Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,39

of the Singing Skies,” he said lightly. “In Patria, in the City of the Skies, when an angel died, the temple choirs took to the air and sang laments for three days without ceasing. If only you could have heard it, Eliana. If only you could have seen us at the height of our glory.”

He wanted her to weep, to wail and beg, but Eliana refused, even once she had returned to her room. She wasn’t truly alone there, after all.

She would never be alone again.

• • •

When Eliana awoke, she was in a house that resembled her home in Orline.

A tall, narrow house, all its windows thrown open to the morning. Polished tile floors, thick rugs in the sitting room, the bedrooms, her father’s study.

She found Ioseph Ferracora in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, humming a tune. Eliana grinned as she watched him. It had been so long since she had seen him like this, relaxed and cooking breakfast. For years, he had been at war, but now he was home, and she couldn’t stop looking at him. He was fair-skinned with ruddy cheeks, shaggy dark hair like Remy’s, and he had a stubborn square jaw and square shoulders. A stranger wouldn’t expect him to possess any sort of grace or gentleness. But Eliana knew better.

He could whittle the finest little figurines—woodland creatures with legs thin as twigs, robed saints crowned with stars. When she woke from nightmares of the war that had nearly claimed him, he held her as tenderly as if she were a newborn.

Ioseph set down his knife, and Eliana came up behind him and hugged him, wrapped her arms around his big barrel chest and pressed her face to his back. When he laughed, she felt it in her ribs.

“What’s that for?” he asked, pulling her around to face him.

She gazed upon his rugged features, his beard-roughened cheeks. Her own felt likely to split open from her smile.

“It’s for nothing,” she answered. “It’s for everything. I’ve missed you, Papa.”

“I know, my sweet girl,” he told her, and kissed her cheek. “But that’s all past now. We’re together. We’re a family, and we’re safe.”

A merry shriek flew at them from the next room, which sent her father’s mouth quirking. He retrieved his knife and gestured with it toward the door.

“You’d best get a handle on that man of yours,” Ioseph warned, laughter in his voice. “He and Remy will wake the neighbors.”

Eliana turned to see Remy race into the kitchen and Simon tumble in just after him. Simon caught him, scooped him up into his arms, and Remy howled with laughter, pounded his fists against Simon’s shoulders.

“He cheated, El!” Remy shouted. “He cheated at king’s cards, and I called him on it!”

“Ah, but I would never lie to you,” Simon proclaimed solemnly, and then, over Remy’s head, he gave Eliana a sly wink that left her wobbly at her father’s side.

But something was wrong, she thought, watching them tease and laugh. Ioseph approached them with mock sternness, hands on his hips, and proclaimed something Eliana could not understand, for she was suddenly distracted. She stared at the back of her father’s head, watched Simon set Remy on his feet and ruffle his hair, and that was it, she realized—that was the wrongness of it.

Remy was too small. He was a tiny child again, not the gangly boy she knew. And Simon’s face was smooth and full of light, the shadows gone from under his eyes, and Ioseph…

“Father?” she asked quietly.

He didn’t respond, his back to her, but something was wrong, or at least she thought it was, and she needed to look at Ioseph Ferracora straight on. She needed to see her father’s warm, dark gaze, the amiable lines around his eyes, and feel reassured that this strangeness turning inside her was simply a fancy, the echo of a dream.

She touched his shoulder, but before he could turn, she saw his reflection in the mirror hanging across the room.

Mouth frozen in a smile, eyes black as twin hollows.

“You should have let yourself dream,” said Ioseph, but the voice was not his, and came from over her shoulder.

She whirled, but when she opened her eyes, it was to find herself twisted on the floor of her room. Her nightgown clung to her, soaked through with sweat.

Corien stood above her, clearly amused.

“You insist upon turning every sweet thing I give you into a horror,” he told her, and then pulled her to her feet and held her as she