Chapter 2 Elena
ELENA
The Phoenix’s love is strange. At once, it nourishes. Protects. And yet the kiss of fire is so gruesome that I wish to no longer bear Her worship.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
Smoke filled the breach. Elena felt it vine through her chest, squeezing her lungs as she climbed over fallen fragments of the wall.
A small force of fifty Black Scale soldiers, those who had been lying in wait at the bottom of the cliffs, had already ripped through and taken the Jantari unawares.
The larger, second force would break through the northeastern wall.
Already, she could hear pulse fire in the distance.
She should be running toward it, should be in position when Samson and his forces descended into the center.
But Elena did not hurry.
She surveyed the debris, the splotches of blood, the crumpled bodies. A mangled sensation built in her chest.
People.
Her people.
She swayed, trying to catch her balance, and a hand, broken and bloody, crunched under her boot.
She wanted to scream.
She fell, instead.
Her hands and feet began to move of their own accord. Distantly, Elena realized she had started to dig through the rubble. Stones bit into her skin. Scraped her palms. Her gloves were in ruins. She hissed as she felt the sting of the cuts, leaving bloody handprints in her wake.
“What are you doing?”
She whirled to find Visha standing in the breach, a hand on her hip.
It was the sight of Visha’s unbloodied hands, gloved and spotless while hers were red and ruined, that made Elena bristle until all she could see, all she could think about, were those fucking perfect hands.
She rose, snarling.
Visha started, reaching for the urumi on her belt. It was too late.
The flame lanced through the air like an arrow, ripping the sword from her grasp.
“What the hells are you doing!” she barked.
“You lied,” Elena said, stalking forward. “You told us after your recon that only soldiers manned the walls, but there were Ravani there. Goddamn civilians, Visha.”
“Listen, I—” Visha said, taking another step back. Her heel struck the edge of a broken sandstone, and she tottered before regaining her balance. “We need to get to the others.”
“We need to dig out the survivors,” Elena said.
Visha laughed, short and harsh. “That’s not our orders.”
“Those might be yours. Not mine.”
“We’ll send rescue parties after we take the city.”
“If we wait, we’ll find only corpses.”
“Well,” Visha said, fixing her with a cold smile, “we better take this city quickly.”
“Did he know?” Elena said as Visha turned. The strategist froze. “Did you tell him?”
Before Visha could respond, a drone filled the air. At once, Elena felt her fury fizzle, die. She whipped around to see three Jantari warbirds rise from within the center of the city and race toward the broken wall.
“Shit,” Visha said.
“I thought—” Elena said, mouth suddenly dry.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Visha grabbed her arm, pulling her. “Run, Ravani.”
They barreled down the ruins as the jets roared.
There was an earsplitting boom, like thunder cracking right above her head.
Elena could not even hear her own scream.
She slammed onto her back. The air rushed out of her, and for a moment, she couldn’t see.
Couldn’t breathe. The world went black, then white.
Elena blinked away bright, hot lights. The ground, the wall, everything was spinning.
A new section of the wall had been blown off. A gaping black hole, yawning into the dark canyons beyond. The warbirds circled overhead, no doubt searching for the mysterious army ensconced in the canyons.
We’re already inside, you fools, she thought vehemently.
Something grabbed her hand. She blinked. Visha swam into her vision, ash streaking her face. She was pointing up, up, up.
But Elena felt them before she saw them.
The red sandstone beneath her rumbled as a steady thrumming reverberated through the air.
The blackwings streaked past her from their journey within the Agnee Range, silver serpents rippling on their black hides as if alive.
They shot past the warbirds, who scattered.
One blackwing peeled away to the south while the other swung around, chasing after the warbirds within the canyons.
It opened fire, long-range pulses lighting up the sky like red lightning bolts.
Two Jantari jets managed to get away—but one was not quick enough.
A pulse ripped through its wing, shredding metal and severing it in two. The warbird crashed into the deeper canyons. A ball of gas and flames belched into the air like the dying gasp of some twisted beast.
Visha whooped. “Blast them, boys!”
Elena could not look away, even as the explosion split the air and blinded her.
It was brutish and elegant and terrifying all the same.
All that fire. She leaned forward as if to feel the brush of that distant inferno.
She could feel its heat sear through her as if she herself had summoned it.
It filled her with a deep, carnal pleasure, and a desire to burn. To do so much worse.
Soon, you will want to take everything, Samson had told her. You will want everything to sing its song.
But then her gaze slammed back to the fallen wall, and Elena tasted something acidic and vile on her tongue. Hot shame flushed over her. She swallowed the prickly torridity pushing up her throat and forced herself to breathe, to bury that treacherous desire.
“Come on. We need to get you to the center,” Visha said.
Elena rose unsteadily to her feet, looking back to the wall.
She wanted to stay. To sift through the rubble with her bloodied hands and rescue the survivors.
If there are any left, she thought. How many were gasping for air right now, buried under rock?
She almost took a step toward the wall when she felt a ripple, low in her stomach.
A whine keened in her ears. And it began again.
The thud thud in her veins as her Agni gnashed and roiled in frustration.
It was beginning.
He was calling.
“Elena, we have to go.” Visha held out her pulse gun. “Come.”
When she still did not move, Visha stepped forward and pressed the gun into her hand with a gentleness that startled her.
“How many more will die if we stay here, searching for what few survivors are left?” Visha said softly.
Elena turned to her, eyes red. Her throat ached. “Don’t.”
But Visha was already moving. She preferred to stay in motion, always. “There are more Ravani trapped in the city center, waiting for their queen. But you can stay here, mourning the dead. Don’t bother with the living.”
The words felt like a slap.
Burn, the Agni within her begged. It was as if the flames pulsed in want. Burn.
Slowly, painstakingly, Elena turned away. Everything within her screamed. Every step felt like a betrayal, and that feeling felt too familiar, too cruel. She pushed back the guilt. Swallowed it as she ran, listening to the rising chant of the flames as they called for her.
They hid behind a makeshift barricade as pulse fire shredded the air. In the tight lane, three Black Scales crouched behind a hovercar. Jantari soldiers, hidden behind a dilapidated storefront, fired from the other end, and Elena ducked as a pulse clipped off a store sign.
“Cover me!” Visha shouted.
Elena fired as Visha dove into the fray, joining the soldiers by the car.
None of her shots hit their mark. Elena swore, warming up her barrel again when she saw Visha stand.
The strategist ran forward as the Jantari fired.
Elena and other Black Scales gave her cover, but a pulse, friendly or not, grazed Visha’s thigh and she tripped, falling, but not before hurling a black ball toward the Jantari.
The grenade exploded. In the din of shouts and screams, Elena shot up and hauled Visha behind a cart full of shattered diyas.
“Can you walk?” she asked.
Visha nodded grimly, but Elena could see the blood blooming across her thigh. The other Black Scales had already run up, firing into the smoke.
They joined them to find five Jantari soldiers sprawled dead within the rubble. A comms crackled, and one Black Scale yanked the bloody device out of the fallen’s ear with a sudden, vicious movement.
“There’s another squad up ahead,” he said as he listened. “Twelve of them in the northwest bazaar. They’re calling for reinforcements.”
“Soon all those bastards will be here,” Visha said. “We have to move.”
Their advantage was speed. That, and surprise.
The Jantari had not known they would attack in the middle of the night.
Twice. The blackwings picked off any escape hoverpods and warbirds as the infantry pushed in with a two-pronged attack, like a knife followed by a sledgehammer. A quick cut, then the killing blow.
“We just have to hold them off a little bit longer,” Visha said. “When the second wave comes in, they’ll crumble.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” The soldier fitted the Jantari comms into his ear and grinned. It was his grin that reminded Elena of his name. Kavson. A tall brute with small ears and close-set eyes. Eyes that he fixed on her. “Let’s take back the queen’s city.”
And save its people, Elena wanted to add, but they were already turning away.
They ran through a twisting alley that opened onto a wider road.
Torn storefronts and sagging walls bowed to Elena.
She spotted a body crushed beneath a wall, the legs splayed out, as if the soldier had been caught mid-leap.
More bodies, some fallen Black Scales, mostly Jantari soldiers, were tangled within the rubble.
She spotted a hand, half-closed. A shock of black hair, with the face squashed under stone.
A boot, with no sign of its owner, sat alone in the middle of the road.
As Elena picked her way past it, she saw that the foot was still within the shoe.
Visha turned as Elena vomited. Her face screwed up in contempt.
“Try to keep your shit together,” she said.
“Visha, Visha,” Kavson chided. He shot Elena a wolf’s smile. “Don’t make fun of our queen’s delicate sensibilities. Not all of us are as lucky to have them.”
“I’d rather shoot my eyes out,” Visha said.
“What a waste,” he said. “How will you find me in the dark, then?”
Elena wiped spit from her chin. She wanted to retort that she did not feel lucky, but then a high-pitched hum cut through the smoke. Cruiser. Before Elena could react, the armored vehicle burst over the rubble, guns firing.
“Everybody down!” Visha screamed.
Elena lunged to the side, ducking behind a crumbled wall. She saw a spray of blood out of the corner of her left eye, then heard a shriek. Visha dropped her grenade, fingers bloodied. Elena began to make her way toward her, but then the cruiser plunged forward, forcing her back.
She was trapped.
Elena shot up, trying to gun down the driver, but her pulses glanced off the shields. The cruiser hurtled closer. Fifty paces, forty. It switched on its headlights, blinding her. Thirty. Elena fired desperately. Twenty, ten—
The grenade shattered her eardrums. She screamed but did not hear it.
Elena smacked into the ground, gasping. She tried to get up, but her limbs were heavy, slow.
Blood leaked out of a gash on her forehead.
She managed to climb onto her knees and peer at the world through a screen of crimson.
She spotted Kavson ahead, yelling, or maybe he was laughing as he pushed a crumpled body out of the cruiser.
Visha and two other Black Scales were running up the side of the street toward Kavson. Elena wobbled to her feet. She called out to them, her voice far-off and foreign.
And then the air split.
At first, Elena saw only a blinding white light.
Grenade. But the light was too bright, too sharp, and Elena felt it sear the air.
It hit her with a physical force she did not expect.
She slammed against the rubble, and this time, something pierced the armor of her battlesuit, straight into the soft flesh of her arm.
She moaned. The light slowly faded, and when Elena gingerly opened her eyes, her heart dropped.
A hull blocked the end of the street.
It was a behemoth, tall as two men and wider than three.
Thick metal coils hooked three Jantari soldiers within its belly.
Where the men ended and the machine started, Elena could not tell.
They were more metal than flesh, more weapon than man.
The hull rolled through the street, crushing stone, limbs, soldiers.
She watched it flick Kavson off his feet as if he were nothing but a fly.
Visha fired, but it was useless. The hull came.
Brutal. Relentless. Elena raised her hands to form the Lotus, the first form of her Agni, but her sparks fizzled in her palms, as bleary as her mind.
Suddenly, a sound pierced through the fog of her mind.
It was a hiss. Low and dangerous.
Her fingers smarted. Elena felt heat building in her arms, her legs, her throat as the fire that licked the buildings curved toward the sky. Every part of her, every cell, vibrated with the rhythmic hissing.
The inferno bent as if it too knew.
The Prophet was here.