cruciata, flung by something out of sight. The raptor’s sleek black-green feathers painted bright blue streaks across the floor.
“He’s coming, and faster than I thought,” Ludivine announced. Her voice betrayed nothing, but Eliana felt the slightest of tremors in her mind.
“You’ll send us through and then come right after us,” Eliana said firmly to Simon. “Close the thread behind you. Don’t look back.”
Simon nodded. A slight shudder passed through his body. His threads—dozens of them, maybe hundreds—were gathering into a solid ring of spinning light. And as Eliana watched, darker threads joined the lighter ones, consuming them. They snapped like whips, lashing a spitting blackness through the air. The ring of light flickered, dimmed, then brightened. Dark threads twined with threads of light. Shapes manifested beyond the ring—tall green shadows like enormous soldiers marching in clean lines. Trees?
Eliana’s skin prickled. The royal gardens behind Baingarde.
She retrieved Katell’s sheathed sword and hooked it to her weapons belt, then drew the sword out for inspection. It was more elegant than she had guessed it would be, the golden hilt carved to resemble rays of sunlight, the blade polished to a high shine. Though it looked enormous, it felt light and nimble in her hands. She stood, marveling at how easily it moved through the air. Her castings sang against the hilt, their brilliant light kissing the metal.
Horrifying screams ricocheted through the halls outside. Someone whose voice she did not know begged for mercy.
A dark pressure rippled against her mind and brought with it a faint whisper:
Eliana.
Heart pounding, she returned Katell’s sword to its sheath. Pangs seized her, terrible longings for her room at home, for dear brave Zahra, for the warm embrace of Navi’s arms. Watching the threads, she held the knot in her throat so it could rise no further. She rolled her shoulders, shifted from foot to foot, shook out her hands and fingers. Her castings threw light across the ceiling.
Beside her, Simon’s arms trembled in the air as if holding up an unthinkable weight. She reached for him, then thought better of it. If only she could wrap him in her arms, bury her face once more in the hot space between his shoulders.
Instead, she faced the spinning ring of light, its sparks spitting across the room, and prepared herself to run. Her muscles tensed, Katell’s sword an unfamiliar slight weight against her leg. Beside her, Remy held a dagger in his right hand. At his hip gleamed another. His face, turned haggard by his time in Elysium, could have been carved from stone, perched atop one of the temples in Orline as a tribute to the fierce saints of old.
The moment Corien arrived, Eliana felt it like the fall of night across her skin. The air pulsed, suddenly so thick and close that Eliana gasped for breath. A roar of fury punched the walls. Metal hit metal. Did Corien also have a sword? What did it look like, two angels locked in combat of both blade and mind?
She kept her eyes on the threads, felt Remy start to turn, and grabbed him, swung him back around.
“Don’t look at him,” she muttered. “Look at Simon. Look at the light.”
She could feel Corien’s fingers scrabbling at the edges of her thoughts, digging for her. Her calm splintered like wood.
Eliana. His whispers tumbled like falling rocks. A rush of furious sound. Eliana.
“Go.”
Simon’s hoarse voice rang out like a shot. Eliana eyed the spinning threads as if they surrounded a chasm, cold and bottomless. A wave of fear swept across her skin, sharp as needles.
She resisted the urge to touch Simon and instead moved as close to him as she dared.
“Now?” she whispered.
Tears stood bright in his eyes. His mouth twisted. “Now. Go, Eliana.”
From behind them came a sharp cry. Some blazing instinct compelled Eliana to turn. Corien’s white shirt, half-torn from him, shone wet with red and blue blood. Veins of black drew a dark map across the winter of his skin. He drew wheezing breaths, and each step was unsteady, but whatever the cruciata blood had done to him, whatever lingering pain the blightblade had left in him, he was fighting it. A lesser angel, so drenched, might have died at once.
But Corien bared his teeth and raised his sword high. Ludivine stumbled. One of her hands flew to her temple. With a scream of fury, Corien swung at her. The blade sliced clean through Ludivine’s neck. Blood spurted like red rain. Her head dropped to the floor and rolled.