Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,5

you, I would kill them, or you would, and I would glory in the sight of you.

She blinked up at him. Would I?

You would, and I would kiss you after, he said, and then came the thought of him kissing her brow and her cheeks, and if her heart was still in uproar, she could not feel it and didn’t care to.

She was content, wrapped in Corien’s cloak. She wished to live forever inside it.

Across from Rielle, the little Kirvayan queen Obritsa climbed into her own seat, her face pinched, strips of her pale-brown skin visible above her ragged collar, under her fall of white hair. Corien insisted upon saving Obritsa’s strength for at least another week and traveling by foot instead. The girl was exhausted, having threaded herself, Artem, and Corien across the continent to Celdaria in time for the royal wedding.

A marque, secretly pretending true humanity as part of a revolution brewing in Kirvaya.

Rielle barely noticed the girl. She smiled a little to be polite, which was more than the staring little brat deserved. Then she shifted sleepily within the voluminous folds of Corien’s cloak and reached out to him. He was outside the carriage giving orders to Artem, Obritsa’s devoted guard, who would drive the restless team of snow-dusted horses onward and east.

Hurry and come back to me, she pleaded. Please, Corien.

His voice teased. So easily can your loneliness best you. Patience, my lovely one.

And all at once, her calm vanished.

Suddenly, the comforting fog was gone, and Rielle was alone, trapped with her own thoughts somewhere deep in her own dark mind. She tightened her grip on Corien’s cloak, panic crawling up her arms. Her body felt swollen and heavy, and she didn’t understand why. She stared at Obritsa, who watched her, frowning, and then Rielle looked away and shut her eyes, for she could not quite remember where she was, and this frightened her. She wondered if she was locked away, caged in a high tower, or if she was in a carriage in eastern Celdaria, or perhaps out on a soft gray sea with no one and nothing for thousands of miles.

In this empty space, a sudden roar of memories swelled, and Rielle’s eyes filled with tears.

It was not so long ago—only six days past—that she had stood in the gardens behind Baingarde. She remembered this now. She saw it plainly. Amid the mounting haze of this fear she could not explain, figures manifested. Audric. Her king. Her husband, now. Her dearest love. Only six days ago, he had turned away from her, his face twisted with loathing. He had commanded her not to touch him.

You’re the monster Aryava foretold, he had said. A traitor and a liar.

And what home was there in the world for a traitor? What heart would spare love for a liar?

She touched her temples. Her mind whirled with bewildering images, each fighting to rise faster than the last, and she could not find her breath. Corien? Where are you?

Rielle, I’m sorry, I was gone for too long, came his voice, and then he was climbing inside the carriage to greet her.

She reached for him, feeling pathetic and small, and yet she could not stop herself. The memory of Audric’s scorn, his disdain and hatred, was too close, too fresh. She had shed her wedding gown some miles back in the woods and now wore an ill-fitting woolen dress Corien had stolen from some farmer’s daughter he had found coming home alone from the market. The wool was scratchy and far too hot. She raked her fingers across her skin. She remembered the chaos of the capital as she had fled from it, thousands of people reeling from the revelations in the vision Corien had shown them.

No, not a vision—a truth.

Their new queen had killed the father of Ludivine and Merovec. She had killed her own father, and her mother too. She had killed their late beloved king, Audric’s father.

And she had lied about it. She had lied, and had nevertheless been crowned by the Archon’s own holy hands.

Rielle shut her eyes, her lips pressed together in a tight line. Perspiration beaded at her hairline. A din of screaming voices circled back to her—those belonging to the people she had sworn to protect, first as Sun Queen and then as the newly crowned queen of Celdaria. She had sworn this, and then she had abandoned her people. Their voices calling out her name were cruel black birds of memory winging in