More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“He hates me,” she whispered at last against the curve of Corien’s ear. “He does not understand me.” Corien kissed the bridge of her nose. “He is too small to understand you. All of them are. They see a monster. I see a god in the shape of a girl.” His hand slid down her arm to rest on her hip. “They see a beast to be tamed. I see a divine creature aching to be set free.”
With every step we take away from our home, grief braids itself more tightly into the fabric of our deepest selves. And just as I cannot pry my grief from me, discard it, and move on without it, I also cannot let go of my hope.”
My belief is my hope, and hope is the light that shines even on the darkest night.”
If he had never loved Rielle, would they be standing there? Would a usurper sit on his throne? Would his father be dead and his mother a shell of her former self? It would have been easier, he knew, if he had never loved her. And yet, given the choice, he would do it again, even knowing what was to come. He would lose her a thousand times over if it meant he would first have the chance to love her.
“It was the only way, Eliana,” he said, the first time he had uttered her name in months. His voice broke beneath the word, and his fingers flexed at his sides, as if he longed to reach for her. “That’s what she told me. It was the only way.” He drew a ragged breath, then at last lifted his gaze to meet her own. She stepped back from him. That piercing blue, the full force of it like a strike to her chest. Once, it had held the heat of desire, the flint of anger. Not once until now had she seen his eyes raw with grief.
She stepped away from him to join her army as it marched relentlessly forward. She could see past them, past the mountains, past the Celdarian and Mazabatian armies assembled and waiting. She could see past all of it to a castle dark and tense, its halls rustling with urgent whispers, and a courtyard near the armories, where a king mounted a winged godsbeast and prepared to ride into battle.
“There is too much hate in the world already,” Navi replied after a moment. “Why direct more of it at yourself?”
“But you do have my love,” she said furiously, as if it were a curse. Simon watched her, hardly breathing. He did not blink. “I wish you had nothing of mine,” Eliana said through her teeth. Her cheeks burned with anger, and her heart ached in too many places. “Not my love, not my anger, not my memories. I wish you hadn’t seen what he did to me. I wish…”
He must have sensed her desperation, the wild sorrow building in her chest like a storm spinning with pitiless thunder. He moved sharp and hard, as if he could imbue in her the memory of every night they would never have. An apology for every time he had hurt her. A plea for forgiveness that would never come.
don’t love you,” she whispered fiercely against his skin. A moment passed. Then she felt Simon’s hand cup the back of her head, cradling her to him. His lips touched her brow. “I know,” he replied, his voice choked with sadness. “I don’t love you either.”
“I’m also trying to remember what it felt like, that first night we were together,” she whispered at last. “It was everything,” Simon answered. He heard the brittle sound of his voice as if he no longer belonged to his own body and was listening from somewhere distant, somewhere golden and warm within the light of their rising power. “You were everything that night. You were the entire world, and I was safe inside you. For once, I felt safe.” Eliana slowly wrapped her arms around his torso, then pressed her cheek between his shoulder blades and held him. “So did I,” she whispered.
Rielle no longer held a sword. It was her arm itself that burned, a brilliant red spear of light, and as it plunged for his heart, Audric held her beloved face in his gaze and whispered, “Rielle, I love you.”
“The empirium speaks to you,” Eliana said, tearing her eyes from Remy to find Rielle once more. “It speaks to me too. It tells me to rise. It tells me it is mine and that I belong to it. But I belong only to myself. And it is the same for you.”
“You can,” she said firmly. “And you will. We all have light and darkness inside us. That is what it means to be human.”
She met Rielle’s eyes. Their gazes locked. And then, as one, with the world’s ageless heartbeat drumming in their blood, Eliana and Rielle rose with blazing palms and turned to meet the fate they had chosen.
Rielle shook her head, struggling beneath the flat, hard press of his mind. One image rose to the surface, clung fast amid the chaos he was making of her thoughts: Eliana, falling to her knees in agony. Eliana, radiant in battle. Eliana, kissing her cheek.
“I may be a monster,” Rielle said, the words thick with pain, “but I am no longer yours.”
And on a small terrace outside the finest suite of rooms in Baingarde, the king of Celdaria cradled his daughter against his chest, watching the horizon bloom bright with farewell.
But out of everything in the shop, as wonderful as it all was, Eliana liked Simon best of all.
