Elena gave him a pitiless smile. “Oh, I think I know what you meant.”
She looped her urumi and hung it on her shoulder.
“Wear it like a belt,” he said suddenly.
Elena paused, her hand on the hilt.
“May I?” He stepped closer and unhooked the urumi from her shoulder. Carefully, he wound his arms around her, his hands brushing against the curves of her waist and then back around, sliding the blade into the hilt. His eyes met hers. She was so close that he could see the gold flecks in her irises. The small birthmark hidden within the arch of her right brow.Funny, he thought. He had never noticed it before.
“Your hands,” she said slowly, “are on top of my crotch.”
Samson jerked away, heat rising to his cheeks as he quickly clasped his hands behind his back. “N-now you look like a proper warrior.”
Elena looked down at the urumi wound around her hips. “I think I’ll cut myself if I move.”
“Ah, but that’s the beauty of it.” He patted his waist. “‘A beltless warrioris a blind warrior.’ You can’t relax when you wear an urumi like this. It keeps you alert. Whether for an enemy or—” He hesitated, then rushed her. Elena immediately snapped back, her urumi slashing upward to fend off his advance. The cut was slow, lazy. She still had a lot to learn. Samson sidestepped and whirled around, catching her from behind, his hand pressing into the small of her back. “—a friend.”
But then she did something unexpected. She fell into his instep, her elbow lancing into his side as a red flame curled up from her shoulder and launched into his face. Samson cried out. He grasped the flame and spun on his toe, using momentum to throw the flame against the arch. It hit the stone and hissed. Samson steeled himself, his blue flames crackling, black spots already creeping into the edges of his vision. He still wasn’t strong enough to conjure his Agni fully. But then the red flame sputtered and died with an undignified gasp.
“You have your urumi, I have my dance,” Elena said. Samson turned to face her. The urumi coiled around her feet like a silver serpent. “To each their own.”
He sensed the flare of her inferno before it appeared. Elena called her Agni, and as flames darted down the blade, he felt his Agnisoar.
It was as if he had been plodding through his life in a dream and only now, with her flames rushing down his urumi’s twin, did he know the true feeling of beingalive. For a brief, aching moment, his Agni flared, brilliant and awake. In his mind’s eye, he saw their connection. And he followed it to the life force of her inferno, the bloodied radiance of crimson and the heat of sand. The taste of salt and earth. It ran deep, deeper than he had thought, into the very soil of this land and ones beyond, in the hidden volcanoes of the sea to the mountains kissing the skies. His heart quickened as the potency of her Agni licked up his spine. His jaw hurt. He felt a giddiness and an ancient terror, one laid into the very marrow of his bones, and he thought, with an awful clarity,I have done it.
He had linked his Agni to hers.
Unknowingly, she had given a spark of her own Agni to his, which meant…
Amrithi.
Samson wobbled. Elena turned to him with a smile as she gazed at the urumi, but her smile quickly fell.
“Your eyes,” she gasped.
He touched his face. “Wh-what?”
“They’re blue on blue.”
Your eyes are too blue, his mother had said.It is a curse, and a god-given gift.
A death wish, Ruru.
His name used to be Ruru. Little Ruru. Prince Ruru. Little Prince Ruru. His mother had different variations, plucking the name from the air with a smile as white as the beaches beyond their home.
“Samson,” his father had said, “is more suitable. He won’t be singled out by the older Jantari boys.”
And so he became Samson. Studious Samson. Careful Samson. Don’t-Push-Back-Against-the-Jantari Samson.
But to his mother, he was always Ruru. Mischievous Ruru. Brave Ruru. My sweet, beautiful Ruru.
He treasured that name. Kept it close to his heart, like the lion-heart seashell his father had found for him.
“Ruru,” he’d whisper into the shell.
“Ruru,” it would sing back.
At the state-sponsored school, he went by his Jantari name. His official government name, according to the records. The Jantari preferred rigidity and tradition, and Samson, his father had said, was a name that met their demands.
