Eliana shook her head. “This is quite an elaborate delusion.”
Zahra raised one amused eyebrow. “I assure you, your mind is quite sound.”
“You know Simon, do you?”
“I do. Though, only through messages passed through the underground. I serve the Prophet, and so does he.”
“The Prophet this, the Prophet that,” Eliana muttered, rubbing her temples. “Who is this man, and why does everyone fawn over him so? What does he want, anyway? There has to be more to him than simply some noble selfless desire to save the world from tyranny. And how long has he been around? Is there one Prophet or many?”
“You certainly have many questions. I don’t blame you.” Zahra drifted to the door, cocked her head. Listening? “But perhaps we’ll wait until a bit later for a Red Crown history lesson.”
“You’re Red Crown?”
“Obviously. As I said, I serve the Prophet.”
Eliana longed to punch something. “What are we waiting for exactly? I promise I won’t act rashly. Is that what you want to hear, my imaginary little friend? All my rashness has fled, I swear it.”
Zahra’s black mouth thinned. “No matter how long I spend among humans, I sometimes forget that I must actually put voice to my thoughts for you to understand.”
“As opposed to?”
“When I speak to my own kin,” Zahra explained, “I have no need for words.”
“Wait, you…” Could Remy have been right? Were the old stories true after all? “You mean mind-speak.”
Zahra inclined her head.
Eliana’s blood ran cold. Suddenly the idea of conversing with her own hallucination no longer amused her. “You’re an angel.”
“Once, I was. But no longer.”
“Well,” said Eliana, retrieving her tray from the floor, “if I hadn’t already decided to mistrust you, I certainly do now.”
“I understand that compulsion. Our two races have not always been friendly.”
“What is it you want with me?”
“To take you home,” Zahra said patiently, “as I told you before.”
“To Orline? Why?”
“Not Orline. Celdaria. We cannot go immediately there, of course, but—”
“I’ve never even been to Celdaria,” Eliana snapped, though her stomach tightened unpleasantly at the name of the far eastern kingdom. Her vision of the Emperor returned to her, as though it had been carved into her mind and coated with dust, and now a sharp wind had uncovered it.
“You have, once,” Zahra argued. “My queen, you were born there.”
“Ah, I see. Of course I was.”
Zahra frowned. “You’re mocking me.”
“Tell me what you want me to know, and I’ll say yes to it all, and I’ll believe what you want, as long as you get me out of this cell and help me find Navi.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“But you just said—”
“Princess Navana is not our priority. Nor, I must add, is Rozen Ferracora. You, Eliana, are all that matters—to Red Crown, to the Prophet, to all enemies of the Empire.”
“If you don’t help me rescue Navi and then help me search for my mother, I will make every last second of your life a miserable and agonized one.”
“I doubt that,” said Zahra, “as you will die long before I will.”
Eliana froze. “Is that a threat?”
“It is a fact. You are a human. I was once an angel, and now I am forever trapped as this.” She reached down with long-fingered hands, picked wistfully at her robes. “I will live long past the age when the last human walks the earth. And yet, if given the chance to step backward in time, I would make the same choice.”
Eliana narrowed her eyes. “What choice is that?”
“I would choose to stay in this form—stripped of all physicality—rather than be resurrected. What so many of my kin have done is abhorrent.”
At Eliana’s blank expression, Zahra sighed. “Am I to assume from the look on your face that you, the Sun Queen, are unfamiliar with the stories of how the world once was?”
“I know the stories,” Eliana bit out impatiently. “My brother won’t shut up about them.”
Zahra’s expression softened into something like pity. “Simon sent word about him as well. Remy, yes?”
Tears rose hot and sudden in Eliana’s eyes. “Don’t you dare say his name.”