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.