Chapter 4 Elena
ELENA
We are a stubborn lot. Even when armies come to desecrate our temples and rebuke our god, we refuse. Perhaps that is our greatest rebellion, and our terrible tragedy—this refusal to stop believing.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
How many captured?” Elena asked.
“About eight hundred Jantari,” Samson said. Blood flecked his jaw, dry and rust colored, but he made no move to wipe it off. She wondered if she too had blood on her that she had not noticed.
They had set up a rudimentary command center in the city square, in the hall that had once been filled with dignitaries and bureaucrats.
The Jantari had taken it over, and Elena saw the remnants of their control: communication panels and pods, various headgears and military equipment, even a zeemir, recently polished.
In the next room, the Jantari had kept their weapons arsenal and battlesuits.
Chandi and Visha were in there, taking stock.
Elena could hear their quiet murmur, the scuffle of their feet.
The hall was a reprieve from the chaos of the city, but Elena found the quiet discerning, unnatural.
She nodded toward the control panel that had once been Edmund’s.
“Are you sure no codes or messages were sent out? To Rani? To Farin?”
“None,” Samson said. “We took out their communications tower in the south. They were in the black.”
“And the Ravani army? How many soldiers were imprisoned?”
“Two hundred, or at least that’s how many we found. They’re in bad shape. But they’re alive. And grateful.”
A blue flame, half-formed, flickered like a ghost around his wrist. Ever since he had proclaimed himself the Prophet, Samson was more open with his powers.
Fire, it seemed, was always around him. Even when she couldn’t see it, she could feel it.
Like awakening a limb that had fallen asleep, tiny pinpricks of awareness traveled through her bones.
She could feel her inner spark, her Agni, ripple beneath her skin, yearning to be released.
But she held it back. Something about so flagrantly flaring her powers filled her with distaste.
Samson’s eyes slid to her. “What is it? You’re fidgeting.”
“You’re wielding,” she retorted, pointing to his wrist.
“A habit.”
“One you kept conveniently hidden in Rani,” she said before she could stop herself.
He sighed. “Again, Elena?”
She bristled at his tone, but more so, she felt the same sensation of slow strangulation.
They had discussed this before. Samson was the Prophet.
She had seen it, felt the awful depth of his powers.
As a Ravani who had been raised on the stories of the Prophet, she knew she should believe in him and his fight for freedom.
He had promised her vengeance. But in the months after she had taken his hand, her disbelief and unease had grown.
He did not claim fealty to the Phoenix. He had allowed the order to be killed, watched her father fall into madness during his hunt—
“Elena.” He took her hands, his voice gentle. “I told you, I had to hide. Your father would not have believed me, even if I summoned flames before him. He was already lost. His fate already written in the flames. Even I could not have stopped it.”
“His fate,” she said darkly, working against the lump in her throat. “I could have convinced him. Brokered a partnership—”
“The Eternal Fire had already claimed him. I could do nothing,” he said.
“You could have warned him,” she said.
“And it would have changed nothing,” he responded.
They stared at each other—she, confused and hurt; he, wary and watchful. It was the same argument. The same patterns. They went around and around and arrived at the invariable conclusion. Silence.
Finally, Elena looked away. She felt her anger leaching out, replaced by a bone-weary grief that seemed to have never loosened its grip since Rani.
All at once, she was acutely aware of the grime on her clothes, the blood in her hair, a filth that sank deeper than skin.
She wanted to sleep. To scream. To scrub her skin until her hands felt raw and she saw the white gleam of bone.
Maybe then this grief would leave her. Maybe then she could walk without this burden bearing down until it ripped through her stomach and left her bleeding.
Hollowed.
“We counted the survivors in the city,” Samson said, breaking the silence. He hesitated, then placed his hand on her shoulder. It was warm, heavy. “Mostly Ravani, with some Sesharian refugees who settled south. They’ll be in the square soon. You should address them.”
“And the Jantari soldiers?” she asked.
“They’ll be dealt with.”
“We crushed civilians when we breached the wall. I sent out a crew to search for survivors, but they found none.” She met his gaze. “Our intel said all civilians were kept in the inner city, under tight watch. But Visha reported her recons to you. Did you know they were there?”
A pause.
“You saved thousands of Ravani, Elena. Tens of thousands, in exchange for seventy.”
“That wasn’t an answer to my question.”
“No,” he said, and the flame on his wrist flickered, then stilled. “But you and Visha were right to continue the mission. We have Magar now. The city is free of the Jantari, thanks to you.”
Thanks to you. A twinge of guilt reverberated through her ribs, hammering against her heart. “I regret it,” she said.
Her voice, though soft, seemed to echo in the hall.
Samson stilled. Even Visha and Chandi in the room over must have noticed, because she could no longer hear their murmurs. Samson stepped closer, his eyes raking over her, through her, and she had the odd sensation of being stripped down, examined, and found lacking.
“Regret,” he said slowly, pulling out the word as if tasting it for the first time.
“Yes,” she said, uneasy. She was pinned between him and the table. With no escape, Elena faced him. She faced the Prophet and the darkness beginning to bleed into his eyes. “You are their Prophet, our Prophet. Surely you must feel regret for killing your followers.”
Samson cocked his head and regarded her with a cold, almost reptilian focus. “I have had many regrets in my life, Elena Aadya Ravence, but this is not one of them. Tell me. Did you feel regret when you destroyed those Jantari mines and set off landslides, crushing the tiny village?”
She stared at him, speechless.
He drew closer, and she saw now how his blue eyes were not dark, but hot like burning coals.
“You told me you wanted vengeance against the Jantari. This is part of it. These sacrifices,” he said, and she flinched, as if struck.
“There is no room for regret, or those who feel it. So, tell me, rani. Do you still want vengeance, or will I have to leave you behind?”
Elena swallowed. There was a fervor in his eyes, vicious and bright, like fire glinting off a sword.
But when he hooked his fingers beneath her chin, drawing her in with a touch so gentle that the absence of pain felt like a prick, she realized the look in his eyes was more than just fervor.
It was zeal. The unshakable belief of the righteous, who knew, without a tremor of doubt, that their actions were justified.
Because he was a god, and gods did not answer to the laws of men.
“Should I leave you behind?” he said, his breath brushing her lips.
Disgust, guilt, anger rippled through her as she wrestled for an answer. The long cool hall stretched onward, and outside the great doors, she began to hear the chatter of a crowd gathering. Survivors. Her people, freed because of him. Because of them.
“No,” she spat.
His nail lightly scraped the underside of her chin. “Good. Because regret immobilizes you. Makes you weak. You are a god, Elena, whether you believe it or not. And gods do not fret about regrets, not when we have a war to win.” He let her go. “I would hate parting ways with you, my rani.”
He began to leave, but she hooked her nails into his arm and forced him to stop.
“I want to give the ones lost at the wall proper funerals,” she said, her voice hard, firm. “It’s the least we can do, as gods. Right?”
He looked down at her hand. For a moment, she thought he would refuse, but then Samson dipped his head. “As you wish.”
“The queen!”
“Make way!”
“She’s alive, she’s alive! Phoenix Above, look!”
Elena blinked against the sudden brightness of the day, overwhelmed by the onslaught of voices from the crowd waiting on the hall steps. They swarmed her, shouting, calling. One older woman came forward and draped a mala, a garland threaded with fresh jasmine and marigold, around Elena’s neck.
Already, celebrations were ringing through the city.
People walked openly in the streets, drinking, singing, dancing, with no fear of curfew, no zeemir glinting overhead.
Elena wanted to feel their exuberance. She wished for joy to sweep her up like a heady drug so that she forgot the deaths along the wall, the blood beneath her fingernails.
She wanted to relish their victory. Her victory.
But Elena could only stand there, silent.
With each passing second, her smile faded.
She ducked her head and pushed past the crowd, muttering excuses, and with every hand that reached out to touch her, she flinched.
She stumbled down the steps, heading—where?
She did not know these streets, not like Rani, not like the dunes surrounding the capital.
The city walls towered overhead, red and stark in the bright midday sun.
The breach, she thought, but as soon as she thought of it, the strength left her legs.
She staggered, sick. The idea of digging up the dead and creating more funeral pyres churned her stomach.
She could not face the dead or yield her regret.
Somehow, that juxtaposition of pain felt right.
Good, she thought savagely. Let me suffer.
At least it was something she deserved, unlike this joy.