Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,214

held a sword. It was her arm itself that burned, a brilliant red spear of light, and as it plunged for his heart, Audric held her beloved face in his gaze and whispered, “Rielle, I love you.”

45

Eliana

“I hear Aryava’s voice in my dreams—not the voice I knew and loved, but the voice from his last moments, when he sounded unlike himself, his words hoarse and distorted. ‘The world will fall,’ he proclaimed. ‘Two Queens will rise.’ And something cold and ancient looked out at me from his fading gaze—something that did not belong to him. In that moment, I was seen for what I had done, what we all had done. What we had to do, and would do again.”

—From the journals of Saint Katell, written in the years after the Angelic Wars, stolen from the First Great Library of Quelbani

Baingarde was full of light, thick pulsing veins of it that tangled like the roots of a gigantic tree. They drifted after Eliana as she raced up the castle’s sweeping grand stairs. They reached for her legs, her castings, the blade of Katell’s sword.

It was torment to run past them. They pulled at her like a song, promising her glory and infinite kindness if only she would stop and touch them. As they climbed, only Remy, swift and silent beside her, kept her moving forward. Pangs of longing bloomed in her chest even as her stomach lurched with fear.

At last, they reached a set of stained glass doors through which poured dazzling rivers of sizzling light. One of the doors had been left open.

Eliana stood a few paces away, staring at it. Her heart thudded in her ears. Her hands were slick with sweat. She heard voices raised in argument, the crackle of magic, and someone laughing. A familiar laugh that sent cold spilling down her body.

Remy, beside her, stared at the doors. Beyond them blazed an unthinkable brilliance, and in that glow, he seemed smaller than he ever had, his stolen sword a child’s toy.

“Is that him laughing?” Remy glanced at her, his face pale under its coat of ash. “Is it Corien?”

She was too terrified to nod. Weights slammed against stone—four, in quick succession. A woman cried out in wild grief, and then a man, shouting words she could not understand. Something about the man’s voice was familiar, though she had never before heard it, and suddenly the empirium was booming inside her, wordless and urgent, pushing her toward the doors.

She could have defied it. She could have run, gone back to Odo’s basement and hidden in the dark until the angels came for her.

Instead, she slowly approached the doors and looked out onto a terrace of stone and fire. Cords of light held four people to the castle wall and the terrace floor, their limbs askew like the wings of pinned insects. Eyes wide, voices hoarse from screaming, they watched a pale woman with wild dark hair, her skin painted gold with light, a sword of snapping red flames in her hands. A man fought her—brown skin, dark wet curls plastered to his forehead. His sword shone with the light of the sun, but it was nothing compared to the woman herself. She was glorious, incandescent, and his arms shook as she pressed him flat against the floor.

Eliana stared at the awful bright world beyond the doors, watching them fight as if through the haze of a dream. Names came to her, for of course it was them: Rielle, the Kingsbane, and Audric, the Lightbringer. She heard the grief in Rielle’s voice, the fury and fear. Audric’s desperation as the sparks of Rielle’s sword singed his face and arms. His body dripped with blood, sweat, and soot, and beneath Rielle’s gown of flowing crimson was a belly swollen with child.

Eliana touched her own stomach, as if that would somehow diminish the strangeness of watching these people who had made her.

But then Rielle’s sword changed, joining with her body until her right arm was a ribbon of red fire. She reared back to strike, aiming for Audric’s heart, and Eliana watched him close his eyes, saw his lips move around words she could not hear.

Panic burst open inside her. She raced onto the terrace, and the sea of golden branches crowding the floor parted to make way for her. Rielle’s arm flashed, but before it could fall, Eliana threw herself in front of Audric, summoned all her strength, and flung up Katell’s sword.

Rielle’s arm crashed against Eliana’s blade,