Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,220

her daughter’s body, and she was every bird teeming on Corien’s back.

“That is what you are,” Corien said quietly, unblinking. “This is the darkness that lives inside you. See it, Rielle. Remember it. Love it, as I do.”

At last, Rielle found her voice. She could not look at him. He would not allow it. He pressed her skull against the floor.

“I remember everything,” she rasped, her tears hot against the rough stone. “I remember how you drugged my thoughts, kept me stupid for weeks. I remember long months of you coming to me in dreams. I told you I wanted to sleep, and you kept me awake anyway, whispering to me of resurrection.”

“You love our great work,” he said. “It brings you pleasure you have never felt before, joy you could never have found with them. You know this, Rielle.”

She blinked hard against the bursts of pain pounding her skull. She tried to reach for her power, but her thoughts were too scattered. It was like clutching at water with only her hands.

“Let me rise,” she choked out.

“No. Not until I know you have come to your senses.”

A sob of rage tore loose from her throat. “Release me!”

“You fear yourself a monster,” he said, his whisper booming in her ear. “It eats at you. You killed your father. You killed Tal. You have killed and killed, and you will kill again. The Unmaker.” His voice slid against her like a mouth in the dark. “And what if it’s true? We are all monsters, full of perversities and violence. At least you and I accept this and have the power and intelligence to do something with it.”

Rielle shook her head, struggling beneath the flat, hard press of his mind. One image rose to the surface, clung fast amid the chaos he was making of her thoughts: Eliana, falling to her knees in agony. Eliana, radiant in battle. Eliana, kissing her cheek.

“I may be a monster,” Rielle said, the words thick with pain, “but I am no longer yours.”

Corien’s shock was as clear and swift as if she had struck him.

“I have loved you,” he said hoarsely, “as I have never loved anyone. You know this. You feel this every time I look at you.”

The stone of the terrace was turning molten beneath Rielle’s fingers. She prayed it would suck her through and send her falling. Dirt and pebbles, flung by the wind, stung her cheeks. A storm was rising. Ten storms. The mountain shook beneath the castle, and the castle shook beneath their feet.

“Look at me.”

She did not. She watched the world ripple gold at her fingertips.

Corien grabbed her chin, forced her to look up at him. “Look at me!” he roared, and then he wrenched her up off the ground and captured her mouth in a bruising kiss.

His thoughts slithered in fast and locked into place inside her. He found the deepest hollows of her mind and settled there. His teeth caught her lip, bit hard. He sent her visions, memories. His bed in the Northern Reach, the furs askew, their bodies bare and flushed. That cave in Kirvaya where she had first kissed him. The warm safety of his arms after she had fled Âme de la Terre, heartbroken and furious. How he had crooned her name, pressed his lips to her hair.

She whimpered, clutching his sleeves. The sound emboldened him. He deepened his kiss, his hands tight around her skull, and she could feel him toying with her desires, stoking them. If she would not respond on her own, he would force her. If she would not see the truth of his words, he would remake her eyes so she never saw anything but what he allowed her.

And it would be easy, Rielle thought, to allow Corien this. In exchange, she would not have to touch anything that hurt her, or face the things she had done, or discover how to live in this world into which she did not quite fit. She could explore her power unfettered and care nothing for what she left in her wake.

She tried to pull back for air, reeling from his kisses, but he tightened his hold on her, yanked her close against him. His anger was a film of tar at the back of her mouth. She could not breathe; her head pulsed with white waves of pain. His grip became punishing, his nails digging into her flesh.

“Mine,” he sobbed against her mouth. “You’re mine, Rielle, and I’m yours. We understand