Chapter 1 Elena
ELENA
I have woken to a strange world where heroes have turned beasts, and beasts turned men. Where the heartless grow merciful, and the merciful—heartless.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
It was impossible to distinguish the smell of rancid metal from that of burning flesh. Elena pressed herself against the canyon wall, trying to breathe through her mouth, but the stench crawled down her nose and sat in her throat. She could taste their fear. Her people, already dying.
Carefully, Elena scaled the canyon, the fine webbing of her gloves and kneecaps sucking onto the rough faces of the rocks.
The cliffs of southern Ravence towered above her, red and severe, their stiff, craggy faces unlike the soft, ever-changing curves of the dunes.
Their silence swallowed her. She felt like a beetle. Small. Inadequate.
She paused on a ledge and flexed her tired arms, wincing.
They had been climbing for hours. Behind her, the others vaulted softly onto the ledge.
Visha did not stop to rest. The strategist was already flicking open her pod with a gloved hand, studying the maps.
The holos cast a pale blue light on her face, leeching the color from her cheeks and making the sharp angles of her nose and chin as stark as the cliffs.
“I say we have about a few more minutes’ climb before we reach the base of the tower,” she said.
She elongated her s’s, savoring them like morsels of meat caught in her teeth.
Behind her, the twins, Akino and Akiri, were unbuckling their pouches, sliding out various weapons: stun grenades, hand-sized explosives, pulse guns, and of course, their daggers.
They were Black Scale issued, with a winged serpent on the hilt.
Elena had warned them not to carry too much weight. The climb was long and narrow, but while she leaned against the wall, trying not to pant, the Black Scales moved with calculated ease, each move measured, bouts of energy managed. Visha was barely sweating.
“We’ve lost connection to the comms,” Akiri said, checking her pod.
“So… it’s only us… from here,” Elena said.
Akino glanced at her and must have noticed the sweat on her brow, for he turned away, frowning.
“Lucky bastards,” he said. “They’re down there while we have to deal with this smell.”
“Skies above, it’s horrid,” Akiri said. Her eyes avoided Elena’s. “And we’ve been moving so slow. And taking too many breaks. If I have to smell this another minute—”
“Quit prattling,” Visha snapped. The twins immediately quieted. “Phoenix set the pace. We’ve made good time, even if we are on the later side.”
Elena’s cheeks burned, but she ignored the slight. “I say… we rest another minute. Then head up. The tower is just ahead of us…” She sucked in air and blew out slowly. “So that means the rocks above will be crawling with Jantari. I can take lead and—”
“Let me,” Visha interjected.
Elena paused. Though Visha met her eyes, there was a force in her voice that left Elena unsettled, like someone had run a wet rag down her sweaty arms.
“I did recon. I know the area. I can scout the cliffs ahead and make it back without losing too much time,” Visha continued. “I’ll move… quicker.”
Elena wrestled the urge to panic. They aren’t disobeying me, she thought.
This was her mission. Her orders. Her team.
After two months of studying Black Scale military tactics, suffering their grueling training, and planning the operation down to every single minute, every second, she had earned her right to lead.
Never mind the fact that every Black Scale, including the three before her, had once vowed to serve her and her kingdom.
They were her men, in name. But in spirit?
Elena felt that same odd uncertainty, the unease that skittered like the fast-fading vestiges of a dream.
Crouched before her, dressed in their black battlesuits with their silver horned shoulders, the Black Scales looked like sleek, vicious gargoyles. Demons of a god.
They will follow me, she thought furiously.
“We’ll move together,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t betray her misgivings. Visha’s face remained carefully neutral, while Akiri scowled, and Akino glanced at his sister.
Mine, she thought desperately.
Something flickered at the edge of her vision.
Elena whirled, but the soldiers flew into movement.
Their speed astonished her, even now. Visha with her throwing knife, poised and ready; the twins with their guns, one red, the other blue, both stamped with the seal of their leader. The black serpent.
The shadows flittered again. Elena was reaching for her gun when the shadows paled, then diminished as a bright, searing light flooded the top of the canyon.
“Get down!” Visha hissed.
Elena shrank back. The searchlight skimmed over them, every indention, every nook in the wall, suddenly bright and visible, before the light passed and the shadows rushed back with uncanny swiftness.
She waited a beat, then straightened slowly. Visha checked her pod.
“The tower is on,” she said.
“But I thought—” Akino began.
“We’re late,” Akiri said flatly. Though Elena was facing away from her, she could feel her glower. “And those fucking junk brains are right on time.”
They were supposed to have reached the tower base before the searchlight activated. Elena had made it a point in her briefing. Planned it, in the minute-by-minute breakdown. And now it’s on me. I moved too slow, took too many breaks. She watched the rocks above, heart bleating. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“We can still make it,” Visha said.
Akino collected his weapons, but Elena noticed an added urgency in his movements. Visha pocketed her pod. Akiri was no longer scowling, but there was a dark, almost murderous look in her eyes. Elena could almost imagine her thoughts: If I die because of this Ravani bitch—
“We will make it,” Elena said. She met their gazes, biting back her nerves as they stared, eyes like flint.
She fished hurriedly in her pockets for her pod, not Yassen’s, but the other.
It was smooth and unmarred, face clean of scratches.
A novice’s pod, she thought suddenly as she drew it. Not a captain’s.
“Here, look at this,” she said, highlighting a route in red.
It indicated a path that diverged from their planned route, hugging the rocks and then climbing up the steep cliffs of the western side of the tower.
There was a sheer drop of several hundred feet on this side, which Elena noted.
“But it will work,” she said hastily. “We can’t go the eastern route like we had planned.
The Jantari guards will be out. But they won’t expect someone creeping up the cliffs because—”
“It’s a suicide mission,” Akiri said.
Visha shot her a look. “Not if we move carefully. And quickly.”
Akiri opened her mouth to retort, then seemed to think better of it. Akino belted on his gun, flexed his hands. His scar, hanging down from the edge of his eyebrow like a thin crescent moon, scrunched as he smiled.
“I’ll beat you to it, di,” he said to Akiri.
She sniffed. “Like hell you will. I was born two minutes before you.”
The searchlight swung back, and they hid in the crevice again. By the time it receded, Elena felt heat building in her arms, something gritty on her tongue. It took her a moment to realize it was ash.
Her Agni was stirring.
Which could only mean that he was growing impatient.
“We should move forward,” Visha said.
“On my signal,” Elena cut in.
Visha met her gaze, eyes narrowing. “Right. Captain.”
Elena crept up the wall. She could feel Visha’s cold, disparaging gaze on her neck, could feel all their eyes boring holes into her shoulders like perfectly round pulse wounds.
She had a sudden, irrational fear that if she looked down, she would find their guns pointing at her.
She got caught in the pulse fire, she could almost imagine Visha saying.
Poor, poor queen. Elena gripped her gun. She did not look down.
She climbed up onto the next ledge and sidled along the wall until she found the path cutting into the cliff. Once they reached it, she began to move quicker, rounded the corner, the others on her flank.
The corridor sloped upward, then veered left, but the swollen curve of a boulder blocked the view ahead. A blind spot. Elena crept forward. She strained to listen past the blood pounding in her ears for any sound, any indication of something waiting ahead. Nothing. Even the wind held its secrets.
Cautiously, Elena continued. The boulder loomed above her, its red face dark in the moonless night. Twenty paces, ten, five…
As Elena reached the turn, she spotted movement in the shadows in the corridor ahead.
She held up her hand, signaling, but then the shadow morphed, and a man stepped toward the far wall, his back to her.
He had a jagged silver weapon strapped to his shoulder.
Zeemir. Elena backpedaled. The soldier had not seen her.
He was too busy fiddling with his pants, the jangle of his belt bouncing through the air.
She stepped back and crashed right into Visha.
The strategist hissed, and it was this sound, so quick and innocuous, that made the soldier whirl around. His eyes widened.
“The devils—” he began, reaching for his gun.
But Visha was already moving, a blur of armor and knives and bright teeth, her dagger slicing cleanly into his neck as his pulse shot ripped through the fragile quiet.
It cleaved through the boulder, rock and dust exploding in the air.
Elena dove to the ground. An alarm wailed, and the searchlight swung around, its white, searing light washing out the rocks, Visha, the twins.
The memory came rushing back, pinning her to the ground.
The hoverpod’s searchlight. The burning mountain. Yassen, grasping her hand.
Elena, run.