“Oh please.” Maya scowled. “If it weren’t for me, we wouldn’t have learned he was Fireblood as early as we did. Maybe ifyouhad done your job better, we could have used the two of them long before—”
“Enough.” Taran’s voice, spider soft, echoed like the ring of a sword against a metal beam.
They stilled. But Jaya could feel her heart thumping wildly, in her chest, her wrists, her head. She was no warrior. Why did they expect her of all people to carry out the worst?
“S-sir, if I may,” she said. “I believe I can speed up the process in awakening the asset. All I need is a reading of Elena and Samson’s intertwined Agni. Then Div—I mean the third…”
She trailed off as Taran gave a sympathetic smile.
“Ah, I’ve forgotten how long it’s been. A sun now, hasn’t it?”
Jaya swallowed, her throat suddenly tight. “One sun, four months, nineteen days, and two hours.”
Her voice floated through the air, up into the haze of the shimmering holos. Taran held out his hand.
“Come, child. See your brother.”
Jaya took his arm, her heart ratcheting up to a roar as they approached the glass wall. In the chamber below, two metal tubes were attached together by three pipes: oxygen, microfluids, and blood.
It ran like a slow, steady river between the two coffins, and in one of them, through the small glass pane, Jaya saw the face of her brother.
Her parents had thought they were going to have another girl, and so they chose Divya to match Jaya. Radiance and victory.With both in our household, why would we ever want for more?her mother had said. But when her sibling came out kicking with a scream so loud it frightened the solpriest, Jaya had said, almost without thought:
“Div.”
Later, when they had cleaned and wrapped him, she held him for the first time. He looked like an alien, forehead wrinkled, nose smooshed, lips puckered and twisted for another cry. Jaya had never seen such an ugly thing. He was perfect.
And he still was, albeit he looked gaunter than she had last seen him, skin sucked tightly along the curve of his cheekbones and the line of his jaw. His long dark hair blossomed like a flower around him, the strands soft and luxurious. He had never had the heart to wield it like a weapon. Were it not for the tubes and the holos before her, Jaya would have thought Div was asleep. Lost within peaceful dreams.
“He is doing well,” Taran said gently. “They both are. Had Div not been his blood type, we would have lost the asset. But soon, we’ll be able to wake him. We can reconstruct Div’s body with your sands and his fire. We can give him a better life.”
Jaya nodded. Her throat suddenly felt too hot, her chest too small to speak. Her gaze traveled to the second tube, and she felt a tightness lace up her shoulders, her spine—a buzz building in her ears with the sound of a thousand ringing swords—as she met the glazed golden eyes of the third.
She did not believe in destiny. Fate was a religious man’s dream, and chaos his bitter reality. She had lost her faith the day it had crushed her mother and father into a tangle of severed limbs, and she had come to learn the world held no reason. But power? Power controlled chaos, and she knew better than most how even the slightest advantage could turn the field. And the third Agni was control itself.
She pressed her hand against the glass. Div slept soundly, peacefully. When he woke, she would tell him how their past had been a bad dream, that his new body was a testament to all they had suffered, all they had survived. She removed her hand, leaving smudges on the glass.
“The reading,” she began, and Taran shook his head, almost good-naturedly, or as much as a crow could manage a grin. He pressed the pod into her hand.
“If you insist, then get it. But it should not come in the way of your mission, Jaya. Remember:Be clever, be wicked, be ruthless.” The old adage of the first gamemasters, the first Ravani. “Come home safe, and we’ll wake the asset together.”
She met his red gaze. “And then Div.”
It was not a question.
Taran nodded, his smile edged. “And then Div.”
She fisted the pod. “Tell me what to do.”
CHAPTER 59
ELENA
The gods gave us Agni. In turn, we promised them death. Who, then, the real victim? Who, then, the real tyrant?
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
Elena stood underneath the warm spray of the shower as rivulets of blood trickled down her arms, her legs.You lost Ravence yourself.She turned the heat up, increased the jet sprays, but neither the heat nor the water could drown out Farin’s voice. He was wrong.He was wrong, damn it—
