Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,195

heard Eliana rise from the bed, tug on his discarded tunic, and come to him. She knelt and touched his face. So careful, the fall of her fingers on his skin, as if afraid he would fly away from her. That she would wake, and it would be another dream sent by the enemy.

Simon glared hard at the floor. What lay ahead terrified him. Only twice in his life had he attempted to travel through time, and both instances had ended in disaster.

“When I was younger,” he said thickly, “I didn’t need this kind of help to work magic.”

“There isn’t anything wrong with needing help.”

“No, there isn’t. I had just forgotten what it felt like to receive it.”

He sensed a change, then, a shift in the battle that seethed at the perimeter of his mind. He knew what it meant and raged against it. He drew Eliana to him roughly, and she grabbed him just as hard and held him close. Her breath was hot in his hair, her body too thin under his hands.

“We are more than our anger,” she said, her voice low. They were the words she had said in Willow, the gardens soft with rain around them, her hands warm on his scarred chest. The memory drifted sweetly, the last leaf falling before winter.

“We are more than what has been done to us,” he said in reply, and felt her smile against his neck.

The door opened. One of Ludivine’s nameless acolytes, unabashed, crisply efficient. Eliana whirled to glare at the man over her shoulder.

“Yes?” she snapped, and the sharp sound of her anger made Simon ache with love.

“She says it is time,” the acolyte said, looking each of them in the eye. “He has found us.”

41

Eliana

“It isn’t the concept itself of threading through time that so frightens those who decry the practice. Rather, their fear stems from the potential repercussions, the unpredictability. Time is not a clock that can be calibrated, no matter how skilled the traveler. Time is endless, brutal, and as untameable—and changeable—as the sea.”

—Meditations on Time by Basara Oboro, renowned Mazabatian scholar

Eliana hurried into Ludivine’s favored chamber, Simon close behind her. They both wore fresh clothes provided by the acolytes. Eliana’s coat buttoned at her shoulder and fell to her knees, flexible enough for her to move but thick enough to offer some protection. She wore a hefty weapons belt, laden with daggers, and felt a pang for her own lost knives.

She glanced at Simon only once. Moments ago he had been holding her, his face open and soft. Now, he was armored for battle. A long coat like Eliana’s, and beneath it a vest of mail. Revolver at his hip, knives in his boots and in sheaths strapped to his forearms.

Inside the room, Ludivine sat with Remy as she had with Eliana—in two chairs facing each other within a wide triangle of three flickering candles.

Ludivine glanced up, her skin pale as bone. Eliana startled to see how much she had changed in only a few hours’ time. Shadows darkened the hollows of her face, and sweat dotted her upper lip.

But her voice was still as cool water. “Is everything working as it should?”

Eliana could have happily struck her again for that. Such coldness in her voice, as if she didn’t know exactly what had happened, as if she could not feel the state of their hearts.

“All is as it should be,” Simon replied, his gaze bright as lit steel.

Ludivine didn’t flinch, but Eliana heard her voice, soft and sad in her mind. I’m sorry, little one. I was not always as I am now. I wish you could have known me when my heart was still whole.

Eliana sent her nothing in reply. No pity, no kindness. She had no room for it. Her body was taut and trembling; she pushed hard against herself as if fighting a rising flood. She heard soft footsteps at the room’s entrance and glanced behind her to see Navi and Ysabet, Patrik and Hob, Malik, and several others just behind them.

Navi reached for her. Eliana gratefully took her hand, then faced Ludivine once more. She didn’t look directly at the back of Remy’s dark head, too frightened to think about what he and Ludivine might have been discussing.

“Your acolyte said Corien has found us.” She bit off each word, teeth hard and tongue sharp. “Now what would you have us do? Where is he?”

Ludivine stood. Serene, she breathed in and out, then tilted her head slightly, as