Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,181

said nothing, shoveling food into her mouth. After a few minutes, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve, let her spoon drop into the empty bowl. Then she fixed her eyes on Ludivine’s.

“You say it was the only way to bring me here safely,” Eliana said. Unspoken words hovered between them, vibrating and tense. Images battered Eliana’s mind: Simon standing on the pier’s edge and shooting down their friends; Remy on the deck of the admiral’s ship, being dragged away from her; their father falling to his death.

She placed her feet flat on the floor, seeking calm. “Why couldn’t you have come to me? You’re clearly powerful enough to evade Corien’s detection. Why hide here and wait for me? Something could have happened. A storm could have sunk the admiral’s ship. I could have managed to kill myself.”

“A storm was unlikely. The passage you took is well traveled for a reason. And I have demonstrated that I wouldn’t have allowed you to kill yourself,” said Ludivine. “As I told you, I needed you to break and then be reborn as your truest self. If I had come to you, none of this would have happened. You would still be small and human, frightened of the power in your blood.” Ludivine tilted her head. “You are familiar with the legend of the Kirvayan firebird? To rise, first one must burn.”

Eliana glared at her. “I am still human.”

“Not entirely. Humans cannot do what you can do. Humans cannot do what your mother could do. You are something more than that, and so was she. You know this.”

“You could have come to me,” Eliana insisted. “You could have done to me everything that Corien did, remade me as you saw fit. There was no need to bring me here. Remy would have been spared what he’s gone through. Maybe my father would still be alive.”

“Centuries ago, the city of Âme de la Terre occupied this land. Now, it is Elysium. Corien constructed his palace not far from where the castle of Baingarde once stood.” Ludivine paused. “It is difficult enough for even the most skilled marque to travel through time. To ensure success, I eliminated the need to travel through space as well.”

“Traveling through time.” Eliana swallowed, her throat dry. “You want to send me back, to find my mother. Or to kill her?”

A slight flicker of feeling on Ludivine’s placid face. “Hopefully, it will not come to that. You will come upon your mother in a moment of peace, when her mind is clear and open and her loyalties are still firmly with Celdaria. You will attempt to reason with her, convince her to turn on Corien and kill him. If she attacks, you will fight her until she surrenders or you reach an impasse. Or you will come back, and we will try again. Another day, another moment. We will try until we cannot anymore. We will try until we run out of time.”

“You mean until Corien finds us.”

Ludivine inclined her head.

“And then? Once we’ve run out of time?”

Ludivine paused. “Then you will return to the past a final time, and you will kill her and Corien. You will close the Gate as soon as you can, before any more angels can escape the Deep.” The silence was thunderous. “As I said, hopefully, it will not come to that.”

Eliana’s bile rose. “But if I kill her before I am born, how would any of this work? How could I go back to kill her if I never existed?”

“I have been assured by someone much more intimately familiar with the art of time travel than I am that if the threads are pulled in the correct sequence, if the magic is calibrated precisely, this paradox can be avoided. If you are forced to kill her, if she leaves you no other choice, you will kill her—and thereby yourself, past and present. I sincerely hope it does not come to that. You must not let it come to that.”

Eliana felt nothing at the thought of her own death; she had long ago surpassed such small, narrow fears. But at the mention of time travel, a bubble burst inside her. She could no longer contain the question. Her fingernails dug into the table’s polished wood, leaving tiny gold crescents behind.

“Simon,” she bit out. “Tell me.”

Ludivine lifted her glass of water to her lips. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“No, I won’t. You can sense my questions, and you are no fool. You know what