Chapter 8 Elena #2
Elena hesitated, and at this, Samson’s face softened. He reached into his pocket and withdrew an earring. It took her a moment to recognize that dark green jade, and when she did, her breath caught in her throat, the memory, the pain, suddenly all too fresh, all too real.
“Is that—” she began.
“Your father’s. I found it in the ruins today.” Gently, Samson unfolded her hand and placed it in her palm. Her fingers trembled, and Samson wrapped his hand around hers to still them. “Think what he would do.”
She knew what Leo would do. He would call on the Phoenix, on his people’s belief.
Their faith entangled with their anger, building, burning.
They would march with the songs of the Phoenix on their lips.
But their god was a lie now. Crushed by the faith of another.
How, then, could she call upon them? Whom would they follow, other than their Prophet?
Elena clutched her dead father’s earring. “The Phoenix—”
She was interrupted as the doors slid open and Kruppa sprinted in, out of breath.
“Your Majesty, Your Holi—Blue Star.” She stumbled over her words, gasping.
Elena rose. In their exchange, she had not realized they had already docked. She could see shapes moving beyond the hoverpod, could hear multiple voices rising outside. Loud and furious.
“There’s a fight in the medic tents. The refugees—”
But Elena was already running, Samson shouting for men to clear the way.
Elena hurried to the medic quarters where, already, a small crowd was forming. As she drew closer, she could hear angry complaints, soft cries. A man turned, gasped.
“She’s here,” he hissed.
More people began to turn, make way. Elena slowed her pace. She did not want to seem flustered or disgruntled. Calmly, with eyes fixed ahead, she entered the tents.
Several beds were laid out in rows, each occupied by a patient.
To the right, Elena could see the crumbling facade of the overrun city hospital.
On her left, a group of people surrounded the bed of a teenager who cowered into his father’s shoulder.
A woman holding a bleeding child shouted hysterically as a harried-looking doctor stood between her and the cot.
“Give her the bed!” she cried. “Not him.”
The doctor held out his hands in an almost pleading gesture. “Please, I need to treat—”
“They’re Sesharians,” the mother spat. “You need to help your own!”
The father frowned, his expression an exasperated combination of indignity and hurt, but before he could speak, Elena stepped forward.
“What is this?” she said.
They turned. The nurse beside the boy made a quick sign of the Phoenix, and the motion twisted Elena’s stomach.
“Your Majesty!” the mother gasped. She stumbled forward, cradling her daughter, a child of no more than five suns. The girl’s skin was flushed, her eyes hot and feverish. “Please, tell them to treat my daughter. She is burned and hurt. That Sesharian boy has nothing but a broken finger—”
“A Jantari soldier smashed his arm!” the father roared.
The mother whipped around with a sudden, vicious jerk.
“Then your son shouldn’t have gotten in the way!
You Sesharians are always where you’re not wanted.
Your son is a man. My daughter is a child.
A Ravani,” she said, looking pointedly to the doctor.
“And you need to treat her first. Please, Your Majesty. Please, I beg. Help my daughter.”
Around them, Elena could see other patients and their families begin to turn, to listen. Almost all were Ravani.
“Ma—” Elena began.
She stilled as she felt Samson and the others approach. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Black Scale soldiers file into the tent, and the mother noticed too, because she shrank back, her eyes darting from Elena to them.
“Is there a problem?” Samson said.
Emboldened, the father stepped forward. “This woman is refusing to let them treat my son.”
“There’s just been a misunderstanding,” the doctor said, looking to the soldiers. “Please, tell your men to stand down. We already have enough injured patients.”
“My daughter is dying and here you are treating a broken arm,” the mother said.
“I will treat your daughter, ma, but you cannot kick out a patient from their bed—”
“Do you hear that?” the mother called, turning to the entrance of the tent, where more people were beginning to gather. She raised her daughter for them to see. “They refuse to help us first. We Ravani are not being treated justly here.”
The crowd began to push forward. One man shoved a Black Scale, who tottered back, then fell. Another soldier shouted, telling the onlookers to stand back, and beside her, Samson bristled. Elena felt the air sharpen, smolder, just before the summoning of Agni.
“Stop, stop!” Elena cried. She blocked Samson’s path. “Stand down. Now.”
He looked at her, the anger so clear and alive in his eyes that it felt like a blow. She placed her hand on his chest, her touch light, pointed. “Stand down and let me deal with this.”
He hesitated, but Elena used that moment to turn to the mother. “Come. I will treat your daughter.”
The mother cradled her child closer. “But you—”
“Bring me a salve. And whatever clean sheets you have,” she told the nurse and doctor. “She has a fever, so find something to bring it down. You, treat the boy’s arm.”
“Your Majesty—” the mother protested.
“He is a child too, ma,” Elena said. Her voice softened. “Should we treat your daughter only at the expense of another sick child? Do you want his fate on her head?”
The mother looked at the Sesharian teenager, her face a war of confusion and grief, of bitter injustice. But Elena could see her hurt too, her aches, her misguided love that pushed her to threaten another child simply to save her own. Her daughter gave a soft whimper.
“Please,” Elena said, offering her arms.
Slowly, carefully, the mother lifted her child, and Elena took the girl and cradled her to her chest. She was so light, so small.
Elena could feel the fever on her skin, see the molted burns on her legs.
The nurse dumped out dirty sheets from a box and turned it upside down, creating a makeshift table.
Elena turned to the crowd, raising her voice. “This girl needs medical attention and rest, but she can’t sleep if you are all here. Please. I will see to her—you have my word as your queen. Go and let us do our jobs.”
Chandi stood at the entrance of the tent now, and she turned to the crowd. “You heard your queen.”
But no one moved. Around them, Elena could see more people gathering. She glanced at the Sesharians and saw how the father protectively stood by his son’s side, his hands fisted, as if ready to fight.
She did not want another bloodbath on her hands.
Elena lowered the girl onto the box, calling for the nurse.
Better to start treating the child now to mollify the mother.
The nurse knelt beside her, unscrewing an ointment bottle, when suddenly Elena felt a tightening in her stomach, a rush of heat up her spine, and she turned to Samson, crying out, but it was too late.
With a crack, blue flames rushed down his arms. The mother gasped. The nurse shrieked and people outside shouted in alarm.
“Samson, wait—”
His flames engulfed the girl.
The mother screamed. She threw herself down, reaching for her daughter, when the fire suddenly died, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. The child sat up.
Gone was the feverish glint in her eyes. Gone was the sickly pallor of her skin. Gone were the burns on her legs, replaced now by a coiling serpent.
“Phoenix Above,” the mother said, touching her daughter’s face, her hands, her legs, as if she wasn’t real. “H-how?”
Samson looked at her, and then at the silent crowd and patients and doctors, his voice rippling with the crackle of fire.
“Because I am of Agni.” His eyes caught Elena’s, and she saw then his pride, his anger. “I am your Prophet returned.”
Gasps rippled around them. Soft murmurs, confused cries, whispered prayers. But they raged like thunder in Elena’s ears as she saw the mother kneel.
“O Prophet,” she cried. “Forgive me!”
One by one, her people began to kneel. Sesharian, Ravani, the doctors, the soldiers—they all knelt to Samson. Elena remembered the fear in Saayna’s eyes, along with her awe.
I know where my allegiance lies. I have my proof.
How easily they believed. How easily, in a land of burning, her people wished to be saved. The Ravani knew the pain of fire. Of course they would seek a leader who healed.
But Elena did not bend.
She remained standing, watching as Samson smiled, the slow, satisfied smile of a man who recognized power and found himself deserving of it.
And as she watched her people bow to such a man, she felt the strange, unnerving feeling of being undermined.
That she, Elena Aadya Ravence, had been rendered—in some sly, nearly imperceptible way—useless.