The Ravani, the Sesharians, the Jantari—the world—would bow to his Agni.TheirAgni.
But when he turned to her, he saw that she was folding into herself, shoring up, bracing for the worst, and at this, he felt true pity. Pity for her stubbornness, her inability to accept a new truth, however bitter.
The city temple was inconsequential. He had the Eternal Fire. He was in no hurry to push his god—the Ravani would do that for him. One day, they would raze temples themselves. And he hoped, with a tired sort of pity as one would feel for a moth who flings itself, relentlessly, against the burning glass of a lantern, that she would have stopped believing by then.
Chandi would call him a fool. Visha would laugh and then try to tear down the temple herself. But for the first time in his life, Samson retreated.
“Would you want me to?” he asked gently.
Elena blinked. She stared at him with wary hope.
“If you don’t, then you have my word. I won’t touch that city temple.”
She searched his face, but he held still under her scrutiny, and after a while, she nodded. “Thank you.”
“In exchange, I need your help.”
“With what?”
For a moment, he considered telling her the truth.With my own Agni. With the ore.
His control of Agni had always been iron tight, precise to the point of obsession, but he had felt something tremble when the Eternal Fire had fought him. Its subtle defiance, like a cat nipping at your hand before you pet it. He had pushed back the flames with more force than he had needed before, and the effects of that effort still reverberated through him now. Samson clenched his fist as he felt a spasm of pain flicker through his shoulder and chest.
How could she understand the costs of his power when hers remained constant? He could sense the steady thrum of her Agni, the vicious energy humming through her veins. It was cruel. How it taunted him as his own Agni faded.
“For Syla,” he said instead. “Draft a message. Something cryptic butfamiliar enough that he knows it’s you. Ask him to meet us north of the temple, deep into the Agnee Range.”
She pulled out a holopod. It was scuffed and battered, with scratches along the surface, but Samson recognized it at once, and his heart gave a strange shudder.
“That…” he began. He remembered Yassen’s fingers brushing his own, the moonlight limning the bridge of his nose and the crown of his head as they sat in the small courtyard.
“It’s his,” Elena said softly. She rubbed her thumb along the face, and for a moment, Samson felt a hot, irrational rush of jealousy and the urge to snatch away the pod. It was ridiculous and stupid, and yet, his throat closed in.
He thought of how his friend had knelt beside him in that glittering throne room and sung the oath. How it had put him on the side of a burning mountain, dead.
It was not Elena’s fault, he knew. Of course heknewthat. But Samson wondered what would have happened if Yassen had not followed her, or ifhehad never offered the amnesty deal that had sealed his friend’s fate.What if?He clung to thatif. Trembled to think ofif.
What a simple, cruel word. In its two letters, his world skittered off-balance, threatening to tip and crash, all the regret and guilt bubbling up like boiling water if he thought too deeply, too long, aboutwhat if I had never called Yassen? What if he could have lived if not for me? Whatif—
“Here.”
Elena placed the pod in his hand. Samson jolted, blinking rapidly, shocked by the wet, crushing sensation in his eyes and nose. Her hand was gentle on his forearm.
“It’s just full of old bank accounts and the maps you gave him,” she said, and something in her voice told him that she sensed his pain, that it lingered in her too.
He took a small, shaky breath. “He was better than the two of us.”
“He was—is—if he’s still.” She stopped. Drew up her knees and circled her arms around them as if to hug herself. “It’s my fault. I should have listened to him and left the mines alone.”
“I blameme.” He laughed, short, acrid. “I should have never bargained his life away to Leo.”
“It’s not your fault—”
“I loved and lost him too, Elena,” he said, and his voice broke at the end. He looked away, clenching his jaw to stop the trembling.
They sat there in silence, weighed down by their own sudden, private griefs. Samson traced the curve of the pod. He wished, more than anything, for it to ping with a message from Yassen, hurtling toward them in the dark. He wished he had had the courage to tell him earlier just how much he had loved him. How he had never forgotten him after all these suns.
“You’re lucky,” he whispered. “At least he knew that you loved him. At least he loved you back. I could never tell him myself.”
