Samson spread his hands, and blue flames rolled down his shoulders, spiraling around his arms. “I am the Prophet, darling.”
There is a new god, the soldiers had told her.A god that the desert bends to. A foreign god that your people never anticipated.
“But—you—you’re.” Her tongue twisted in on itself. “H-how can that be possible? You’re Sesharian. You don’t believe in the Phoenix. And you—your fire…”
“Fire knows its brethren,” he said, watching her. “We are the same, you and I.”
She took another step back, watching the blue flames with a mixture of wariness and fascination. She could not deny that she felt apull. Deep inside her, something ancient and raw. A burning that seared her veinswith a heady potency and a creeping alarm, like when two predators in the wild see each other from a distance and awareness of their own danger flows between them. “I can wield fire, but I am not the Prophet. What makes you one, then?”
Samson considered her, his head tilting in an achingly familiar gesture that reminded her of hot afternoons spent on her balcony discussing their vision for Ravence. But there was something sharp in the slant of his mouth.
“Let me show you.”
He turned to the Eternal Fire, and in that moment, Elena felt a mysterious sensation begin to build within her. A foreboding, a curiosity. It heightened as he raised his hand and the Eternal Fire, the one she could not control, the one she had spent months trying to even hold,bent. All its heads, all the angry, biting flames,bent.
Elena stared, stunned. Her mind raced, going through the stories of the Prophet, the Phoenix, her father’s hunt, and all the while, that terrible sensation grew stronger.
“Where is the Phoenix?” Her voice was barely a whisper above the hiss of the flames. “The stories say that you were supposed to rise with Her.”
When he spoke, the flames spoke with him. “There is no Phoenix. There never was. Only a lie, conjured by con men. The true master and architect of the Eternal Fire is the Great Serpent, and you and I, Elena, are of Her like.Weare the gods now.Wewill take back Ravence and Seshar and watch the world bend.”
Ravence.
The very name sent an ache through her. Her home lay ruined and burned, occupied by enemies. And before her was the very god the stories claimed would free it.
Stories that, according to him, were no longer true.
Samson must have sensed her hesitation, because he stepped closer, holding out his hand. In the light of the inferno, she could see the ash streaks on his cheeks, the spark of madness or genius in his eyes.
“I know what it means to burn,” he said softly. “I know its misery. Its hunger.”
Elena flinched. He drew closer, his voice low, dangerous.
“And if we can make Jantar just taste that misery, would you not beavenged? Tell me, rani. Would you not be pleased to have Farin’s head at your feet?”
Her heart thundered. Her desire, on his lips, made her sick, thrilled. Around her, Elena could feel the hot rage of the inferno, the cold stares of the ghosts.Vengeance.For her people, her father, Ferma, Yassen,herself. The desire rippled through her with a slow heat, her every breath scraping the inside of her throat like a finely toothed comb. Elena watched the inferno with a new mixture of horror and wonder.Vengeancelay at her fingertips.
At theirs.
“How,” she began, and stopped when she met his eyes. Because in them, she saw her same fury reflected—tenfold. Only his was colder, crueler, a wrath that seemed at once unfathomable and endless. If he harbored that much fury, what kind of god was he? A savior, like the stories said? Or a monster, like she had once believed? Elena paused, uncertain. Yet below her alarm, she sensed an awareness tugging her belly with an incessant urgency, and as she considered it, she felt his Agni twinge in recognition.Like knows like. Fire knows its brethren.The realization hummed through her bones, filling her ears with a buzz that built until all she could hear was the steady murmur of the inferno as it knelt before a cursed god.
A god who offered her his hand.
Slowly, Elena raised hers.
“Will you help me, then?” she said.
Samson smiled. A crude, vicious smile.
A butcher’s smile, she thought.
He took her hand. “We start with Ravence.”
CHAPTER 1
ELENA
I have woken to a strange world where heroes have turned beasts, and beasts turned men. Where the heartless grow merciful, and the merciful—heartless.
