This was what it meant to be a god.
So when they carried him to the front of the temple, underneath the glare of the false deity, Samson cared not for his promise. He pointed, and his people followed. They struck down the walls. Smashed icons. Broke the stones. They heaved ropes around the spire and tore it down with a tremendous crack that echoed through the street and the city beyond.
And then he summoned his Agni, even if it sent a cold pain through his chest. He inked his sin. He drew it delicately, with care. Upon upturned cheeks and arms, within the crevices of necks, and on the soft skin of palms.He met each of them. Exchanged their wishes with his mark, and after what seemed like hours, he came before the ruins of the temple, his flames swelling, his followers crouched in the rain.
“Tell us.” The mother knelt before him, hands splayed. “Tell us what is to come, Prophet.”
They watched him, cold and hungry, and he recognized their appetite as worthy of his.
He looked out across the dark horizon, beyond the canyons and the desert, to the cold tunnels of the mountains where Farin’s most precious metal lay.
“Vengeance,” he said.
CHAPTER 20
ELENA
Hate endures what love cannot.
—a Ravani proverb
Elena did not remember how she made it back to her rooms that night. When she woke in the morning, she had only brief recollections, like the flighty vestiges of a dream. She remembered the cold rain, her chattering teeth. Dark eyes watching as she walked. Hands, warm and firm; a stern but not unkind voice, speaking.
Elena rose carefully. She still wore her clothes from last night, her sari sticking to her skin like a leech. When she glimpsed her image in the cracked mirror, she froze, breath caught in her chest like a shard lodged between her bones.
Blood crusted her swollen right cheek. The pallu of her sari was tattered, her arms littered with scratches and tiny marks. It was as if she had been attacked by an animal. Torn and ripped apart, left for dead.
For a moment, she did not understand. Pain clouded her thoughts, her memory, but when she saw the lines of red, thin and long, stretching across her neck like a horrid necklace, she remembered.
Samson’s wild, ferocious eyes, the rough crush of his hands on her throat.
You are nothing without a butcher, queen. And I am far worse than that.
A white-hot horror flashed through her body, followed swiftly by anger so intense that her fingers trembled as she touched her neck.
She was going to kill him.
She was goingto fucking kill him.
Elena began to reach for her coat, already picturing how she would rip her sword through his neck again and again until the blue leached from his eyes, when the door drew back, and Kruppa entered, breaking her out of her fury.
“You’re awake,” Kruppa said, but Elena heard the unspoken words beneath.You’re alive.
“Where is he?” Elena asked, her voice strained.
“I do not know.” Kruppa sighed. “But word has spread that the Ravani queen has fallen out of favor with the Prophet.”
Elena stilled. Her rage wavered, tamped down now by a slow, marching trepidation. “What do you mean, fallen out of favor?”
Kruppa looked at her, deep lines fanning along her eyes. “It means you are not fit to lead.”
“Me?” Indignation clawed up her throat, nearly choking her. “Me?! He is the monster.Heis unfit.”
But Kruppa kept quiet, and Elena slowly felt her anger wither away in the woman’s stoic silence until she felt dizzy, her knees weak. She crashed into a seat.
“Me,” she whispered. Her fingers curled around the wooden frame of the bed as grief and resentment coiled within her into a black, throbbing ball of pain. “Me.”
Kruppa finally spoke. “We saw how he beat back your fire with his own. His holy rage.”
