“Get away from me,” she spat. Her throat throbbed. It hurt to speak. She scrambled back as Samson watched her with something akin to heartbreak.
This too felt familiar, this hurt too much.
“I didn’t mean to, Elena,please, let me help,” he said.
Syla stepped between them. “Your commander is right, Butcher. You need rest. All of us do. Come.”
He offered his arm to Elena, and she took it. Samson did not try to stop her, though she felt his eyes and the weight of his guilt. When they began to leave, he called out to her.
“Thank you,” he said.
She ventured one glance back.
Too blue, she thought.A curse. A curse that is now mine.
“It’s too late to go back now,” she said and turned away. It was an insufficient reply, but it was the only one Elena could give. Because she did not know if, by saving Samson and the darkness within him, she had now damned the world.
CHAPTER 36
SAMSON
There comes a time when a man must fold his morals into the pockets of his heart and forget its existence.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
He swam through the hellscape of dreams. They morphed without pattern, without reason. He saw his mother and sister calling for him on the beach. Shadows waned around his feet. One rose with eyes of gold, and he screamed for them to run when hands pulled him into the dark waters of the sea. Salt water rushed up his nostrils and into his mouth, stinging his throat.
He coughed out sand.
The desert stretched before him in its cold austerity. Dunes upon dunes that seemed to grow toward the heavens. They moved with the awful gradual force of plates shifting beneath the earth’s skin, bearing toward a collision that could not be stopped. And there in the bowl of the dunes, the black figure stood. White fire wreathed its arms like armor and formed a crown upon its head.
At the sound of his gasp, it began to turn, and Samson felt the awful, crushing certainty that if he saw its face, the dunes would swallow the moons.
He scrambled back, and out of the corner of his eye, he detected movement. Another figure. Another shadow barely real. But he knew that flickering face. He had seen it before in his memories, in the chambers of his heart he dare not enter. Samson called to it, and it turned to him with eyes of gold.
He snapped awake. Someone startled beside him, and in the irritational dregs of his dream, Samson thought it was the black figure. He yelled, reaching for his urumi, but his waist lay bare.
“Easy!” Chandi said.
“I—I thought—” he gasped. Visions swam before him. The figure stood behind Chandi and smiled at him, but then he blinked, and it was gone. Samson sagged into his bed.
“Water,” he rasped.
Chandi poured from a pitcher, and he accepted the glass with a trembling hand. She watched, quiet, but he could feel the weight of her thoughts, see the tension laced in her shoulders, and he remembered his cold indifference toward her. It seemed so worthless now.
“I’m sorry, Chandi,” he said.
She started, surprised. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“When you went behind my back with the Arohassin, I couldn’t stand to look you in the face, but… I—I was wrong. You’ve only ever done what’s best for us. For Seshar. For me, and I have treated you unkindly for it.” He met her eyes. “I was blind, Chandi. I’ve been blind to many things, and I—I…” He trailed off, looking away. When he spoke again, his voice was choked. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you fool.” She hit his arm, her eyes wet. “I know I’m a better fighter than you.”
He laughed, a crushed, choking sound. “They will need you. After what I’ve done… I don’t know how to face them. Akino, he—he shot me when I left. When I saw his eyes, there was so much betrayal. So much disappointment. I—I have never hated myself more than in that moment. And now Farin, those children.” He stopped, his chest twisting into an excruciating tangle of shame. “I tried to protect us all, and I have only damned us more.”
“Then defeat Farin and earn your forgiveness.” Her voice was hard, and he winced at the harsh truth of it. “You cannot wallow, Samson. You have not earned that pleasure.Wecannot afford it. For better or for worse, the Great Serpent chose you to see through Her purpose. So fight until we are free, and maybe then you’ll earn forgiveness from the dead. We must go to the council.Youmust face Farin and kill him.”
He chuckled humorlessly. “You would have made a ruthless Prophet.”
