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Altan waited until they were alone, and then he closed the door. He crossed the room and stood so that there was very little distance between them.
“You do not contradict me,” he said quietly.
Rin crossed her arms. “Ever, or just in front of Jun?”
Altan didn’t rise to the bait. “You will answer to me as a soldier to her commander.”
“Or what? You’ll have Suni drag me out of your office?”
“You’re out of line.” Altan’s voice dropped to a dangerously low volume.
“And you let my friend die,” Rin answered. “He was lying there and you left him there.”
“You couldn’t have extracted him.”
“Yes, I could have,” she seethed. “And even if I couldn’t have—you might have, you might have saved my friend instead of dragging out some Federation soldier who deserved to die in there—”
“Prisoners of war have greater strategic importance than individual soldiers,” Altan said calmly.
“That is such bullshit,” she snarled.
Altan didn’t answer. He took two steps forward and struck her across the face.
None of her guards were up. She took the full force of his hit with no preparation. His blow was so powerful that her head snapped to the side. The sudden impact made her knees buckle, jerked her to the ground. She raised a hand to her cheek, stunned. Her fingers came away bloody; he’d reopened her arrow wound.
Slowly she looked up at Altan. Her ears rang.
Altan’s scarlet gaze met hers, and the naked rage on his face stunned her.
“How dare you,” he said. His voice was overly loud, distorted through her thundering ears. “You misunderstand the nature of our relationship. I am not your friend. I am not your brother, though kin we may be. I am your commander. You do not argue with my orders. You follow them without question. You obey me, or you leave this Militia.”
His voice held the same double timbre that Jiang’s voice had held when he opened the void at Sinegard. Altan’s eyes burned red—no, they were not red, they were the color of fire itself. Flames blazed behind him, flames whiter and hotter than any fire she’d ever been able to summon. She was immune to her own fire, but not his; it burned in her face, choking her, forcing her backward.
The ringing in her ears reached a crescendo.
He doesn’t get to do this to you, said a voice in Rin’s head. He doesn’t get to terrorize you. She had not come this far to crouch like this in fear. Not to Altan. Not to anyone.
She stood up, even as she reached somewhere inside herself—somewhere spiteful and dark and horrible—and opened the channel to the entity she already knew was waiting for her summons. The room pitched forward as if viewed through a long scarlet prism. The familiar burn was back in her veins, the burn that demanded blood and ashes.
Through the red haze she thought she saw Altan’s eyes widen in surprise. She squared her shoulders. Flames flared from her shoulders and back, flames that mirrored Altan’s.
She took a step toward him.
A loud crackling noise filled the room. She felt an immense pressure. She trembled under the weight of it. She heard a bird’s laughter. She heard a god’s amused sigh.
You children, murmured the Phoenix. You absurd, ridiculous children. My children.
Altan looked stunned.
But just as her flames resisted his, she began to feel uncomfortably hot again, felt his fire begin to burn her. Rin’s fire was an incendiary flash, an impulsive flare of anger. Altan’s fire drew as its source an unending hate. It was a deep, slow burn. She could almost taste it, the venomous intent, the ancient misery, and it horrified her.
How could one person hate so much?
What had happened to him?
She could not maintain her fire anymore. Altan’s flames burned hotter than hers. They had fought a contest of wills and she had lost.
She struggled for another moment and then her flames shrank back into her as quickly as they’d sprung out. Altan’s fire dimmed a moment after hers did.
This is it, Rin thought. I’ve crossed the line. This is the end.
But Altan didn’t look furious. He didn’t look like he was about to execute her.
No—he looked pleased.
“So that’s what it takes,” he said.
She felt drained, as if the fire had burned up something inside her. She couldn’t even feel anger. She could barely stand.
“Fuck you,” she said. “Fuck you.”
“Get to your post, soldier,” said Altan.
She left his office, slamming the door shut behind her.
Fuck me.
Chapter 20
“There you are.”
She found Chaghan over the north wall. He stood with his arms crossed, watching as civilians poured out of Khurdalain’s dense streets like ants fleeing a collapsed hill. They straggled through the city gates with their worldly possessions packed onto wagons, strapped to the sides of oxen or horses, slung across their shoulders on poles meant for carrying water, or simply dragged along in sacks. They had chosen to take their chances in the open country rather than to stay another day in the doomed city.
The Militia was remaining in Khurdalain—it was still a strategic base that needed to be held—but they would be protecting nothing but empty buildings from here on out.
“Khurdalain’s done for,” Chaghan said, leaning against the wall. “Militia included. There’ll be no supplies after this. No hospital. No food. Soldiers fight battles, but civilians keep armies alive. Lose the resource well, and you’ve lost the war.”
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
He turned to face her, and she suppressed a shudder at the sight of those eyes without pupils. His gaze seemed to rest on the scarlet palm print on her cheek. His lips pressed together in a thin line, as if he knew exactly how the mark had gotten there.
“Lovers’ spat?” he drawled.
“Difference of opinion.”
“Shouldn’t have harped on about that boy,” he tutted. “Altan doesn’t tolerate shit like that. He’s not very patient.”
“He’s not human,” she said, recalling the horrible anger behind Altan’s power. She’d thought she understood Altan. She’d thought she had reached the man behind the command title. But she realized now that she didn’t know him at all. The Altan she’d known—at least, the Altan in her mind—would have done anything for his troops. He wouldn’t have left someone in the gas to die. “He—I don’t know what he is.”
“But Altan was never allowed to be human,” Chaghan said, and his voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “Since childhood, he’s been regarded as a Militia asset. Your masters at the Academy fed him opium for attacking his classmates and trained him like a dog for this war. Now he’s been shouldered with the most difficult command position that exists in the Militia, and you wonder why he’s not going to trouble himself with your little boy toy?”
Rin almost hit Chaghan for that, but she restrained herself with a twitch and set her jaw. “I’m not here to talk about Altan.”
“Then why, pray tell, are you here?”
“I need you to show me what you can do,” she said.
