“Gods, Elena, you have missed so much.” Samson grinned, his eyes dead like stagnant pools of festering waters. “Thanks to your little rendezvous with the Yumi, I had to seek help from them. Speaking of. Where are your feared warriors?” He turned, calling. “Oh great madams, where are you? Come quick! Our queen is afraid of our visitors.”
Elena straightened, hands curling into fists. “That’s enough.”
“Come, come! We need your help. Apparently, we’re shit at protecting our own.”
“I said that’s enough!” she snarled.
Samson whipped around, lightning quick, and she flinched at the sudden movement, hands rising in defense. His eyes fell to her palms. Guilt flickered across his face before he killed it like an ember smothered. “So you failed too.”
She bristled at his tone. “Not quite.”
“Did the Yumi agree to show for the council? Did they pledge help?” Syla asked. The Arohassin woman perked up at this, though she remained quiet.
Elena hesitated. Samson was watching her with a new alertness, and she wondered if he felt it too. The feather warming in her pocket. She withdrew it and held it up.
“Their high priestess gave me this.”
“What is that?” Syla drew closer. “A feather?”
“I believe it’s a powerful token,” she said and remembered the high sister’s instructions.
Give it to the one they call Prophet, and his Agni can be yours for the taking.
Slowly, she held it out to Samson. The feather grew warmer as he approached, and at the same time, she felt her Agni snap alert. A sudden hum thrilled through her bones, as if her blood had awakened, heightened. And with it, an irritational fear. It spidered down her spine, hooking its long legs into her ribs, and pulled slowly. She ignored it.
“Take a look,” she said.
Samson reached for the feather.
CHAPTER 34
SAMSON
Such is the tragedy of gods. They are not aware of their own mortality.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
This was a kind of pain that had no name.
Samson’s chest heaved, fire lacerating down his ribs. He crashed to the ground, writhing, screaming, clutching his chest as the token slipped from his hand.
The others were shouting, but Samson could not hear, a roar rising in his ears as something cold and sharp slid between the notches in his spine.Not again.
Panic closed his throat. He had the sensation of being squeezed, like a lemon, wrung and wrung until he had no more juice to give.
Fire, he tried to say, but no sound came out of his mouth. He needed fire. Warmth. Couldn’t they hear?
His vision swam. He was no longer in the courtyard of the king, but back in the dark, dank tunnels, the walls wet and alive around him.
The darkness laughed in a voice painfully familiar. He cried, kicked,and then he was hurtling through nothingness, the wind tearing at his face, the laughter rising—only to smash into the ground.
Around him, ore glittered like the stars untouched. A long and silver object snaked across the chamber. At its center, a fire burned.
Black.
Smokeless.
He tried to run. Instinct told him that if he looked into the black fire, if he so much as saw the face that lay ruined within, it would ruinhim.
