“Not all angels are alike, and not all worship at the Emperor’s feet. There are those who have taken pity on us and believe the Emperor’s actions to be cruel and unjust. They remain bodiless and are considered traitors to their kind, all in order to ally with humans—descendants of those long-ago saints who once drove the angels into the Deep.”
—The Word of the Prophet
Eliana sank to the floor with a tiny dark laugh and rubbed the heels of her palms against her eyes.
“I don’t have time to sit around listening to…whatever this is. And whatever you are.” Eliana struggled to her feet and moved to the door. She was hallucinating. She was talking to a hallucination.
“My name is Zahra,” said the wraith.
“Right.”
“Rozen is not here.”
Eliana turned. A slow, panicked feeling unfurled in her chest. She kept her face blank. “Who’s Rozen?”
“The woman you think is your mother but truly is not.”
“Do you know a way out of here?” Hallucination or not, if she could use it to escape, she would.
“Yes.”
“Then either show it to me or fuck right off, would you please?”
Zahra raised one floating eyebrow. “This is not how I had imagined you would be.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” Eliana resumed pounding on the door with angry clenched fists.
The wraith appeared between her body and the door. Eliana’s fists flew through the wraith’s torso. Her balance tilted, her vision phased in and out of focus. She backed quickly away.
“What is that? Every time you come near me—”
“You feel ill.” Zahra nodded sadly. “It is a common human affliction when in the company of wraiths. You’ll get used to it, over time. Others have. Though you seem to be affected far more than most. Unsurprising, given your ancestry. Your sensitivity to changes in the empirium is undoubtedly tremendous.”
Eliana glared at the floor. “Get me out of here.”
“Wait a moment.”
“Get me out—”
The wraith rose to her full height once more, her black eyes flashing. “We can’t leave yet. We must wait first until the shift change is complete, and second for you to calm down, so I can be assured you won’t do something rash and endanger yourself.” Zahra exhaled sharply, considering her. “Simon’s message was accurate. When you’re angry, you very much resemble your mother. How unsettling.”
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.”
“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.”
Zahra reached for her, then closed her hand and floated back. “I wish I could touch you and give you comfort, my queen. That is the thing I miss most of all about my body.”
Eliana looked to the ceiling, willing her eyes dry. “You may call me Eliana. Nothing else.”
“As you wish, Eliana. But whatever name I use, it does not change the truth. You are my queen, and I serve you with great joy.”
“Then,” Eliana said through her teeth, “get me out of here.”
“I have always intended to do so,” Zahra said patiently, gesturing at the door. “The shift change is underway. In five minutes, once the new guards have settled into their posts, it will be safe to move. Believe me, my queen, I would not keep you here longer than absolutely necessary.”
“I will start pounding on this door and ruin our supposed escape if you don’t open it this instant.”
“And here I thought all your rashness had fled.”
“I’m not joking, whoever you are.”
“Zahra.”
“Yes, right.”
“Anyway, feel free to pound on the door all you like,” said Zahra, folding her vaporous arms smugly across her chest. “No one will hear you.”
Eliana narrowed her eyes. “And why wouldn’t they?”
“Though I may no longer look like an angel, and though my mind is not what it once was, I can still use it. And right now I am using it to make the vermin of Fidelia forget you are here.”
Eliana’s heart pounded hard in her ears. “You mean…you’re hiding me.”
“As best I can, yes.” Zahra hesitated. “Though once Semyaza finds us, that will change. Wraiths are not strong enough to deceive other wraiths.”
“Semyaza?”
“He serves this faction of Fidelia. He helps them hunt, disguises them, and distracts their prey. It was him you sensed in Sanctuary.” Zahra turned up her nose. “You’ll find, Eliana, that not all wraiths are as enlightened as I am.”
“What does he want? Why is he helping them?”
“Semyaza hopes that if he serves the Empire loyally, then once the Emperor has found the Sun Queen and bound her to him, Semyaza will be resurrected. He will have earned a body at last.”
Eliana shook her head, stepping away from Zahra. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Resurrected?”
“It would be easier to show you, Eliana. If you’ll permit me to take hold of your mind?” She tilted her head toward the door. “We have just enough time for it.”
“Take hold of my mind. Like the Emperor did?”
“What?” The drifting tendrils of Zahra’s hair and robes went rigid. “You have spoken with the Emperor?”
“At an outpost several days ago, I was…I was with Lord Morbrae. He looked at me, and something changed. I saw the Emperor. I was in Celdaria somehow. I couldn’t see anything very well, but I could see enough. And the Emperor, he found me standing there, and he…he knew me. I don’t know if he was happy or furious to see me. And I don’t know which is worse.”
Zahra closed her eyes. “Simon did not send word of this. Oh, he has seen you. He knows, then, that you are alive.”
“Why does the Emperor care who I am or that I’m alive?”
The wraith’s huge, dark eyes were terribly sad.
“May I show you, Eliana?” Zahra whispered. “Forgive me, but it will be easier for me than words.” She shook her head, sank to the floor. “This is a shock. This is an awful blow.”
Eliana crouched before her. “You swear to me that my mother isn’t here?”
Zahra peeked out from behind her hair. “Yes. Simon’s instructions were to send word if any of us found her. But I have not.”
“Wait.” Eliana’s body drew tight as a bowstring. “He knew that Fidelia took her?”
Zahra nodded miserably. “We were all told to look out for her.”
So. Simon had known. He had known who had taken her mother—and, Eliana suspected, he had known Fidelia was behind the other abductions too.
And he had not done a thing about it. He had led her across the country on this wild quest without so much as a whisper of the truth.
She gripped her knees, hard, and stared at the stained stone floor of her cell.
I will kill him for this.
“You may show me what you want to show me,” she said, her voice trembling with barely contained fury, “as long as you then help me find Navi before we leave this place. Do we have a bargain?”
Zahra nodded. “Yes, Eliana. I pledge this to you.”
Eliana gave her a grim nod. “Then do it. Quickly.”
Without warning, Zahra collapsed into a twisting cloud of light and shadow. Her new shape resembled great, jagged black wings.
Then she rushed at Eliana and disappeared.
And Eliana opened her eyes—and she saw.
• • •
Unlike when she had seen the Emperor, this vision was all too clear.
There was no fog blocking her sight. She felt the steaming hard ground beneath her feet. The air was close, rippling with heat; her nostrils burned from the ash darkening the air.
Movement at the corner of her eye made her turn. A woman stood watching her, tall and ebony-skinned, wearing a suit of tarnished platinum armor. Her thick white hair fell in braids past her hips, and gold paint rimmed her dark eyes. Massive wings of shifting light and shadow spanned out from her back.
“Zahra?” Eliana whispered.
Even Zahra’s small nod was magnificent. “As I was during the Angelic Wars. Before the Gate. Before the long curse of the Deep and the loss of my body.” Then she pointed. “Look, Eliana.”
Eliana squinted across the fire-ribboned plain, and images rushed at her like the horrors of a nightmare:
A woman stood on a distant flat plinth. She raised her arms and carved a blinding door from the sky.
A castle flashed white, then fell, and from the abyss around it rushed a wave of ruin. There was a cry of pain and fear, a chorus of thousands—millions—and then silence.
The screams of a woman in a bloodied bed.
A baby, held tightly in the arms of a boy. Eliana peered over the boy’s shoulder, and she knew as she stared at the infant that the face looking back up at her was her own. Then she turned to see the boy, and—
A vastness of black, filled with screams too alien to belong to either human or animal. There was a light on the horizon and a figure standing beside it. Eliana cried out, crushed by the lonely weight of this place, and ran toward the light—
She was back on the firelit plain, watching a woman kneel beside a dismembered, blood-soaked corpse. The woman’s back was to Eliana. She wore a suit of black armor and a crimson cloak. The woman moved pale hands over the corpse, knitting across skull and collarbone, down chest and across severed hips. The air around the corpse shimmered, shifting, and then the woman sat back, calm, and the corpse jerked, gasped, and staggered to his feet. He was no longer a corpse. His skin was whole and new, his limbs intact. He took a few unsteady steps before falling to his knees. He looked down at his body and then threw out his arms and shouted to the skies—with joy, with relief, with fury.
The woman rose, smooth and silent, to her feet.
“You’re working faster now,” said the man beside her, whom Eliana had not noticed before. “Well done.” He drew the woman into an embrace, and Eliana stood frozen in horror as their faces came into view.
The woman was dark-haired and unspeakably beautiful, with a face so pale and faultless it could have been carved from porcelain—save for the shadows stretching dark beneath her green eyes and the small, hungry smile curling her mouth.
Eliana brought shaking fingers to her own lips.
My mouth, she thought and then touched the brittle ends of her own tangled dark hair. My hair.
And the man standing beside this woman—blue-eyed instead of black but with the same lovely pale face and untroubled poise that graced the painted portraits in Lord Arkelion’s palace. Black hair, mud-caked cloak, a bloodstained sword at his belt. He guided the woman’s mouth to his, and she clung to him as if their kiss was the only reason she remained standing.
The Emperor.
Eliana frantically backed away, tripped over another corpse, fell to the ground hard.
The world shifted, darkened.
She blinked.
She had returned to her cell, and Zahra hovered quietly in front of her—a mere distortion of the air once more, ephemeral and wingless.
“Please breathe, Eliana,” Zahra urged gently. “I know it is a great deal to understand.”
Eliana gasped for breath, tears streaming down her face. Her skull felt too heavy for her body. Her skin still felt flushed from the battlefield’s flames.
“That was him,” she croaked. “That was the Emperor. But…”
“That was the Emperor before he called himself the Emperor. When his name was simply Corien. He was the first of us to escape. And I am sorry that he was.”
Remy was right. The thought kept circling through Eliana’s mind. They’re angels. The Emperor, his generals, Lord Arkelion, Lord Morbrae. Remy was right.
“And the woman,” she whispered. “I know her face.”
“I would imagine so.” Zahra touched Eliana’s hands, and Eliana felt nothing. “For it is your own, is it not?”
“Partly. More beautiful. More…”
“More unkind.” Zahra offered a small smile. “You have a kind face, Eliana, though you try to make it not so.”
Eliana crossed her arms and shut her eyes. “That’s why he recognized me. The Emperor. Corien.”
Zahra was silent.
“What were they doing?” Eliana asked. “That body.”
“What he failed to accomplish with your mother before her Fall ruined all their work,” Zahra said, “and what he hopes to finish with you. Resurrection. Our return—and our revenge.”
“Our. The angels?”
“Yes, Eliana.”
When Eliana opened her eyes once more, her body felt caught on a high, hot wind—floating, untethered.
“I hope you are lying to me,” she said at last. “Please tell me you’re a hallucination. I won’t be angry, I swear it.”
Zahra bowed her head. “I wish I could.”
“I am the daughter of the Blood Queen.” Her voice came out hollow, heavy. “Daughter of the Kingsbane.”
“You are.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That is understandable. It does not, however, change the truth.”
Eliana stared at the floor through a furious fog of tears. “How did I get here, then? If I was born back then, to her, and now I’m here… How?”
“That, I’m afraid, is not my story to tell.”
Eliana laughed wearily. “Of course.”
“Eliana, I’m not being coy—”
Eliana waved Zahra silent. She waited until her tears had dried, until she felt she could stand, until she could almost believe the story she told herself—that this was indeed a hallucination, some horrible dream brought on by whatever Fidelia had used to knock her unconscious.
Zahra said quietly at the door, “It’s time to leave.”
Eliana rose to her feet, wiped her face on her sleeve, and said to Zahra, “Then get me out of here. I have things to do.”
