His flames engulfed the girl.
The mother screamed. She threw herself down, reaching for her daughter, when the fire suddenly died, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. The child sat up.
Gone was the feverish glint in her eyes. Gone was the sickly pallor of her skin. Gone were the burns on her legs, replaced now by a coiling serpent.
“Phoenix Above,” the mother said, touching her daughter’s face, her hands, her legs, as if she wasn’t real. “H-how?”
Samson looked at her, and then at the silent crowd and patients and doctors, his voice rippling with the crackle of fire.
“Because I am of Agni.” His eyes caught Elena’s, and she saw then his pride, his anger. “I am your Prophet returned.”
Gasps rippled around them. Soft murmurs, confused cries, whispered prayers. But they raged like thunder in Elena’s ears as she saw the mother kneel.
“O Prophet,” she cried. “Forgive me!”
One by one, her people began to kneel. Sesharian, Ravani, the doctors, the soldiers—they all knelt to Samson. Elena remembered the fear in Saayna’s eyes, along with her awe.
I know where my allegiance lies. I have my proof.
How easily they believed. How easily, in a land of burning, her people wished to be saved. The Ravani knew the pain of fire. Of course they would seek a leader who healed.
But Elena did not bend.
She remained standing, watching as Samson smiled, the slow, satisfied smile of a man who recognized power and found himself deserving of it. And as she watched her people bow to such a man, she felt the strange, unnerving feeling of beingundermined. That she, Elena Aadya Ravence, had been rendered—in some sly, nearly imperceptible way—useless.
CHAPTER 9
SAMSON
I have read of a deeper, darker power… This power fed visions to Alabore, led him to the desert, and tormented him into subsequent madness… The Eternal Fire does not rage because it is angry; it rages because it grieves.
—from the letters of Aahnah Madhani Ravence
They trailed after him then, the believers. He recognized most from the medic tents, but there were new faces too. More bystanders began to stop and mutter as he left the medic tents and made his way toward the ruined wall.
“The Prophet.”
“Is it him?”
“Did you see how he healed her burns?”
One man stepped back and spat. It landed right before Samson’s feet.
“His eyes are blue and cursed,” the man said. “He is no Prophet.”
Beside him, Chandi stiffened. But then the mother strode forward, her child in tow. She stood before the man, her eyes raking him from head to toe,and laughed. Loud and strong, her body shaking. She laughed in the man’s face and presented her arm, where Samson had blessed her with his sign.
“But your eyes are not cursed, are they, brother? See, then. See the proof.”
The man sniffed, but his eyes skittered past her and met Samson’s. “Well?”
Samson looked at him and then Elena. She stood apart, her lips pressed together, her jaw tight. He could sense her Agni roiling in agitation. She did not know how to hide it from him or how to read his.So many things you don’t know, he thought. So many things he wished he could tell her.
But she refused to meet his gaze. Without a word, Elena turned, and while the crowd watched him, eyes wide and expectant for evidence of another miracle, he watched as she disappeared from his view. A strange ache traveled through him then—not the pain from summoning Agni, but a deeper, insidious sting as if someone had gently slid a dagger through his ribs without his noticing. He did not understand it, this new hurt. Nor why his throat closed as if he had tasted something sour and sharp.
“Prophet,” the mother called.
He turned back to them. So many faces, Sesharian and Ravani, believers and nonbelievers, some leaning forward as if, by simply being closer, they could touch his godliness, while others stood back, wary yet watchful. Those were the ones on the precipice. The ones who just needed a simple push.
