Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,194

should they have a lifetime of years to share between them, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to convince himself that he deserved to look at her.

“I was trying to remember something,” Eliana said quietly after a time, “but I’m having trouble. I wonder if you could help me.”

Simon closed his eyes. He could have listened to her speak for the rest of whatever life was left to him. Her voice held shadows, but it was still hers. How he had missed it. How he had agonized in his quiet room at the palace, trying to ignore the distant echo of her screams.

“Of course I’ll help you,” he rasped.

“Well, it’s a bit of a funny thing. When we first met, you and I, in my house in Orline. We fought. You wore your mask.”

Simon reached for the memory. It was ragged, as were all the rest. Flashes of chaotic color trapped behind churning darkness. Ludivine shut up in her room, Corien shut up in his palace, each of them fighting the other—the ripples of their war battered him even now, protected in the deep heart of Ludivine’s home as he was.

“I remember,” he said at last. “We fought. You were very good.”

“I was,” Eliana agreed, “but here’s the thing I can’t quite recall.” She paused. “How many times did I punch you in the face? Three? Five?”

Harsh laughter burst out of him. He was not used to laughing. It sat strangely in his throat, left him dizzy.

“I pulled a gun on you,” he remembered. “You called me a cheater.”

“You were,” she said lightly. “I would have beaten you otherwise.”

“Unlikely.”

There was a pause. Then Eliana moved closer to him, her leg touching his. “I’ve tried to remember other things.”

He knew what she was doing. He felt the steady heat of her power reaching for him, as if she were indeed the sun come down to warm him. Already he could feel his power rising to meet hers. The air around him began to clear, and his thoughts along with it.

He blew out a long breath and raised his arms once more.

“What other things?” he asked. Light bloomed softly at his fingertips. A good burn.

“What your father’s name was. You told me once.”

“Garver,” he replied. The name dropped awkwardly from his tongue. His father’s face was but a faint smear of memory. “Garver Randell.”

“He was a healer.”

“Yes.”

“And a marque, like you.”

Simon nodded.

“Tell me, Simon,” Eliana said gently.

“Yes,” he replied. “A marque, like me.” He licked his dry lips. “What else do you want to remember?”

“The names of our friends you shot at Festival,” she said without judgment.

Still he struggled to speak. “Darby. Oraia. Ester. Dani, and her son, Evon.”

“And many others.”

“Yes.”

“All in service of me.”

“Always, Eliana.” His voice caught on thorns. Always. A cruel word, a lying word.

He held his breath, waiting for her to speak again. Beyond his hands spun a dazzling circle of light. Threads, waiting to be traveled.

“I’m also trying to remember what it felt like, that first night we were together,” she whispered at last.

“It was everything,” Simon answered. He heard the brittle sound of his voice as if he no longer belonged to his own body and was listening from somewhere distant, somewhere golden and warm within the light of their rising power. “You were everything that night. You were the entire world, and I was safe inside you. For once, I felt safe.”

Eliana slowly wrapped her arms around his torso, then pressed her cheek between his shoulder blades and held him.

“So did I,” she whispered.

Simon let himself live there for a moment, then stood and drew on his trousers. He took the feeling of her quiet embrace with him through the threads and emerged in the room’s far corner with her name on his lips. The threads’ light snapped closed at his heels, throwing off a slight bitter tinge of smoke.

He turned to find Eliana watching him. The sight of her nearly felled him. Bare in the rumpled blankets, echoes of violence marking her skin, she held her head high and looked at him steadily. The air around her glimmered with power. A queen in his bed, lighting the world awake.

It took everything in him to turn away from her, and try again, farther and more easily each time, until he had traveled to the far end of Ludivine’s compound and back to his room in the space of a breath.

He sank to the cold floor, shaking with things he could not name. He