For every Jantari soldier that fell, another took his place. Tanmay stumbled as a pulse grazed his shoulder. Elena flung her Agni toward him, to act as a shield of flame, but she was too slow. Another pulse hit him in the chest, and he toppled.
Ajira cried out, rushing to his side.
“Ajira, no!”
A pulse cleaved her leg, and she went down with a shriek.
Fury, immeasurable, immense, flared down Elena’s spine. They were picking off her friends one by one, knowing they could not hit her. The cowards.The fiends—
“Elena!” Maya cried in between swipes. A Jantari fell down, but two more pressed forward. “A little help!”
Elena rushed across the deck, swiping one soldier with her sword. He dodged, but the tip of her blade nicked his thigh. He wobbled then,off-balance, and Elena pounced. Her blade cut through him. So quick, so clean. She yanked out her sword and turned to the other before he had even fallen.
She pressed her awareness onto the remaining soldier, observing the map of his body, the flow of his prana. She reached—
Pain, white-hot, impossibly sharp, ripped up her leg with such intensity that Elena gasped, staggering. Her mind flailed. She could not comprehend—had not seen—where—
The fallen soldier’s dagger had cut her calf. Elena swallowed a scream, failed. She stumbled, crashing to her knees. Maya called out to her. More Jantari swarmed forward, this time without their pulse guns. This time with only daggers and swords she could not manipulate, could not bend. Elena hauled herself to her feet with snarl, and they leapt onto her.
CHAPTER 54
SAMSON
I have not forgotten the sting of the inferno, but I have come to long for its bitter wrath. Perhaps that is love. Perhaps this is my undoing.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
Samson slammed onto the deck of theRelentlesswith the Sandsworn. The sandmen swept forward, taking the Jantari by surprise. They tried to shoot them down, but the holes they made only closed again with a hiss of sand. Never had he been more grateful for these hideous creatures.
He whipped his urumi, twin blades singing. A maelstrom of metal and fire and fury. At the other side of the deck, he heard Elena scream, and it rent something dark and terrible within him, an awful burning desire to hurt and keep hurting until the ones who had made her scream no longer breathed.
He bounded forward, cutting the ones who tried to stop him. There were so many Jantari—but there were even more Sandsworn. They bolstered his advance, covering his blind sides, and Samson sent a silent thanks to Jaya, who controlled them using the sensor in his metal lotus.
I gave one to Elena too, Jaya had said as she pulled their bounder alongside theRelentless.They’ll find and protect her, like they will with you.
Indeed, the Sandsword swept forward, barreling through squawking Jantari who barely had a chance to register what hit them before sand rushed down their throats.
His Agni twinged, seeking.
“Elena!”
He saw her then—a radiant, burning beacon amid the swarm of Jantari and Sandsworn—and his heart clamored with a deep, furious keen.
Stay alive, he thought.I’m coming.
He tore his way. He had no care for it, no elegant design, no grace. He slashed and cut, whirled and lunged, parrying and swinging, his twin blades alive with flame, crackling with malice.
“Sam,” she cried as he was halfway across the deck.
Blood ran freely from her nose. Her eyes were bloodshot, inhuman. Through his mind’s eye, he could see the prana sparking from her skin, as if she were an explosion waiting to be set off. It frightened him.
Thrilledhim.
A line of Jantari stood between him and his queen. Some wheeled to face him, others charged toward Elena. Across the bloody deck of the ship, his eyes met hers.
“Together,” he called.
At once, he swung his urumi, and Elena spun into her dance. A great inferno ripped forth, red and blue, the desert and the sea, growing, melding. Across the space, they reached for each other. In between, the Jantari screamed, but the roar of the inferno drowned them out, and then, there was nothing else but their conflagration. An Agni that swelled not from tapping into each other’s power, but from simplybeing.
