said, his mouth against her hair. “Your home is wherever we are.”
But there was an emptiness in her, one that Corien hadn’t yet been able to fill. With Ludivine’s echo fresh in her mind, memories of home clung fast—Audric’s warm laughter, Ludivine’s softness, the scents of cinnamon in the kitchen and mountain snow on Atheria’s wings. Ale and fried potatoes in Odo’s tavern. The sweet floral perfume of the whistblooms surrounding the Holdfast. Candle smoke and prayer incense, rich and heady, in Tal’s office.
“The two of us together,” Corien insisted. “Together, Rielle. That’s all that matters.”
But Rielle knew—and so did he, she could sense it—that as much as they both wanted that to be enough, it wasn’t.
Not yet.
First, she would have to let this strange new life, the loneliness of it, the sorrow still aching inside her, finish breaking her heart.
And then she would have to rebuild it.
• • •
Five days later, they were on a stolen supply ship, sailing southeast across the Namurian Sea.
Corien had convinced its crew to massacre each other, sparing only enough of them to dispose of the others’ bodies and keep the ship afloat afterward. They drifted through their duties with gray, unseeing eyes—tending the sails, manning the rudder, swabbing the decks clean of their shipmates’ blood.
Rielle huddled in the captain’s quarters, a scratchy wool blanket wrapped tightly around her. They were in pursuit of the nearest casting—the arrow of Saint Ghovan. For months, Corien had been tracking the Venteran Obex, the ancient guardians sworn to protect the casting. They had abandoned their customary post and were instead now traveling at an obscene pace across the world, never stopping for long, using marques to jump from place to place.
Weeks earlier, their trail had ended abruptly on the southern continent of Patria, which had centuries before been the heart of the angelic empire. For weeks, the Obex had stayed in one place. Hiding. Waiting.
Had the Obex exhausted their power and energy? Were they stranded, their employed marques depleted, and ready to make a desperate final stand in the ruins of Patria?
“Or is it a trap of some kind?” Corien had mused two days earlier as he lay in the late captain’s bed with Rielle curled at his side. “Do they know I’m tracking them? Are they planning an ambush?”
He had laughed at the idea, and Rielle, weary, seasick, had smiled weakly against his sleeve. The smooth sound of his laughter was a gorgeous rarity. She clung to it.
“I do hope they’ll try an ambush,” he’d said, lazily stroking the curve of her back. “Wouldn’t that be amusing, my love?”
In his voice, she had heard what he expected of her: If the Obex were indeed lying in wait, planning an ambush, he wanted Rielle to kill them before they had the chance to attack. Dissolve them. Scorch them.
He wanted her to unmake them.
And I will watch you, Corien had whispered in her mind. My glorious queen, burning our enemies where they stand. Taking what is ours. Beginning our great conquest.
Now, on the floor, Rielle wrapped her long hair into a knot at the base of her neck and held it in her fist. She was too tired to think about unmaking anyone at the moment. Her pregnancy was a sickness; her joints ached, and her stomach churned.
And her mind would not quiet. Even through the door Corien had pulled shut and locked twice now, Ludivine persisted. She whispered and wheedled. She sent endearments and thin threads of memory.
Rielle ground the heels of her palms against her temples in tight circles. “Lu, go away.”
“If you want to see her,” said a small voice from across the room, “I can send you to her. Not all the way there in one go, of course, but eventually. It would be a start. Maybe he wouldn’t attack me, if you were with me.”
Rielle lifted her head, staring blearily.
Bound in the opposite corner, the girl-queen Obritsa met Rielle’s gaze. It was the first time she had spoken since Corien had taken Artem belowdecks just after they’d claimed the ship as their own. Where the Kirvayan guard was kept and what games Corien was playing with his mind, Rielle did not know.
“Isn’t that what you want?” Obritsa continued. “To see Lady Ludivine? To see them both? You didn’t have time to say a proper goodbye, after all.”
Rielle closed her eyes. “I didn’t want to say goodbye.”
“I saw you on the night of your wedding. You were devastated. There was agony on your face.