Furyborn by Claire Legrand Read Free Book Online

Onecould not hunt without a good night’s sleep.
    “We don’t have to watch,” she told him as patiently as she could manage. “We can go.”
    He released her hand. “You can go if you want. I have to watch.”
    There it was again—that same exhausted tone, like a sad-eyed hound resigned to its next beating.
    To keep from snapping at him, Eliana fiddled with the battered gold pendant under her cloak.She wore it on a chain around her neck every day and knew the scratched, worn lines of it by heart: The arch of the horse’s neck. The intricate details of its wings. The figure riding astride it, sword raised, face blackened from time: Audric the Lightbringer. One of the dead Old World kings her brother obsessed over for reasons Eliana couldn’t fathom. Her parents told her they had found thetrinket on the street when Eliana was still a baby and given it to her to calm her crying one sleepless night. She had worn it for as long as she could remember, though not out of love for the Lightbringer. She cared nothing for dead kings.
    No, she wore it because, some days, she felt like the familiar weight of the necklace at her throat was the only thing that kept her from flying apart.
    “I’ll stay,” she told Harkan lightly. Too lightly? Probably. “I’ve got the time.”
    He didn’t even scold her. The executioner lifted his sword. At the last moment, the child raised his hand in a salute—a fist at his heart and then held up in the air. The sign of allegiance to the rebellion, to Red Crown. His arm shook, but he stared at the sun with unblinking eyes.
    He began reciting theSun Queen’s prayer: “May the Queen’s light guide me—”
    The sword fell.
    Eliana’s tears surprised her. She blinked them away before they could fall. Harkan covered his mouth with one hand.
    “God help us,” he whispered. “El, what are we doing?”
    She grasped his hand, made him face her.
    “Surviving,” she told him. “And that’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She swallowed—and swallowed again.Her jaw ached. Pretending boredom was hard work, but so was war. And if she fell to pieces, Harkan would crumble even faster.
    The Lord of Orline raised one hand.
    The citizens packed into the plaza below chanted the words that constantly circled through Eliana’s mind like carrion birds:
    “Glory to the Empire. Glory to the Empire. Glory to the Empire.”

3
    Rielle
    “After the breaking of the Sunderlands, the Seven returned to the mainland, and still they could not rest. Their people had been at war for decades, and they craved a safe place to call home. So the saints began in Katell’s homeland and used their power to carve out of the alpine mountains a paradise. Sheltered by high peaks, verdant with forests and farmlands, this havenwas named Âme de la Terre and became the capital of Celdaria. They built the queen’s city in the foothills of the highest mountain and surrounded it with a crystal lake that seemed carved out of the clearest sky.”
    — A Concise History of the Second Age, Volume I: The Aftermath of the Angelic Wars by Daniel Riveret and Jeannette d’Archambeau of the First Guild of Scholars
    The starting linewas chaos.
    Some riders competed in the name of the Church temples. Those from the Pyre, Tal’s temple, wore scarlet and gold. Black and deep blue for the House of Night, the temple of shadowcasters and Tal’s sister, Sloane. Umber and light green for the Holdfast, the earthshaker temple.
    The great Celdarian houses had also sent representatives. Rielle passed riders in lilac and sage forHouse Riveret, russet and steel for House Sauvillier. Riders had even traveled from the distant kingdoms of Ventera and Astavar, which lay across the Great Ocean.
    Many riders, like Rielle, had been hired by merchants eager for the winning purse—though none of them were as wealthy as her sponsor, Odo Laroche.
    And none of the other riders had had the privilege of training with the king’sfinest horsemasters since they were