Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,74

from black stone, immaculate and silent. Two adatrox guards flanked door 14. Jessamyn prepared to order them aside, but they opened the door and stepped away before she could.

She set her jaw as she breezed past them. She hoped that when the Empire had been elevated to its proper former glory, the use of adatrox soldiers would no longer be necessary. They could be useful tools, she supposed, but she hated their sightless gray eyes, the stupid, jerking way they moved. Controlled by angels, their own human minds flattened and ravaged—the adatrox reminded her of her own humanity, and how weak it was. How easily she could be invaded and manipulated, reduced to some puppet creature, if she failed to prove her worth to the Emperor.

Someday, when she had earned her angelic name, and with it a place as an adviser to the Emperor, she would tell him this. And he would listen.

A tiny chill of pleasure skipped down her arms as she imagined it. Since her appointment with the Emperor the day before, she had not been able to stop thinking of him. Blood-splattered, wild-eyed, and beautiful, whispering to her of the plan they would carry out together. Turn the boy Remy into a weapon. Use him to wear down the last of Eliana’s will.

Show the little shit of a princess that the one person left to her in the world had become an eager pet of the enemy—all thanks to Jessamyn.

Pride warmed her chest. If only Varos could have seen this day. He would never have doubted her again.

Jessamyn stood tall in the door of Remy’s cell. He huddled in the corner. The air was foul and cold.

“Wake up,” she commanded.

A moment passed. Remy did not move.

She stormed toward him, grabbed the collar of his prison tunic, and wrenched him to his feet.

“Wake up,” she repeated, shoving him away with a snarl.

He stumbled, wide-eyed, and managed to right himself. His bare feet slapped into a shallow dark puddle near the drain in the center of the floor.

In silence, Jessamyn assessed him. He was a skinny bird of a boy. His head barely reached her shoulder. His matted hair had grown wild; his bottom lip was swollen and bloodied. Scratches marred his arms and feet. He stood with his shoulders hunched, his body curled forward as if to protect his middle.

Jessamyn suppressed a swell of irritation. Presenting a mangy, half-dead child to the Council of Five as her new student would make her a laughingstock, no matter the Emperor’s orders.

She would need time alone with Remy before anyone at the Lyceum got a good look at him. It was not only her reputation at stake but Varos’s as well.

“My name is Jessamyn,” she told him. “You will come with me.”

She turned and made for the door, but he did not follow. At the threshold, she glared over her shoulder.

“Or would you prefer to stay here?” she asked calmly. “Alone and festering in the dark? Rotten scraps to eat and guards coming every morning to beat you?”

At last, he spoke. “Is where you’re taking me worse?”

That surprised her. Such a miserable-looking creature; he didn’t look as though he had any wits left about him.

“Better in some ways, worse in others,” she answered, for there was no point in lying. She forced herself to gentle her voice. Let him think she could be a friend. “But you will see your sister. In fact, if you do as I tell you, there will soon come a time when you’ll be able to see her every day.”

His face brightened. In his eyes shone a small light of hope.

Jessamyn frowned as he limped to follow her. So there was softness in him yet.

There would not be for long.

• • •

That night, Remy sat on a stool in Jessamyn’s room at the Lyceum, watching her closely in the mirror.

“Your face is your biggest failing,” Jessamyn told him. A silver snip of her scissors. He had bathed, and now she was trimming his hair to a respectable length. “I can see every question you wish to ask, every emotion you feel.”

She watched him attempt to school his features into a cold mask. It might have been humorous, had the Emperor’s words not still been whispering in her thoughts.

Maybe he was watching them even now.

Jessamyn glared at her muddled reflection in the scissors’ blades.

“I understand,” Remy told her, his voice carefully even.

“You understand nothing.” Jessamyn stepped back to check her work. “And if you want to survive,