in hand—the frontispiece of a meticulously curated collection of obscure Astavari children’s tales. In the illustration, visible only when illuminated by direct sunlight, Tameryn is a child, and though ordinarily her likeness is of grave expression, in this instance she is beatific. In repose among a meadow’s flowers, she holds to her breast a white kitten in one hand and a beam of light in the other. No black leopard godsbeast to guard her. No dagger with which to fell her enemies. Not a single shadow in sight.”
—A footnote in The Book of the Saints
Rielle waited with mounting impatience for the tailor to finish adjusting the fabric of her new gown.
But she could not allow herself to be impatient. She needed to keep her mind as schooled as her face—mostly blank, a touch of imperiousness. The tailor moved quickly around her, pinning fabric, taking measurements. Corien had insisted she have a spectacular wardrobe, and the tailor he had conscripted for the job hailed from Kirvaya. Brilliantly talented, Corien had assured her, and indeed the man had created something exquisite—a high-collared black gown with structured shoulders and long snug sleeves that glittered with artful swirls of tiny gold jewels, a high waist, and a sweeping, dramatic skirt that allowed room for her growing belly.
Exquisite, and yet Rielle could not look directly at it. The black expanse of it, the glittering gold froth at the hem, reminded her of the endless sea of the empirium and how she had nearly drowned in it.
How she had wanted to drown in it.
The tailor fussed with a wrap of dark gray fur, draping it across her shoulders.
Rielle locked eyes with her reflection. The same green she had always seen in mirrors now flared with thick bands of swirling gold. The change had been happening slowly over the past few months, and she had ignored it, but could do so no longer. The gold would soon eclipse the green.
Suddenly, she could not bear to stand there any longer. Her stomach was unsettled; she couldn’t eat anything anymore without feeling sick. And she was surrounded by horrors. Monsters crafted from dragons and children forced into their magic. Monsters battering at the Gate. A monster who kissed her one moment and crafted abominations the next.
And she herself, the most monstrous of them all.
“We will finish this later,” Rielle announced, placing a hand on her belly. “I feel ill and need to rest.”
Half a lie, and one that almost made her laugh. She would never be allowed to rest.
As her handmaidens helped her undress, slip into a sleeping shift, and find her furred slippers, Rielle imagined clamping her thoughts between the jaws of a vise, afraid to breathe too loudly. Corien was working somewhere deep in the bowels of the Northern Reach to which he had not yet introduced her. With his mind occupied—directing the movements of angels around the world, communicating with those still in the Deep, working with his physicians to cut and maim—Rielle’s own mind was as clear as it would ever be.
But she had to move fast.
As soon as she was alone, she gathered every piece of warm clothing she could find. Her sturdy fur-lined boots, which she had worn earlier that week when Corien gave her a tour of the reeking dragon pens. Thick tights, thick wool stockings, tunic, and trousers, and a long fur coat that fell past her knees. A scarf to wrap around her head and neck and a fur hat to tie down over that.
She fashioned a sack from one of the bedsheets, trying to put out of her mind the recent memory of being tangled in it, Corien’s mouth hot on her skin. Her hands shook as she stuffed her makeshift bag full of clothing. Then she grabbed a blank page from the notebook on Corien’s desk and a pen and stuffed them into her bodice.
She flew down the hidden staircase that began behind the mirror in the bathing room—a secret passage through which Corien could enter and exit his rooms privately. It was mid-afternoon—the laboratories and barracks, the mines and forges, would be bustling with activity, but the fortress itself was quiet. Rielle hurried to one of the supply storerooms near the kitchens, grabbed potatoes and hard rolls, a few strips of cured elk meat. She couldn’t guess what food they would be able to find or where their journey would take them.
She reached out with her mind, wondering if she would feel Corien watching her.