“I tried to hold on to you.” Simon fumbled to fold the rag into her fingers. Then he lifted their joined hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “But I couldn’t. The thread was too strong for me. I was too young for it. And then your mother…”
“My mother.” The Blood Queen. If she believed that. Did she believe it? Tears gathered in her eyes. They didn’t have time for this, but if she moved away, the moment would snap, and she might never find it again. “Simon, what are you saying?”
“We are the only two left, Eliana. You and me. The only two who lived there.”
She ducked down to look at his face. “Where did we live? Tell me.”
“Celdaria.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “I tried to hold on to you, but time tore you away from me. We were only supposed to go to Borsvall. They were going to hide us from him.”
All the air left her lungs. Her mind raced. “From who? Corien?”
“He’ll never touch you. I lost you once, but I won’t ever again.”
She kept her hands folded around the little scrap of rag. Out of all things, she couldn’t move past one tiny question: “But, what is this?”
He looked down at the rag cupped in her palms and smiled.
“Your blanket.” The sorrow in his voice pierced her heart. “She wrapped you up in it, and when the thread ripped you out of my arms, it tore. I’ve kept this piece with me because it reminds me…of everything. Of home. We were so small, Eliana. And then I brought us here, and ruined everything. I failed you. I failed everyone!”
An explosion detonated; the ship rocked, heaving them both to the side.
“Eliana,” Zahra said tightly.
“I know.” Eliana cupped Simon’s face, looked into his ruined eyes. “We’re going to run now, and I can’t carry you. You have to help me. Just like you did before, in—” Her voice caught. Her necklace felt too sharp and cold beneath her shirt. “In Celdaria. Right?”
He nodded, then heaved himself to his feet. She propped him up against her side, slung her arm around his shoulder. Zahra leading the way, they limped out into the corridor and up the narrow stairs. Another explosion sounded, knocking them against the wall. Eliana hissed at the slam of Simon’s hard weight.
“Just give me a moment,” he said, his face tight with pain, “and then I’ll walk on my own.”
“I’m sorry, I know you’re hurt.”
“Don’t apologize to me, Eliana. Not ever.”
When they stepped outside onto the main deck, Eliana stopped cold.
A broad bay flanked with tall, jagged rocks and scattered with small icebergs stretched before them. Two lines of ships faced each other across a narrow expanse of black water choked with flaming wreckage. Beyond the water, crowded with soldiers, a white beach hugged a cluster of night-shrouded hills.
Astavar.
She stepped out from under Simon’s arm, made sure he could stand. “Zahra? Can you hide us?”
Zahra shook her head, mouth in a frustrated line. Her form faded, then flickered back whole. “I don’t think so, my queen.”
Eliana exhaled. “Perfect.”
“Stay close to me, step where I fly. I’ll find the best path I can for you.”
“We survived the end of the world, you and I,” Simon murmured, squeezing Eliana’s fingers. His breath puffed in the air. “We’ll survive this too.”
A chill seized her at his words. Then she tightened her grip on his hand, and they ran.
49
Rielle
“Onto this bleak and unknown path
Born from loss and paved with wrath
Cast down your heart and light the way
From darkest night to brightest day”
—“The Song of Saint Katell” unknown composer
Rielle stepped inside the Hall of Saints, her heart racing.
This was wrong.
To be in this room, wearing a glittering gown, with Bastien’s body not yet interred in the catacombs, with the kingdom grieving their dead and the loss of their king—it felt thoughtless, even cruel, for this to be the day that the Archon crowned her Sun Queen.
It would have felt cruel even if she hadn’t been the one to kill them all.
But the Archon had insisted upon it.
“Saint Katell’s writings require that the Sun Queen, when she comes, be crowned on a solstice,” he had explained to her the day after the fire trial massacre, her ears still ringing with the sounds of death. “We timed your trials for precisely this reason. You know this, Lady Rielle.”
She’d closed her eyes. A mistake. Every time she did so, she saw Ludivine falling to her death. After days of searching the maze’s smoking rubble, they hadn’t even been able to find her body.
“Yes, I know,” Rielle managed, her voice thick, “but perhaps, given recent events, the Church could—”
“No.” The Archon searched her face. She wondered what he would find. Did he look into her eyes and see what her father had always seen? The soul of a murderer?
“Now more than ever, Lady Rielle,” the Archon had said, “our people need hope. We cannot wait until the winter solstice to crown you. Celdarians need their Sun Queen to help them through the days to come.”
And what hope, she wanted to ask, can they possibly find in a killer such as me?
In the Hall of Saints, Rielle closed her eyes to fight back tears. Were it not for her, Corien would not have invaded the fire trial. The Sauvillier soldiers he’d entrapped would be at home in the north, and those innocents who had died in the hillside skirmish would be alive.
Ludivine. Papa. King Bastien. Lord Dervin.
The names cycled constantly through her mind, nicking away at the crumbling shell of her heart.
Ludivine.
The final count, according to the Lord of Letters’s report, was fifty-eight dead. Their blood now coated her hands, and she could not reveal the truth about why. Not yet. Not ever. Maybe, if Ludivine were still alive, Rielle would have dared confess to her.
Ludivine, she thought, despairing, I’m so sorry.
She opened her eyes to the waiting crowd, managed a solemn smile. The entirety of King Bastien’s court and the city’s elite had gathered inside the hall. Outside Baingarde, a throng of citizens waited in the stone yard at the castle’s entrance. At midday, after the Archon’s blessing, the solstice bells would ring.
Rielle looked ahead at the gold-plated altar, shining under the light of a thousand candles. The Archon waited for her in his formal robes. Behind him, in the rafters, stood a choir of temple acolytes singing “The Song of Saint Katell.”
She took a deep breath and began the long walk toward him, leaving her guards standing at the doors.
Weeks ago, she had made this same journey, frightened and uncertain beneath the stern eyes of the saints. On that day the hall had been mostly empty, and her walk had been lined with guards prepared to kill her.
But today the crowded room watched her progress with shining eyes. Reverent whispers rippled through them as she passed.
Ludivine had, apparently, commissioned the gown without Rielle’s knowledge. Ludivine’s red-eyed servants had brought it to Rielle three days before for final adjustments. She had taken one look at the gown and barely managed to send the servants away in time before losing her composure.
It was a vision in pale Astavari lace. The wide neckline left her shoulders bare. Long, airy sleeves fell to the floor, trailing beside the train of her skirt. A shimmering iridescent lining clung to her torso, shining through the lace’s fine weave. The effect made her look as though she had been dipped in liquid sunlight. Ludivine’s servants had begged permission to weave fine golden ribbons through the dark fall of her hair and paint glittering amber swirls around her eyes.
“Lady Ludivine would want us to take care of you,” the eldest of them had said, her mouth trembling, “and make you resplendent as the sun, my lady. And so we shall.”
But, walking through the hall, Rielle cared nothing for the gown, nor the murmurs of appreciation from the people she passed. Her fingers itched to clutch the necklace at her throat.
Instead, she found Audric sitting beside his father’s empty throne, and took comfort from the weary warmth of his eyes.