Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,235

roared for her to walk faster. She was almost there; she was nearing the end. Soon, she would feel no pain, and there would be no reason to cling to what was left of her fraying body. Her jaw ached so brutally that it was difficult to speak. Some nights, she had thought she would awaken to find she had ground her teeth to dust in her sleep.

Only once they were in the city did she retrieve her voice.

“Tonight I will die,” she said, “and when I do, I will send the empirium here in Avitas into something like sleep. It will lie dormant for years. People will be frightened when they wake and find their power has been silenced. I’m sorry for that, but it must be done.”

“Why?” Evyline whispered, the word thin with horror.

“To close the Gate,” Zahra said quietly. “And to stop more war before it begins.”

Evyline stared. “More war? But we have fought a war, and we have won it.”

“But revolution blazes in Kirvaya between those with elemental magic and those without, and if left unchecked, it will spread.” Zahra’s words came swift and soft. “Marques will hear of the Eliana who traveled to us from the future, and they will experiment with corners of magic they ought not to touch. The princess will be in danger. Many angels still live, and their grief for Kalmaroth is vicious. They will come for you again and again. They will find a way to call others from the Deep, unless the Gate is sealed.”

Evyline paled. “I see.”

Rielle forced her eyes open even as the blinding world urged them closed. Each building they passed burned with a thousand white fires. Her every step sent waves of power rippling across the ground.

“No new angels will be able to possess human bodies,” she managed, struggling to form words—teeth against tongue, tongue against throat. “Those without bodies will remain so, and any survivors I resurrected will find the power of their minds diminished. Elemental castings will go dark. Marques…” She hesitated, thinking of little Simon. How sober and quiet he had been, standing at the ready while his father brought Eliana into the world. “Marques will no longer be able to thread. I will leave only three things untouched: the godsbeasts, the wraiths loyal to the crown, and Eliana.”

It was painful to say Eliana’s name, as if each syllable were a bludgeon to her ribs. Her heart lurched back toward Baingarde, toward the quiet rooms that held the two surviving pieces of her heart.

“The princess will retain all her power?” Evyline asked.

Rielle nodded. “Someday, the empirium will return. Something will happen to awaken it. Another conflict, perhaps a new enemy. I can see glimmers of this, but the empirium has shown me nothing more. The Gate is a doorway to the Deep, and the Deep is a doorway to every world there is. Something will come. And when this happens and the empirium returns, the world will look to Eliana for guidance.”

Her tears crested savagely. “I wish I did not have to ask this of her. I wish I were not leaving Audric to face a world grieving the loss of its magic. But I know no other way of protecting them in the coming hard years, and soon I will no longer be here to do it myself.”

“And what of the temples, my queen?” Evyline asked thickly. “What will we worship, if magic is gone?”

“Nothing will stop you from praying to sun and shadows. And if the old prayers become ill-fitting, you will write new ones.”

Fresh agony sent her crashing to the ground. Cracks raced across the cobbled road, splintering hundreds of precisely cut stones. She trembled, gasping, and when she looked up, she saw not a road, not a city, but a vast shallow sea. At its horizon, a girl in white.

Evyline tried to help her rise but could only manage to bring her to her knees. The earth pulled at Rielle’s neck, its tendrils stubborn and hungry. Fighting it was like fighting the hard press of the ocean. If she was to reach the mountains in time, they would need help. Another body to help her stand and walk, someone she could trust.

Zahra’s voice came to her, distant and faint. “My queen, we are near the house of Garver Randell.”

“Bring him to me,” she croaked, and every word tasted of lightning. “Tell him to hurry.”

He came at once, stood quietly for a moment, then knelt at her side. Rielle