and every image of him her mind had ever stored away flew at her. She reached for them, tried to grab hold of one and press it close. Simon!

“Come, Simon!” Corien howled, jubilant. “How long can you stand to watch her like this? Hours? Days? Weeks? I am ageless. I am infinite. I can burn her until the world falls apart around us!”

“I will watch for however long it takes you to succeed, my lord,” came Simon’s flat voice.

“Such a loyal pup you are, such a beautiful crag of a man. But even you, ice-cold as you are, will tire of her screams. The human mind can only stand to witness so much pain.” He shoved Simon. “Put up your hands! Find me a thread, Simon! Do it!”

Simon obeyed, his arms rising stiffly.

Corien’s fingers, wedged deep in Eliana’s thoughts, twisted savagely. A scream did burst from her then. She was hidden in her thicket in that lush courtyard garden. In the Blue Room on the admiral’s ship. At the glittering masked ball in Festival, in her warm candlelit room at Willow. She was in Orline, black and lithe, leaping from rooftop to rooftop with Harkan at her side. She was in her bedroom, listening to Remy read her a story about the saints.

She was in Ioseph Ferracora’s arms, watching the sun rise, looking shyly up at the crumbling statue of the Lightbringer, noble and tireless on his winged horse.

Her scream found a word. “Simon!” Her fingers were rigid; her bones would soon pop from her skin. “Simon, please!”

“Simon, please! Simon, please!” Corien burst into wild laughter. “Can you feel the threads, Simon? Can you sense them coming? She won’t last long. I can feel her every shield cracking. Poor little Eliana.” He leaned close, shouted in her ear. “Poor little Eliana! So brave, so noble, so needlessly fucking stupid! You could have been happy, you