41

Eliana

“It isn’t the concept itself of threading through time that so frightens those who decry the practice. Rather, their fear stems from the potential repercussions, the unpredictability. Time is not a clock that can be calibrated, no matter how skilled the traveler. Time is endless, brutal, and as untameable—and changeable—as the sea.”

—Meditations on Time by Basara Oboro, renowned Mazabatian scholar

Eliana hurried into Ludivine’s favored chamber, Simon close behind her. They both wore fresh clothes provided by the acolytes. Eliana’s coat buttoned at her shoulder and fell to her knees, flexible enough for her to move but thick enough to offer some protection. She wore a hefty weapons belt, laden with daggers, and felt a pang for her own lost knives.

She glanced at Simon only once. Moments ago he had been holding her, his face open and soft. Now, he was armored for battle. A long coat like Eliana’s, and beneath it a vest of mail. Revolver at his hip, knives in his boots and in sheaths strapped to his forearms.

Inside the room, Ludivine sat with Remy as she had with Eliana—in two chairs facing each other within a wide triangle of three flickering candles.

Ludivine glanced up, her skin pale as bone. Eliana startled to see how much she had changed in only a few hours’ time. Shadows darkened the hollows of her face, and sweat dotted her upper lip.

But her voice was still as cool water. “Is everything working as it should?”

Eliana could have happily struck her again for that. Such coldness in her voice, as if she didn’t know exactly what had happened, as if she could not feel the state of their hearts.

“All is as it should be,” Simon replied, his gaze bright as lit steel.

Ludivine didn’t flinch, but Eliana heard her voice, soft and sad in her mind. I’m sorry, little one. I was not always as I am now. I wish you could have known me when my heart was still whole.

Eliana sent her nothing in reply. No pity, no kindness. She had no room for it. Her body was taut and trembling; she pushed hard against herself as if fighting a rising flood. She heard soft footsteps at the room’s entrance and glanced behind her to see Navi and Ysabet, Patrik and Hob, Malik, and several others just behind them.

Navi reached for her. Eliana gratefully took her hand, then faced Ludivine once more. She didn’t look directly at the back of Remy’s dark head, too frightened to think about what he and Ludivine might have been discussing.

“Your acolyte said Corien has found us.” She bit off each word, teeth hard and tongue sharp. “Now what would you have us do? Where is he?”

Ludivine stood. Serene, she breathed in and out, then tilted her head slightly, as if listening for a distant sound.

Eliana tensed. A thick moment passed, and then she heard it: a rumbling vibration, a distant high shriek. Faint but unmissable. The air tightened, grew still. It was the moment before a storm broke open.

Behind Eliana, the others shifted nervously.

Ysabet marched forward, hands on hips, eyes narrowed. “She’s done something. Can you feel that? The stone is vibrating under our feet.” She jerked her head. “What have you done, angel?”

Beside Eliana, Simon shifted. She glanced at him. He would not look at her, but she sensed it was now for a different reason.

Ludivine gestured at the two acolytes flanking the door. At once, they began emptying the room—the chairs, the carpet, the pedestals on which the candles burned. Only the candles themselves remained, and Katell’s sheathed sword.

Remy silently came to Eliana’s side, found her free hand. The ache that now lived in her throat blossomed ruthlessly. If they did this, none of it would matter. Not Vaera Bashta, not Invictus, not the hard new glint of Remy’s eyes. He would be born to Ioseph and Rozen Ferracora and live a happy life in the city of Orline, writing stories and baking cakes. She refused to acknowledge any other possibility.

“This chamber lies at the heart of a labyrinth,” said Ludivine, very still as her acolytes bustled around her. “There are dozens of chambers, hundreds of passages. Some lead to rooms. Others lead nowhere. This will buy us some time. The cruciata are intelligent, but their bloodlust dulls their wits.”

Navi drew a sharp breath.

Just behind Eliana, Simon stood quietly, hands fisted at his sides.

Tentatively, Eliana reached for Ludivine’s mind. At once, Ludivine showed her the truth, her black eyes unblinking and unashamed.

“You’ve brought the cruciata underground,” Eliana whispered. Shrill, rasping cries, still distant, followed her words, as if the beasts had heard their name.

Someone behind her—Hob, she thought—muttered a sharp curse.

“Why?” Navi whispered harshly. “How?”

The chamber thrummed with rising vibrations. Something was approaching them, some ruthless marching weight. The beasts? Or worse?

Eliana’s stomach dropped. Clarity swept through her, heat chased by cold.

“Because the angels are coming for us,” she said, “and the cruciata will protect us.”

“Protect us?” Patrik scoffed, glaring at Ludivine. “They have no love for us, and now two enemies will soon be upon us, thanks to you.”

It had been so long since Eliana had seen Patrik that the sight of his furious pale face rested strangely on the surface of her mind, like oil topping water. He was familiar and yet not, flesh and blood and yet a memory. He glared at Ludivine, his ruined eye hidden behind a frayed black patch. And there was Hob, tall and frowning at his side, fresh scars on his dark-brown skin. Navi, her eyes bright with tears, her mouth thin with anger. Ysabet behind her, looking ready to tear out Ludivine’s throat with her teeth. Malik at the door, his face so like Navi’s—lovely straight nose, warm dark eyes. And crowding in the hallway, everyone Navi had brought with her across the ocean. Dozens of refugees and sailors and hardened fighters, all now trapped underground.

Looking at them, a slow tingle of horror spreading across her skin, Eliana understood why Ludivine had waited to guide her here. She had been waiting for Navi’s little army to arrive—a disposable infantry. Help is coming, the Prophet had told her. Help is close.

Ludivine smiled faintly at everyone gathered. “It’s time. Hurry. She needs you.”

One by one, their faces changed. A ripple of feeling passed through them like a shimmering wave of heat. Fear hardened into anger. Tears dried and mouths set. Patrik was the first to turn away and draw his sword, pushing past the others to hurry down the hallway. Hob followed shortly after him, then Malik, then Ysabet, with a ferocious growl.

Navi choked out a sob, pulled Eliana hard into her arms. A moment later, she was gone, the last of them to leave the chamber. Eliana stood frozen, the sounds of their war cries muffled by the blood pounding in her ears. Another breath, and her dread lifted. Sound came crashing back to her. She called Navi’s name, tried to run after them. Hands pulled her back against a strong chest. Too enraged to scream, she shoved Simon away with a burst of power from her castings. She didn’t realize she had tackled Ludivine to the ground and started punching her until Remy and Simon yanked her away.

“Every moment you helped me, every day you worked with me to strengthen my power,” she spat, “you knew what you would do. You saw Navi and the others coming to Elysium and guided them down here. You knew you would send them to fight the cruciata, sacrifice them without a thought if it bought us some time. You knew, and you never said anything to me.”

Ludivine sat up, wiping her mouth. As Eliana watched, her lip stopped bleeding. “Of course I didn’t.”

“Because you feared I would fight you.”

“I feared nothing. I knew you would react as you’re reacting now.”

A sob burst out of Eliana as she imagined Navi’s face. “I love them.”

“And they love you. Even those who have never met you. They love what they have been told about you. They believe in your ability to save them. And if they must die to allow you that chance, then they must die.” A smile touched Ludivine’s lips. “Navi draws irresistible pictures of you for anyone who will listen. Of course they love you. One night at Navi’s side, listening to her stories about you, and anyone would believe what she says. That you are a queen for the ages.”

Eliana wrenched her arms free of Simon and Remy. Her feet were stones on the floor. “You got inside their heads just now, sent them away to fight. You could have done that with anyone, recruited dozens of people from Elysium. Two hundred, five hundred. Why them?”

Ludivine let out a thin laugh. It did not move her face. Her mouth was pale, her eyes grotesquely dark in the bleached canvas of her skin.

“I’m not sure you understand how angry he is,” she said, her voice smooth as a polished blade. “It requires so much of my strength to keep him out of this room. I have very little left to spare, only enough to encourage people already inclined to die for you to go and do just that. I could not have shepherded people from the city down to us. I could not have gotten inside their minds and made them into puppet soldiers. It would have left me too vulnerable. It would have left Simon too vulnerable, or you. And now, every part of me that still lives is fighting him.”

Eliana pressed her fists to her thighs. A hundred people paled in significance against the entirety of humankind. She knew this.

And yet she clung to her anger. “You gave them no choice,” she whispered.

“They chose to sail to you,” Ludivine said. “They chose to follow Zahra through a city tearing itself to pieces when at any moment she could have died and they would have been discovered. One chink in Zahra’s mental armor, and a warship could have found them, blasted them to pieces on the high seas. I merely made a suggestion just now. A slight breeze at the backs of warriors already prepared to die and eager to fight.”

Eliana was too numb with sadness to protest when Ludivine took her hands. She wished Zahra were before her instead of this black-eyed angel with a hollow space where her stolen heart should be. She formed the thought viciously, slammed it at Ludivine’s face.

It remained unruffled, porcelain smooth.

“Five of my acolytes died twenty minutes ago while drawing the cruciata into my home,” Ludivine said quietly. “I have spent long years with all of them. I grieve their death. But I did not flinch at sending them to it, nor did they flinch at going. When Navi, Ysabet, and their crew left the Vespers, they knew they would sail to their doom. They did so gladly. They did so for you. It was their choice to fight then, and to fight today. We should now honor that choice by doing what must be done.”

Eliana held Ludivine’s black gaze, then turned away to face the empty door. Navi had stood there, and Patrik and Hob, only a moment before. Behind her, Simon and Ludivine were speaking. She ignored them, listening instead to the distant sounds of battle. Monstrous shrieks, wet guttural roars.

Swords crashing.

“I hear swords,” she said, the words foul on her tongue.

“My acolytes, before they died, managed to tempt one hundred cruciata underground,” Ludivine replied. “And Corien has sent five hundred angels ahead of him. They will move slowly, avoiding the cruciata blood our friends have spilled. This will give us some time. But their sheer numbers will eventually overwhelm the beasts. They will be the sea that clears a path for him. Before an hour has passed, he will stand in this room. But by then, you will be long gone.”

Eliana turned. Simon stood in the center of the room, his back to her. He pulled threads from the air, a weaver of light.

Ludivine put her hand on Remy’s shoulder. “Remy and I have been practicing Old Celdarian. In case something should happen to Simon, Remy will know how to speak with whomever you encounter. The common tongue was different then, and Celdarians will be more likely to trust you if you speak their language. Luckily, Remy’s vocabulary was already quite robust. He learned much in his time with Jessamyn.” She smiled fondly, tucked some of Remy’s dark hair behind his ear. “If only we had longer to spend together, Remy Ferracora. Your mind is a fascinating one. It holds so many dreams, even after months of living in darkness.”

Watching them, Eliana felt ill. She snatched Remy away from Ludivine, then walked with him to the far side of the room.

In the shadows, she steeled herself. Pressed her brow to his, held his cheeks. His eyes were her whole world. Bloodshot and blue, rimmed with dark lashes.

“I would say you can’t go with me,” she said, “but somehow I don’t think you’ll accept that.”

A tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “If I stay here, I’ll definitely die. If I go with you, I might live.”

She bit her tongue. It was not the moment to talk about time, what might or might not happen, what would or would not be changed.

“There is that,” she said weakly.

Remy put his hands over hers, gently pressed her fingers. “You can do this, El.”

It felt wrong to hear the pet name in his new cracking voice. This boy before her, this wiry killer with watchful eyes. She pressed a fierce kiss to his forehead. If she didn’t look straight at him, she could pretend away the past few months and imagine her room in Orline. The lace curtains, her mother’s quilt, Remy’s voice lulling her to sleep as he read of saints and angels, godsbeasts and kings.

From the corridor came horrible sounds, the crash and tear of teeth and swords like lightning splitting open the earth. A sharp cry burst free of the chaos. Eliana thought it sounded like Navi. Her neck went cold with sweat.

Ludivine moved past them to the door. The light from Simon’s growing threads lit the walls strangely, a wan white-gold that carried with it a sharp, acrid scent like the silver charge of spitting storm clouds.

“When you step through the threads, you will find yourself in the royal gardens behind Baingarde,” Ludivine said. Her hair was liquid gold in the growing light. “It was a peaceful evening. Audric, Rielle, and I were resting under a sorrow tree at the end of a long day. Long, but good. The trials were over. We had not yet left for the tour that would introduce her to the kingdom. Her father had recently died, and Audric’s too, and there was grief in us, and fear, but when it was only us three, there was also peace.”

She glanced back over her shoulder. The threadlight gave her eyes a golden sheen. “Simon?”

“Nearly there,” he said, his voice tightly coiled.

Eliana went to him and stood at his side. She felt Remy join her, caught a glimpse of how soft with wonder his face had become as he watched Simon work. The expression made him more familiar.

“Is there anything I can do?” Eliana asked.

Simon tightly shook his head. “No.”

“You’re doing wonderfully.”

His mouth quirked. His temples gleamed with sweat. “How would you know?”

The truth was, she didn’t. But it was beautiful, as it had been before, to watch his long, deft fingers draw light from the air. The serious furrow of his brow, the set lines of his jaw.

She placed her hand on his arm. His body relaxed, and the swirling threads of light gathering at his fingertips solidified, brightening.

Despite the fear turning coldly in her chest, Eliana smiled.

“Thank you,” Simon whispered, his voice thin beneath the growing hum of his threads, and though he could not remove his hands from the air, she felt him shift toward her. Their legs touched. Remy hooked his arm through hers, pressed his cheek to her shoulder. He muttered a sentence in Old Celdarian over and over. At the corner of Eliana’s eye, one of the candles flickered.

Then, an explosion of sound from the hallway, a titanic cascading clatter of metal against stone. Past the door flew a slain cruciata, flung by something out of sight. The raptor’s sleek black-green feathers painted bright blue streaks across the floor.

“He’s coming, and faster than I thought,” Ludivine announced. Her voice betrayed nothing, but Eliana felt the slightest of tremors in her mind.

“You’ll send us through and then come right after us,” Eliana said firmly to Simon. “Close the thread behind you. Don’t look back.”

Simon nodded. A slight shudder passed through his body. His threads—dozens of them, maybe hundreds—were gathering into a solid ring of spinning light. And as Eliana watched, darker threads joined the lighter ones, consuming them. They snapped like whips, lashing a spitting blackness through the air. The ring of light flickered, dimmed, then brightened. Dark threads twined with threads of light. Shapes manifested beyond the ring—tall green shadows like enormous soldiers marching in clean lines. Trees?

Eliana’s skin prickled. The royal gardens behind Baingarde.

She retrieved Katell’s sheathed sword and hooked it to her weapons belt, then drew the sword out for inspection. It was more elegant than she had guessed it would be, the golden hilt carved to resemble rays of sunlight, the blade polished to a high shine. Though it looked enormous, it felt light and nimble in her hands. She stood, marveling at how easily it moved through the air. Her castings sang against the hilt, their brilliant light kissing the metal.

Horrifying screams ricocheted through the halls outside. Someone whose voice she did not know begged for mercy.

A dark pressure rippled against her mind and brought with it a faint whisper:

Eliana.

Heart pounding, she returned Katell’s sword to its sheath. Pangs seized her, terrible longings for her room at home, for dear brave Zahra, for the warm embrace of Navi’s arms. Watching the threads, she held the knot in her throat so it could rise no further. She rolled her shoulders, shifted from foot to foot, shook out her hands and fingers. Her castings threw light across the ceiling.

Beside her, Simon’s arms trembled in the air as if holding up an unthinkable weight. She reached for him, then thought better of it. If only she could wrap him in her arms, bury her face once more in the hot space between his shoulders.

Instead, she faced the spinning ring of light, its sparks spitting across the room, and prepared herself to run. Her muscles tensed, Katell’s sword an unfamiliar slight weight against her leg. Beside her, Remy held a dagger in his right hand. At his hip gleamed another. His face, turned haggard by his time in Elysium, could have been carved from stone, perched atop one of the temples in Orline as a tribute to the fierce saints of old.

The moment Corien arrived, Eliana felt it like the fall of night across her skin. The air pulsed, suddenly so thick and close that Eliana gasped for breath. A roar of fury punched the walls. Metal hit metal. Did Corien also have a sword? What did it look like, two angels locked in combat of both blade and mind?

She kept her eyes on the threads, felt Remy start to turn, and grabbed him, swung him back around.

“Don’t look at him,” she muttered. “Look at Simon. Look at the light.”

She could feel Corien’s fingers scrabbling at the edges of her thoughts, digging for her. Her calm splintered like wood.

Eliana. His whispers tumbled like falling rocks. A rush of furious sound. Eliana.

“Go.”

Simon’s hoarse voice rang out like a shot. Eliana eyed the spinning threads as if they surrounded a chasm, cold and bottomless. A wave of fear swept across her skin, sharp as needles.

She resisted the urge to touch Simon and instead moved as close to him as she dared.

“Now?” she whispered.

Tears stood bright in his eyes. His mouth twisted. “Now. Go, Eliana.”

From behind them came a sharp cry. Some blazing instinct compelled Eliana to turn. Corien’s white shirt, half-torn from him, shone wet with red and blue blood. Veins of black drew a dark map across the winter of his skin. He drew wheezing breaths, and each step was unsteady, but whatever the cruciata blood had done to him, whatever lingering pain the blightblade had left in him, he was fighting it. A lesser angel, so drenched, might have died at once.

But Corien bared his teeth and raised his sword high. Ludivine stumbled. One of her hands flew to her temple. With a scream of fury, Corien swung at her. The blade sliced clean through Ludivine’s neck. Blood spurted like red rain. Her head dropped to the floor and rolled. Her body crumpled, and her sword clattered to the ground.

A whine of panic erupted in Eliana’s skull. She spun back to the threads and launched herself at them. She grabbed Remy’s hand, pulled him with her through the ring of light.

A gunshot cracked the air.

Behind her, Simon cried out.

Eliana turned back to reach for him, but something yanked him away, out of her reach. She saw a flash of his face, bright with pain, and then he was gone. His threads shifted sharply, veered, then righted themselves, as if a cloud had passed over them and then the sun had returned. The darker threads, those hissing tendrils of time, split and reformed. They grabbed Eliana and Remy, flung them forward. Her mind screamed with fear. Something gripped her throat, stole her voice.

Then she set foot on solid ground. The threads snapped closed behind her, singeing her heels.

She took a breath, desperate for a cool, quiet world of green. The royal gardens behind the castle Baingarde. It was a peaceful evening.

But then a bolt of fire zipped over her head. Breathless, she ducked, pulling Remy down with her. They hit the ground hard. Mud sucked at their feet and hands. The twin black smells of blood and smoke sent her head reeling. Something barreled past them, some great beast with a mottled furred head and a long serpentine tail. With each of its thundering steps, the earth quaked. Something glinted around its ankles as Eliana watched them streak by. Flat strips of metal embedded in swollen skin, each piece glowing with a familiar light.

Horror swept through her. This creature was not quite a cruciata, at least not like any she had seen, but it was close enough, and it wore castings. On its back sat a gray-eyed child with wrists that snapped fire. Eliana’s blood turned cold. An elemental child, controlled as the adatrox were.

She pushed herself up. Remy scrambled to his feet beside her. The world was an uproar of sunlight and fire, darkness that moved and howled. Something was burning nearby. They ran, choking on smoke, and found a rocky ridge to hide behind. They wedged themselves into a crevice slick with mud and blood. Beside them lay a man in armor, his glassy eyes open wide and one of his legs torn away.

Eliana hid the light of her castings against her chest and stared over the rock at the chaos beyond.

It was a battlefield, so vast it could have been the entire world. Soldiers in armor swung their swords, flung their spears. A horse with no rider raced by, its reins trailing. Eliana flinched as a shadow-hawk flew shrieking past them. It dove at an armored soldier, talons first, and expanded. A cocoon of darkness wrapped quickly around him, smothered him, and slammed him to the ground.

Night had fallen, and yet bursts and beams of light illuminated the fight in erratic flashes. Eliana saw a pale woman with short black hair swing a black staff topped with a glowing blue orb. The orb drew shadows from the ground, and soon a pack of dark wolves bounded away from her and into the battle, their jaws open wide. A man struck the ground with a glowing shield, cracking the earth open. Five soldiers stumbled clumsily into it, and Eliana saw one of their eyes as they fell—gray and cloudy, expressionless.

Her blood chilled. Adatrox.

“Look.” Remy, crouching beside her, pointed to her left, where the silhouette of an enormous mountain loomed in the distance. A thousand tiny lights spilled across its foothills. Fires marked an enormous stone wall. It was a city built on the hills that rose up toward the mountain, and at its apex stood a faint gray castle with towers reaching for the sky.

“Baingarde,” Remy whispered. In his voice, she heard the same reverent awe that had kept him reading about the Old World night after night, year after year.

Something exploded nearby. Fire bloomed and grew. A soldier flew—flew—away from the inferno, carried swiftly away on spears of white light tipped in shadow.

For a moment, Eliana could only stare. She had spent a dark lifetime in the palace of an angel, but never before had she seen one with wings.

Remy tugged on her arm, drawing her down. They flattened themselves behind the rock. Eliana’s castings trembled against her palms. Breathless, face pressed into the dirt, she tasted magic on her tongue. It choked the wind, sparked cold and metallic in her mouth, as if she’d kissed a bolt of lightning. Her vision was sharp as glass. Her blood roared, jubilant. Words floated to her mind on currents of gold.

Rielle was alive. The empirium had not yet been broken. Eliana dug her fingers into the mud, resisting the upward pull of the magic-ripe air. Was it possible to fly without wings?

“This isn’t the night Ludivine spoke of,” she said.

“No,” Remy agreed. In the shifting, bursting light, his eyes were glittering jewels. “This is spring, the last year of the Second Age. It’s the Battle of Âme de la Terre. The battle that ended the world.”