He would have found a way. Yassen Knight always found a way. With his gentle smile and quick hands, he’d manage to balance the scale between queen and Prophet, between her people and his. Yassen Knight could do anything.
But he could not come back from the dead.
Elena shuddered. She remembered the torn, forlorn look on Samson’s face.
I loved and lost him too.
She did not know what to make of his grief. He, with his blazing swords and cursed eyes and vicious fire,inflictedmisery. But for a moment, she had seen something broken and exposed, something awfully familiar. She had seen her pain reflected in him. It was unbecoming, like putting a bow on a tiger.
The diyas guttered, the temple fire whispering.
She half turned to listen when Kruppa sighed. The priestess set down her scroll, wincing as she cracked her back.
“Holy Bird, these old bones,” she muttered.
“Careful. Say it near our Blue Star and he might behead you.” Elena meant to keep her voice light, sarcastic, but it came out tired and worn, a pathetic accusation rather than a tease.
Kruppa rubbed her chin, her eyes slinking to the Phoenix statue. “He really means to tear down my temple, then?”
“No—maybe. I—” Elena shook her head. “I think we have more pressing matters to deal with than razing an old temple.”
“Old?” Kruppa snorted. “These walls shine better than any of the holy homes in Rani. Name one temple more spotless.”
Elena scraped her finger along the floor and withdrew ash. “I think you missed a spot.”
“Thatis from the holy fire.” Kruppa skimmed her hand along the edge of a diya, raking up the black ash, and then reached for Elena.
She dipped her head, and Kruppa drew a tilak on her forehead.
“There,” Kruppa said. “Now who would want to behead a pretty face like that?”
Elena smiled at the priestess’s attempt at humor, but a cold, clammy sensation prickled her skin. She imagined it: her kneeling in the ruins of the temple, Samson’s urumi glinting over the soft skin of her neck as her people raised their hands for his offerings. She pushed the image away. No. Samson would not kill her. She was of Agni—he needed her. But the fire swelled, and the flames whispered, and she thought she heard its voice, soft and spiderlike, skittering across her skin like a warning.
To what end?it said.
Elena turned and picked up another scroll. She forced down the disquiet clotting her throat. The scroll was old and laden with a thick layer of ash. Blowing off the dust, Elena found it to be a journal entry from Priestess Nomu, dated before Alabore. Ash flaked off as she peeled back the edge, and Elena thought of the hundreds of thousands of scrolls and books burned during the invasion, the amount of her people’s history—erased. She felt a great unwieldly loss, one whose shape she could not see or trace, but which spread through her with grey, phantomlike limbs. She should have read more. Asked more, listened to her mothermore. There was so much more she could have done, so much she wished she had asked. Her mother had tried to transfer the scrolls to digital records, but that effort had ended after her death, when her father had sealed the royal library to everyone but themselves.
Grief led one to strange pursuits, but in her family, it induced them to do awful, ruinous things.
“‘The inferno quakes with a different temper today,’” she read aloud. “‘The high priestess says it’s a sign that the Sixth Prophet will be chosen soon and take the flames. What a shame. I do not want it to leave. I’ve grown quite fond of the inferno’s spirit, even if it mostly tries to spit sparks in my face.’”
Kruppa chortled. “She makes the Eternal Fire seem like an abusive lover.”
“I suppose it is,” Elena said, thinking of Samson standing before the inferno, the wrath scraping across his face as he forced the flames to bend.
She returned her attention back to the scroll when something struckher. “Wait. I thought the Sixth Prophet created the Eternal Fire. Why does it seem like it existed before her?”
“Because it did.” Kruppa flipped through the prayer book, the pages rustling like the soft susurrus of sand against skin, and settled on a passage. “‘And thus the First Prophet spoke: “This fire will burn in my stead to protect the land.” Within the heart of the temple, the people saw a spark flare to a great inferno that burned the eyes of the sinners and healed the weak and the blind.’ See? The Eternal Fire has been here since the dawn of time. Since the Phoenix and First Prophet.”
Elena frowned, picking up another scroll. This one was a historical account labeled by a scrawling hand,The Last Prophet, dated after Alabore, author unknown.
“It says here about the Sixth, ‘She spoke with the multitude of her former incarnations. “This fire will protect the land. Do not let it die.” And so the Eternal Fire came to live in the heart of the temple.’”
“Let me see that.” Kruppa took the scroll and read it fully, top to bottom, thrice. The lines around her mouth deepened. “This must be a mistake. Some priest must have gotten too high or loopy living underground in the great temple. The Eternal Fire hasalwaysexisted, even before the Sixth. Priestess Nomu mentions it.”
“She never names it, just calls it the inferno,” Elena said.
Kruppa made an offended clucking sound. “It’s one and the same. Eternal Fire, inferno, great blaze. I’ve once seen it written as the Flaring Fury. You know, we priests are quite inventive in our naming.”
