The inferno sprang forth with a roar. Snapping. Biting. Tearing. He flicked his blades, and the flames bounded past Elena, barreling into the hull.
Glass popped. The hull, and the soldiers within it, screamed, batting at the flames. The huge machine stumbled, and he saw Elena raise her gun.Wait! Just see!he wanted to yell, but then he saw she wasn’t aiming at the floundering hull, but at a Jantari soldier who had suddenly appeared from behind a fallen wall, lobbing a dark shape into the air.
With a snarl, Samson raised his blades, and a flame shot up. It caught the grenade and devoured the force of its explosion. Melded the heat into its own. Samson felt it surge through his body with an electricity that heightened his nerves, a giddiness that made the inferno cackle with glee.
He flew forward. Snapping his urumi, he directed the flames through the melee. The blue fire rushed past his Black Scales, instead latching on to any man who held a zeemir. Howls erupted as metal melted onto flesh. Samson whipped his urumi faster, the Agni beating within him, heat traveling through his limbs as the inferno grew larger, bolder. He saw Jantari soldiers running. Retreating.
“Cowards!” he crowed.
Sweat bathed his face. A buzz zipped through his bones, setting his teeth on edge, but Samson paid it no mind as his urumi crackled and his Black Scales pushed past the Jantari blockade.
A laugh started in his stomach. It rumbled through his chest, up his throat, and pierced the air. High and crazed.
Battle madness, his father would call it.
Victory is what he called it.
Samson slashed down, and the blue flames rammed into the hull. It fell with a clatter. Oil and something acidic filled the air as Samson slowly walked toward it. The fire hissed. It bowed to him like a devotee to its master.
Come, it chanted.
Elena was already kneeling, peering into the hatch.
“They’re dead,” she said.
Samson slowly crouched beside her. He could not make sense of the tangle of metal and flesh and coils. But he saw the metal eye of one soldier blink. Once. Twice. And then it stopped, fizzing.
He remembered the Jantari king with his robotic eye, the cold touch of his metallic fingers.You are like a son to me, Farin had said. He remembered the smell of oiled flesh.And one day, you will look like this too.
Samson spat. It hit the unblinking eye and dripped down into the mangled flesh and coils.
Elena turned to him in surprise as he stepped back to avoid the growing pool of blood. No sense in ruining his boots.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Blue flames brushed his feet, whispering. Elena inhaled sharply. She scrutinized the melted hull, but he knew she was looking past it, listening to what the fire had to tell.
“What do you hear?” he asked, hopeful.
“Men weeping.” She stood, and the fire parted with a hiss. “They’re all crying in the city center.”
“You’re getting better.” He reached out, and a blue flame looped up his arm. It unfurled slowly as if testing the air. He brought it closer. “The fire tells me that the Black Scales have pushed the Jantari inward. They’ve barricaded themselves in the city center.”
“You heard all this from the fire?” she asked, incredulous.
“Yes.” He smiled as the flame slithered down his arm and waist. “You just need to listen.”
“We penned them in. But we also trapped the remaining civilians.”
“Elena—”
“They’re hostages, Sam,” she said. There was an edge of bitterness in her voice that made him bristle. “You made them hostages.”
“The Jantari wouldn’t dare to hurt them.”
“How do you know?” She finally met his gaze.
Once, when they had danced under rose petals and soft lights, she had looked at him with something like hope. Tenderness, even. He had asked her how far she was willing to go to protect her kingdom, and her voice had cracked with complete conviction.Far enough.He had heard himself in that answer. Believed that perhaps they shared a similar sense of duty, of burden.
