“We sent Syla your code,” Samson cut in, throwing his officers a quick glance. “But we’ve received a report from our scouts in Rani that the Jantari are growing antsy. They seem to be planning a new counterattack. The sooner we meet with Syla, the better.”
The lie, smooth and glib on his tongue, slipped out easily. Lies, he hadfound, were easier to tell than the truth. Truths were blunt and unwieldly, but lies required care and craft, and he knew how to feed them with the finesse of a butcher fattening a sow destined for dinner.
“Rani,” she said, and the way her voice tripped, he knew she had bitten into the lie. “What kind of counterattack?”
“We don’t know, but Syla might have intel,” Samson said as Akino reentered holding a black suede bag. He started forward, but Samson gave a subtle shake of his head.Not yet.He would give Elena the urumi later, after he had earned her trust.
“Come,” he told her. “There’s something I need to discuss with you.”
They entered the courtyard behind the hall. The Jantari officers had used it as a training ground, the stones still riddled with scars from zeemirs. The fountains lay grey, stagnant. Samson watched Elena survey the courtyard as he leaned against an old gulmohar tree.
“They’re used to be sculptures here,” Elena said, her voice carrying through the quiet. “Jodhaa and her sister, Sandhana, each holding a feather of the Phoenix. I wonder what they did to them.” She turned slowly, and he saw the pain on her face then, perhaps not for the statues, but for the loss they represented—a destruction of her people, her culture, her history.
“When the Jantari invaded, they ripped out the golden medallion of the Serpent from the city temple. Now it sits in one of their museums. Maybe your statues will be there too,” Samson said.
Elena smiled ruefully. “No, they will not. Farin will have them in his palace to remind himself who is truly the Phoenix King.”
Her face darkened then, and Samson knew this was the time to broach his proposition. He carefully pushed off from the gulmohar, his voice slow, measured.
“I need your help, Elena,” he said. “We need to understand each other’s Agni. How it works, when it doesn’t.”How to sustain it without consequence.“Our Agni is our advantage over Farin. If we could hone it, strengthen it, the war won’t even last a sun.”
Across from them leaned a tall, cracked mirror. Her eyes connected with his within it. “You’re the Prophet of our great god. Shouldn’t you already know the nature of Agni?”
He ignored the edge in her voice and drew up beside her, her shoulder brushing his scar, and he felt a shiver—cold, fiery—crackling down his sternum. He watched her face within the mirror. A crack bisected it, he on one side, she on the other.
“You burned three Jantari mines down on your own, Elena. That’s impressive,” he said. She quirked an eyebrow but stayed silent, her eyes dark, watchful. “What if… we were to burn more? Enough to really make Farin notice?” He stepped closer, his face sliding over the crack in the mirror so that his reflection bent, one half alone, the other half hovering over her head. “For that to happen, we need to amplify our Agni.”
He had known of her, knownher, for a long time. When he had been a boy scavenging the streets of Rani, he had felt an odd sensation crawl up his neck. It tugged him, like a hook on one of his father’s fishing rods, to Palace Hill. He had looked up at that austere, distant behemoth and thought something of him belonged there. Someone like him.
The feeling had grown when he met Leo for the first time in Rasbakan. Elena had accompanied her father, though she had been in another part of the compound when he had met the old king. The odd sensation, the one he had felt as a boy, rose within him then. As he spoke to Leo and offered his proposal of marriage, he felt a low burning in his naval chakra. It had been difficult to suppress his Agni and quench the sparks threatening to break from his fingertips. Heat thrummed through his spine not as a sensation but as aphysicality, a buzzing that vibrated through his bones and teeth with such power he wondered why Leo and his Astra were not trembling like he was. He had felt then, with an awful clarity, that someone within the walls of this compound was thesame. Just as wondrous, just as monstrous. It filled him with dizziness and elation—to be so close to someone of his nature, someone who knew the consequences of fire. Someone who knew his burden of burning.
It wasn’t until he had seen her in the throne room, dressed in a resplendent lehenga, looking both beautiful and terrifying, that he knew it was her. He had wanted to rush over and take her hands, to feel the heat in her veins.You and I are gods, he had wanted to say.
Gods among men. The powerful among the weak. What was she doing, waiting, when the world could be theirs?
But she had proved to be a godling, not yet awakened. And he hadwatched her coming into her power with an impatient hunger, anticipating the right moment, the right people to be eliminated, before—
Elena strode forward, breaking him from his thoughts. She trailed her hand through the bowl of a fountain and flicked. Water spattered across him, though some drops caught her. A little bead of water trembled on her bottom lip.
“And how exactly can we amplify our Agni?” she said.
He was still staring at the bead of water on her lip. With great effort, Samson dragged his gaze away. “W-we start by understanding its true nature. I will show you everything I know of Agni, and in turn, you can show me what you know. We can start training tomorrow.”
She considered this for a moment, and he noticed how her eyes seemed to turn inward, as if she was retreating into the chasms of her mind, finding solutions, back alleys, twists and turns. Some way to use him, manipulate him—just as he would her.
It delighted him, in a sick, perverse way. They were more alike than she knew, no matter what label she threw at him.
He began to speak again when she raised her hand. The air grew taut, and he tasted ash on his tongue. At first, there was a fizzle. Then a spark. Then a glare so bright he had to turn away. He didn’t need to see it—hefeltit. The sudden rush of heat emanating from his lower chakra, the electric buzz filling his throat, his ears.
When he turned back, there was a single red flame in Elena’s hand. Brilliant and perfect, hissing with a power that reminded him of the sound of waves crashing against a cliff. He could feel its reverberations in his bones. Unlike his fire, hers didn’t bend or sway. It stood ramrod straight, tall and bright. Her fingers fluttered around the fire, dancing.
“How do you do it?” Samson said, voice soft with wonder. “How do you call your Agni so easily?”
Without pain, he thought.
Elena played with the flame in her hand. “It’s not easy,” she said, and a tiny line appeared between her eyebrows. It was oddly endearing. “I’ve gotten better, but… it takes practice. Focus. Dance, at least for me.” She glanced up at him, and he saw that the line between her brows had deepened like a mark, a scar, and he had a strange desire to take his blue flames and mend it away. She raised the flame higher. Her fire cast an orangeglow on her face, making her features starker, harsher—frightful even—and he was reminded of the Sesharian stories of a queen so in love with infernos that she drove all those around her to ruin. His adoration withered a degree.
“How do you summon yours?” she asked.
