Simon
“In holy lore and sacred art, particularly concerning the saints, the image of the wolf can often be found. Though not a godsbeast, the animal is significant. A pack of wolves raised the orphaned Saint Tameryn, and godsbeasts were often found in the company of wolves. The beast has an affinity for creatures touched by the empirium, but do not mistake it for a guardian. The appearance of a wolf can also mean uncertainty. A precipice. A portent.”
—A footnote from The Book of the Saints
When Simon strode into the kings’ war room, he knew at once that Eliana wasn’t there.
It was a terrible, marvelous thing, to be able to so keenly sense her presence. He was no angel—though as a marque, somewhere in his veins existed angelic blood, dormant and useless, snuffed out by the goddamned Blood Queen along with everything else. He was no angel, and yet back in Orline, after only a few days spent observing Eliana from a distance—before they had sparred in her home, before he had been able to, at last, look her in the eye and see that face of hers, uninterrupted and unimpeded—after only a few days observing her, he had known her. The way she moved through a space, the sound of her footfalls against the ground, the lines between her eyebrows when she frowned.
Her father’s full mouth, his serious brow, his dark eyes. Her mother’s fierce jaw, the delicate turn of her wrists.
From the first moment he had set eyes on Eliana, he had known her in his bones, in the knit of his muscles, in the roar of his blood. As a boy, he had cradled her tiny infant body in his arms and done everything he could to hold on to her even as the world ripped itself apart at their feet. And now, as a man, her closeness changed the air around him, drawing his senses taut as bowstrings and lighting his skin from the inside out, as if he had consumed a brew of stars that wouldn’t stop spinning.
But in the war room, the air remained dull and unremarkable, and he knew she wasn’t there even before he scanned the room to confirm it.
Ordinarily, he wasn’t one to make a scene, but in that instance, he felt dangerously close to it.
“Where is she?” he said very quietly, and then a soft cry from the far side of the room alerted him to Remy.
The boy ran for him and slammed into his front. Face muffled against Simon’s shirt, his arms tight around Simon’s torso, Remy mumbled, “Navi said Eliana went to find me, but she hasn’t come back. We sent guards to find her.”
Simon placed one hand on Remy’s head and another on his shoulder. He felt a horrible idea beginning to form. “And where is Harkan, might I ask?”
Navi met his eyes from across the room. “We haven’t been able to find him either.” Then she paused, her eyes widening. “You don’t think…”
“I don’t know what I think, but I certainly don’t like not knowing where either of them are. In fact, instead of just standing here staring at me, why don’t you send out more of your guards to fucking find them?”
King Tavik, bent over a crudely sketched map on the room’s central table, straightened with a dark look. “Right hand of the Prophet or no, if you say anything like that to my daughter again, I will have my guards toss you out of this tower.”
“I’ll help,” Navi offered dryly.
Simon ignored the king’s glare. “Tell me what happened the last time you saw her.”
“She said she needed to find Remy, which I understood,” Navi replied. “She left in the direction of the central library.”
“Damn it, Navi.” Simon turned away, dragging a hand through his hair. “You shouldn’t have let her go.”
“And what should I have done, exactly? Ordered her not to go after her brother? Bound her in chains and forced her to come with me instead?”
“Yes,” he said at once. “That’s exactly what you should have done.”
Navi rose from her chair, leaning heavily against a broad-shouldered female guard. “Has it occurred to you that your insistence on shaping her path for her might be the very thing that keeps driving her away from you?”
Simon bristled. “I’ve been exceptionally patient with her.”
“Your definition of patience is an odd one, Captain,” said Lady Ama mildly, examining the map alongside the kings. “You’ve been hovering around that poor girl for weeks, brooding and scowling.” She raised an eyebrow, glancing up. “Did the Prophet forget to teach you manners?”
“Manners have no place in a world at war,” Simon said. “And, yes, Navi, your guards should have bodily restrained her, if necessary. Without her, we have no chance to mount any sort of resistance, or fight the Empire, or turn the tide of war. Without her, we’re nothing.”
“We’ve done a fine job on our own in Astavar for decades now,” said King Eri. “We’ve resisted the Empire’s fleets—”
“They were toying with you,” Simon interrupted. “This is all a game for the Emperor. Until he found Rielle’s daughter, his slow conquest of this world was a game, a way to pass the time. Now he’s found her, and this is no longer a game. It is a hunt. An obsession. This invasion is only the beginning. He will stop at nothing until he finds her, and when he does—”
A series of explosions shook the room. Remy’s hand tightened around Simon’s fingers.
The door to the war room burst open, admitting Hob and a servant—a young woman, perhaps a year or two older than Eliana. Her mouth was set in a thin, grim line.
Hob wiped his brow, his dark skin gleaming with sweat and dust. “Tell them what you told me, Perri.”
Perri nodded once. “I saw them. Lady Eliana and Harkan. They were talking in the corridor near Lady Eliana’s rooms. And then…”
Perri glanced at Hob, hands clasped tensely at her waist.
“It’s all right,” said Hob. “Go on.”
Perri squared her shoulders. “And then I saw Harkan grab hold of Lady Eliana and press a cloth to her face. She struggled, and then went limp. She was still a little bit awake, I think, at least enough to walk beside him. But he directed her movements, as though she wouldn’t be able to walk without his help. Her eyes were open but foggy. And Harkan, he looked terribly upset. For a moment, I thought he might be sick. Then they were gone, hurrying down the hallway. I came at once to tell someone, and I found Hob.”
Then Perri’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry I didn’t go after them. I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“It’s good that you didn’t,” Navi said gently into the shocked silence, her face hard as stone. “He might have hurt you to get away.”
“I will kill him.” Simon’s anger was so complete it numbed him, reduced him to a man incapable of moving. His mind buzzed and snarled—every instinct he possessed, every lesson that had been beaten into him, flooding him with the desire to inflict violence. “I’ll find them, and I’ll kill him where he stands.”
“Please don’t,” Remy said, his voice breaking. He tugged at Simon’s hand. “We’ll find them. They can’t have gone far. Harkan was probably just afraid. He wouldn’t hurt her. Maybe she was trying to leave again, and he had to stop her.”
“She would try to flee, leaving you behind? Impossible.”
And then Simon’s path became clear to him.
He detached himself from Remy’s grip, placed both hands on the boy’s shoulders, and leaned down to look him in the eye. Navi would try to stop him from taking Remy, as would Hob, as would all of them.
They would fail.
“Do you trust me?” he asked Remy, gentling his voice. Even in his fury, it was an easy thing to do—to slip into that cunning silver world of lies in which he had been raised since landing in this future, all those years ago.
Behind Simon, the war room doors opened once more, admitting Prince Malik, Commander Haakorat, and two other soldiers, each of them spattered with mud and blood. They hurried to the table, Malik consulting in furious whispers with the kings.
Remy watched them, biting his lip. “Malik doesn’t look happy. Do you think the city will fall?”
“Answer me.” Simon turned Remy back to face him. “Do you trust me, Remy?”
“El would say I shouldn’t,” Remy replied after a moment, and then his expression flattened in a way Simon had never seen before. “Which probably means I should.”
“Good boy. If we move quickly, we can find them, catch up with her and Harkan before they slip into the wild for good. And if you’re there with me, I’ve got a better chance of either changing his mind or turning her against him.”
Remy considered him gravely. “Will you hurt me to get her back?”
Simon only paused for a moment. There was no point in lying to the boy, and telling him the truth, as harsh as it was, would perhaps further engender his trust. “I don’t want to, but if I must, I will.”
Remy glanced over Simon’s shoulder. “Navi’s watching us.”
“Answer me quickly, then.”
The boy’s bright-blue eyes locked with Simon’s own for a long moment. Then he lifted his sharp little chin, squaring his jaw in the same way Eliana so often did. “I’ll do it.”
Simon gave him a tight smile. “Hold on to me, and close your eyes. When I run, you run too.”
Then he reached into his pocket, withdrew three tiny black smokers, and flung them to the floor. They cracked open with a trio of sharp pops, filling the room with smoke. Hob’s deep voice bellowed a curse. Navi called out Simon’s name. Guards drew their weapons, coughing, the metallic scrape of their swords ringing in the swirling darkness.
Simon ran, trusting Remy to keep up. At the door, he smashed his fists into the jaws of two guards obstructing their path. Their bodies slumped to the floor. He snatched one of their swords, and a dagger from the nearest one’s belt, and thrust the latter at Remy.
The boy grabbed the weapon, and together they fled back through the war room tunnels to a castle full of shattered windows and screaming servants. The sound of nearing gunfire punctuated the air, and Simon refused to think about bullets piercing Eliana’s body, or cannon fire blasting her to bits, or how he should have taken her away from this place as soon as she had forged her castings.
Instead, his thoughts glided into the comfortable rhythm of the Prophet’s teachings, the years of training and conditioning he had endured in that frigid compound under the mountain, the long, brutal dark his life had been before finding Eliana in Orline. Three soldiers pursued them from the war room. He pulled the revolver from his hip and shot them each through the skull. Remy cried out in protest, but Simon shoved him onward.
With every slam of his boots against the floor, his mind chanted one furious word—a curse, a plea, a prayer.
Eliana. Eliana. Eliana.