her own. Sometimes she was lost at sea and cried out for him, but even he could not find her there in the dark shimmering depths.
There, she was utterly alone with the empirium. Its tireless voice was an unending chorus of words too strange and terrible for her to decipher, and she could not plug her ears, nor did she want to. Wrapped up in its waves, she floated and dove and sank and drowned, and she welcomed each lung-crushing moment of pain. She opened her mouth and swallowed black water. She opened her eyes and saw skies scattered with gold stars. She reached out, fingers grasping, and was pulled down into darkness, and she welcomed the fall, because somewhere in the darkness was the answer.
Somewhere in this endless world of the empirium was more—more power, more understanding.
Why have you chosen me? She asked this many times. What do you want with me?
The empirium answered in incomprehensible words that rattled her bones and cracked her spine, but where she should have felt pain, she felt only warm waves of pleasure. She turned into the tide, let it sweep her down through ecstatic black water. It broke around her, a cold curtain of needles.
you are, rumbled a voice that was not singular but rather all voices, an eternal chorus.
Yes? She held her breath, listening.
Nothing answered her but the constant beat of her heart, the churning pulse of black waves.
Then the empirium spoke again—a boom of noiseless noise that exploded between Rielle’s ears:
I will wake
Her eyes snapped open.
• • •
She was surrounded by white, and she was in Corien’s arms. He held her against his chest, his black hair peppered with snow.
“There you are,” he whispered, relief plain on his face. “You’ve come back to me.”
Air burst into her lungs. She coughed, expelling water that wasn’t there, and pushed against Corien’s chest. “Put me down!”
He obeyed, looking flummoxed, and then Rielle was on the ground near a sweeping flight of black steps. The air repulsed her, as did the rock stretching for miles beneath her and the countless infinitesimal grains of moisture she could sense floating around her. She turned inward, away from the elements that called to her, away from the empirium that lived inside them all. In her head, she heard the crash of black waves, and when she fought them, they thundered ever louder.
“I am just a girl,” she whispered, praying it. A lie, and yet it comforted her.
Once she had remembered how to breathe, she looked around and saw that she huddled between two massive doors, each flung open wide. To her left, a sprawling landscape of mountains and ice. To her right, a dark entrance hall lit by torches in iron brackets.
She pressed her forehead to the cool floor—polished tiles of black marble veined with white. She pounded her fists against it once.
Corien knelt silently beside her. “What is it? What happened?”
“I was almost there,” she said, hardly able to speak. “I almost understood. I could see it. I could feel it. I was swimming toward it, and then suddenly I was here, with you.” She glared at him through her tears. “Did you wake me?”
“No,” Corien said calmly. “You woke on your own. I was worried…” He hesitated, his jaw working. “I was worried you might never wake again.”
Rielle closed her eyes, pressed her brow hard against the tile. It was cold as ice and settled her frenzied mind. “There was an ocean. A great black ocean lit up with gold. I was inside it. It was taking me…”
“Where was it taking you?”
“No, you don’t understand. It was taking me. It wanted to breathe. It wanted to walk, to see through my eyes.” She struggled to sit up, glad he did not try to help. She felt clumsy after days of inactivity, her body strange and heavy. Distracted, she placed a hand on her stomach. The girl on the mountain flitted through her mind, a memory she refused to follow.
“The empirium was claiming me for its own,” Rielle murmured, “and I wanted it to have me.”
Corien watched her curiously. “If the empirium had taken you, what would have become of you?”
“I don’t know. It would have killed me. It would have made me better, or stronger. Or maybe it would have not liked my taste and spat me out. But I would have known, at least, even if it had killed me. I would have understood.”
“Understood what?”
Impatience lashed through her. “This. All of this.” She gestured