The flames leapt and crashed over each other, momentum now.
The inferno laughed, shattering, biting, momentum now.
When Samson stopped his dance, when his twin blades finally floated down to the earth like wings come to rest, the fence was gone. The fleeing soldiers were too. Only black mounds, chipped bone.
The survivors were corralled at the back of the pen, hedged in by Black Scales with pulse guns.
Chandi ran to him. “Edmund, have you seen him?”
A sudden cry made them both turn as a Black Scale held up a ruined uniform. Even from here, Samson could see the glint of stars on the shoulders.
Chandi hissed. “We were supposed to use him as a bargaining chip.”
The realization, like a touch of cold steel against his skin, made Samson still amid his battle lust. He blinked at Chandi.
“The general was our prized hostage. We need some hostages for—”
“We have seven hundred others.” Samson swayed on his feet even as he belted his urumi. His bones buzzed. The pain, ever present, came back with relish.
Sulfur in his nose. Electricity in his blood. He needed to leave, now.
“Samson, are you—”
“We were supposed to execute their officers.” Samson turned, his boots trudging through the remains. “I just started it for you.”
She caught him before he fell, and he sagged into her shoulder. “You fool.”
He could barely hear her.
Pain crashed through him, fast and fierce. Chandi shouted, and then he found himself in a cruiser, then on a cot. Clarity returned, and he recognized his quarters, an old family home set behind the city center. Shakily, he unbuttoned his shirt. His scar began to sting, and when he looked down, he saw that it had darkened too.
He had pushed hard today, perhaps too much. Heat prickled down his spine, and Samson felt sweat break on his forehead. He opened his palm. He tried to summon sparks, but his hand remained empty. Hollow.
He had spun his Agni so completely, so vehemently, that it had devouredhim. He couldn’t differentiate the inferno’s hunger from his own. It frightened him, in a way that made his insides shrivel as if unearthing a dirty secret. Even now, he could taste its hunger, like a morsel of food stuck stubbornly between his teeth. It hooked into his spine and began to tug.
But then a wave of tiredness washed over Samson, sucking him down into a dark, black sea.
It was always this way. Sound seeped out. The hammering in his chest slowed until he could hear nothing at all. Familiar panic rushed through him, and Samson tried to fight, tried to claw his way back to the surface. A distant part of his mind worried that Elena would call upon him and see him like this, weak and vulnerable, but then another wave crashed over him, and Samson was sinking. The soundless black sea drowned everything out. All he could hear was the quiet. So loud, it felt like a roar. And then a voice, so, so far away.
“It’s all right, Blue Star.” A gentle hand touched his forehead. “Rest now. It’s only me.”
And he slipped beneath the sea, unmoored.
CHAPTER 6
SAMSON
“What is the most dangerous opponent of fire?” the son of sea asked.
“Nothingness itself,” the Great Serpent hummed. “Be wary of absence. Even Agni cannot burn on its own.”
—fromThe Legends and Myths of Sayon
He dreamed of men pressed against a cage, clawing at him with large metallic hands. He stared up at them and realized with a start thathewas in the cage. Above, the men laughed. With ease, they broke through the bars and grabbed his hair, his face, sinking their hungry teeth into his flesh and chewing nonchalantly, as if he was simply a thing they had already claimed and thus found no particular hurry to enjoy. He roared for his Agni, but his waist was bare, his urumi gone. No flames leapt to his aid. Metal teeth grated through his stomach, and he yelped as a dark mouth ripped out his Agni, the spark already fading.Come back, he cried.Come back!And then he was sinking. A deep, terrible void surrounded him, pinning him down as if it was a physical weight. Like waves, it pushed him down farther and farther to a bottom he could not see, could not feel,but the knowledge of its absence filled him with a wild, animallike fear. He screamed. The sea vibrated with laughter, and suddenly he was on the wet floor. Someone kneeled on top of him. Pale hands gripped his throat, metal nails breaking through skin. He tried to hit the attacker, and they jerked away to reveal eyes as golden as the sun. Horrible and familiar. He reached—
The void reached back, claiming him.
Samson gasped awake. His throat burned. Ash on his tongue, iron clacking between his teeth. He tried to sit up when he noticed the hot coals on his body. Three were lined down his naked chest and abdomen, placed above his chakra points. Their heat spread through his bones, and gradually, Samson relaxed. There was no chill in his blood, no empty feeling in his gut. He opened his palm and blue embers sparked between his fingers. His Agni, whole and alive.
