Elena banged on the doors again as the ground shifted beneath her feet. The shadows around the room shrank back from what came from beneath the mountain. She could feel its presence, or rather the absence of air behind her, but Elena dared not look back.
“Hello?” she yelled. “My name is Elena Aadya Ravence! I’m here!”
The gate remained shut. The air around her grew thinner. Elena looked at the coiled dragon hidden in the gears and tried again.
“My name is Elena Ravence, daughter of Leo Ravence and Aahnah Madhani, queen of the desert kingdom.”
The door did not move.
The world grew colder. Her eyelids felt heavy, her body weak.
“My name is Elena,” she whispered.
The gears turned and the bolts receded. Slowly, the doors swung open. A gush of fresh air and light hit her, and she stumbled forward.
At first, she was blinded by the sun and how it bounced off a silver mass spilling between the mountains. Little by little, the world took shape around her. She saw that she was standing on a bluff and that the silver body was actually a large blue lake, bluer than the sea or the sky. A concrete compound sat on its bank, flanked by tankers and hoverpods.
The Black Scales.
The gate slammed shut behind her, trapping whatever lay within. The mountain groaned. Elena shook, with adrenaline, with shock, with fear of what would have happened had the doors not opened.
She sank to her knees. She had no idea what day it was, whether the Black Scales were in this compound, whether the Ravani kingdom still existed—but she was alive.
Elena raised her face to the sun. She drank in its warmth and savored its light. A wild, desperate laugh shook her, and she realized she was crying too, but she did not care. The sky was a deep blue, an endless expanse.
She wondered if Yassen saw it too.
“Hold,” a voice came from behind her.
Slowly, she wiped her tears and turned. There, on the ridge above the door, stood a soldier, and then another, and another. They were dressed in combat black and had their pulse guns trained at her head.
“What did you say your name was?” one asked, and she saw the blue insignia of a dragon on his chest.
She gasped in relief.
“Elena Aadya Ravence.” She pushed to her feet and looked at them with clear eyes. “Queen of the Kingdom of Ravence.”
“Well, queen,” the soldier said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
EPILOGUE
CORONATION DAY
It was a pleasure not to burn.
Samson sighed as the inferno raged around him. Underneath the Phoenix statue, he watched the sky redden. The Eternal Fire ripped down the temple, filling the mountainside with agony and smoke.
Flames wrapped around his arms, healing the burn on his hand.
“I know,” he said as they crooned, “I shouldn’t have let him burn me.”
He closed his eyes. Felt the quiet, steady hum of energy coursing through his veins. The rush of power. It was calculating. It knew when and how to burn.
When Samson opened his eyes, blue embers danced in his palm. He let them fall from between his fingers.
Slowly, he climbed onto the back of the Phoenix’s statue. A woman called his name, but when he turned, the inferno washed over him. The heat buffeted his face, warm and sweet like a lover, the crackle of the fire like a song. It whispered to him about how many men it had caught, how many trees it had taken. It told him about the assassins crawling up the mountainside.
He had expected the Arohassin to keep their word about attacking Ravence today; what he hadn’t expected was Yassen’s role in it.Poor Cass.Even when he had dangled freedom before Yassen, his friend had chosen the Arohassin.
