been trapped in this clearing for days, crawling and desperate, trying to escape Corien’s hold.
He stalked toward Obritsa, grabbed her tangled white hair, yanked her to her feet. She did not cry out. Instead, she kneed him in the groin, twisted out of his grip. That startled him; Rielle could feel his surprise. She watched in astonishment as the girl whipped a crude knife out of her boot—a jagged piece of stone sharpened into a blade. Obritsa swiped at Corien as he lunged. Her knife sliced across his chest. He roared in fury, backhanded her. She crashed to the ground. Her knife flew into the trees, and she scrambled for it.
Corien found her first.
She collapsed with a scream. Her small body twisted in the dirt like a beached fish.
“You thought you could run from me,” Corien said, crouching over her. “You thought you could beat me.”
“I did,” Obritsa gasped out. “For three days I beat you.”
Corien’s face twisted with fury. “I don’t need to touch you to hurt you, but it does intensify the feeling.” He lowered his hand to her face, pressing her cheek into the dirt. “Don’t you agree?”
Obritsa’s shrieks were animal, unintelligible. A low moan sounded from Rielle’s left—Artem, still immobile on the ground, a soft groan of distress the only thing he could manage as Obritsa writhed.
The sound was so pathetic that it embarrassed Rielle. And if Corien kept going, he would kill the girl. They would be stranded here—wherever here was—and would have to covertly secure transportation through coercion, manipulation, and murder. Doable, but messy.
Rielle was too tired for messy, and the sight of Obritsa’s legs kicking, her fingernails scraping the ground as she tried to push away from Corien, turned Rielle’s stomach. A desperate feeling touched her—a sense of being pinned down, of being caged—and she realized Obritsa’s fear was spilling out of Corien’s thoughts and into her own.
The Kirvayan queen was a tiresome brat, but this was not the way to punish her.
Rielle stepped forward. “Release her.”
“Oh, but she ran away,” Corien said sweetly. “She must be punished.”
“You’ll punish the life out of her, and then we won’t have a marque to help us. Release her, now.”
“Like a naughty dog, she ran off and made us chase after her.” Corien clucked his tongue. Obritsa’s back arched, her scream cracking with sobs.
“And it’s your fault she was able to run away,” Rielle pointed out.
Obritsa’s screams subsided to awful choked whimpers.
“Release her,” Rielle commanded.
Corien growled an angelic curse but did not relent.
“Fine,” she said sharply. “You idiot.”
A flick of her wrist, and Corien flew back through the trees. He hit one spine-first, then dropped into a bed of tangled undergrowth.
Lightheaded, Rielle stood over Obritsa as the girl was sick in the dirt. Artem, his breathing labored, pushed himself onto his hands and knees.
“Korozhka,” he wheezed, then spoke to the girl in Kirvayan as he crawled toward her. Rielle knew enough of the language to translate: My queen, my dearest heart, I’m here. If you live, then I live. If you die, then I am no longer.
At the naked tenderness in his voice, an unwelcome pang shook Rielle. A door inside her unlocked and gave way, and a flood of images claimed her vision.
She saw herself in Baingarde, sleeping peacefully in her bed with Audric on her left and Ludivine on her right. Limbs sprawled across pillows. Audric snoring. Ludivine’s eyelids restless with dreams. They were young. It was a thing they often did in childhood—sneaking into each other’s rooms, reading books and playing games, eating cakes stolen from the kitchens until they fell asleep in a pile like a pack of tired puppies. It was before Ludivine died, before an angel took her place. Before the trials. Before Corien.
Rielle froze, seeing but not seeing Artem and Obritsa’s embrace—Artem smoothing Obritsa’s dirt-streaked hair, Obritsa whispering fiercely, tearfully, against his collar.
Rielle’s body was there in the wilds of Vindica, but suddenly her mind was at home in Celdaria.
Another vision came. She was playing a game of snaps at a sticky table in Odo’s tavern. There was Audric, losing cheerfully, his curls damp from the heat and his smile broad. And there was Ludivine—an angel now, though they didn’t know it—leaning in close, pressing a kiss to Rielle’s cheek.
Rielle shook herself, stepping away from Obritsa and Artem.
Ludivine had found her at last.
“Go away,” Rielle whispered. “I don’t want you here.”
In answer, another image appeared: herself in Garver Randell’s shop, listening patiently as the boy Simon taught her the