Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,29

the edges of her mind. Invisible coy fingers, plucking and stirring. She shook her head as if to shake off drowsiness, and her vision shifted violently, a discordant sound scraping against her skull. Flashes of images appeared with each blink: a man in black sitting on a throne. A woman standing in a field of fire.

Eliana herself, ankle-deep in a shallow pool of black water, reaching for the star-dusted sky.

She touched one of the stars, and it burned her fingers. She tried to yank away her hand, but the star had fused with her skin and was bleeding down her arm, flooding her veins, bubbling up her throat to disintegrate her tongue.

The images abruptly disappeared, leaving her unbalanced. She watched the shadows gather as they floated down the stairs, joining to become a teeming black heart, and wondered wildly if a beast was coming for her, some feral, starved creature set loose from the city’s dungeons.

She shook herself, blinking hard. She could not trust her mind. Of course she couldn’t.

What nonsense, came a voice she recognized, sliding happily into her mind like a wriggling cat. Your mind is the only thing you can trust. It will show you what you must do to survive.

She looked up, eyes burning, and watched shapes emerge from the shadows, until at last there were boots and trousers, a fine white linen shirt, a long black coat, unbuttoned, knee length. A smiling face, pale and elegant. Eyes black and liquid. Soft dark hair curling against cheeks and nape.

The Emperor. Corien.

“And here you are at last,” he said. “The daughter of my great love. Time tried to separate us, Eliana, but we managed to find each other eventually, didn’t we?”

His voice was smooth and clear, so inarguably lovely that it sickened her. She could barely speak, her throat closing with fear. “Where is my brother?”

“I’ll tell you if you help me. I’ll bring him right here, and you’ll never be parted from him again.”

Stricken, she stared at him. “If I help you.”

He laughed softly. “I can’t tell you how delighted I am to finally have the opportunity to learn everything about you.” He paused, his smile widening. “Well, I could tell you, in fact. I could make you feel my delight as keenly as I do. I can make you feel whatever I want you to feel. I could make you want to kiss me. I could make you rub yourself against me like a groveling dog.”

Circling her, he fell silent, and when Simon stepped away, Eliana felt the absurd, mortifying urge to reach for him and keep him close, despite everything.

“Awful, isn’t it? To love someone so very deeply? To love them enough that you would lose yourself to them, lose everything to them, if it meant they might stay beside you a little while longer?” There was mockery in Corien’s voice, with sympathy close behind. “I loved like that once, as you know. I loved many times before that, but never again since. It’s lonely to be loveless for a thousand years. Lonelier still to build an empire from the ashes of a world destroyed by your own mistakes, and to do that not once but twice.”

Corien stopped before her, close now. He considered her face, and she fought desperately not to blanch under that terrible unblinking scrutiny.

“Tell me where Remy is,” she said, her jaw clenched tight.

“I won’t make such mistakes a third time,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’m sure you’ve guessed that. I’ve had centuries to plan for this moment. My hatred has grown for centuries. My hate for you, Eliana, and for all of your kind. My hate for the deceitful woman I loved. My hate for a God that would condemn me to this endless fate of war and grief and torment.”

Corien’s gaze was thoughtful, his voice calm. “Can you comprehend how deeply I hate you? I’ll allow you to attempt imagining it for a time, until I decide to share the feelings with you directly. I hate you, and yet I love you, in a strange way. It’s an unsettling dichotomy I long to tear from my mind, but I can’t—it’s lodged there, it’s part of me. I love you because you are hers. I loathe you because you are his.”

With no warning, he seized her chin, turned her face left, then right, inspecting her, and she was too terrified, too baffled, to react.

A small smile curved his lips. “I see her there.” He waved with