Time slowed.
She saw herself, and Simon, both of them shivering and bloodied. She saw the beach being swarmed by monsters and the prows of the Empire fleet carving through the ice. She heard the Astavari soldiers’ cries for help, and she thought she heard Prince Malik Amaruk shouting orders for those fighting on the beach. She thought she heard Remy, hidden in Navi’s castle, whisper, “Eliana, please be all right.”
And she thought she heard a voice drift across the ocean to tell her, I felt that, Eliana. You can’t hide from me now.
Unseeing and all-seeing, Eliana stared at the exploding, frigid world around her.
Icy fingers of grief closed around her throat.
It will consume you. Her mother’s voice. A memory now and nothing more.
She dropped to her knees. Shoved Simon’s hands away, uttered a wordless protest.
I will not be consumed.
Then she slammed her fists hard against the ice and buckled over, struggling to breathe.
The noises of the battle around her fell away. She existed in a cocoon—the water lapping at the ice, the ice hot with her mother’s blood, the blood slick on her clenched palms.
The water rumbled, shifting. The ice cracked open. Rozen’s body slid into the water and disappeared. A dim percussive noise struck the air. Bright lights flashed—angry and too many.
A muffled shout pulled her out of whatever place she’d gone.
She blinked. Blinked again.
Simon pulled her to her feet. “You’re burning up. Come on, let’s move. God, Eliana, what did you do?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t know the answer. A charged feeling tugged at her hands, nipped across her skin.
They plunged into frigid, knee-high water. She watched her feet wade through a black ocean thick with chunks of ice, felt her boots slide through mud.
“Eliana, stop!”
She stood on shifting sand, water lapping at her toes. The shore.
“Look at me!” Simon was shouting at her, but the field of light beyond her eyes was too bright, too terrible. She squinted her eyes shut and turned into him. Her body could no longer hold itself up. She sagged to the ground, and Simon went with her, holding her in his arms. The wind howled around them, whipping ice and sand against her skin.
“What’s happening?” she murmured. A brutal coughing fit seized her. Every bone in her body ached, every muscle burned.
A cold hand smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “Look at what you’re doing, Eliana. I need you to open your eyes for me, come on.”
She forced open her eyes and looked out to sea.
Lightning flashed, three new strikes every second, painting the battlefield a fevered silver. They blasted apart the crawlers still swimming to shore; icebergs erupted into flame. Roiling dark waves crashed against the Empire fleet. A savage wind whipped sails from their masts, stirred the sea into whirlpools that sucked the warships underwater and snapped them in two.
“You have to stop it,” Simon shouted over the wind.
“Am I doing this?” she murmured, then realized she wasn’t breathing, that the storm had sucked all the air from her lungs. Her gasp hurt, cleaved her chest in two.
Simon’s hands cupped her face, steadying her. “Please, Eliana, look at me, look into my eyes.”
She did, sobs she didn’t intend to release tearing out of her throat. “I killed her. I couldn’t save her!”
“I know.” He wiped the grit from her face. “And I’m sorry. But you have to stop this now, or you’ll kill us all.”
She shook her head, realizing through the frantic roar of her despair that somehow she was doing this, that the world was echoing her own rage. Zahra was right, and so was Simon. There was an impossible thing living inside her. She had always thought it a monster of her own creation, forged by the violence she had done to survive.
But the truth was this: It was a monster given to her by her mother. The Blood Queen. The Kingsbane. A traitor and a liar.
And Eliana decided, in that moment, to hate her.
“I don’t know how to stop it,” she cried. Her fingers blazed along with the storm; the feeling revolted her. She watched ships being torn apart, soldiers swimming for their lives. Black waves surged toward the shore.
“Just hold on to me,” Simon whispered, cradling her against his chest. “Hold on to me and think of Remy. Think of Navi.” He pressed his cold cheek to her forehead. “Think of home.”
Home. And what was home to her now? Orline? Or Celdaria?
With the storm raging, she could remember neither place.