Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,38

could not have said why, and when she pushed open the door, she let out a cry, for there was Simon, sitting at a desk with his feet up on a windowsill. He turned to her and smiled broadly. He stood and came toward her with three long strides, and she met him in a pool of sunlight at the room’s heart. When she threw her arms around his neck, he lifted her off her feet and buried his face in her hair.

“There you are,” he said, and she squirmed happily in his arms, pulled back to gaze upon his face.

And froze.

It was wrong. It was all wrong.

That face, so smooth and smiling, was not Simon’s. She remembered now—there ought to have been scars. He was scarred all over; he had been burned and cut. But this man holding her was healed and happy. No shadows turned in the bright blue of his eyes. His smile was open and easy.

“No,” she whispered, and pushed back from him.

He released her, brow furrowed. “What is it, love?”

She whirled around to face the door and screamed, “No!”

She woke in her white room, drenched in sweat. The sunlight was gone. It was the deep of night.

Across the room, sitting in a chair by the window, was Corien, washed silver with moonlight.

“That wasn’t real,” she said, staring at him, her heart racing high in her throat. Even now that she understood her dream had been a lie of his creation, she wished she had never woken from it, and she hated herself for that.

She could still feel Simon’s arms around her, and the feeling of lightness in her heart as she had wandered those halls bright with sunshine.

Tears came to her eyes. Her chest ached with longing. The pinch of hunger returned to her stomach; she had not eaten since she had first woken in this room, since she had beaten her fists raw on the locked doors.

“That wasn’t real,” she whispered again.

Corien shrugged eloquently and rose to his feet. “It could be,” he said, and left her alone with her staring guards.

• • •

When Eliana awoke, she was standing on a white shore.

Gentle, warm waves lapped at her feet. The sand was soft, and behind her, on the dunes, clusters of thin pale grass rustled quietly in the wind. She tasted salt on her lips. The air was clear and light. She put her arms out to feel it and rose up onto her toes. Maybe she would fly. She was happy enough for it.

“El!”

She turned and smiled.

Remy was coming up a trail through the dunes, his arm linked with that of a kind-eyed boy with light brown skin and dark hair he kept long and knotted at his nape. Remy kissed his cheek, then ran to Eliana with a basket in his hands. She watched him fondly. At seventeen, he was the gangliest boy she had ever seen, and taller than she remembered. Had he grown even since leaving for the market that morning? The sea wind ruffled his dark hair. His eyes were bluer than the sky.

He grinned down at her and held out his basket. “I remembered.”

She pulled back the basket’s covering and saw a bushel of strawberries, each bright and red as blood. When she bit into the first one, the taste burst open in her mouth.

She sighed, closing her eyes. “I could die from happiness.”

Warm hands slid around her waist, gently pulling her back against a broad chest.

“Please don’t,” Simon murmured. “Stay with me.”

She turned to him with a smile.

“They’re perfect,” she said, and when he bit into the fruit she held up for him, his teeth grazed her fingers, and she shivered with delight, but then she caught a strange scent on the air. A sharp sweetness that did not belong.

“What is that?” she asked, before recognizing it—a floral perfume, cloying and familiar.

She cried out, bolted from Simon’s arms, ignored Remy calling her name, and ran.

She awoke not in bed but on Corien’s arm. They were walking together along a breezeway of his palace, overlooking the city of Elysium. White spires pierced the sky. A gown of black velvet cinched with a gold sash kissed her legs with every step.

She thought of the sea, the soft shore, Remy’s bright smile.

Corien pointed with his walking stick at a nearby tower capped with bronze tiles and winged figures carved from white stone. The polished scarlet jewel at the top of his cane glinted like an evil eye.

“That is the Tower