Kingsbane (Empirium, #2)

by Claire Legrand

Eliana turned away. “I don’t know how to be anyone’s hope.” Navi touched her cheek, turning her back. “You’re mine already. Did you know that? I’ve prayed to you all my life, before I knew your face. And since I learned who you are, I’ve prayed to you instead. You, Eliana, the Sun Queen of my prayers and my dreams. I lie here in this stinking bed as Fidelia’s poisons eat me alive, and I think of you and pray to you, and when I do that, I feel a lightness in my heart that helps me bear the rest of it. For even if I die, you will live on, and you will ride into the Emperor’s city on a steed of light and burn down every one of his towers until all that remains is ashes.”

“Like the sun and the moon. Like day and night. I am the shore and you are the sea, my darling. The wild, wild sea—ever-changing and mighty. I need your passion, and you need something steady to come home to. An anchor, warm and sunlit.”

“You’re not a fool. You’re a young woman, and you’re tired and lonely, and your heart holds a thousand different aches.

“Papa once told me that, when I lay dying—because someday I will, as will we all—I must not think of the things that frighten me, and I must not think of my pain. I must think of everyone and everything I have ever loved, for if I do that, those thoughts will follow me into death, and that far black place will turn bright and golden, as the world long ago used to be.”