The Burning Queen (The Ravence Trilogy #2)

Prologue Elena

PROLOGUE

ELENA

The desert howled around them in rippling waves, spitting sand and rock against the curved window of the hoverpod. Even through the thick glass, Elena could smell the desert: its dry camphor, underlaid with something bitter and savage.

“Brace for landing,” the pilot called.

Elena did not sit. She placed her hands against the sill and leaned forward so that her nose pressed against the glass, leaving a smudge of ash.

She needed to see it with her own eyes, to affirm that the rumors were real.

That these, the dark amorphous forms of billowing sand, were wraiths of a god made alive.

A god so cursed that the desert raged before it.

When the mountains of the Agnee Range snapped up through the storm, Elena went rigid.

There, nestled between the dark teeth of the cliffs, was the Eternal Fire.

It licked the open sky as if sensing her approach.

She began to shake. Not long ago, she had come to these same mountains with the blazing, glorious hope of a kingdom behind her.

Only ghosts followed her now.

The pod docked, and Elena stumbled after the Black Scale soldiers as they ascended the temple stairs.

The winds were not so fierce this high, but she could taste salt in the air, intermingled with the acidity of smoke.

With it, memories came flitting back: the hot breath of the inferno, the piercing note in her father’s screams, the temple crumbling like a crushed flower underneath a cruel hand.

Elena faltered on the steps. Above, in the ruins of the temple where she had been crowned queen, the ghosts awaited.

Her father, Ferma, the guards, all those who had died in her name.

All the ones she could not save. She felt their unearthly stares prick her flesh with the cold, tender care of a carver’s blade cutting through a skinned bird.

Ahead, one of the soldiers turned. She had dark, liquid eyes and a tattoo of a skull hand wrapped around her throat. She smiled, and the ghosts wailed.

“Come, he’s waiting,” she called.

With a stuttering heart, Elena let go of the crumbling railing.

The wailing of the ghosts manifested into a keen, needling down her ears and setting her teeth on edge.

Elena slipped her hand into her pocket and grasped Yassen’s holopod.

She traced its familiar scratches, and her chest loosened a degree.

He had led her this far. Been so brave, so fierce.

She borrowed courage from it and from him, wherever he was.

Elena trudged toward the Eternal Fire, blinking furiously as its heat buffeted against her face. Fallen columns and crushed diyas littered the ground. Scorch marks marred the white marble foundation, but her gaze, like an arrow flying true, settled on him.

The man basking within the inferno, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Her heart ratcheted up a notch, and all her earlier anticipation came crashing back. The flames sensed it. They trembled at her approach, rising, singing in soft hisses. As they grew louder, Elena felt the air tighten until it grew sharp, physical, like a match poised to strike.

The man turned.

The match struck, and Elena felt a deep, burning sensation ripple through the air and her body, cauterizing her nerves.

Eyes too blue, she thought. Eyes cursed in the desert.

They drank in the sight of her: the tousled hair of a month of no sleep; the cuts on her arms; the darkened skin of her hands. A slow smile spread across his face.

“I knew we’d find you,” Samson said.

His voice seemed to come from the flames themselves, a thick, crackling song.

The flames swooned. Her mind teetered between disbelief and fear.

He could not be alive. He should not be alive.

But then Samson stepped forward and took her hands, and the shock of his touch, warm and tender like the flames she summoned, jolted her back.

“You’re alive,” she said.

He smiled again, so bright and blinding that for a moment, Elena felt her fear dissipate, flooded out by relief.

“You’re alive,” she gasped. She crushed him in an embrace, and Samson laughed, the flames rumbling with him. He smelled of smoke and ginger, like spices roasted and set alight. His arms were heavy and strong as he pressed her into his chest and rested his chin on top of her head.

“I am, my rani,” he said.

That was when she noticed the flames.

Not the ones of the Eternal Fire, but the others. They crawled up the staircase, encroaching on all sides. Blue like an unblemished sky. Blue like the roiling sea. Blue like his cursed eyes.

Elena pulled away. A question, the one that festered inside her like a parasite as the Black Scales had smuggled her out of Jantar, rose in her throat.

She did not want to say it and make her fears real.

But Samson only looked at her, expectant.

And she saw then that his smile had never reached his eyes.

“How?” she said, her voice a low rasp. “How did you survive?”

Samson spread his hands, and blue flames rolled down his shoulders, spiraling around his arms. “I am the Prophet, darling.”

There is a new god, the soldiers had told her. A god that the desert bends to. A foreign god that your people never anticipated.

“But—you—you’re.” Her tongue twisted in on itself. “H-how can that be possible? You’re Sesharian. You don’t believe in the Phoenix. And you—your fire…”

“Fire knows its brethren,” he said, watching her. “We are the same, you and I.”

She took another step back, watching the blue flames with a mixture of wariness and fascination.

She could not deny that she felt a pull.

Deep inside her, something ancient and raw.

A burning that seared her veins with a heady potency and a creeping alarm, like when two predators in the wild see each other from a distance and awareness of their own danger flows between them.

“I can wield fire, but I am not the Prophet. What makes you one, then?”

Samson considered her, his head tilting in an achingly familiar gesture that reminded her of hot afternoons spent on her balcony discussing their vision for Ravence. But there was something sharp in the slant of his mouth.

“Let me show you.”

He turned to the Eternal Fire, and in that moment, Elena felt a mysterious sensation begin to build within her.

A foreboding, a curiosity. It heightened as he raised his hand and the Eternal Fire, the one she could not control, the one she had spent months trying to even hold, bent.

All its heads, all the angry, biting flames, bent.

Elena stared, stunned. Her mind raced, going through the stories of the Prophet, the Phoenix, her father’s hunt, and all the while, that terrible sensation grew stronger.

“Where is the Phoenix?” Her voice was barely a whisper above the hiss of the flames. “The stories say that you were supposed to rise with Her.”

When he spoke, the flames spoke with him.

“There is no Phoenix. There never was. Only a lie, conjured by con men. The true master and architect of the Eternal Fire is the Great Serpent, and you and I, Elena, are of Her like. We are the gods now. We will take back Ravence and Seshar and watch the world bend.”

Ravence.

The very name sent an ache through her. Her home lay ruined and burned, occupied by enemies. And before her was the very god the stories claimed would free it.

Stories that, according to him, were no longer true.

Samson must have sensed her hesitation, because he stepped closer, holding out his hand. In the light of the inferno, she could see the ash streaks on his cheeks, the spark of madness or genius in his eyes.

“I know what it means to burn,” he said softly. “I know its misery. Its hunger.”

Elena flinched. He drew closer, his voice low, dangerous.

“And if we can make Jantar just taste that misery, would you not be avenged? Tell me, rani. Would you not be pleased to have Farin’s head at your feet?”

Her heart thundered. Her desire, on his lips, made her sick, thrilled.

Around her, Elena could feel the hot rage of the inferno, the cold stares of the ghosts.

Vengeance. For her people, her father, Ferma, Yassen, herself.

The desire rippled through her with a slow heat, her every breath scraping the inside of her throat like a finely toothed comb.

Elena watched the inferno with a new mixture of horror and wonder. Vengeance lay at her fingertips.

At theirs.

“How,” she began, and stopped when she met his eyes.

Because in them, she saw her same fury reflected—tenfold.

Only his was colder, crueler, a wrath that seemed at once unfathomable and endless.

If he harbored that much fury, what kind of god was he?

A savior, like the stories said? Or a monster, like she had once believed?

Elena paused, uncertain. Yet below her alarm, she sensed an awareness tugging her belly with an incessant urgency, and as she considered it, she felt his Agni twinge in recognition.

Like knows like. Fire knows its brethren.

The realization hummed through her bones, filling her ears with a buzz that built until all she could hear was the steady murmur of the inferno as it knelt before a cursed god.

A god who offered her his hand.

Slowly, Elena raised hers.

“Will you help me, then?” she said.

Samson smiled. A crude, vicious smile.

A butcher’s smile, she thought.

He took her hand. “We start with Ravence.”