Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,226

golden light shifting across her face. A sly wink, it illuminated her cheekbones, the curve of her lips, and was gone.

A cold stone dropped between Audric’s ribs. He smoothed his thumbs across her face as if he could wipe away whatever it was, this luminescence that sometimes rippled to life under her skin. She gazed up at him dreamily, her sleepy green eyes suddenly swirling with golden currents. Beneath them, shadows stretched long and dark.

“Is it happening again?” Rielle whispered.

He nodded, unable to speak. It had been happening for weeks.

She took his hand, kissed his knuckles. He helped her to the bathing room, then saw her back to bed and sent a page downstairs for food. Her feet dangling above the floor, she watched him gather his papers, his dress cloak, his favorite pen. When he kissed her goodbye, she held his healing face tenderly in her hands, and all the way downstairs, the sweetness of her touch lingered. Yet Audric could not shake the rope of dread winding slowly around his heart.

Yes, Rielle loved him. He knew this, and yet he feared that someday, for her, it would not be enough.

• • •

The days passed too quickly, each one packed with activity that left him aching with exhaustion by nightfall.

He met with the royal councils, saw to the repair of the watchtowers and the wall, helped the surviving city guard as they slowly cleared the ruined streets. Foul odors drew them to bodies buried in the rubble, both human and not. A disemboweled beast with a stomach full of flies. A child stuck through the heart with a rafter rent from the roof of her bedroom.

Over each body, he knelt and prayed. Sometimes those nearby joined him. Sometimes they stood and stared resentfully. So many had died, and yet he had lived.

He made himself look at their pain without flinching. Sometimes he woke from dreams drenched with sweat, his bones aching from some primal fear, and he knew with biting certainty that he should have died that night. And yet there he was, shaking at the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, alive and whole with only a few scars and one nasty bandaged gash on his leg.

Then Rielle would reach for him, softly call his name, and in her arms he would find a kind of solace until the next nightmare claimed him.

• • •

Often, Rielle joined him when he met with his advisers. The larger meetings, with dozens of people gathered in the Hall of the Saints, were one thing—Rielle sat quietly on her throne at Audric’s side and offered insight when needed. What was the condition of the Gate? What would be required to close it, and when would she be strong enough to try it? Could it be resealed completely, even stronger than it had been before?

How many angels still remained in the Deep?

And what other creatures might someday escape it?

But the more intimate meetings in the small council chambers surrounding the Hall of the Saints—these Rielle avoided until the day came when her expertise was required.

They sat around a large square table of polished oak. Rielle to Audric’s right, and to his left, Genoveve, pale and silent, her auburn hair pinned up in neat coils. Beside her was Sloane, shadows under her bleary eyes. Ardeline Guillory of the House of Light sat on Rielle’s other side, followed by Rafiel Duval of the Firmament, his thick black braids tied at his nape. The Archon’s chair sat empty, gleaming with polish, and then came Brydia Florimond in her earthshaker robes of umber and soft green, her ruddy skin patched with bandages.

Then there was Miren, rigid and stone-faced. Between her and Sloane, Tal’s chair sat empty.

“We have received reports from Queen Obritsa,” Audric said, drawing out the papers. “She is requesting aid. Supplies, healers, soldiers. Corien’s fortress—”

“Yes,” Rielle murmured, her gaze distant. “The Northern Reach.”

A pause, silence stretching taut across the table. Magister Duval looked at his hands, his mouth thin.

Audric imagined his mind as a flat, clean plain, free of divots or dust. It was the only way he could move past what Rielle had told him about her time there in the icy far north and focus instead on the papers in front of him.

“Yes,” he said flatly. “The Northern Reach. When Corien died, so too did many of the angels there, but not all. Any angels who were not connected to him at the exact moment of his death have

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