Heavenly Bodies

Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Elara woke the next morning to the smell of smoke. She coughed, arms reaching out blindly. Her eyes widening, she saw plumes of smoke rising, coming from the rough direction of the palace gates. She staggered to her feet in alarm, her view obstructed by the parapets and towers of the palace grounds.

Quickly pulling on her training clothes, she strapped her dagger to her thigh and ran out into the empty corridor, shouting for Merissa or Leo.

‘Anybody? Help! There’s smoke by the palace gates!’

The palace was as silent as the Graveyard and Elara fought to quell the rising panic inside. She flung herself around a corner, hoping that she was heading the right way. She began to hear the hum of a crowd and followed it. She spotted Merissa, who waved desperately, beckoning her over. With a lurch, she ran to her, holding her robe around her.

‘What in the Stars is going on?’ she cursed, straining over the heads of both palace guests and workers. Opposite where she had come from, there was another arched entrance to the yard, gated, and Elara saw beyond it even more crowds pressed against the bars, a roiling restless energy slithering through them.

‘A public execution,’ Merissa explained, peering over their heads herself. ‘The bells tolled just before dawn. The biggest one we’ve had in years.’

Elara shook her head. ‘ Public executions? You still have those?!’

Merissa looked at her as though she were insane. ‘You don’t in Asteria?’

‘My father outlawed them decades ago.’

Merissa looked at her uneasily. ‘You’d better not watch, then.’ She turned to the spectacle.

Elara made to turn too, sickness waving over her. However, something ground her to the spot, a heavy pulling sensation in her stomach. She moved, peering through a parting in the crowd. Her breath stopped. A few steps led to a raised platform, a portico built upon it. And there, each tied to a pillar of the structure, were five men.

One, small and weaselly, had blood pouring from his nose. The next, short and muscled, had burns down one side of his face.

‘Good gods,’ Elara breathed.

The next looked around Elara’s age, and wept through purple and swelling eyes. Blackened blood was encrusted on his lips and lids. The man beside him was cursing, deep lacerations all over his bare chest. The men who had held her down. The men who had watched.

Finally, at the end, moaning wordlessly, his tongue cut down to a blackened stump, visible as he wailed, she saw him. A sandy head, a scar across his temple.

Elara’s breath quickened, her heart drumming such a song that it enveloped her, drowning out everything else—the sounds of the crowd, the gossip, the jeers.

‘No, no, no,’ she uttered, clutching the pillar next to her.

‘Elara? Elara!’ Merissa held her, concern plain on her features.

‘He…He…’ Stars, she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak as the weight of what she saw before her crushed her. ‘Where is he?’ she snarled. ‘Where is he?’

‘Who?’ Merissa frowned. ‘Who, Elara?’

Elara sucked in mouthfuls of air, anger setting her chest aflame as the incomprehensible became clear. Then she saw him.

Prince Lorenzo, the Lion of Helios, all-powerful Son of Light, the deadliest warrior to grace the land in centuries. As he strolled slowly past the prisoners, clad head to toe in black, his eyes were stormy, his jaw set. He halted and turned to the crowd, looking down upon them.

‘These men are charged with assault of the highest degree.’ His voice carried across the space like the blade of a sword dealing a deadly blow. ‘They have besmirched the name of the City Guard.’ The prince spat at the feet of the ringleader as he moaned in pain. Elara lunged, trying to force the crowd apart to stop him, to make her way to the dais.

The morning light was dimmed in that moment by the glint in Lorenzo’s eyes as he spoke, the crowd murmuring in disgust, taunting as the charges were read.

Elara tried to shout his name, but her voice was swallowed by the crowd.

‘Let this be a lesson,’ he shouted over them all, ‘that this will be the fate that befalls anyone found guilty of the same. Of touching a woman against her will. Let this be a lesson,’ he said, turning to the whimpering figures tied to the posts, one hand raised elegantly against the bright skies, ‘that you will burn .’

A flick of his wrist and flames engulfed them all, their screams coating the thick, heaving air. Some of the crowd cried in horror. Others cheered. Enzo scanned the crowd, tall and proud, until his eyes snagged upon Elara’s. Her breath was stolen from her at the way the flames surrounding him burned within his eyes too. The sound of the crowd seemed to fade into the background, registering only as a dull roar in her ears, alongside distant, excited shouts of ‘Burn, burn, burn.’

Enzo’s stare did not leave her, and she couldn’t withstand the fire that surrounded her any longer. Head spinning, she tore from Merissa’s grip and ran at full speed through the palace gates, away from the baying crowd, and the Lion of Helios with them.